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Article I, Article Iii, And The Limits Of Enumeration, Gil Seinfeld
Article I, Article Iii, And The Limits Of Enumeration, Gil Seinfeld
Articles
Article I, Section 8 and Article Ill, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution deploy parallel strategies for constraining the power of the federal government. They enumerate powers that the national legislature and judiciary, respectively, are permitted to exercise and thereby implicitly prohibit these two branches of government from exercising powers not enumerated. According to conventional thinking, this strategy has failed in connection with Article I and succeeded in connection with Article III. That is, it is widely acknowledged that Congress routinely exercises powers that are difficult to square with the Article I enumeration; but it is commonly thought that the …
Constitutional Flaw?, Carl E. Schneider
Constitutional Flaw?, Carl E. Schneider
Articles
Do terminally ill patients have a constitutional right "to decide, without FDA interference, whether to assume the risks of using potentially life-saving investigational drugs that the FDA has yet to approve for commercial marketing, but that the FDA has determined, after Phase I clinical human trials, are safe enough for further testing"? In Abigail Alliance for Better Access to Developmental Drugs v. McClellan, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia said "no." In Abigail Alliance for Better Access to Developmental Drugs v. von Eschenbach, a panel (three judges) of the United States Court of Appeals …
The Truth About Torts: Rethinking Regulatory Preemption And Its Impact On Public Health, William Buzbee, William Funk, Thomas Mcgarity, Nina A. Mendelson, Sidney Shapiro, David Vladeck, Matthew Shudtz
The Truth About Torts: Rethinking Regulatory Preemption And Its Impact On Public Health, William Buzbee, William Funk, Thomas Mcgarity, Nina A. Mendelson, Sidney Shapiro, David Vladeck, Matthew Shudtz
Other Publications
As consumers, we assume that the automobiles, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and other products we purchase are generally safe for their intended uses. We rely on manufacturers to design and produce safe products, and we assume that federal regulators are conscientious watchdogs of the marketplace. In most instances, our assumptions are valid and we safely go about our lives. But the regulatory system is now frayed to the point that dangerous products sometimes slip through the cracks. Vioxx, Firestone/ATX tires, and toxics-laden children’s toys have endangered and harmed millions. In these cases, society depends on the state courts as a venue …
Quick Off The Mark? In Favor Of Empowering The President-Elect, Nina A. Mendelson
Quick Off The Mark? In Favor Of Empowering The President-Elect, Nina A. Mendelson
Articles
The United States’s presidential transition period is too long. Between November 7, 2008, and January 20, 2009, the media quickly identified a “‘leadership vacuum.’” In contrast to those of President-elect Obama, President Bush’s approval ratings were at historic lows. One reporter commented in late November, “The markets, at least, seem to be listening to one [P]resident—and he’s not the one in the Oval Office,” and another noted that “everyone . . . ignores the actions of the lame duck.”
Limits Of Interpretivism, Richard A. Primus
Limits Of Interpretivism, Richard A. Primus
Articles
Justice Stephen Markman sits on the Supreme Court of my home state of Michigan. In that capacity, he says, he is involved in a struggle between two kinds of judging. On one side are judges like him. They follow the rules. On the other side are unconstrained judges who decide cases on the basis of what they think the law ought to be. This picture is relatively simple, and Justice Markman apparently approves of its simplicity. But matters may in fact be a good deal more complex.
When Should Original Meanings Matter?, Richard A. Primus
When Should Original Meanings Matter?, Richard A. Primus
Articles
Constitutional theory lacks an account of when each of the familiar sources of authority-text, original meaning, precedent, and so on-should be given weight. The dominant tendency is to regard all sources as potentially applicable in every case. In contrast, this Article proposes that each source of authority is pertinent in some categories of cases but not in others, much as a physical tool is appropriate for some but not all kinds of household tasks. The Article then applies this approach to identify the categories of cases in which original meaning is, or is not, a valid factor in constitutional decisionmaking.
Limiting Federal Agency Preemption: Recommendations For A New Federalism Executive Order, William Funk, Thomas Mcgarity, Nina A. Mendelson, Sidney Shapiro, David Vladeck, Matthew Shudtz, James Goodwin
Limiting Federal Agency Preemption: Recommendations For A New Federalism Executive Order, William Funk, Thomas Mcgarity, Nina A. Mendelson, Sidney Shapiro, David Vladeck, Matthew Shudtz, James Goodwin
Other Publications
The structure of the U.S. Constitution reflects a profound respect for the principles of federalism and state sovereignty. These principles require the federal government to recognize and encourage opportunities for state and local governments to exercise their authority, especially in areas of traditional state concern such as the protection of the health, safety, and welfare of their citizens. However, over the last six years there has been a coordinated Executive Branch effortto use the regulatory process to shield certain product manufacturers from state tort liability. The Food and Drug Administration, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and Consumer Product Safety Commission, …
Federalism And The Commerce Clause: A Comparative Perspective, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Federalism And The Commerce Clause: A Comparative Perspective, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Articles
The U.S. Supreme Court has on numerous occasions addressed the constitutionality of state taxes under the U.S. Constitution (most often under the Commerce Clause, but sometimes under the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses). In general, the Supreme Court has granted wide leeway to the states to adopt any tax system they wish, only striking down the most egregious cases of discrimination against out-of-state residents. Thus, for example, the Court has generally refused to intervene against state tax competition to attract business into the state. It has twice upheld a method of calculating how much income of a multinational enterprise …
Grados De Libertad: Democracia Y Antidemocracia En Cuby Y Luisiana, 1898-1900, Rebecca J. Scott
Grados De Libertad: Democracia Y Antidemocracia En Cuby Y Luisiana, 1898-1900, Rebecca J. Scott
Articles
This comparative study between the quest for political racial inclusivity in 1890s Louisiana and the fight against state-sanctioned racialized violence in Cuba in the early 1900s exposes similarities, tensions, and differences between the two systems. The article traces the evolving contests for citizenship and suffrage in each climate at the end of the 19th century and into the beginning of the twentieth, juxtaposing the expression of race, suffrage, and citizenship in the constitution and political climate of each locale. In 1898, the new Louisiana state constitution disenfranchised African-Americans, while in 1900 Cuba was positioning itself for a grant of universal …
Judicial Power And Mobilizable History, Richard A. Primus
Judicial Power And Mobilizable History, Richard A. Primus
Articles
One contribution that law professors can make to constitutional discourse, I suggest, is the nurturing of new mobilizable histories. A "mobilizable history," as I will use the term, is a narrative, image, or other historical source that is sufficiently well-known to the community of constitutional decisionmakers so as to be able to support a credible argument in the discourse of constitutional law. It draws upon materials that are within the collective memory of constitutional interpreters; indeed, a necessary step in nurturing a new mobilizable history is to introduce new information into that collective memory or to raise the prominence of …
A Government Of Limited Powers, Carl E. Schneider
A Government Of Limited Powers, Carl E. Schneider
Articles
Roscoe C. Filburn owned a small farm in Ohio where he raised poultry, dairy cows, and a modest acreage of winter wheat. Some wheat he fed his animals, some he sold, and some he kept for his family's daily bread. The Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938 limited the wheat Mr. Filburn could grow without incurring penalties, but his 1941 crop exceeded those limits. Mr. Filburn sued. He said Claude Wickard, the Secretary of Agriculture, could not enforce the AAI's limits because Congress lacked authority to regulate wheat grown for one's own use. He reasoned: In our federal system, the states …
Of Power And Responsibility: The Political Morality Of Federal Systems, Daniel Halberstam
Of Power And Responsibility: The Political Morality Of Federal Systems, Daniel Halberstam
Articles
In comparative constitutional discourse, Americans are from Mars and Europeans from Venus; we eagerly tell our European counterparts about the U.S. constitutional experience, but rarely do we listen when they talk to us about their own. Whereas Europeans routinely examine U.S. constitutionalism as an illuminating point of comparison or contrast, as Americans, we seem convinced that we have nothing to learn from looking abroad. This Article challenges that assumption. In particular, it argues that American courts and scholars have overlooked an important alternative to the dominant interpretation of the division of powers in the United States by ignoring the theory …
The Dormant Commerce Clause And The Hormones Problem, Donald H. Regan
The Dormant Commerce Clause And The Hormones Problem, Donald H. Regan
Book Chapters
It is obvious that no anti-discrimination regime can stop at forbidding explicit discrimination of the relevant sort. If only explicit discrimination is forbidden, lawmakers who want to discriminate can hide their discriminatory intentions behind facially neutral classifications that are nonetheless chosen because they differentially burden the protected class. So, we must be prepared to invalidate some facially neutral laws that have "discriminatory effect" or, as American lawyers often call it, "disparate impact." On the other hand, we cannot possibly invalidate all laws which have a disparate impact on a protected class; many perfectly reasonable laws adopted for completely innocent purposes …
The Canon Has A History, Richard A. Primus
The Canon Has A History, Richard A. Primus
Reviews
Legal Canons, edited by J. M. Balkin and Sanford Levinson, is a collection of fourteen essays on subjects related to canonicity in law and legal education. Balkin and Levinson have two principal aims. One is to expand the category of things that can be canonical: not just texts, they say, but also arguments, problems, narrative frameworks, and examples invoked in conversation or teaching. In their view, what makes something canonical is its ability to reproduce itself in the minds of successive generations.' If generation after generation of legal academics argues about the countermajoritarian difficulty, then the countermajoritarian difficulty is a …
...A Rendezvous With Kreplach: Putting The New Deal Court In Context, Richard D. Friedman
...A Rendezvous With Kreplach: Putting The New Deal Court In Context, Richard D. Friedman
Reviews
The Supreme Court of the New Deal era continues to captivate lawyers and historians. Constitutional jurisprudence changed rapidly during the period. Moreover, some of the most significant changes seemed--whatever the reality--to result from pressure imposed in 1937 by President Franklin Roosevelt's plan to pack the Court. The structure of constitutional law that emerged within a few years of Roosevelt's death remains intact in significant respects today.
Free-Standing Due Process And Criminal Procedure: The Supreme Court's Search For Interpretive Guidelines, Jerold H. Israel
Free-Standing Due Process And Criminal Procedure: The Supreme Court's Search For Interpretive Guidelines, Jerold H. Israel
Articles
When I was first introduced to the constitutional regulation of criminal procedure in the mid-1950s, a single issue dominated the field: To what extent did the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment impose upon states the same constitutional restraints that the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendments imposed upon the federal government? While those Bill of Rights provisions, as even then construed, imposed a broad range of constitutional restraints upon the federal criminal justice system, the federal system was (and still is) minuscule as compared to the combined systems of the fifty states. With the Bill of Rights provisions …
'Bush' V. 'Gore': What Was The Supreme Court Thinking?, Richard D. Friedman
'Bush' V. 'Gore': What Was The Supreme Court Thinking?, Richard D. Friedman
Articles
One of the most astonishing episodes in American political history ended last month with perhaps the most imperial decision ever by the United States Supreme Court. In one stroke, the Court exercised power that belonged to Congress, the legislature of Florida, Florida's courts and administrators, and, most importantly, the people of the state.
Beyond The Hero Judge: Institutional Reform Litigation As Litigation, Margo Schlanger
Beyond The Hero Judge: Institutional Reform Litigation As Litigation, Margo Schlanger
Reviews
In 1955, in its second decision in Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court suggested that federal courts might be called upon to engage in long-term oversight of once-segregated schools. Through the 1960s, southern resistance pushed federal district and appellate judges to turn that possibility into a reality. The impact of this saga on litigation practice extended beyond school desegregation, and even beyond the struggle for African-American equality; through implementation of Brown, the nation’s litigants, lawyers, and judges grew accustomed both to issuance of permanent injunctions against state and local public institutions, and to extended court oversight of compliance. …
Finding The Constitution: An Economic Analysis Of Tradition's Role In Constitutional Interpretation, Adam C. Pritchard, Todd J. Zywicki
Finding The Constitution: An Economic Analysis Of Tradition's Role In Constitutional Interpretation, Adam C. Pritchard, Todd J. Zywicki
Articles
In this Article, Professor Pritchard and Professor Zywicki examine the role of tradition in constitutional interpretation, a topic that has received significant attention in recent years. After outlining the current debate over the use of tradition, the authors discuss the efficiency purposes of constitutionalism--precommitment and the reduction of agency costs--and demonstrate how the use of tradition in constitutional interpretation can serve these purposes. Rejecting both Justice Scalia's majoritarian model, which focuses on legislative sources of tradition, and Justice Souter's common-law model, which focuses on Supreme Court precedent as a source of tradition, the authors propose an alternative model--the "finding model"-- …
Constitutions And Spontaneous Orders: A Response To Professor Mcginnis, Adam C. Pritchard, Todd J. Zywicki
Constitutions And Spontaneous Orders: A Response To Professor Mcginnis, Adam C. Pritchard, Todd J. Zywicki
Articles
Professor John McGinnis has written a perceptive and provocative comment on our economic analysis of the role of tradition in constitutional interpretation.1 A brief summary of our areas of agreement and disagreement may help set the stage for this response. It appears that Professor McGinnis substantially agrees with the two central propositions of our article. First, he appears to agree with our definition of efficient traditions as those evolving over long periods of time from decentralized processes.2 Second, he explicitly agrees that Justices Scalia and Souter have adopted sub-optimal models of tradition because they rely on sources that lack the …
Theorists' Belief: A Comment On The Moral Tradition Of American Constitutionalism, Jospeh Vining
Theorists' Belief: A Comment On The Moral Tradition Of American Constitutionalism, Jospeh Vining
Articles
The Moral Tradition of American Constitutionalism is one of those rare works that leads us to face, at the center of law and legal thought, the largest questions about human life and human purpose. There is a special reader's shudder, a certain gestural shift in the chair, reserved for that moment of realizing where one is being led-not to the edge, but to the center, so that the questions become insistent, and whatever we and others say and do in the face of them becomes our response to them.
Art Of Judgement In Planned Parenthood V. Casey, James Boyd White
Art Of Judgement In Planned Parenthood V. Casey, James Boyd White
Articles
This article was excerpted and abridged with permission from a chapter in Professor White's recent book Acts of Hope: Creating Authority in Literature, Law, and Politics. In the book, he explores the nature of authority in various cultural contexts. Here he examines the Joint Opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which has been attacked both from the right, on the grounds that it tried to keep Roe v. Wade alive, and from the left, on the grounds that it significantly weakens the force of that case. Professor White, by contrast, admires it greatly, and in this chapter explains …
Abstract Democracy: A Review Of Ackerman's We The People, Terrance Sandalow
Abstract Democracy: A Review Of Ackerman's We The People, Terrance Sandalow
Reviews
We the People: Foundations is an ambitious book, the first of three volumes in which Professor Ackerman proposes to recast conventional understanding of and contemporary debate about American constitutional law. Unfortunately, the book's rhetoricinflated, self-important, and self-congratulatory-impedes the effort to come to terms with its argument. How, for example, does one respond to a book that opens by asking whether the reader will have "the strength" to accept its thesis? Or that announces the author's intention of "engaging" two of the most influential works of intellectual history of the past several decades-and then discusses one in two and one-half pages …
The Constitution As Literature, James Boyd White
The Constitution As Literature, James Boyd White
Book Chapters
Although presumably no one would say that the Constitution offers its readers an experience that cannot be distinguished from reading a poem or a novel, there is nonetheless a sense in which it is a kind of highly imaginative literature in its own right (indeed its nature as law requires that this be so), the reading of which may be informed by our experience of other literary forms. But to say this may be controversial, and the first step toward understanding how such a claim can be made may be to ask what it is we think characterizes imaginative literature …
Patents And The Progress Of Science: Exclusive Rights And Experimental Use, Rebecca S. Eisenberg
Patents And The Progress Of Science: Exclusive Rights And Experimental Use, Rebecca S. Eisenberg
Articles
In this article I analyze the proper scope of an experimental use exemption from patent infringement liability by comparing the rationales behind promoting technological progress through granting exclusive patent rights in inventions with competing arguments for promoting scientific progress by allowing all investigators to enjoy free access to the discoveries of other scientists. I begin by reviewing key features of the patent laws and theoretical justifications for granting patent monopolies in order to clarify the implications of existing patent doctrine and theory for an experimental use exemption. I then look to the literature in the sociology, history, and philosophy of …
Some Modest Proposals On The Vice-Presidency, Richard D. Friedman
Some Modest Proposals On The Vice-Presidency, Richard D. Friedman
Articles
There are many good things in the Constitution, but the vice-presidency isn't one of them. In Part I of this essay, I will argue that there are three basic problems with the vice-presidency: the method of nomination, the method of election, and the office itself. That just about covers the waterfront.' If we had to do it all over again, we almost certainly would not" create the system we currently have. We cannot undo history, but we do have a very strong incentive to develop a better system of succession to the presidency. Whom we choose as vice-president is a …
Constructing A Constitution: 'Orginal Intention' In The Slave Cases, James Boyd White
Constructing A Constitution: 'Orginal Intention' In The Slave Cases, James Boyd White
Other Publications
The question how our Constitution is to be interpreted is a living one for us today, both in the scholarly and in the political domains. Professors argue about "interpretivism" and "originalism" in law journals, they study hermeneutics and deconstruction to determine whether or not interpretation is possible at all, and if so on what premises, and they struggle to create theories that will tell us both what we do in fact and what we ought to do. Politicians and public figures (including Attorney General Edwin Meese) talk in the newspapers and elsewhere about the authority of the "original intention of …
Constitutional Interpretation, Terrance Sandalow
Constitutional Interpretation, Terrance Sandalow
Articles
"[We] must never forget," Chief Justice Marshall admonished us in a statement pregnant with more than one meaning, "that it is a constitution we are expounding."' Marshall meant that the Constitution should be read as a document "intended to endure for ages.to come, and, consequently, to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs."'2 But he meant also that the construction placed upon the document must have regard for its "great outlines" and "important objects."'3 Limits are implied by the very nature of the task. There is not the same freedom in construing the Constitution as in constructing a …
Federalism And Social Change, Terrance Sandalow
Federalism And Social Change, Terrance Sandalow
Articles
A familiar passage in Professors Hart and Wechsler's casebook likens the relationship between federal and state law to that which exists between statutes and the common law. The underlying idea is that federal law rests upon a substructure of state law. "It builds upon legal relationships established by the states, altering or supplanting them only so far as necessary for [its] special purpose."' A similar relationship exists between state and federal judicial systems. State courts are courts of general jurisdiction, assumed to have authority to adjudicate controversies unless Congress has displaced them by conferring exclusive jurisdiction on federal courts. Federal …
Judicial Protection Of Minorities, Terrance Sandalow
Judicial Protection Of Minorities, Terrance Sandalow
Articles
In United States v. Carolene Products Co., Justice Stone suggested by indirection that there "may be narrower scope for operation of the presumption of constitutionality" when courts are called upon to determine the validity "of statutes directed at particular religious . . . or national . . . or racial minorities."' In such cases, he explained, "prejudice against discrete and insular minorities may be a special condition, which tends seriously to curtail the operation of those political processes ordinarily to be relied upon to protect minorities, and which may call for a correspondingly more searching judicial inquiry."' Forty years later, …