Digital Commons Network^™

The Recognition Of Same-Sex Relationships: Comparative Institutional Analysis, Contested Social Goals, And Strategic Institutional Choice, Nancy J. Knauer

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The emerging field of comparative institutional analysis (CIA) has much to offer public policy analysts. However, the failure of CIA to address the dynamic process through which social goals are articulated limits the scope of its application to the largely prescriptive pronouncements of legal scholars. By examining the movement for equal recognition of same-sex relationships, this Essay builds on the basic observations of CIA and introduces a new dimension, namely the dynamic process through which social goals are articulated and social change is pursued. The acknowledgment that the production of social goals involves institutional behavior, as well as multiple sites …

Breaking The Bank: Revisiting Central Bank Of Denver After Enron And Sarbanes-Oxley, Celia Taylor

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No abstract provided.

Making State Law In Federal Court, Benjamin C. Glassman

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Abstract: We know from Erie R.R. Co. v. Tompkins that unless the Constitution or a federal statute provides the rule of decision in federal court, state law does. Contrary to the assumption of several recent commentators, however, Erie itself does not tell the federal court how to ascertain what is the law of the state, and the refrain that federal courts are to predict what the state supreme court would decide not only proves unhelpful upon examination, but also has tended to confuse the courts themselves in recent years. Yet federal courts routinely face questions of state law that admit …

Rhetorical Holy War: Polygamy, Homosexuality, And The Paradox Of Community And Autonomy, Gregory C. Pingree

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The article explores the rhetorical strategies deployed in both legal and cultural narratives of Mormon polygamy in nineteenth-century America. It demonstrates how an understanding of that unique communal experience, and the narratives by which it was represented, informs the classic paradox of community and autonomy – the tension between the collective and the individual. The article concludes by using the Mormon polygamy analysis to illuminate a contemporary social situation that underscores the paradox of community and autonomy – homosexuality and the so-called culture wars over family values and the meaning of marriage.

U.S. Supreme Court Tort Reform: Limiting State Power To Articulate And Develop Its Own Tort Law–Defamation, Preemption, And Punitive Damages, Thomas C. Galligan

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U.S. Supreme Court Tort Reform: Limiting State Power to Articulate and Develop Its Own Tort Law–Defamation, Preemption, and Punitive Damages analyzes and critiques the three primary areas in which the U.S. Supreme Court has found federal constitutional limits on a state’s power to articulate, develop, and apply its common law of torts. It is the first piece to consider all three areas together as an emerging body of jurisprudence which Professor Galligan calls U.S. Supreme Court tort reform. After setting forth a modest model of adjudication, the article applies that model to each of the three areas: defamation and related …

Counter-Majoritarian Power And Judges' Political Speech, Michael R. Dimino

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Canons of ethics restrict judicial campaigning and prohibit sitting judges from engaging in political activity. Only recently, in Republican Party v. White, 536 U.S. 765 (2002), has the Supreme Court addressed the constitutionality of these restrictions, concluding that judicial candidates must be allowed some opportunity to discuss legal and political issues in their campaigns. But White left many questions unanswered about the permissible scope of restrictions on judges’ political activity.

This Article suggests that those questions will be answered not by applying principles of free speech, but by analyzing the opportunities the restrictions provide for independent judicial policy-making. Restrictions on …

The Paradox Of Omnipotence: Courts, Constitutions, And Commitments, David S. Law

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Sovereigns, like individuals, must sometimes make commitments that limit their own freedom of action in order to accomplish their goals. Social scientists have observed that constitutional arrangements can, by restricting a sovereign’s power, enable the sovereign to make such commitments. This essay advances several claims about the commitment problems that sovereigns face. First, constitutions do not necessarily solve such problems but can instead aggravate them, by entrenching inalienable governmental powers and immunities. Second, sovereigns and other actors face two distinct varieties of commitment problems – undercommitment and overcommitment – between which they must steer: an actor that can bind itself …

The Irrational Supreme Court, Michael I. Meyerson

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Abstract: The Irrational Supreme Court

The pejorative “irrational” is used to describe many defects in legal reasoning, but is generally not meant to be understood as a literal lack of rational thinking. Similarly, the “rational basis test” is not meant to determine whether a legislature is “not endowed with reason or understanding,” but rather if it has acted with some hidden, invidious motive. Incredibly, though, the Supreme Court has frequently issued truly “irrational opinions,” simply due to the fundamental nature of group decision-making.

Much has been written about Nobel Prize winner Kenneth Arrow’s “Impossibility Theorem,” which proved that, when faced …

Book Review: Forensic Linguistics, Dru Stevenson

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Review of John Gibbons' text "Forensic Linguistics"

Compliance Theory And The Inter-American Court Of Human Rights, Morse Hyun-Myung Tan

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This essay fills a gap by exploring compliance theory in international law to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. After introducing the topic and setting the context, it delves into the question of why nations follow international law. Interacting with prominent theoretical models (including the managerial model, fairness and legitimacy, transnational legal process, self-interest, and a comparative perspective with Europe), it arrives at a critical synthesis in the conclusion.