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The Democratic Virtues, Our Common Life And The Common School: Trust In Democracy: Anabaptists, Italian Americans, And Solidarity, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

Consider two phrases in Professor Marie Failinger's charge to those of us discussing Jeffrey Stout's Democracy and Tradition, October 28, 2005, at Hamline University: (i) "How would we construct a real democratic sociality holding each other responsible for ethical life that would warrant trust in democracy? . . . and, (ii) How do the religious traditions help us reflect on this issue?"

My reflection, probably sectarian, refers more to where we come from than to what we choose. The reference here is to three communities, none of which is primarily concerned with "real democratic sociality." But none of them is …

"We Shall Not Be Moved": Urban Communities, Eminent Domain And The Socioeconomics Of Just Compensation, James J. Kelly

Journal Articles

If eminent domain is to serve true community development, statutory reforms must limit its propensity to abuse while still preserving its effectiveness. The first part of this article offers a normative legal theory of eminent domain as constrained by both the availability of alternative means of achieving public objectives and the inability of some condemnees to be made whole by cash compensation. The consideration of the land needs of both the condemnor and the condemnee is crucial to the respective evaluations of public use and just compensation as limitations on eminent domain. In the context of urban redevelopment, the theory …

Religion And State: Some Main Issues And Sources, John M. Finnis

Journal Articles

Public reason's default position is not atheism or agnosticism about the dependence of everything on a transcendent Creator. On the contrary, there is good reason to judge that there is such a transcendent cause, capable of communicating with intelligent creatures, that one of the world's religions may be essentially true and others substantially truer than atheism, and that there is a human or natural right to immunity from coercion in religious inquiry, belief (or unbelief, precisely as such), and practice so far as is compatible with public order, that is with the rights of others, public peace and public morality. …

Religion, Division, And The First Amendment, Richard W. Garnett

Journal Articles

Nearly thirty-five years ago, in Lemon v. Kurtzman, Chief Justice Warren Burger declared that state programs or policies could excessive(ly) - and, therefore, unconstitutionally - entangle government and religion, not only by requiring or allowing intrusive public monitoring of religious institutions and activities, but also through what he called their divisive political potential. Chief Justice Burger asserted also, and more fundamentally, that political division along religious lines was one of the principal evils against which the First Amendment was intended to protect. And from this Hobbesian premise about the inten(t) animating the First Amendment, he proceeded on the assumption that …

"The Dean Of Chicago's Black Lawyers": Earl Dickerson And Civil Rights Lawyering In The Years Before Brown, Jay Tidmarsh, Stephen Robinson

Journal Articles

Brown v. Board of Education is a watershed in American law and society. In the years since it was decided, Brown has shaped America's views of race, constitutionalism, and equality. Brown exerts an equally important influence over the historiography of civil rights lawyering in the decades before Brown. In particular, in constructing the story of civil rights lawyering in the crucial years between World War I and World War II, historians and legal scholars have focused primarily on the people and the events that shaped Brown.

Washington's "War Against Terrorism" And Human Rights: The View From Abroad, Douglass Cassel

Journal Articles

"When it comes to human rights, there is no greater leader than the United States of America," White House spokesman Scott McClellan has said.

The view from abroad is less kind. A recent resolution of the European Parliament, for example, "condemns" our government's treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo. It urges Washington to guarantee all prisoners "minimum human rights in accordance with international human rights law and fair trial procedures" and to "immediately clarify the situation of the prisoners." European objections run so deep that a New York Times account finds a "high level of anger in Europe at reports that …

A Law-Policy Proposal To Know Where Babies Come From During The Reproductive Revolution, Michael J. Malinowski

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Judicial Activism And Its Critics, Kermit Roosevelt, Richard W. Garnett

Journal Articles

"Judicial activism," writes Professor Kermit Roosevelt, of Penn, has been employed as an "excessive and unhelpful" charge--one "essentially empty of content." As a substitute, Roosevelt reviews here the framework for analysis of Supreme Court opinions that receives fuller treatment in his recent book, The Myth of Judicial Activism. Professor Richard W. Garnett, of Notre Dame, is willing to go along with "much, though not all, of" Roosevelt's position. Ultimately, Garnett suggests "that 'judicial activism' might be salvaged, and used as a way of identifying and criticizing decisions...that fail to demonstrate th[e] virtue" of constitutional "humility."

Foreword: Representation Without Party: Lessons From State Constitutional Attempts To Control Gerrymandering, James A. Gardner

Journal Articles

Since the founding, all gerrymandering of election districts, at both the state and congressional levels, has been accomplished by state actors operating almost exclusively under state law. State constitutions have often served as a first line of defense against publicly disfavored practices, and the treatment of gerrymandering is no exception. The state constitutional record reveals a gradual introduction, diffusion, and evolution of a wide variety of provisions intended to control gerrymandering, including requirements of contiguity, compactness, respect for local political boundaries, and preservation of communities of interest, among others. Indeed, such provisions have been validated by the U.S. Supreme Court …

Redefining Open Access For The Legal Information Market, James G. Milles

Journal Articles

The open access movement in legal scholarship, inasmuch as it is driven within the law library community over concerns about the rising cost of legal information, fails to address - and in fact diverts resources from - the real problem facing law libraries today: the soaring costs of nonscholarly, commercially published, practitioner-oriented legal publications. The current system of legal scholarly publishing - in student-edited journals and without meaningful peer review - does not face the pressures to increase prices common in the science and health disciplines. One solution to this problem is for law schools to redirect some of their …

Rethinking The "Less As More" Thesis: Supranational Litigation Of Economic, Social And Cultural Rights In The Americas, Tara J. Melish

Journal Articles

In their 2005 law review article Less as More: Rethinking Supranational Litigation of Economic and Social Rights in the Americas, James Cavallaro and Emily Schaffer argue for a "rethinking" of strategies to advance economic, social and cultural rights in the Americas. They posit that to achieve higher rates of real-world protection for such rights, social rights advocates should do two things: first, bring less litigation and, second, frame any marginal litigation that is pursued as violations of classic civil and political rights. According to the authors, this recommended course will increase the "legitimacy" of the litigation and lead to higher …

The Secret Life Of Legal Doctrine: The Divergent Evolution Of Secondary Liability In Trademark And Copyright Law, Mark Bartholomew, John Tehranian

Journal Articles

The recent explosion in intellectual property litigation has witnessed increasing recourse to secondary liability theories. The courts have responded favorably to plaintiffs by enunciating substantial reinterpretations of extant principles, thereby precipitating a veritable secondary liability revolution. Numerous commentators have bemoaned this trend, contending that judicial recasting of liability rules expands intellectual property rights beyond their intended scope, thereby resulting in an overprotective regime that stifles innovation. Yet one of the most striking aspects of the secondary liability revolution has been all but ignored in the literature: While the courts have broadened the scope of secondary liability principles with respect to …

Free Wage Labor And The Suffrage In Nineteenth Century England, Robert J. Steinfeld

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

A Tribute To My Friend, Wendy B. Scott

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No abstract provided.

From An Act Of God To The Failure Of Man: Hurricane Katrina And The Economic Recovery Of New Orleans, Wendy B. Scott

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No abstract provided.

Book Review, Mark C. Modak-Truran

Journal Articles

In volume 1, James Hitchcock provides a comprehensive historical treatment of all the U.S. Supreme Court cases involving the religion clauses. Volume 2 focuses on the broader “context of the continuing dialogue about the role of religion in public life” and its relationship to the Court’s interpretation of the religion clauses.

Seeking Different Treatment, Or Seeking The Same Regard: Remarketing The Transracial Adoption Debate, Angela Mae Kupenda

Journal Articles

The transracial adoption discourse mistakenly has been phrased as a request for black children awaiting adoption to be treated different from white children and to be placed with parents of like race only. This paper urges a remarketing of the transracial adoption debate to reflect a request based on sameness, not difference. The request presented here is not a request for different treatment for black children. Rather, it is for black children to be given the same regard that is given to white children. This request is illustrated with the story of a black couple seeking to adopt healthy, fat …

Fahrenheit 451on Cell Block D: A Bar Examination To Safeguard America’S Jailhouse Lawyers From The Post-Lewis Blaze Consuming Their Law Libraries, Evan R. Seamone

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Book Review, Deborah Challener

Journal Articles

COURTIERS OF THE MARBLE PALACE is a compelling, informative book. As much as anything, it is a tremendous informational source for anyone interested in the Supreme Court. It is evident that the author has thoroughly researched the topic and provided the reader with a factual view of the past and present responsibilities of a Supreme Court law clerk. Because Peppers relies on principal-agent theory to develop his hypotheses and used exhaustive research to prove them, the book also appears to be objective.

Understanding The Person Beneath The Robe: Practical Methods For Neutralizing Harmful Judicial Biases, Evan R. Seamone

Journal Articles

This article presents hands-on self-awareness techniques for use by judges, arbitrators, members of commissions, and other legal decision-makers who are confronted with complex cases. All too often, these judges are expected to make the “right” decisions without knowing how to accomplish this task. While judges, no doubt, are capable of applying the law to a case, this is only one aspect of righteous behavior. This article is concerned with the related expectation that judges are capable of rendering fair and impartial decisions. No matter how much training they receive, judges can only avoid biases that are known to them.

Law School Faculty As Mentors, Jim Rosenblatt

Journal Articles

Professors see potential in our students that they do not see themselves. Based on his or her knowledge of the student and his or her awareness of student performance in the classroom and on examinations, a professor might suggest a career path, an intern opportunity, a research topic, an advanced degree, or a job contact that the student had not considered through the "door opening" process by which the professor opens doors and helps the law student see what is behind that door. Without this mentoring assistance that door may never have been opened by the student left to her …

Intellectual Property, Privatization And Democracy: A Response To Professor Rose, Mark P. Mckenna

Journal Articles

The broad thesis of Professor Rose's article Privatization: The Road to Democracy? is an important reminder that no institution deserves all the credit for democratization, and that the success of any particular institution in promoting democracy depends to a greater or lesser extent on the existence and functioning of other political institutions. While protection of private property has proven quite important to successful democratic reform, we should not be lulled into thinking private property can carry the whole weight of reform. That lesson has particular significance in the context of intellectual property, given proponents general tendency to overstate the significance …

The Supervisory Power Of The Supreme Court, Amy Coney Barrett

Journal Articles

Relying on something it calls supervisory power or supervisory authority, the Supreme Court regularly prescribes rules of procedure and evidence for inferior courts. Both scholars and the Court have treated the Court's exercises of this authority as unexceptional exercises of the inherent authority that Article III grants every federal court to regulate procedure in the course of adjudication. Article III's grant of inherent authority, however, is conventionally understood as permitting a federal court to regulate its own proceedings. When the Supreme Court exercises supervisory power, it regulates the proceedings of other federal courts. More than a reference to every court's …

Roman Catholic Lawyers In The United States Of America, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

My agenda here is Roman Catholics in the American legal profession, from George Higgins's Jerry Kennedy to Judge Samuel Alito's joining the four other Catholics to make a majority on the federal Supreme Court. (I thought, as I said this in Washington, just before the Senate confirmation hearings in January 2006, that some in attendance may not have thought about this, and may have wanted to leap to their feet and phone their senators.)

Begin with ethnographic narrowing: When I talk about Catholic lawyers in the U.S., I mean to talk about descendants of the late immigrants—that is, people whose …

Chief Justice Rehnquist's Enduring Democratic Constitution, Richard W. Garnett

Journal Articles

William H. Rehnquist's essay, The Notion of a Living Constitution, was delivered as the Will E. Orgain Lecture and then published thirty years ago, back when Rehnquist was still a relatively junior Associate Justice. The piece provides a clear and coherent statement of Rehnquist's judicial philosophy, and the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy and the Texas Law Review deserve thanks for their initiative and generosity in reproducing it, in memory of his life and work.

This introduction to Rehnquist's essay highlights his view that the Notion of a Living Constitution was to be resisted, not out of pious …

State Courts And The Interpretation Of Federal Statutes, Anthony J. Bellia

Journal Articles

Scholars have long debated the separation of powers question of what judicial power federal courts have under Article III of the Constitution in the enterprise of interpreting federal statutes. Specifically, scholars have debated whether, in light of Founding-era English and state court judicial practice, the judicial power of the United States should be understood as a power to interpret statutes dynamically or as faithful agents of Congress. This Article argues that the question of how courts should interpret federal statutes is one not only of separation of powers but of federalism as well. State courts have a vital and often …

The Neglected Political Economy Of Eminent Domain, Nicole Stelle Garnett

Journal Articles

This Article challenges a foundational assumption about eminent domain - namely, that owners are systematically undercompensated because they receive only fair market value for their property. The Article shows that, in fact, scholars have overstated the undercompensation problem because they have focused on the compensation required by the Constitution, rather than on the actual mechanics of eminent domain. The Article examines three ways that Takers (i.e., non-judicial actors in the eminent domain process) minimize undercompensation. First, Takers may avoid taking high-subjective-value properties. Second, Takers frequently must pay more compensation in the form of relocation assistance. Third, Takers and property owners …

Defending Human Rights In The "War" Against Terror, Douglass Cassel

Journal Articles

Safeguarding human rights in our "war" against terrorism is both the right and the smart thing to do. It is right because human rights embody our fundamental values as Americans and as Christians. Our Constitution stands for freedom; our Creator teaches us to respect the God-given dignity of each human soul. Christians are called to cherish human dignity, not only of innocents, and not only of captives in war whose status as combatant or civilian may be uncertain, but also of cardinal sinners, the terrorists themselves. Christ Jesus teaches us to hate the sin, but somehow to bring ourselves to …

Lawmaking By Public Welfare Professionals, Gerald Jogerst, Jeanette Daly, Jeffrey Dawson, Gretchen Schmuch, Margaret F. Brinig

Journal Articles

When thinking of law-making, one usually thinks of the activities of Congress or state legislatures. Students of law and government may also think of the rule-making activities of federal or state bureaucracies. More recently, some attention has been paid to the lawmaking power known as prosecutorial discretion (the decision of whether or for what crimes to charge a criminal defendant) or judicial discretion in sentencing. However, so far most of this work has been theoretical or, at best, anecdotal. Further, far less attention has been paid to the ubiquitous activities of the bureaucrat who must decide whether or not to …

Ranks And Rivals: A Theory Of Competition, Avishalom Tor, Stephen M. Garcia, Richard Gonzalez

Journal Articles

Social comparison theories typically assume a comparable degree of competition between commensurate rivals on a mutually important dimension. In contrast, however, the following set of studies reveals that the degree of competition between such rivals depends on their proximity to a standard. Studies 1-3 test the prediction that individuals become more competitive and less willing to maximize profitable joint gains when they and their commensurate rivals are highly ranked (e.g., #2 vs. #3) than when they are not (e.g., #202 vs. #203). Studies 4-6 then generalize these findings, showing that the degree of competition increases not only for high ranks …