Law Commons^™

Shleifer's Failure, Jonathan Klick

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Thinking, Big And Small, Stephen B. Burbank

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Court-Packing And Compromise, Barry Cushman

Journal Articles

President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1937 Court-packing bill would have permitted him to appoint six additional justices to the Supreme Court, thereby expanding its membership to fifteen immediately. Throughout the ultimately unsuccessful campaign to enact the measure, Roosevelt was presented with numerous opportunities to compromise for a measure authorizing the appointment of fewer additional justices. The President rejected each of these proposals, and his refusal to compromise often has been attributed to stubbornness, overconfidence, or hubris. Yet an examination of the papers of Attorney General Homer S. Cummings reveals why FDR and his advisors believed that he required no fewer than …

General Law In Federal Court, Bradford R. Clark, Anthony J. Bellia

Journal Articles

Conventional wisdom maintains that the Supreme Court banished general law from federal courts in 1938 in Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins when the Court overruled Swift v. Tyson. The narrative asserts that Swift viewed the common law as a “brooding omnipresence,” and authorized federal courts to disregard state common law in favor of general common law of their own choosing. The narrative continues that Erie constrained such judicial lawmaking by banishing general law from federal courts. Contrary to this account, Swift and Erie represent compatible conceptions of federal judicial power when each decision is understood in historical context. At the …

Valid Rule Due Process Challenges: Bond V. United States And Erie’S Constitutional Source, Kermit Roosevelt Iii

All Faculty Scholarship

This article begins by asking what constitutional provision is violated by the enforcement of law without a lawmaker. Taking a positivist view—i.e., that law does not exist without a lawmaker—it concludes that the problem of law without a lawmaker collapses into the problem of coercion without law. Coercion without law violates the Due Process Clause in an obvious way: it is deprivation of something “without … law.” The article then explores the existence of this form of substantive due process in American law, arguing that we find it in three somewhat surprising places: Lochner-era substantive due process; modern federalism …

What Ed Cooper Has Taught Me About The Realities And Complexities Of Appellate Jurisdiction And Procedure, Catherine T. Struve

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Court-Packing Plan As Symptom, Casualty, And Cause Of Gridlock, Barry Cushman

Journal Articles

This essay, prepared for the Notre Dame Law Review's Symposium, “The American Congress: Legal Implications of Gridlock,” considers three ways in which President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1937 Court-packing bill was related to the phenomenon of gridlock in the 1930s. First, as FDR's public remarks on the subject demonstrate, he believed that the early New Deal was a victim of partisan gridlock between the Democrat-controlled political branches and the Republican-controlled judiciary. Moreover, he did not believe that the impasse could be overcome through an amendment to the Constitution, for he regarded Article V's supermajority requirements as virtually encoding gridlock into the …

On What Distinguishes New Originalism From Old: A Jurisprudential Take, Mitchell N. Berman

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Alexander's Genius, Mitchell N. Berman

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Asking The First Question: Reframing Bivens After Minneci, Alexander A. Reinert, Lumen N. Mulligan

Faculty Works

In Minneci v. Pollard, decided in January 2012, the Supreme Court refused to recognize a Bivens v. Six Unknown Federal Narcotics Agents suit against employees of a privately run federal prison because state tort law provided an alternative remedy, thereby adding a federalism twist to what had been strictly a separation-of-powers debate. In this Article, we show why this new state-law focus is misguided. We first trace the Court’s prior alternative-remedies-to-Bivens holdings, illustrating that this history is one narrowly focused on separation of powers at the federal level. Minneci’s break with this tradition raises several concerns. On a doctrinal level, …

The Difference A Justice May Make: Remarks At The Symposium For Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Suzanne Baer

Articles

First, I will briefly summarize the state of the art of equality law in Germany today. A distinct dimension of this story from a European Union member state is that we are not just theorizing postnational constitutionalism these days, but that we live it already, since law is not anymore isolated as national but needs to be seen in the context of transnational migration and multinational regimes. Second, I turn to a key feature and key challenge in and to equality law today. It is what I have called the triangle of fundamental rights, referring to the three most prominent …

The Pastor, The Burning House, And The Double Jeopardy Clause: The True Story Behind Evans V. Michigan, David A. Moran

Articles

The true story behind Evans v. Michigan is that a man who was probably innocent, and who would almost certainly have been acquitted by the jury, had his trial shortened after it became obvious to the judge that the police had picked up a man who had nothing to do with the fire. In other words, the facts set forth by the Michigan Supreme Court, and repeated by Alito, were grossly misleading. And because I, like Alito, believed the Michigan Supreme Court’s version of the facts, I made a silly mistake when I agreed to take the case. That silly …

Deconstructing Antisocial Personality Disorder And Psychopathy: Guidelines-Based Approach To Prejudicial Psychiatric Labels, Kathleen Wayland, Sean O'Brien

Faculty Works

Prejudicial psychiatric labels such as antisocial personality disorder and psychopathy have an inherently prejudicial effect on courts and juries, particularly in cases involving the death penalty. This article explains how and why these labels are inherently aggravating, and also discusses the mental health literature indicating that they are subjective, unreliable and non-scientific. The authors conclude that no competent defense lawyer would pursue a mitigation case based on such a damaging and scientifically questionable psychiatric label. Further, a proper life history investigation conducted in accordance with the ABA Guidelines on the Appointment and Performance of Defense Counsel in Death Penalty Cases …

The Wages Of Crying Judicial Restraint, Randy E. Barnett

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Five Justices voted to affirm the proposition that the Constitution creates a government of limited and enumerated powers and that the courts will enforce those limits. To understand why this victory was possible, it is important to understand that there are not just two versions of federalism, pre‐New Deal and post‐New Deal. There is also a third version. The failure to recognize the third version goes a long way to explain why most of my academic colleagues predicted that the right would have no chance to prevail in our constitutional challenge to the individual insurance mandate.

The first version of …

State Law, The Westfall Act, And The Nature Of The Bivens Question, Carlos Manuel Vázquez, Stephen I. Vladeck

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In a number of recent cases touching to varying degrees on national security, different courts of appeals have applied a strong presumption against recognition of a Bivens cause of action. In each of these cases, the courts’ approach was based on the belief that the creation of a cause of action is a legislative function and that the courts would be usurping Congress’s role if they recognized a Bivens action without legislative authorization. Thus, faced with a scenario where they believed that the remedial possibilities were either "Bivens or nothing," these courts of appeals chose nothing.

The concerns that …

Conditional Spending After Nfib V. Sebelius: The Example Of Federal Education Law, Eloise Pasachoff

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In NFIB v. Sebelius, the Supreme Court’s recent case addressing the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, the Court concluded that the expansion of Medicaid in that Act was unconstitutionally coercive and therefore exceeded the scope of Congress’s authority under the Spending Clause. This was the first time that the Court treated coercion as an issue of more than mere theoretical possibility under the Spending Clause. In the wake of the Court’s decision, commentators have expressed either the concern or the hope that NFIB’s coercion analysis may lead to the undoing of much of the federal regulatory state, …

The Gravitational Force Of Originalism, Randy E. Barnett

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In part I of this essay, prepared for the Fordham conference on “The New Originalism and Constitutional Law,” I describe four aspects of the New Originalism: (1) The New Originalism is about identifying the original public meaning of the Constitution rather than the original framers intent; (2) The interpretive activity of identifying the original public meaning of the text is a purely descriptive empirical inquiry; (3) But there is also a normative tenet of the New Originalism that contends that the original public meaning of the text should be followed; (4) Distinguishing between the activities of interpretation and construction identifies …

Sanctions: Where Law And Justice Collide: Kraze Entertainment (S) Pte Ltd V Marina Bay Sands Pte Ltd [2013] Sghc 39, Denise Huiwen Wong

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This is a cautionary tale for litigation practitioners and their claimant clients. The decision emanates from the High Court of Singapore, but is equally applicable to any jurisdiction in which security for costs can be sought against the claimant in an action. In Singapore, the Rules of Court set out the procedural rules governing all civil proceedings in the High Court and Subordinate Courts. Unlike the Civil Procedure Rules (CPR), the Singapore Rules of Court do not expressly articulate an overriding objective of timely and proportionate justice. However, the courts have consistently prioritised robust case management and “an uncompromising but …

Victory Without Success? – The Guantanamo Litigation, Permanent Preventive Detention, And Resisting Injustice, Jules Lobel

Articles

When the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) brought the first habeas cases challenging the Executive’s right to detain prisoners in a law free zone at Guantanamo in 2002, almost no legal commentator gave the plaintiffs much chance of succeeding. Yet, two years later in 2004, after losing in both the District Court and Court of Appeals, the Supreme Court in Rasul v. Bush handed CCR a resounding victory. Four years later, the Supreme Court again ruled in CCR’s favor in 2008 in Boumediene v. Bush, holding that the detainees had a constitutional right to habeas and declaring the Congressional …

The Dimensions Of Judicial Impartiality, Charles G. Geyh

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Scholars have traditionally analyzed judicial impartiality piecemeal, in disconnected debates on discrete topics. As a consequence, current understandings of judicial impartiality are balkanized and muddled. This Article seeks to reconceptualize judicial impartiality comprehensively, across contexts. In an era when "we are all legal realists now," perfect impartiality-the complete absence of bias or prejudice-is at most an ideal; "impartial enough" has, of necessity, become the realistic goal. Understanding when imperfectly impartial is nonetheless impartial enough is aided by conceptualizing judicial impartiality in three distinct dimensions: a procedural dimension, in which impartiality affords parties a fair hearing; a political dimension, in which …

“Fine Distinctions” In The Contemporary Law Of Insider Trading, Donald C. Langevoort

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

William Cary’s opinion for the SEC in In re Cady, Roberts & Co. built the foundation on which the modern law of insider trading rests. This paper—a contribution to Columbia Law School’s recent celebration of Cary’s Cady Roberts opinion, explores some of these—particularly the emergence of a doctrine of “reckless” insider trading. Historically, the crucial question is this: how or why did the insider trading prohibition survive the retrenchment that happened to so many other elements of Rule 10b-5? It argues that the Supreme Court embraced the continuing existence of the “abstain or disclose” rule, and tolerated constructive fraud notwithstanding …

Confronting Criminal Law’S Violence: The Possibilities Of Unfinished Alternatives, Allegra M. Mcleod

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Confronting criminal law’s violence calls for an openness to unfinished alternatives — a willingness to engage in partial, in process, incomplete reformist efforts that seek to displace conventional criminal law administration as a primary mechanism for social order maintenance. But despite all indications that the status quo in U.S. criminal law administration is profoundly dysfunctional — an institutional manifestation of the deepest pathologies in our society — contemporary criminal law reform efforts and scholarship focus almost exclusively on relatively limited modifications to the status quo. These modifications may well render criminal law administration more humane, but fail to substitute alternative …

Rethinking Critical Mass In The Federal Appellate Courts., Laura Moyer

Faculty Scholarship

This article draws from critical mass studies of gender in other political institutions to inform an application to the US Courts of Appeals. The results demonstrate the utility of considering court-level aspects of diversity. As mixed-sex panels become more common within a circuit, both male and female judges increasingly support plaintiffs in civil rights claims, though the magnitude of the effect is larger for women. The presence of a female chief judge is also positively associated with pro-plaintiff decisions by men and women in sex discrimination cases.

The Judge, He Cast His Robe Aside: Mental Health Courts, Dignity And Due Process, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

One of the most important developments in the past two decades in the way that criminal defendants with mental disabilities are treated in the criminal process has been the creation and the expansion of mental health courts, one kind of “problem-solving court.” There are now over 300 such courts in operation in States, some dealing solely with misdemeanors, some solely with non-violent offenders, and some with no such restrictions. There is a wide range of dispositional alternatives available to judges in these cases, and an even wider range of judicial attitudes. And the entire concept of “mental health courts” is …

Mass Torts And Universal Jurisdiction, Vivian Grosswald Curran

Articles

The technologies of the present era mean that injuries have become more massive in dimension. Mass torts affect greater numbers of people and larger geographical areas. Consequently, they can cross borders, affecting the populations of multiple countries. One of the two mechanisms in tort law for remedying mass catastrophes. restricted to cases involving jus cogens violations (namely, violations of human rights so grave as to be against international customary law, or the "law of nations"), is universal jurisdiction pursuant to the Alien Tort Statute (ATS).

Despite the distinctive official restriction of universal jurisdiction to the criminal law domain in civilian …

Federal Judicial Center International Litigation Guide: Recognition And Enforcement Of Foreign Judgments, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

This publication was prepared for the U.S. Federal Judicial Center as a guide for Federal Judges on the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments. It covers applicable law in federal courts, the issues raised when a foreign judgments recognition case, grounds for non-recognition (and their sources in the law), and recent developments that may affect future adjustments in the rules. The law in those states that have adopted one of the Uniform Acts is covered, as is the law in states that remain under a common law system for recognition and enforcement of judgments. Also covered is the 2005 Hague …

Where The Judiciary Prosecutes In Front Of Itself: Missouri's Unconstitutional Juvenile Court Structure, Joshua Gupta-Kagan

Faculty Scholarship

This Article will address several issues raised by Missouri’s unusual juvenile court structure, arguing that the structure violates the Missouri Constitution’s separation of powers clauses by placing prosecutorial discretion with-in the judicial branch. By granting juvenile officers, who are subject to judges’ supervision, exclusive power to file child abuse and neglect and juvenile delinquency cases, Missouri law concentrates power into the hands of one branch of government. Missouri law thus empowers individual judges to set child welfare and juvenile justice policy by managerial decree. Subordinate judicial branch officials face pressure to file and litigate cases to please their boss, the …

Contract And Innovation: The Limited Role Of Generalist Courts In The Evolution Of Novel Contractual Forms, Ronald J. Gilson, Charles F. Sabel, Robert E. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

In developing a contractual response to changes in the economic environment, parties choose the method by which their innovation will be adapted to the particulars of their context. These choices are driven centrally by the thickness of the relevant market – the number of actors who see themselves as facing similar circumstances – and the uncertainty related to that market. In turn, the parties' choice of method will shape how generalist courts can best support the parties' innovation and the novel regimes they envision. In this Article, we argue that contractual innovation does not come to courts incrementally, but instead …