Law Commons^™

Dimensions Of Delegation, Cary Coglianese

All Faculty Scholarship

How can the nondelegation doctrine still exist when the Supreme Court over decades has approved so many pieces of legislation that contain unintelligible principles? The answer to this puzzle emerges from recognition that the intelligibility of any principle dictating the basis for lawmaking is but one characteristic defining that authority. The Court has acknowledged five other characteristics that, taken together with the principle articulating the basis for executive decision-making, constitute the full dimensionality of any grant of lawmaking authority and hold the key to a more coherent rendering of the Court’s application of the nondelegation doctrine. When understood in dimensional …

Supreme Court Institute Annual Report, 2018-2019, Georgetown University Law Center, Supreme Court Institute

SCI Papers & Reports

During the U.S. Supreme Court’s October Term (OT) 2018 – corresponding to the 2018-2019 academic year –the Supreme Court Institute (SCI) provided moot courts for advocates in 99% of the cases heard by the Supreme Court, offered a variety of programs related to the Supreme Court, and continued to integrate the moot court program into the education of Georgetown Law students. The varied affiliations of advocates mooted this Term reflect SCI’s firm commitment to provide assistance to advocates without regard to the party represented or the position advanced.

A list of all SCI moot courts held in OT 2018 – …

Judicial Choice Among Cases For Certiorari, Tonja Jacobi, Álvaro Bustos

Faculty Articles

How does the Supreme Court choose among cases to grant cert? In a model with a strategic Supreme Court, a continuum of rule-following lower courts, a set of potential cases for revision, and a distribution of future lower court cases, we show that the Court takes the case that will most significantly shape future lower court case outcomes in the direction that the Court prefers. That is, the Court grants cert to the case with maximum salience. If the Court is rather liberal (or conservative), then the most salient case is that which moves the discretionary range of the legal …

State Standing For Nationwide Injunctions Against The Federal Government, Jonathan R. Nash

Faculty Articles

Recent years have seen a substantial increase of cases in which states seek, and indeed obtain, nationwide injunctions against the federal government. These cases implicate two complicated questions: first, when a state has standing to sue the federal government, and second, when a nationwide injunction is a proper form of relief. For their part, scholars have mostly addressed these questions separately. In this Essay, I analyze the two questions together. Along the way, I identify drawbacks and benefits of nationwide injunctions, as well as settings where nationwide injunctions may be desirable and undesirable. I present arguments that, although I do …

Punishment And Its Limits, Debra Parkes

All Faculty Publications

The nearly three decades in which Beverley McLachlin was a member of the Supreme Court, including as Chief Justice, witnessed a number of shifts in Canadian penal policy and in the reach and impact of criminal law. During the Harper decade (2006 to 2015) in which the federal Conservatives enjoyed a majority government led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, criminal justice policy took a turn toward the punitive. The federal government tore a page out of the American legislative handbook and sought to “govern through crime”, albeit in a more restrained Canadian style.