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Full-Text Articles in Law
Picking And Choosing Text: Lessons For Statutory Interpretation From The Philosophy Of Language, Victoria Frances Nourse
Picking And Choosing Text: Lessons For Statutory Interpretation From The Philosophy Of Language, Victoria Frances Nourse
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Textualists claim that they follow statutory text. This Article argues that, in practice, textualists often create meaning rather than find it. Deploying the analytics of linguistic philosophy, this Article takes a deep dive into textualist methodology. The philosophy of language reveals what legal scholarship has left submerged: The very choice of text can put the thumb on the scales of any interpretation. When one pulls a term out of a statute and isolates it from the rest of the text (what I call “isolationist” method), this decontextualization offers the opportunity for adding and subtracting meaning from the statute by “pragmatic …
Leach, Billy (Fa 1040), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives
Leach, Billy (Fa 1040), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives
Folklife Archives Finding Aids
Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 1040. Paper titled "Folklore in the Kentucky Courtroom" in which Billy Leach challenges courtroom stereotypes by collecting anecdotal evidence from a local judge.
Judging Justice - How Solicitors' Expertise Can Improve The Courts System, Brian M. Barry
Judging Justice - How Solicitors' Expertise Can Improve The Courts System, Brian M. Barry
Reports
This article details the initial findings of a nationwide interview study undertaken by the author of litigation solicitors in Ireland on their views of the Irish courts system and the Irish judiciary.
Erisa Preemption After Gobeille V. Liberty Mutual: Completing The Retrenchment Of Shaw, Edward A. Zelinsky
Erisa Preemption After Gobeille V. Liberty Mutual: Completing The Retrenchment Of Shaw, Edward A. Zelinsky
Faculty Articles
Gobeille v. Liberty Mutual Insurance Co. is the U.S. Supreme Court’s most recent preemption decision under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA). In Gobeille, the Court completed the process of reconciling the restrained approach to ERISA preemption announced in New York State Conference of Blue Cross & Blue Shield Plans v. Travelers Insurance Co. with the Court’s literal and expansive approach adopted earlier in Shaw v. Delta Air Lines, Inc. Gobeille consummated this reconciliation by confirming the sub silentio retrenchment of Shaw and its “plain language” approach in favor of Traveler’s broader construction of ERISA preemption. …
Nationwide Injunctions, Rule 23(B)(2), And The Remedial Powers Of The Lower Courts, Michael T. Morley
Nationwide Injunctions, Rule 23(B)(2), And The Remedial Powers Of The Lower Courts, Michael T. Morley
Scholarly Publications
No abstract provided.
Judicial Federalism In The European Union, Michael Wells
Judicial Federalism In The European Union, Michael Wells
Scholarly Works
This article compares European Union judicial federalism with the American version. Its thesis is that the European Union’s long-term goal of political integration probably cannot be achieved without strengthening its rudimentary judicial institutions. On the one hand, the EU is a federal system in which judicial power is divided between EU courts, of which there are only three, and the well-entrenched and longstanding member state court systems. On the other hand, both the preamble and Article 1 of the Treaty of Europe state that an aim of the European Union is “creating an ever closer union among the peoples of …
Historical Gloss, Constitutional Convention, And The Judicial Separation Of Powers, Curtis A. Bradley, Neil S. Siegel
Historical Gloss, Constitutional Convention, And The Judicial Separation Of Powers, Curtis A. Bradley, Neil S. Siegel
Faculty Scholarship
Scholars have increasingly focused on the relevance of post-Founding historical practice to discern the separation of powers between Congress and the executive branch, and the Supreme Court has recently endorsed the relevance of such practice. Much less attention has been paid, however, to the relevance of historical practice to discerning the separation of powers between the political branches and the federal judiciary — what this Article calls the “judicial separation of powers.” As the Article explains, there are two ways that historical practice might be relevant to the judicial separation of powers. First, such practice might be invoked as an …
The History Of The Florida Supreme Court, M C. Mirow
The History Of The Florida Supreme Court, M C. Mirow
Faculty Publications
This article describes the challenges to writing the history of Florida's colonial courts in the Spanish and British periods from 1513 to 1821. These courts are an important yet understudied aspect of Florida legal history.
Empowering Individual Plaintiffs, Alex Stein, Gideon Parchomovsky
Empowering Individual Plaintiffs, Alex Stein, Gideon Parchomovsky
All Faculty Scholarship
The individual plaintiff plays a critical—yet, underappreciated—role in our legal system. Only lawsuits that are brought by individual plaintiffs allow the law to achieve the twin goals of efficiency and fairness. The ability of individual plaintiffs to seek justice against those who wronged them deters wrongdoing, ex ante, and in those cases in which a wrong has been committed nevertheless, it guarantees the payment of compensation, ex post. No other form of litigation, including class actions and criminal prosecutions, or even compensation funds, can accomplish the same result. Yet, as we show in this Essay, in many key sectors of …
The Bylaw Puzzle In Delaware Corporate Law, David A. Skeel Jr.
The Bylaw Puzzle In Delaware Corporate Law, David A. Skeel Jr.
All Faculty Scholarship
In less than a decade, Delaware’s legislature has overruled its courts and reshaped Delaware corporate law on two different occasions, with proxy access bylaws in 2009 and with shareholder litigation bylaws in 2015. Having two dramatic interventions in quick succession would be puzzling under any circumstances. The interventions are doubly puzzling because with proxy access, Delaware’s legislature authorized the use of bylaws or charter provisions that Delaware’s courts had banned; while with shareholder litigation, it banned bylaws or charter provisions that the courts had authorized. This Article attempts to unravel the puzzle.
I start with corporate law doctrine, and find …
Blackstone, Expositor And Censor Of Law Both Made And Found, Jessie Allen
Blackstone, Expositor And Censor Of Law Both Made And Found, Jessie Allen
Book Chapters
Jeremy Bentham famously insisted on the separation of law as it is and law as it should be, and criticized his contemporary William Blackstone for mixing up the two. According to Bentham, Blackstone costumes judicial invention as discovery, obscuring the way judges make new law while pretending to uncover preexisting legal meaning. Bentham’s critique of judicial phoniness persists to this day in claims that judges are “politicians in robes” who pick the outcome they desire and rationalize it with doctrinal sophistry. Such skeptical attacks are usually met with attempts to defend doctrinal interpretation as a partial or occasional limit on …
Exploring The Intersections Between International And Domestic Justice Efforts, Susana Sacouto
Exploring The Intersections Between International And Domestic Justice Efforts, Susana Sacouto
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
No abstract provided.
Custom In Our Courts: Reconciling Theory With Reality In The Debate About Erie Railroad And Customary International Law, Nikki C. Gutierrez, Mitu Gulati
Custom In Our Courts: Reconciling Theory With Reality In The Debate About Erie Railroad And Customary International Law, Nikki C. Gutierrez, Mitu Gulati
Faculty Scholarship
One of the most heated debates of the last two decades in U.S. legal academia focuses on customary international law’s domestic status after Erie Railroad v. Tompkins. At one end, champions of the “modern position” support customary international law’s (“CIL”) wholesale incorporation into post-Erie federal common law. At the other end, “revisionists” argue that federal courts cannot apply CIL as federal law absent federal legislative authorization. Scholars on both sides of the Erie debate also make claims about the sources judges reference when discerning CIL. They then use these claims to support their arguments regarding CIL’s domestic status. Interestingly, neither …
Reciprocal Legitimation In The Federal Courts System, Neil S. Siegel
Reciprocal Legitimation In The Federal Courts System, Neil S. Siegel
Faculty Scholarship
Much scholarship in law and political science has long understood the U.S. Supreme Court to be the “apex” court in the federal judicial system, and so to relate hierarchically to “lower” federal courts. On that top-down view, exemplified by the work of Alexander Bickel and many subsequent scholars, the Court is the principal, and lower federal courts are its faithful agents. Other scholarship takes a bottom-up approach, viewing lower federal courts as faithless agents or analyzing the “percolation” of issues in those courts before the Court decides. This Article identifies circumstances in which the relationship between the Court and other …