Law Commons^™

A State's Power To Enter Into A Consent Decree That Violates State Law Provisions: What "Findings" Of A Federal Violation Are Sufficient To Justify A Consent Decree That Trumps State Law?, David W. Swift

ExpressO

In the last forty years federal courts have played a prominent role in reshaping our public institutions. And while some scholars question the efficacy of these structural injuctions, the authority of federal courts to order such relief is generally unquestioned. What is open to debate, however, is whether state officials can agree to a remedy they would not have had the authority to order themselves; and if so, to what extent must an underlying constitutional violation be proved so as to justify the remedy?

This article discusses the competing theories and concludes that a remedy that violates state law may …

Does History Defeat Standing Doctrine?, Ann Woolhandler, Caleb Nelson

Michigan Law Review

According to the Supreme Court, the Federal Constitution limits not only the types of matters that federal courts can adjudicate, but also the parties who can bring those matters before them. In particular, the Court has held that private citizens who have suffered no concrete private injury lack standing to ask federal courts to redress diffuse harms to the public at large. When such harms are justiciable at all, the proper party plaintiff is the public itself, represented by an authorized officer of the government. Although the Court claims historical support for these ideas, academic critics insist that the law …

Determinants Of Civil Rights Filings In Federal District Court By Jail And Prison Inmates, Anne Morrison Piehl, Margo Schlanger

Articles

This article uses panel data estimation techniques to examine the relation between the number of federal court civil filings by inmates and jail and state prison populations (and, hence, the relation between jail and prison inmate filing rates) both before and after the effective date, in 1996, of the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA). The research issue matters for several reasons. First, the amount of litigation by inmates is a crucial component of the regulatory regime governing jails and prisons and thus what factors drive filings, and by how much, deserves close attention and assessment. In addition, the PLRA was …

Guantánamo, Diane Marie Amann

Scholarly Works

This article addresses not only offshore detainees at Guantánamo and elsewhere, but also the two Americans and one Qatari held in the United States as enemy combatants. It focuses on the critical issues in U.S. litigation - extraterritoriality and deference - yet also examines the scope of detention and the propriety of proposed special tribunals. After demonstrating that in the wake of September 11, 2001, no U.S. constitutional precedent governed these issues, the article then looks to norms drawn from international humanitarian and human rights law to aid decision. The Supreme Court increasingly consults such external norms as persuasive authority; …

Chevron And Preemption, Nina A. Mendelson

Articles

This Article takes a more functional approach to reconciling preemption doctrine with Chevron when Congress has not expressly delegated preemptive authority to an agency, an approach that considers a variety of concerns, including political accountability, institutional competence, and related concerns. The Article assumes that federalism values, such as ensuring core state regulatory authority and autonomy, are important and can be protected through political processes." It argues that although Congress's "regional structure" might hint at great sensitivity to state concerns, it actually may lead Congress to undervalue some federalism benefits that are more national in nature. Meanwhile, executive agencies generally have …

The Political Economy Of The Production Of Customary International Law: The Role Of Non-Governmental Organizations, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

Increasingly, United States courts are recognizing various treaties, as well as declarations, proclamations, conventions, resolutions, programmes, protocols, and similar forms of inter- or multi-national “legislation” as evidence of a body of “customary international law” enforceable in domestic courts, particularly in the area of tort liability. These “legislative” documents, which this Article refers to as customary international law outputs, are seen by some courts as evidence of jus cogens norms that bind not only nations and state actors, but also private individuals. The most obvious evidence of this trend is in the proliferation of lawsuits against corporations with ties to the …