Law Commons^™

Self-Determination In American Discourse: The Supreme Court’S Historical Indoctrination Of Free Speech And Expression, Jarred Williams

Honors Theses

Within the American criminal legal system, it is a well-established practice to presume the innocence of those charged with criminal offenses unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Such a judicial framework-like approach, called a legal maxim, is utilized in order to ensure that the law is applied and interpreted in ways that legislative bodies originally intended.

The central aim of this piece in relation to the First Amendment of the United States Constitution is to investigate whether the Supreme Court of the United States has utilized a specific legal maxim within cases that dispute government speech or expression regulation. …

Justice Scalia, The Nondelegation Doctrine, And Constitutional Argument, William K. Kelley

Journal Articles

Justice Antonin Scalia wrote two major opinions considering the nondelegation doctrine. In Whitman v. American Trucking Associations, he accepted and applied a very broad, indeed virtually unlimited, view of Congress's power to delegate authority to administrative agencies that was consistent with the Court's precedents since the New Deal. In his dissent in Mistretta v. United States, however, he concluded that the constitutional structure formally barred the delegation of naked rulemaking power to an agency that was untethered to other law execution tasks. This essay analyzes Justice Scalia's nondelegation jurisprudence in light of the general jurisprudential commitments he championed throughout his …

After The Override: An Empirical Analysis Of Shadow Precedent, Deborah A. Widiss, Brian J. Broughman

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Congressional overrides of prior judicial interpretations of statutory language are typically de­fined as equivalent to judicial overrulings, and they are presumed to play a central role in maintaining legislative supremacy. Our study is the first to empirically test these assumptions. Using a differences-in-differences research design, we find that citation levels decrease far less after legislative overrides than after judicial overrulings. This pattern holds true even when controlling for depth of the superseding event or considering only the specific proposition that was superseded. Moreover, contrary to what one might expect, citation levels decrease more quickly after restorative overrides—in which Congress repudiates …

Thinking Like A Lawyer Abroad: Putting Justice Into Legal Reasoning, James Maxeiner

All Faculty Scholarship

Americans are taking new interest in legal reasoning. Thinking Like a Lawyer: A New Introduction to Legal Reasoning by Professor Frederick Schauer suggests why. According to Schauer, American legal methods often require decision-makers “to do something other than the right thing.” There has got to be a better way.

Now comes a book that offers Americans opportunities to look into a world where legal methods help decision-makers do the right thing. According to Reinhard Zippelius in his newly published Introduction to German Legal Methods, German legal methods help decision makers resolve legal problems “in a just and equitable manner.”

This …

Contemporary Meaning And Expectations In Statutory Interpretation, Hillel Y. Levin

Scholarly Works

This Article introduces and explores an approach to, or theme within, statutory interpretation, one grounded in contemporary meaning and expectations. This approach posits that judges interpreting ambiguous statutes are and should be constrained by the understanding and expectations of the contemporary public as to the law’s meaning and application. These are developed in response to, and mediated by, the actions and statements of government officials and the broader community. The Article argues that this apparently radical approach is necessary in order for law to maintain its moral force, and further that the principles underlying it are embedded in several doctrines …

Shadow Precedents And The Separation Of Powers: Statutory Interpretation Of Congressional Overrides, Deborah Widiss

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In both judicial decisions and critical commentary on statutory interpretation, the possibility of congressional override is generally considered a significant balance to the countermajoritarian reality that courts, through statutory interpretation, make policy. This Article demonstrates that the "check" on judicial power provided by overrides is not as robust as is typically assumed. One might assume that overridden precedents are functionally erased or reversed. But because Congress technically cannot overrule a prior decision, courts must determine whether the enactment of an override fully supersedes the prior judicial interpretation. Overrides thus raise unique, and previously largely ignored, questions of statutory interpretation. Using …

How To Think About The Federal Commerce Power And Incidentally Rewrite United States V. Lopez, Donald H. Regan

Articles

Almost sixty years after the "revolution" of 1937, we still do not have an adequate theory of the commerce power. The Court was right to abandon the theory of dual federalism epitomized by Carter v. Carter Coal Co.;' and it has got the right results in the major cases decided since then. But our post-1937 theory, whether before or after Lopez, is a mess. On the one hand, we have a collection of doctrinal rules that, if we take them seriously, allow Congress to do anything it wants under the commerce power. On the other hand, we continue to pay …

The Supreme Court And State Protectionism: Making Sense Of The Dormant Commerce Clause, Donald H. Regan

Articles

For almost fifty years, scholars have urged the Court to "balance" in dormant commerce clause cases; and the scholars have imagined that the Court was following their advice. The Court has indeed claimed to balance, winning scholarly approval. But the Court knows better than the scholars. Despite what the Court has said, it has not been balancing. It has been following a simpler and better-justified course. In the central area of dormant commerce clause jurisprudence, comprising what I shall call "movement-of-goods" cases), the Court has been concerned exclusively with preventing states from engaging in purposeful economic protectionism. Not only is …