Law Commons^™

A History Of Corporate Law Federalism In The Twentieth Century, William W. Bratton

Seattle University Law Review

This Article describes the emergence of corporate law federalism across a long twentieth century. The period begins with New Jersey’s successful initiation of charter competition in 1888 and ends with the enactment of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002. The federalism in question describes the interrelation of state and federal regulation of corporate internal affairs. This Article takes a positive approach, pursuing no normative bottom line. It makes six observations: (1) the federalism describes a division of subject matter, with internal affairs regulated by the states and securities issuance and trading regulated by the federal government; (2) the federalism is an …

The Collective Right Endures: Pre-Heller Precedent And Our Understanding Of The Modern Second Amendment, William Reach

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

Prior to 2008, legal scholars who examined the Second Amendment fell roughly into two camps: those who believed “the right of the people to . . . bear arms” only covered state militias, and those who believed it extended to individual citizens.

After District of Columbia v. Heller conclusively established that the “Second Amendment conferred an individual right to keep and bear arms," discussion of the collective right to bear arms largely receded from public discussion and most litigation surrounding the Second Amendment shifted to define the outer edges of the individual right. But the pre-Heller showdown between these …

Federalism And The Military Power Of The United States, Robert Leider

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Article examines the original meaning of the constitutional provisions governing the raising and organization of military forces. It argues that the Framers carefully divided the military between the federal and state governments. This division provided structural checks against the misuse of military power and made it more difficult to use offensive military force. These structural checks have been compromised by the creation of the U.S. Army Reserve, the dual enlistment of National Guard officers and soldiers, and the acceptance of conscription into the national army, all of which have enhanced federal military power beyond its original constitutional limits.

This …

Federalism: Necessary Legal Foundation For The Central Middle Eastern States, Issa Al-Aweel

Pace International Law Review

The Central Middle East—comprising of Syria, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, and Jordan—is in need of a legal foundation defined by a constitutional umbrella that governs it as a whole. This is a proposed broad structure of such legal foundation that serves regional legal and economic needs and includes recognition of human rights.

The need for such restructuring is evident from the persistence of regional conflict and instability. Conflict and instability have been constants in the region in general and certainly in the listed five states. The issues include political instability, terrorism, continuous threats of fundamentalism, and pervasive disregard to human life …

Book Review: Foreign Affairs And The Constitution. By Louis Henkin. Mineola, N.Y.: The Foundation Press, 1972. Pp. 553. $11.50., Carl Marcy

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

State Labs Of Federalism And Law Enforcement 'Drone' Use, Chris Jenks

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This article reviews and assesses current state legislation regulating law enforcement use of unmanned aerial systems (UAS). The legislation runs the gamut of permissive to restrictive and even utilizes different terms for the same object of regulation, UAS. These laws are the confused and at times even contradictory extension of societal views about UAS. The article reviews the U.S. Supreme Court’s manned aircraft trilogy of cases, California v. Ciraolo, Florida v. Riley, and Dow Chemical v. U.S. and two significant technology based decisions, Kyllo v. U.S. and U.S. v. Jones, and applies them to current state efforts to regulate law …

Defining And Punishing Offenses Under Treaties, Sarah H. Cleveland, William S. Dodge

Faculty Scholarship

One of the principal aims of the U.S. Constitution was to give the federal government authority to comply with its international legal commitments. The scope of Congress's constitutional authority to implement treaties has recently received particular attention. In Bond v. United States, the Court avoided the constitutional questions by construing a statute to respect federalism, but these questions are unlikely to go away. This Article contributes to the ongoing debate by identifying the Offenses Clause as an additional source of Congress's constitutional authority to implement certain treaty commitments. Past scholarship has assumed that the Article I power to "define …

Biodefense And Constitutional Constraints, Laura K. Donohue

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The United States and United Kingdom have different approaches to quarantine law that reflect each country’s unique historical context and constitutional structure. Under the Tudors, England vested quarantine authority in the monarch, with its subsequent exercise conducted by the military. As the constitutional structure changed, the manner in which quarantine was given effect subtly shifted, leading to constitutional reforms. Authorities transferred first to the Privy Council and, subsequently, to Parliament, where commercial interests successfully lobbied them out of existence. By the end of the 19th Century, quarantine authorities had been pushed down to the local port authorities. In the United …

Katrina, Federalism, And Military Law Enforcement: A New Exception To The Posse Comitatus Act, Sean Mcgrane

Michigan Law Review

In the days following Hurricane Katrina, as lawlessness and violence spread throughout New Orleans, the White House considered invoking the Insurrection Act so that members of the U.S. military could legally perform law enforcement functions inside the flooded city. This Note contends that the White House's decision not to invoke the Act was substantially driven by federalism concerns-in particular, concerns about intruding on Louisiana's sovereignty. But, this Note further contends, in focusing so heavily on these state sovereignty concerns, the White House largely ignored the other side of the 'federalism coin "-namely, enabling the federal government to act where national …

Rethinking The Political Future: An Alternative To The Ethno-Sectarian Division Of Iraq, Paul Williams, Matt Simpson

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

In the coming year, the political leadership in Iraq will need to make a final determination as to whether they are going to structure the state of Iraq as a federal state with ethnically heterogeneous provinces, a loose federal state with ethnically defined provinces or regions, or whether they are going to divide the state into three new states based on ethno-sectarian lines.

A number of prominent American law makers and foreign policy shapers have strongly advocated for the soft, and sometimes hard, partition of Iraq — either through the creation of a loose federal structure based on ethno-sectarian lines, …

Holding Enemy Combatants In The Wake Of Hamdan, Ronald D. Rotunda

Ronald D. Rotunda

The article offers, inter alia, a succinct survey of the historical and jurisprudential background for the detainee cases and military commissions cases - including a number of important factual details glossed over in most reporting on the cases (e.g., Padilla has stipulated that he was an enemy spy sent to the United States; it was Hamdan's own defense counsel who had asked to exclude him from the voir dire portion of the proceedings) - as well as legal issues that may still arise.

Unanimously Wrong, Dale Carpenter

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

The Supreme Court was unanimously wrong in Rumsfeld v. FAIR. Though rare, it's not the first time the Court has been unanimously wrong. Its most notorious such decisions have come, like FAIR, in cases where the Court conspicuously failed even to appreciate the importance of the constitutional freedoms under attack from legislative majorities. In these cases, the Court's very rhetoric exposed its myopic vision in ways that now seem embarrassing. Does FAIR, so obviously correct to so many people right now, await the same ignominy decades away? FAIR was wrong in tone, a dismissive vox populi, adopted by a Court …

Privacy Lost: Comparing The Attenuation Of Texas's Article 1, Section 9 And The Fourth Amendment., Kimberly S. Keller

St. Mary's Law Journal

The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution requires that all searches and seizures be reasonable. Article I, Section 9 of the Texas Constitution mirrors its federal counterpart, requiring reasonableness in regard to intrusive governmental action. In examining these texts, both the federal and state provisions are comprised of two independent clauses: (1) the Reasonableness Clause, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures; and (2) the warrant clause, which provides that warrants may issue only upon a showing of probable cause. Both the federal and Texas constitutions include explicit language regulating the government’s right to intrude on a person’s privacy. This …

Fair Labor Standards Act And Sovereign Immunity: Unlocking The Courthouse Door For Texas State Employees., Melinda Herrera

St. Mary's Law Journal

Unless Texas expressly waives its Eleventh Amendment sovereign immunity, its state employees will not have similar legal recourse and protection as those available to private employees. As in many other states, a party may not sue the State of Texas without its consent. Thus, in the absence of constitutional or statutory provisions to the contrary, a state may claim sovereign immunity against any suit brought by a private party in both federal and state court. As a result, the Eleventh Amendment effectively precludes private individuals from suing a state in both federal and state court for violating a federal statute …

The Second Amendment: Structure, History, And Constitutional Change, David Yassky

Michigan Law Review

A fierce debate about the Second Amendment has been percolating in academia for two decades, and has now bubbled through to the courts. The question at the heart of this debate is whether the Amendment restricts the government's ability to regulate the private possession of firearms. Since at least 1939 - when the Supreme Court decided United States v. Miller, its only decision squarely addressing the scope of the right to "keep and bear Arms" - the answer to that question has been an unqualified "no." Courts have brushed aside Second Amendment challenges to gun control legislation, reading the Amendment …

Splitting The Atom Or Splitting Hairs - The Hate Crimes Prevention Act Of 1999 Note., Andrew M. Gilbert, Eric D. Marchand

St. Mary's Law Journal

Problems of bias-motivated violence plague our nation and threaten to erase the progress made during the civil rights era. Recent statistical surveys conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) indicate the number of hate crimes has generally increased over the past few years. In 1996, over 11,000 individuals were victims of hate crimes—five percent more than reported the previous year. Hate crimes are not only injurious to the individual victim, but also fracture surrounding communities and create disharmony among citizens. As a result, some states implemented legislation in the 1980s to deter hate-motived crimes and a few states have …

International Jurisdiction In Products Liability Cases (Analysis Of Asahi And Post-Asahi Cases), Tsutomu Kuribayashi

LLM Theses and Essays

With the increase of foreign trade, there has also been an increase in the number of foreign manufacturers and distributors involved in product liability litigation in the United States. In many cases, the products from these foreign manufacturers and distributors reach the forum states through the stream of commerce, and are distributed to the customers by regional distributors, wholesalers, and retailers. Therefore, in many product liability cases where defective products from these foreign manufacturers and distributors cause injuries to people in the United States, those foreign companies do not have a direct relationship with the forum states. In these cases, …

Federalism Revisited: The Supreme Court Resurrects The Notion Of Enumerated Powers By Limiting Congress's Attempt To Federalize Crime Comment., Larry E. Gee

St. Mary's Law Journal

This Comment argues the federal system must be preserved and the Supreme Court should build upon the interpretation of the Commerce Clause in United States v. Lopez to reinstate the Framers’ vision of federalism. The social justifications for the Court’s expansive construction of the Commerce Clause during the past sixty years no longer existed to justify the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990. Part II of this Comment traces the background of Commerce Clause jurisprudence, focusing on social justifications for traditional rubber stamping of Congress’s broad exercises of power. Part III reviews the Fifth Circuit’s reasoning in deeming the Gun-Free …

Expert Witness Fees In Federal Diversity Cases., Wade P. Webster

St. Mary's Law Journal

Even with the increasing complexity of litigation and the increased utilization of expert witnesses to provide expensive evidence on narrow scientific and technical issues, Congress still limits compensation of expert witnesses to only forty dollars per day, the same rate as ordinary fact witnesses. The justification for the low rate is that the witness fee statute was not intended by Congress to compensate witnesses fully for their lost time and income. Presumably this same reasoning also applies to expert witnesses. The problem with this reasoning, unlike law witnesses who may be compelled by subpoena, individual litigants must pay the fees …

Brinton: From Many One, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of FROM MANY ONE. By Crane Brinton.