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Full-Text Articles in Law
The New Comity Abstention, John Harland Giammatteo
The New Comity Abstention, John Harland Giammatteo
Journal Articles
In the past ten years, lower federal courts have quietly but regularly abstained from hearing federal claims challenging state court procedures, citing concerns of comity and federalism. Federal courts have dismissed a broad range of substantive challenges tasked to them by Congress, including under the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Indian Child Welfare Act, and various constitutional provisions, involving state court eviction proceedings, foster care determinations, bail and criminal justice policies, COVID-era safety practices, and other instances where state courts determine state policy.
This paper is the first to argue that these decisions constitute a new abstention doctrine, unmoored from …
Preference-Based Federalism, Marquan Robertson
Preference-Based Federalism, Marquan Robertson
St. Mary's Law Journal
No abstract provided.
Interposition: A State-Based Constitutional Tool That Might Help Preserve American Democracy, Christian G. Fritz
Interposition: A State-Based Constitutional Tool That Might Help Preserve American Democracy, Christian G. Fritz
Faculty Scholarship
Interposition was not a claim that state sovereignty could or should displace national authority, but a claim that American federalism needed to preserve some balance between state and national authority.
http://commonplace.online/article/interposition/
Monitoring American Federalism: The Overlooked Tool Of Sounding The Alarm Interposition, Christian G. Fritz
Monitoring American Federalism: The Overlooked Tool Of Sounding The Alarm Interposition, Christian G. Fritz
Faculty Scholarship
One key feature of the U.S. Constitution – the concept of federalism – was unclear when it was introduced, and that lack of clarity threatened the Constitution’s ratification by those who feared the new government would undermine state sovereignty. Proponents of the new governmental framework were questioned about the underlying theory of the Constitution as well as how it would operate in practice, and their explanations produced intense and extended debate over how to monitor federalism.
A Prophylactic Approach To Compact Constitutionality, Katherine Mims Crocker
A Prophylactic Approach To Compact Constitutionality, Katherine Mims Crocker
Faculty Scholarship
From COVID-19 to climate change, immigration to health insurance, firearms control to electoral reform: state politicians have sought to address all these hot-button issues by joining forces with other states. The U.S. Constitution, however, forbids states to “enter into any Agreement or Compact” with each other “without the Consent of Congress,” a requirement that proponents of much interstate action, especially around controversial topics, would hope to circumvent.
The Supreme Court lets them do just that. By interpreting “any Agreement or Compact” so narrowly that it is difficult to see what besides otherwise unlawful coordination qualifies, the Court has essentially read …
The New Laboratories Of Democracy, Gerald S. Dickinson
The New Laboratories Of Democracy, Gerald S. Dickinson
Articles
Nearly a century ago, Justice Louis D. Brandeis’s dissent in New State Ice Co. v. Liebman coined one of the most profound statements in American law: “It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.” Justice Brandeis reminded us of our strong tradition of federalism, where the states, exercising their sovereign power, may choose to experiment with new legislation within their separate jurisdictions without the concern that such …