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Full-Text Articles in Law
Suspect Spheres, Not Enumerated Powers: A Guide For Leaving The Lamppost, Richard Primus, Roderick M. Hills Jr.
Suspect Spheres, Not Enumerated Powers: A Guide For Leaving The Lamppost, Richard Primus, Roderick M. Hills Jr.
Michigan Law Review
Despite longstanding orthodoxy, the Constitution’s enumeration of congressional powers does virtually nothing to limit federal lawmaking. That’s not because of some bizarrely persistent judicial failure to read the Constitution correctly. It’s because the enumeration of congressional powers is not a well-designed technology for limiting federal legislation. Rather than trying to make the enumeration do work that it will not do, decisionmakers should find better ways of thinking about what lawmaking should be done locally rather than nationally. This Article suggests such a rubric, one that asks not whether Congress has permission to do a certain thing but whether a certain …
Expressive Law And The Americans With Disabilities Act, Alex C. Geisinger, Michael Ashley Stein
Expressive Law And The Americans With Disabilities Act, Alex C. Geisinger, Michael Ashley Stein
Michigan Law Review
The question of why people follow the law has long been a subject of scholarly consideration. Prevailing accounts of how law changes behavior coalesce around two major themes: legitimacy and deterrence. Advocates of legitimacy argue that law is obeyed when it is created through a legitimate process and its substance comports with community mores. Others emphasize deterrence, particularly those who subscribe to law-and-economics theories. These scholars argue that law makes certain socially undesirable behaviors more costly, and thus individuals are less likely to undertake them.
Customary International Law: An Instrument Choice Perspective, Laurence R. Helfer, Ingrid B. Wuerth
Customary International Law: An Instrument Choice Perspective, Laurence R. Helfer, Ingrid B. Wuerth
Michigan Journal of International Law
This Article proceeds as follows. Part II begins by considering custom’s design features, which the authors distinguish from the canonical elements of custom (state practice and opinio juris) and the individual doctrines associated with CIL. Specifically, they contend that, as an ideal-type, custom is non-negotiated, unwritten, and universal, three characteristics that distinguish CIL from both treaties and soft law, which are almost always negotiated, written, and rarely universal either in formation or application. These design features help to explain some of custom’s peculiar doctrinal characteristics, and they cut across the doctrinal divide which is said to distinguish “traditional” and …
Contextualing Regimes: Institutionalization As A Response To The Limits Of Interpretation And Policy Engineering, Charles F. Sabel, William H. Simon
Contextualing Regimes: Institutionalization As A Response To The Limits Of Interpretation And Policy Engineering, Charles F. Sabel, William H. Simon
Michigan Law Review
When legal language and the effects of public intervention are indeterminate, generalist lawmakers (legislatures, courts, top-level administrators) often rely on the normative output of contextualizing regimes-institutions that structure deliberative engagement by stakeholders and articulate the resulting understanding. Examples include the familiar practices of delegation and deference to administrative agencies in public law and to trade associations in private law. We argue that resorting to contextualizing regimes is becoming increasingly common across a broad range of issues and that the structure of emerging regimes is evolving away from the well-studied agency and trade association examples. The newer regimes mix public and …
Is A Substantive, Non-Positivist United States Environmental Law Possible?, Dan Tarlock
Is A Substantive, Non-Positivist United States Environmental Law Possible?, Dan Tarlock
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
U.S. environmental law is almost exclusively positive and procedural. The foundation is the pollution control and biodiversity conservation statutes enacted primarily between 1969–1980 and judicial decisions interpreting them. This law has created detailed processes for making decisions but has produced few substantive constraints on private and public decisions which impair the environment. Several substantive candidates have been proposed, such as the common law, a constitutional right to a healthy environment, the public trust, and the extension of rights to fauna and flora. However, these candidates have not produced the hoped for substantive law. Many argue that a substantive U.S. environmental …
Institutional Alliances And Derivative Legitimacy, Claire R. Kelly
Institutional Alliances And Derivative Legitimacy, Claire R. Kelly
Michigan Journal of International Law
Part I of this Article describes global lawmaking and the legitimacy challenge. It provides a typology of IOs that develop norms. It explains that legitimacy is a subjective belief, but it provides objective paradigms for assessing legitimacy claims. It demonstrates how pursuing legitimacy according to one set of criteria can sacrifice legitimacy claims under another. It also examines the competition among IOs, the push for democratic norms, and the resulting need for stronger legitimacy claims. Part II explains linkage and accommodation and gives specific examples of where these phenomena work to garner more legitimacy for specific organizations and the soft …
Positivism Regained, Nihilism Postponed, Jose E. Alvarez
Positivism Regained, Nihilism Postponed, Jose E. Alvarez
Michigan Journal of International Law
Review of Law-Making in the International Community by G.M. Danilenko