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Full-Text Articles in Law

Congressional Power And State Court Jurisdiction, Anthony J. Bellia Jan 2006

Congressional Power And State Court Jurisdiction, Anthony J. Bellia

Journal Articles

Federal laws that regulate state institutions give rise to what the Supreme Court has described as the oldest question of constitutional law. In recent years, the Court has confronted questions of congressional power to regulate state legislatures and executives, but has not directly confronted any question of congressional power to regulate state courts. Since the Founding, questions of congressional power to regulate state court jurisdiction of Article III cases have arisen - most notably, congressional power to assign jurisdiction of federal criminal cases to state courts. Today, significant questions of congressional power to regulate state court jurisdiction over non-Article III …


Whose Constitution Is It? Why Federalism And Constitutional Positivism Don't Mix, James A. Gardner Feb 2005

Whose Constitution Is It? Why Federalism And Constitutional Positivism Don't Mix, James A. Gardner

Journal Articles

It is frequently argued that state constitutions ought to be interpreted using a methodology of constitutional positivism, a familiar and commonplace theory of interpretational legitimacy that requires courts to treat a constitution as an authoritative expression of the will of the people who made it. I argue, contrary to this view, that orthodox constitutional positivism is not a viable interpretational methodology for subnational constitutions in a federal system. Although constitutional positivism makes sense for national constitutions, which furnish the paradigm case, subnational constitutions pose important problems for the political theory upon which constitutional positivism relies. According to that theory, the …


Preparing The Groundwork For A Responsible Debate On Stem Cell Research And Human Cloning, O. Carter Snead Jan 2005

Preparing The Groundwork For A Responsible Debate On Stem Cell Research And Human Cloning, O. Carter Snead

Journal Articles

The debate over both cloning and stem cell research has been intense and polarizing. It played a significant role in the recently completed presidential campaign, mentioned by both candidates on the stump, at both parties' conventions, and was even taken up directly during one of the presidential debates. The topic has been discussed and debated almost continuously by the members of the legal, scientific, medical, and public policy commentariat. I believe that it is a heartening tribute to our national polity that such a complex moral, ethical, and scientific issue has become a central focus of our political discourse. But, …


The Theology Of The Blaine Amendments, Richard W. Garnett Jan 2004

The Theology Of The Blaine Amendments, Richard W. Garnett

Journal Articles

The Supreme Court affirmed, in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, that the Constitution permits us to experiment with school-choice programs and, in particular, with programs that include religious schools. However, the constitutions of nearly forty States contain provisions - generically called Blaine Amendments - that speak more directly and, in many cases, more restrictively, than does the First Amendment to the flow of once-public funds to religious schools. This Article is a series of reflections, prompted by the Blaine Amendments, on education, citizenship, political liberalism, and religious freedom.

First, the Article considers what might be called the federalism defense of the provisions. …


State Constitutional Rights As Resistance To National Power: Toward A Functional Theory Of State Constitutions, James A. Gardner Jun 2003

State Constitutional Rights As Resistance To National Power: Toward A Functional Theory Of State Constitutions, James A. Gardner

Journal Articles

In the American legal order, constitutional rights are conventionally understood to apply to and restrain the level of government created by the constitution in which those rights appear. Thus, individual rights in a lower-order constitution are understood to apply solely to the lower level government and to have no relevance to the actions of any higher level of government. This article challenges the conventional understanding by arguing that individual rights appearing in state constitutions can in many circumstances play a meaningful role in restraining the exercise of national power. Specifically, the identification and enforcement of state constitutional rights can serve …


The New Federalism, The Spending Power, And Federal Criminal Law, Richard W. Garnett Jan 2003

The New Federalism, The Spending Power, And Federal Criminal Law, Richard W. Garnett

Journal Articles

It is difficult in constitutional-law circles to avoid the observation that we are living through a revival of federalism. Certainly, the Rehnquist Court has brought back to the public-law table the notion that the Constitution is a charter for a government of limited and enumerated powers, one that is constrained both by that charter's text and by the structure of the government it creates. This allegedly revolutionary Court seems little inclined, however, to revise or revisit its Spending Power doctrine, and it remains settled law that Congress may disburse funds in pursuit of ends not authorized explicitly in Article I …


State Courts As Agents Of Federalism: Power And Interpretation In State Constitutional Law, James A. Gardner Mar 2002

State Courts As Agents Of Federalism: Power And Interpretation In State Constitutional Law, James A. Gardner

Journal Articles

In the American constitutional tradition, federalism is commonly understood as a mechanism designed to institutionalize a kind of permanent struggle between state and national power. The same American constitutional tradition also holds that courts are basically passive institutions whose mission is to apply the law impartially while avoiding inherently political power struggles. These two commonplace understandings conflict on their face. The conflict may be dissolved for federal courts by conceiving their resistance to state authority as the impartial consequence of limitations on state power imposed by the U.S. Constitution. But this reconciliation is unavailable for state courts, which, by operation …