Law Commons^™

Shortened Judicial Term May Prove To Be Lucky, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

Published scholarship collected from academic journals, law reviews, newspaper publications & online periodicals

Untangling The Market-Participant Exemption To The Dormant Commerce Clause, Dan T. Coenen

Scholarly Works

There is no theme more familiar to constitutional law than the clash between federal power and state autonomy. The history of that struggle reveals, by and large, a long losing battle by the states. Over the years, the Supreme Court has recognized far-reaching congressional powers, rebuffed efforts to rein them in through use of the tenth amendment, and saddled the states with every significant restraint imposed by the Bill of Rights. From time to time, however, the currents of constitutional doctrine run in favor of local control. In recent years, for example, the Court has stemmed the tide toward constitutionalizing …

Untangling The Market-Participant Exemption To The Dormant Commerce Clause, Dan T. Coenen

Scholarly Works

This article focuses on an important vehicle through which the modern Court has moved to protect local prerogatives: the market-participant exemption to the dormant commerce clause. The core of the Court's dormant commerce clause jurisprudence is well-settled: "The commerce clause, by its own force, prohibits discrimination against interstate commerce, whatever its form or method...” Over the past two decades, however, the Court has lifted this prohibition when states act as "market participants" rather than as "market regulators." Invoking this distinction, the Court has shielded from commerce clause attack blatant favoritism of local interests when a state or municipality buys printing …

The Right To Evidence, Bennett L. Gershman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Although its theoretical basis may be disputed, nobody questions the proposition that a person charged with a crime has a constitutional right to present a defense. Presenting a defense naturally requires access to proof. Access includes not only the availability of evidence, but also its permissible use. Consider some examples: A defendant wants to testify, but his lawyer's threats drive him off the stand. A witness who might be expected to give favorable testimony for the defense appears at trial but refuses to testify. A defense witness wants to testify, but because the defendant failed to notify the prosecutor about …

The Twenty-Three Lawyer-Delegates To The Constitutional Convention, Charles K. Wiggins

Selected Articles on Washington State Constitution History

Twenty-three of the delegates to the Washington Constitutional Convention of 1889 were lawyers. Who were these met; how did their talents serve them in convention; and what forces shaped their debates and votes?

Shutting Down The Government, Alan L. Feld

Faculty Scholarship

Actions of the federal government cost money. Legislative processes that specify the amounts and purposes of governmental expenditures control the scope and content of government actions.¹ To paraphrase Chief Justice Marshall, the power to withhold spending involves the power to destroy.²

Those involved in the legislative process ordinarily do not engage in wholesale or sudden dismantling of government activities through unheralded failures to provide funds. While disputes over funding constitute a regular part of the nation's political activity, these controversies usually concern adjustments in the level of spending and of agency operations. A decision to terminate an agency …

The Continued Importance Of The Maryland Declaration Of Rights, William L. Reynolds

Faculty Scholarship

An analysis of the origins and development of Maryland's 'Declaration of Rights.'

The First Amendment And The Flag, Bruce Berner

Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Toward An Expanded View Of The Due Process Claim In Entrapment Cases, Paul Marcus

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Habeas Corpus Committee - Press Briefing, Lewis F. Powell Jr

Habeas Corpus Committee

No abstract provided.

Habeas Corpus Committee - Memoranda, Lewis F. Powell Jr.

Habeas Corpus Committee

No abstract provided.

Rhetoric And Reality In The Law Of Federal Courts: Professor Fallon's Faulty Premise, Michael L. Wells

Scholarly Works

Richard Fallon's recent article, "The Ideologies of Federal Courts Law," [74 Va. L. Rev. 1141 (1988)] offers valuable insights into a bewildering body of Supreme Court doctrine. He effectively demonstrates the "substantial doctrinal instability" of this body of law, and also discerns a pattern amid the chaos. Fallon's treatment of the case law and the scholarship is fair-minded, meticulous, and incisive.

I disagree, however, with one aspect of Fallon's thesis. In my view, he falters when identifying sources of the discontinuity in the doctrine. In Part I of his article he argues that the decisions reflect "two sets of incompatible …

Habeas Corpus Committee - Correspondence, Lewis F. Powell, Jr.

Habeas Corpus Committee

No abstract provided.

Tax Reform Held Hostage By Constitutional Amendment, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

Published scholarship collected from academic journals, law reviews, newspaper publications & online periodicals

Debating A Paralyzing Objectivity, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

Published scholarship collected from academic journals, law reviews, newspaper publications & online periodicals

Habeas Corpus Committee - Memoranda, Lewis F. Powell Jr.

Habeas Corpus Committee

No abstract provided.

Habeas Corpus Committee - Memoranda, Lewis F. Powell Jr.

Habeas Corpus Committee

No abstract provided.

Governor Can Still Appoint Replacement For Justice Stout, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

Published scholarship collected from academic journals, law reviews, newspaper publications & online periodicals

A ‘Non-Power’ Looks At Separation Of Powers, Alan B. Morrison

Philip A. Hart Memorial Lecture

On April 6, 1989, Dean, Alan B. Morrison of George Washington Law, delivered the Georgetown Law Center’s ninth Annual Philip A. Hart Memorial Lecture: "A ‘Non-Power’ Looks at Separation of Powers."

Dean Morrison is the Lerner Family Associate Dean for Public Interest & Public Service at GW Law. He is responsible for creating pro bono opportunities for students, bringing a wide range of public interest programs to the law school, encouraging students to seek positions in the non-profit and government sectors, and assisting students find ways to fund their legal education to make it possible for them to pursue careers …

Let's Re-Do Runyon: Questions To Guide Justice White; Response, Theodore Eisenberg

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

What Shapes Perceptions Of The Federal Court System?, Theodore Eisenberg, Stewart J. Schwab

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Two hundred years is a long time. It is too long after formation of a court system to ask such basic questions as (1) what cases occupy the system, and (2) whether even informed professionals have a reasonable picture of what goes on within the system. Nonetheless, continuing debate about the volume and makeup of litigation in general and of federal court litigation in particular requires legal scholars to address these questions. Professor Marc Galanter's work on the litigation explosion questions central assumptions about the nature and growth of the federal docket. Our prior work undermines widely held views about …

Habeas Corpus Committee - Memoranda, Lewis F. Powell Jr.

Habeas Corpus Committee

No abstract provided.

Abolition Then And Now, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

Published scholarship collected from academic journals, law reviews, newspaper publications & online periodicals.”

Problematic Standards Of Reasonableness: Qualified Immunity In Section 1983 Actions For A Police Officer's Use Of Excessive Force, Kathryn R. Urbonya

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Impact Of Substantive Interests On The Law Of Federal Courts, Michael L. Wells

Scholarly Works

The thesis of this Article is that substantive factors exert a powerful and often unrecognized influence over the resolution of jurisdictional issues, and have done so throughout our history. The chief substantive factors at issue are the government's interest iin regulating behavior on the one hand, and the individual's interest in enforcing constitutional restraints upon government on the other. Part I of this Article examines the relationship between jurisdictional rules and substantive consequences, Part II describes the Court's conventional account of federal courts doctrine in terms of jurisdictional policy and institutional roles, and Part III shows that the reasons set …

Mastery, Slavery, And Emancipation, Guyora Binder

Journal Articles

Hegel's dialectic of master and slave in the Phenomenology of Mind portrays a master unable to win genuine recognition from a slave because unwilling to confer it. The dialectic implies that freedom has to be conceived as association based on mutual respect, rather than independence. This article offers a communitarian interpretation of emancipation inspired by Hegel's dialectic of master and slave. It proceeds from an account of slave society which, like Hegel's dialectic, equates slavery with the denial of social recognition. This account argues that the experience of slave society led both the masters and the slaves to conceive of …

Choosing Judges The Democratic Way, Larry Yackle

Faculty Scholarship

A generation ago, the pressing question in constitutional law was the countermajoritarian difficulty.' Americans insisted their government was a democratic republic and took that to mean rule by a majority of elected representatives in various offices and bodies, federal and local. Yet courts whose members had not won election presumed to override the actions of executive and legislative officers who had. The conventional answer to this apparent paradox was the Constitution, which arguably owed its existence to the people directly. Judicial review was justified, accordingly, when court decisions were rooted firmly in the particular text, structure, or historical backdrop of …

Habeas Corpus Committee - Memoranda, Lewis F. Powell Jr.

Habeas Corpus Committee

No abstract provided.

State Sovereignty And The Tenth And Eleventh Amendments, Calvin R. Massey

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Beyond Parity: Section 1983 And The State Courts, Susan Herman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.