Law Commons^™

Viewpoints From Olympus, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay examines the Supreme Court's treatment of content and viewpoint discrimination in Rosenberger v. Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia. In that opinion, the Court adopted a very expansive approach to what constitutes viewpoint discrimination, the form of content discrimination most disfavored by the Constitution. The Court held that a public university could not decline to fund publication of Wide Awake, a magazine devoted to proselytizing for Christianity, if it funded other student publications. Justice Kennedy's opinion for the Court accepted the argument of the sponsors of Wide Awake that the University had engaged in …

We The People[S], Original Understanding, And Constitutional Amendment, Henry Paul Monaghan

Faculty Scholarship

Recent legal and political activity and renewed academic discussion have focused considerable attention on the nature of the federal system that the founders created some two hundred years ago. In two important decisions in the 1994 Term, the Supreme Court addressed this issue. No fewer than fifteen states have recently passed resolutions reasserting the importance of the Tenth Amendment – the constitutional affirmation of the limits on national authority. Additionally, legal academics have advanced arguments intended to alter settled understandings about the constitutional framework established in 1789. This widespread reexamination of the nature and limitations of our federal system has …

Separating From Children, Carol Sanger

Faculty Scholarship

On September 1, 1939, in anticipation of the imminent German bombing of British cities, 150,000 children were assembled at the railway stations of London and sent throughout the day to "'destinations unknown'" in the English countryside. Mothers and children under five were evacuated together but school-age children were shipped out to rural billets in school groups, accompanied only by their teachers and civil defense volunteers. Forty years later, an observer remembered the day vividly:

[T]he mothers [were] trying to hold back their tears as they marched these little boys and girls in their gas masks into the centre …. The …

A Tribute To Jerry Israel: A Friend With A Messy Office, Debra A. Livingston

Faculty Scholarship

My legal education began with Jerry Israel.

During the fall of 1977, I was assigned to his section of Criminal Law. From the very first day of class, Jerry made it clear to us that the problems of crime and punishment were at once profoundly important and elusively difficult. Jerry taught from judicial opinions in the classic Socratic mode. Each day we were forced to grapple with the perplexing manner in which the language of precedent, so comforting when first encountered in the frame of an opinion, turned to quicksilver when tested against new cases, real or hypothetical.

Religious Liberty And Democratic Politics, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

Some time ago, President Clinton talked to a gathering of religious journalists about abortion. He said that he did not believe that the biblical passages often cited by those who are "pro-life" indicate· clearly that abortion is wrong and should be prohibited. The reasons many people have for wanting abortion to be prohibited, or for allowing abortion, relate to their religious convictions. These people, for the most part, regard it as perfectly appropriate that religious perspectives help determine public policy on abortion in the United States. Others object. They say that the religious views of some people should not be …

John Milton's Areopagitica And The Modern First Amendment, Vincent A. Blasi

Faculty Scholarship

The traditional liberal argument for free speech is now under fire from several directions. Critics from the left, the center, and the right find simplistic the claim that unregulated expression promotes the search for truth, the protection of self-government, the autonomy of individuals, and the control of concentrated power. Even if free speech does serve these values to a considerable degree, there are costs associated with liberty, costs the critics say are not sufficiently recognized in the standard liberal accounts.

As a general matter, but especially regarding the freedom of speech, liberalism is seen as too doctrinaire, too optimistic about …

Local Government And The New York State Constitution, Richard Briffault

Faculty Scholarship

On November 4, 1997, the question "Shall there be a convention to revise the [state] constitution and amend the same?" will be submitted to the New York state electorate pursuant to the provision in the state constitution requiring that every twenty years the voters be given the opportunity to call for a constitutional convention. A longstanding constitutional concern in New York is local government and the relations between local governments and the State. With an eye to the upcoming vote on whether to hold a constitutional convention, this paper examines the place of local government and state-local relations in the …

Bargaining About Future Jeopardy, Daniel Richman

Faculty Scholarship

The debate about how much protection criminal defendants should have against successive prosecutions has generally been conducted in the context of how to interpret the Double Jeopardy Clause. The doctrinal focus of this debate ignores the fact that for the huge majority of defendants – those who plead guilty instead of standing trial – the Double Jeopardy Clause simply sets a default rule, establishing a minimum level of protection when defendants choose not to bargain about the possibility of future charges. In this Article, Professor Richman examines the world that exists in the shadow of minimalist double jeopardy doctrine, exploring …

Cooperating Defendants: The Costs And Benefits Of Purchasing Information From Scoundrels, Daniel Richman

Faculty Scholarship

Only the most unreflective prosecutor can avoid feeling ambivalent about cooperation. Without the assistance of defendants willing to trade testimony for the expectation of sentencing discounts, many cases worth prosecuting could not be made. But if a prosecutor maintains any distance from these defendants – as he must – he is bound to be troubled by the magnitude of the discounts that the federal system (like other systems) gives to cooperators, many of whom rank as some of the most odious people he has ever met.

The idea of purchasing testimony through sentencing discounts has a long history, of course, …

The Sovereign Immunity Exception Comment, Henry Paul Monaghan

Faculty Scholarship

Seminole Tribe v. Florida is the 1995 Term's illustration of the importance that a narrow, but solid, five-Justice majority of the Supreme Court attaches to the constitutional underpinnings of "Our Federalism." In Seminole Tribe, this majority declared that Congress lacks authority under its Article I, Section 8 regulatory powers to subject unconsenting states to suits initiated in federal court by private persons. The very same majority had previously made clear its intention to implement the original constitutional understanding of a national government of limited powers, especially when the national government attempted to "commandeer" state legislative and administrative processes. This …

Ballot Propositions And Campaign Finance Reform, Richard Briffault

Faculty Scholarship

For more than two decades, law and policy in the area of campaign finance reform have been framed by the conflict between the norms of promoting political equality and protecting political participation. Viewing campaign finance as a basic component of political activity, the Supreme Court has generally given political participation priority over equality and has invalidated reforms that would limit spending in order to promote equality. The Court, however, has sustained some restrictions on campaign finance activities of candidates, political parties, and individuals and groups who work with these political professionals. In effect, concern about the capacity of private donations …

The Local Government Boundary Problem In Metropolitan Areas, Richard Briffault

Faculty Scholarship

Local government boundaries play an important role in the governance of metropolitan areas by defining local electorates and tax bases and the scope of local regulatory powers and service responsibilities. Yet, the close association of local powers with local boundaries generates spillovers, fiscal disparities, and interlocal conflicts. Real local autonomy is constrained but the local government system fails to provide a means for addressing regional problems. Public choice theorists and political decentralizationists oppose regional governments because of the threat to local autonomy that would result from removing powers from local hands. Richard Briffault's solution to the metropolitan governance problem is …

Three Models Of Affirmative Action Beneficiaries, Thomas W. Merrill

Faculty Scholarship

What has caused the affirmative action debate to become so acrimonious? Perhaps some insight may be gained By considering three competing models of affirmative action beneficiaries that underlie this debate: (1) the outsider group model; (2) the interest group model; and (3) what I will call the adversity group model.

Bork V. Burke, Thomas W. Merrill

Faculty Scholarship

I would like to make the case for a conservative alternative to originalism. Much of the discussion that has taken place over the last two days has proceeded on the assumption that there are two choices. One is Robert Bork's originalism, justified by various values near and dear to conservative hearts, such as the rule of law, continuity with the past, the principle of democratic accountability, and so forth. The other is to flee into the hands of the so-called nonoriginalists, and embrace, to quote Judge Easterbrook quoting Justice Brennan, the judge's "personal confrontation with the well-springs of our society." …

Should Lawyers Obey The Law?, William H. Simon

Faculty Scholarship

At the same time that it denies authority to nonlegal norms, the dominant view of legal ethics (the "Dominant View") insists on deference to legal ones. "Zealous advocacy" stops at the "bounds of the law."

By and large, critics of the Dominant View have not challenged this categorical duty of obedience to law. They typically want to add further public-regarding duties, but they are as insistent on this one as the Dominant View.

Now the idea that lawyers should obey the law seems so obvious that it is rarely examined within the profession. In fact, however, once you start to …

The Future Of The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act: Or, Why The Fat Lady Has Not Yet Sung, John C. Coffee Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

Much commentary about securities litigation shares the implicit premise that the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (Reform Act) is, for better or worse, a fait accompli – that is, legislation whose meaning is fixed and whose impact, while still debatable, is not contingent on future events. This Article sees it differently: the Reform Act is more like wet clay that has been shaped into an approximation of a human form by an apprentice craftsmen and has now been turned over to the master sculptor for the details that will spell the difference between high art and merely competent …

Public Finance In The American Federal System: Basic Patterns And Current Issues, Richard Briffault

Faculty Scholarship

Public finance issues with significant consequences for American federalism have been at the top of the political agenda for the last several years. Indeed, much of the current debate about American federalism has been explicitly about questions of public finance: Which level of government should pay for which programs? What is to be the relationship between financial responsibility and policy-making authority? Should there be some overall limitation on government outlays and receipts?

Thus, one of the first actions of the 104th Congress was passage of a measure, swiftly signed into law by the President, to curb the ability of the …

Preferential Trade Agreements: The Wrong Road, Jagdish N. Bhagwati

Faculty Scholarship

The nature of FTAs is to offer free trade only to members, not to non-members. Thus, FTAs are two-faced: they ensure free trade for members and (relative) protection against non-members. First-year students of international economics would be asked to shift to a different field if they could not grasp this elementary and elemental distinction, and yet today's politicians imagine themselves to be statesmen endorsing free trade when they embrace these inherently discriminatory PTAs.

As PTAs proliferate, the main problem that arises is the accompanying proliferation of discrimination in market access and a whole maze of trade duties and barriers that …

Acknowledgments, George A. Bermann

Faculty Scholarship

On April 11-12, 1996, members of the law faculties at Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität and Columbia University met in New York for the Second Frankfurt-Columbia Symposium on Comparative Law, once again dealing with issues of regulatory federalism and harmonization of laws in comparative perspective. The first symposium took place in Frankfurt a year earlier, and it was our great pleasure to host our German colleagues and return in some small measure the hospitality that they had shown us the previous year. I would particularly like to thank my good friend and colleague Prof. Dr. Ingolf Pernice (now of the law faculty …

The Theory Of Preferential Trade Agreements: Historical Evolution And Current Trends, Jagdish N. Bhagwati, Arvind Panagariya

Faculty Scholarship

The theory of preferential trade agreements (Pf A's), or what might be described in policy terms as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) Article XXIV sanctioned freetrade areas (FTA's) and Customs Unions (CU's), has undergone two phases of evolution, in two very different modes, largely reflecting the contrasting policy concerns of the time. In this paper, we trace this evolution, offering both a historical context and an intellectual coherence to diverse analytical approaches.

Domination In The Theory Of Justification And Excuse, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

The major currents driving legal theory have largely bypassed the field of criminal law. Neither the economists nor the advocates of critical legal studies ("crits") have had much to say about the theory of criminal responsibility or the proper mode of trying suspects. The economists have fallen flat in applying their rationalist models to the problems of punishing wrongdoers. The "crits" have had little to add-beyond Mark Kelman's one original and provocative article.

Of all the schools on the march in the law schools today, the feminists have had the most to say about the failings of the criminal law. …

The Legal Environment Of International Finance: Thinking About Fundamentals, Merritt B. Fox

Faculty Scholarship

The huge increase in cross border capital flows over the last two decades has profoundly important implications for society in general and the law in particular. These flows give rise to a set of legal problems that are sufficiently distinct and coherent to constitute a legal field of their own. Confirming this observation is the development of a specialized legal practice whose members spend the bulk of their time working on such transactions. Nevertheless, a law school course in international finance is a rarity, even at the schools that train most of the students who ultimately join this practice.

The …

U. S. Federalism And Intellectual Property, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

The federal structure of the U.S. government presents interesting questions for intellectual property. Which government, national or state, exercises regulatory authority? Or do both governments play a significant role? Questions of this order cannot be addressed unless one first analyzes what the term "intellectual property" comprehends. Intellectual property includes well-recognized regimes of exclusive rights in inventions (patents), literary, artistic and musical creations (copyrights), and trademarks. But it also covers more elusive, and evolving, interests, such as exploitation of one's personal name and image (right of publicity), trade secrets, and a generalized concern with prevention of acts amounting to unlicensed appropriation …

La Protection Aux Etats-Unis Des Oeuvres D'Art, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

French Abstract
Les Etats-Unis sont un marche important d'oeuvres d'art, non seulement pour la vente des tableaux, mais aussi pour !'exploitation de reproductions et d'adaptations des images. Par exemple, en dehors des reproductions traditionnelles telles que celles contenues dans des catalogues et livres d'art et des reproductions sous forme de cartes postales et affiches, une oeuvre d'art originairement corn;ue comme une expression des beaux arts peut s'exploiter telle par exemple une sortie de bain, du papier peint, voire un decor de poubelle. Dans quelle mesure un artiste peut-il etre remunere ou meme s'opposer a J'exploitation commerciale de son oeuvre aux …

Barbara Jordan: Constitutional Conscience, Philip C. Bobbitt

Faculty Scholarship

Many of us learned for the first time in the press accounts following Barbara Jordan's death that she carried with her a small pocket copy of the U.S. Constitution. From some apparently early point, and then throughout her life, this small paper pamphlet was always with her. What was unreported was the fact that within this copy of the Constitution, there was folded a slip of paper on which was written a quotation from Albert Einstein. I do not believe this quotation is written in Barbara Jordan's hand; but it has clearly lain within her copy of the Constitution for …

The Legal Structure Of The Chinese Socialist Market Enterprise, William H. Simon

Faculty Scholarship

China's phenomenal economic growth since 1978 has been accompanied by a cascade of institutional innovation and experimentation. In at least this one sense a hundred flowers are blooming in the People's Republic. The range of institutional forms and their defiance of the conventions of economic organization in both capitalist and socialist societies are impressive.

The Chinese leadership calls the new order by the unfamiliar (and to some, oxymoronic) term "socialist market" economy. Its "market" dimensions include deregulation of most prices, decentralization of decision-making to the household in agriculture and to the enterprise in industry, incentive schemes for peasants, managers, and …

Regulatory Federalism: A Reprise And Introduction, George A. Bermann

Faculty Scholarship

This colloquium, like its predecessor, proceeds on the basis of a series of assumptions. First, it assumes that the federalism dimension of the regulatory state is an important one Gust as is the regulatory dimension of the federal state). In introducing our first colloquium, I suggested that, although determining the content of public policy is critical in a democratic society, also critical is determining the level of government at which the choice of policy is made. Ingolf Pernice remarked then that a federal system is "any legal entity [which is] comprised of states for the purpose of pursuing certain common …

Risk Assessment Perspectives, Peter L. Strauss

Faculty Scholarship

I have a slightly different subtitle for our session today, which I hope our panelists may consider in addressing the many challenges before them: Cost-Benefit Analysis and Risk Assessment under Diminished Resources. Allan Morrison introduced the resource problem at the end of yesterday's session. It is an important element of the problems we face.

I think another element of those problems is finding a reasoned way of addressing these issues. The contrast between reasoned decisionmaking and political football was also nicely in evidence yesterday, perhaps especially strongly for those of us who have been responsible for putting together these presentations. …

Comparative Risk Assessment In New York, Michael B. Gerrard, Deborah Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

Comparative risk assessment (CRA) is the examination of the relative risks posed by different dangers, with a view to deciding which dangers deserve the most governmental attention. CRA frequently tries to reduce different problems to a common metric, usually the statistical lives saved by a program, so that apples can be weighed against oranges. This article will discuss and assess the growing use of CRA in New York State.

There are two principal arguments for the use of CRA in the environmental context. The first is that we do not have unlimited resources; we cannot move against all problems simultaneously. …

Is There A General Trend In Constitutional Democracies Toward Parliamentary Control Over War-And-Peace Decisions?, Lori Fisler Damrosch

Faculty Scholarship

My hypothesis is that there is a general trend toward subordinating war powers to constitutional control, and that this trend includes a subtrend toward greater parliamentary control over the decision to introduce troops into situations of actual or potential hostilities. UN peace operations present one variant of a recurring problem for constitutional democracies, as do collective security and collective enforcement operations under the auspices of the United Nations or a regional body such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).