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Full-Text Articles in Law

Why Supermajoritarianism Does Not Illuminate The Interpretive Debate Between Originalists And Non-Originalists, Ethan J. Leib Jan 2007

Why Supermajoritarianism Does Not Illuminate The Interpretive Debate Between Originalists And Non-Originalists, Ethan J. Leib

Faculty Scholarship

In A Pragmatic Defense of Originalism, they seek to explain why supermajoritarianism furnishes a new pragmatic defense of originalism. In this Essay, I dispute each of their substantive claims. First, I argue that there is nothing newly pragmatic about their defense. Although they claim to want to make originalists and pragmatists friends, nothing about their project is likely to accomplish this matchmaking. Second, I argue that there is no reason to believe that constitutional entrenchments produced under supermajoritarian decision rules are any more desirable as a general matter than rules produced under other, more relaxed, decision rules. At the core …


Supreme Court Of The United States As Quasi-International Tribunal: Reclaiming The Court's Original And Exclusive Jurisdiction Over Treaty-Based Suits By Foreign States Against States, The, Thomas H. Lee Jan 2004

Supreme Court Of The United States As Quasi-International Tribunal: Reclaiming The Court's Original And Exclusive Jurisdiction Over Treaty-Based Suits By Foreign States Against States, The, Thomas H. Lee

Faculty Scholarship

The thesis of this Article is that the Constitution vests in the Supreme Court original and exclusive jurisdiction over suits brought by foreign states against States alleging violation of ratified treaties of the United States. The basis for non-immunity in suits by foreign states is the same theory of ratification consent that is presumed to justify suits against States by other States or the United States. Just as the States by ratifying the Constitution agreed to suits in the national court by other States and the national sovereign to ensure domestic peace, they agreed to suits by foreign states in …


Redeeming The Welshed Guarantee: A Scheme For Achieving Justiciability, Ethan J. Leib Jan 2002

Redeeming The Welshed Guarantee: A Scheme For Achieving Justiciability, Ethan J. Leib

Faculty Scholarship

In this article, I suggest that Congress re-pass its progressive legislation under the jurisdictional basis of its Guarantee Clause power. While arguments for justiciability continue to be made, a pragmatic way to achieve it has not been spelled out. Part II will lay out versions of republicanism I hope to see discussed in the context of the Guarantee Clause. Part III will explore republicanism's excessive attention on the courts, recommending the aforementioned approach of Jeremy Waldron. Part IV will briefly suggest how some of the legislation recently curtailed by the Supreme Court might be justified under a theory of legislative, …


Towards A Practice Of Deliberative Democracy: A Proposal For A Popular Branch , Ethan J. Leib Jan 2001

Towards A Practice Of Deliberative Democracy: A Proposal For A Popular Branch , Ethan J. Leib

Faculty Scholarship

Proposals for practical institutional reforms are notoriously absent from discussions about deliberative democracy. It is imperative to engage in the “nuts and bolts” debate of just what kinds of changes we discourse theorists or deliberative democrats want to effect. Here I would like to try to synthesize a reform proposal of my own based upon three major assumptions. Without argument, I assume a largely discourse-theoretic view of democracy that takes for granted the republican virtue of collective self-government as well as the Kantian claim that each citizen should be the author of his own laws. I further assume that our …


Making Sense Of The Eleventh Amendment: International Law And State Sovereignty, Thomas H. Lee Jan 2001

Making Sense Of The Eleventh Amendment: International Law And State Sovereignty, Thomas H. Lee

Faculty Scholarship

The Judicial Power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State. - Eleventh Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America The thesis of this article is that the Eleventh Amendment, ratified in 1798, represented the incorporation into the American domestic constitutional law of federalism (specifically, the doctrine of state sovereign immunity) the late eighteenth-century international law rule that only states have rights against other states …


Defining And Punishing Abroad: Constitutional Limits On The Extraterritorial Reach Of The Offenses Clause Note, Zephyr Teachout Jan 1998

Defining And Punishing Abroad: Constitutional Limits On The Extraterritorial Reach Of The Offenses Clause Note, Zephyr Teachout

Faculty Scholarship

The Offenses Clause of the United States Constitution gives Congress the authority to "define and punish... Offences against the Law of Nations." This Note considers whether Congress must conform to the jurisdictional rules of customary international law when legislating pursuant to the Offenses Clause.


Tragic Irony Of American Federalism: National Sovereignty Versus State Sovereignty In Slavery And In Freedom, The Federalism In The 21st Century: Historical Perspectives, Robert J. Kaczorowski Jan 1996

Tragic Irony Of American Federalism: National Sovereignty Versus State Sovereignty In Slavery And In Freedom, The Federalism In The 21st Century: Historical Perspectives, Robert J. Kaczorowski

Faculty Scholarship

A plurality on the Supreme Court seeks to establish a state-sovereignty based theory of federalism that imposes sharp limitations on Congress's legislative powers. Using history as authority, they admonish a return to the constitutional "first principles" of the Founders. These "first principles," in their view, attribute all governmental authority to "the consent of the people of each individual state, not the consent of the undifferentiated people of the Nation as a whole." Because the people of each state are the source of all governmental power, they maintain, "where the Constitution is silent about the exercise of a particular power-that is, …


Reflections On From Slaves To Citizens Bondage, Freedom And The Constitution: The New Slavery Scholarship And Its Impact On Law And Legal Historiography, Robert J. Kaczorowski Jan 1995

Reflections On From Slaves To Citizens Bondage, Freedom And The Constitution: The New Slavery Scholarship And Its Impact On Law And Legal Historiography, Robert J. Kaczorowski

Faculty Scholarship

The thesis of Professor Donald Nieman's paper, "From Slaves to Citizens: African-Americans, Rights Consciousness, and Reconstruction," is that the nation experienced a revolution in the United States Constitution and in the consciousness of African Americans. According to Professor Nieman, the Reconstruction Amendments represented "a dramatic departure from antebellum constitutional principles,"' because the Thirteenth Amendment reversed the pre-Civil War constitutional guarantee of slavery and "abolish[ed] slavery by federal authority." The Fourteenth Amendment rejected the Supreme Court's "racially-based definition of citizenship [in Dred Scott v. Sandford4], clearly establishing a color-blind citizenship” and the Fifteenth Amendment "wrote the principle of equality into the …


Revolutionary Constitutionalism In The Era Of The Civil War And Reconstruction , Robert J. Kaczorowski Jan 1986

Revolutionary Constitutionalism In The Era Of The Civil War And Reconstruction , Robert J. Kaczorowski

Faculty Scholarship

The meaning and scope of the fourteenth amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1866 remain among the most controversial issues in American constitutional law. Professor Kaczorowski contends that the issues have generated more controversy than they warrant, in part because scholars analyzing the legislative history of the amendment and statute have approached their task with preconceptions reflecting twentieth century legal concerns. He argues that the most important question for the framers was whether national or state governments possessed primary authority to determine and secure the status and rights of American citizens. Relying on records of the congressional debates as …


Proposed Amendment On Presidential Inability And Vice-Presidential Vacancy, John D. Feerick Oct 1965

Proposed Amendment On Presidential Inability And Vice-Presidential Vacancy, John D. Feerick

Twenty-Fifth Amendment Articles

In 1965, Congress submitted to the states a constitutional amendment to remedy a glaring flaw in the Constitution: the absence of comprehensive procedures for presidential succession and inability and vice-presidential vacancy. This Article, written shortly after Congress proposed the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, sets forth the text of the proposed amendment and explains the thinking of it sponsors.


Presidential Succession And Inability, Committee For Economic Development. Research And Policy Committee Jan 1965

Presidential Succession And Inability, Committee For Economic Development. Research And Policy Committee

Reports

Publication argues for the ratification of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment. Includes dissenting opinions.


Presidential Inability: The Problem And A Solution, John D. Feerick Apr 1964

Presidential Inability: The Problem And A Solution, John D. Feerick

Twenty-Fifth Amendment Articles

This Article argues for a constitutional amendment to resolve the gaps and ambiguities in the Constitution’s original provisions for presidential inability and succession. It outlines the problems and notes presidential inabilities in the past. The Article endorses the consensus proposal for a constitutional amendment worked out by the panel of experts convened by the American Bar Association in January 1964 and later adopted by the ABA House of Delegates as the proposal of the Association.