Law Commons^™

Constitutional Ethnography: An Introduction, Kim Lane Scheppele

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Constitutional ethnography is the study of the central legal elements of polities using methods that are capable of recovering the lived detail of the politico-legal landscape. This article provides an introduction to this sort of study by contrasting constitutional ethnography with multivariate analysis and with nationalist constitutional analysis. The article advocates not a universal one-size-fits-all theory or an elegant model that abstracts away the distinctive, but instead outlines an approach that can identify a set of repertoires found in real cases. Learning the set of repertoires that constitutional ethnography reveals, one can see more deeply into particular cases. Constitutional ethnography …

Law In A Time Of Emergency, Kim Lane Scheppele

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This article examines the domestic and foreign policy responses of the Bush administration to the events of 9/11 and contrasts them with the primary responses of America’s democratic allies in Europe. Both sets of responses are understood through the lens of Carl Schmitt’s writing on the nature of the state of exception, which in many ways provides a blueprint for contemporary American conceptions of emergency powers while providing a notorious and unsuccessful attempt to justify emergency powers to contemporary Europeans. I argue that the divergence in the standard understandings of two formative historical events help explain European and American differences …

Perceptions Of Corruption And Campaign Finance: When Public Opinion Determines Constitutional Law, Nathaniel Persily, Kelli Lammie

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This study tests the empirical assumptions about American public opinion found in the Supreme Court’s opinions concerning campaign finance reform. The area of campaign finance is a unique one in First Amendment law because the Court has allowed the mere appearance of a problem (in this case, “corruption”) to justify the curtailment of recognized First Amendment rights of speech and association. Since Buckley v. Valeo, defendants in campaign finance cases have proffered various types of evidence to support the notion that the public perceives a great deal of corruption produced by the campaign finance system. Most recently, in McConnell v. …

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University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Decision Rules, Mitchell N. Berman

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No abstract provided.

The Conceptual Jurisprudence Of The German Constitution, William Ewald

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No abstract provided.

Political Representation And Accountability Under Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Tobias Barrington Wolff

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The U.S. military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy constitutes a singular type of speech regulation: an explicit prohibition on identity speech by a defined population of individuals that mandates a state of complete social invisibility in both military and civilian life. The impact of such a regulation upon the public speech values protected by the First Amendment should not be difficult to apprehend. And yet, as the tenth anniversary of the policy approaches, First Amendment scholars have largely ignored this seemingly irresistible subject of study, and the federal courts have refused to engage with the policy's implications for public speech …

The Revolution That Wasn't, Elizabeth Magill

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A principal legacy of the Rehnquist Court is its revitalization of doctrines associated with federalism. That jurisprudence has many critics and many defenders. They disagree about how to describe what has happened, the importance of what has happened, and the wisdom of what has happened. But they all agree that something has happened. There has been genuine innovation in this area of constitutional law.

Not so with separation of powers doctrine. Commentators do not perceive important shifts in the doctrine. Nor should they-the reasoning and results in the Rehnquist Court cases are of a piece with what came before. Lack …

Copyright And Free Expression: The Convergence Of Conflicting Normative Frameworks, Shyamkrishna Balganesh

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Recent attempts to expand the domain of copyright law in different parts of the world have necessitated renewed efforts to evaluate the philosophical justifications that are advocated for its existence as an independent institution. Copyright, conceived of as a proprietary institution, reveals an interesting philosophical interaction with other libertarian interests, most notably the right to free expression. This paper seeks to understand the nature of this interaction and the resulting normative decisions. The paper seeks to analyze copyright law and its recent expansions, specifically from the perspective of the human rights discourse. It looks at the historical origins of modern …

Guillen And Gullibility: Piercing The Surface Of Commerce Clause Doctrine, Mitchell N. Berman

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In Pierce County v. Guillen, the Supreme Court's most recent Commerce Clause decision, the Court upheld a federal law that protects information compiled or collected by states and localities in connection with federal highway safety programs from being discovered or admitted into evidence in state or federal trials. A short and unanimous decision, Guillen has gone almost entirely unnoticed. This article aims to rectify that oversight. Very simply, Guillen is not the gimme that its length, tone, and reception all conspire to suggest. At the heart of the case is a puzzle. And attempts to unravel that puzzle may substantially …

Procedure, Politics And Power: The Role Of Congress, Stephen B. Burbank

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The Unitary Executive During The Third Half-Century, 1889-1945, Christopher S. Yoo, Steven G. Calabresi, Laurence D. Nee

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Recent Supreme Court decisions and the impeachment of President Clinton has reinvigorated the debate over Congress's authority to employ devices such as special counsels and independent agencies to restrict the President's control over the administration of the law. The initial debate focused on whether the Constitution rejected the executive by committee employed by the Articles of the Confederation in favor of a unitary executive, in which all administrative authority is centralized in the President. More recently, the debate has begun to turn towards historical practices. Some scholars have suggested that independent agencies and special counsels have become such established features …

The Judicial Appointment Power Of The Chief Justice, Theodore Ruger

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No abstract provided.

Constitutional Choices: Legal Feminism And The Historical Dynamics Of Change, Serena Mayeri

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"A Question Which Convulses A Nation": The Early Republic's Greatest Debate About The Judicial Review Power, Theodore Ruger

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