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Legal Certainty And Legal Methods: A European Alternative To American Legal Indeterminacy?, James Maxeiner
Legal Certainty And Legal Methods: A European Alternative To American Legal Indeterminacy?, James Maxeiner
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Americans are resigned to a high level of legal indeterminacy. This Article shows that Europeans do not accept legal indeterminacy and instead have made legal certainty a general principle of their law. This Article uses the example of the German legal system to show how German legal methods strive to realize this general European principle. It suggests that these methods are opportunities for Americans to develop their own system to reduce legal indeterminacy and to increase legal certainty.
When Worlds Collide: Federal Construction Of State Institutional Competence, Marcia L. Mccormick
When Worlds Collide: Federal Construction Of State Institutional Competence, Marcia L. Mccormick
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The federal courts routinely encounter issues of state law. Often a state court will have already analyzed the law at issue, either in a separate case or in the very situation before the federal court. In every one of those cases, the federal courts must decide whether to defer to the state court analysis and, if so, how much. The federal courts will often defer, but many times have not done so, and they rarely explain the reasons for the departures they make. While this lack of transparency gives the federal courts the greatest amount of discretion and power, it …