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Full-Text Articles in Law
Federalism And The Treaty Power, Curtis A. Bradley
Federalism And The Treaty Power, Curtis A. Bradley
Faculty Scholarship
in presentations for: Treaties in U.S. Law: New Debates on Old Ideas
Fire, Metaphor, And Constitutional Myth-Making, Robert L. Tsai
Fire, Metaphor, And Constitutional Myth-Making, Robert L. Tsai
Faculty Scholarship
From the standpoint of traditional legal thought, metaphor is at best a dash of poetry adorning lawyerly analysis, and at worst an unjustifiable distraction from what is actually at stake in a legal contest. By contrast, in the eyes of those who view law as a close relative of ordinary language, metaphor is a basic building block of human understanding. This article accepts that metaphor helps us to comprehend a court's decision. At the same time, it argues that metaphor plays a special role in the realm of constitutional discourse. Metaphor in constitutional law not only reinforces doctrinal categories, but …
Speech And Strife, Robert L. Tsai
Speech And Strife, Robert L. Tsai
Faculty Scholarship
The essay strives for a better understanding of the myths, symbols, categories of power, and images deployed by the Supreme Court to signal how we ought to think about its authority. Taking examples from free speech jurisprudence, the essay proceeds in three steps. First, I argue that the First Amendment constitutes a deep source of cultural authority for the Court. As a result, linguistic and doctrinal innovation in the free speech area have been at least as bold and imaginative as that in areas like the Commerce Clause. Second, in turning to cognitive theory, I distinguish between formal legal argumentation …
With Strings Attached: The Limits On Local Control, Richard Briffault
With Strings Attached: The Limits On Local Control, Richard Briffault
Faculty Scholarship
In a December 2003 decision, a Colorado trial court judge invalidated the state's new school voucher program. The decision was unusual in that the court relied not on traditional separation-of-church-and-state concerns, but instead on a provision of the Colorado state constitution that vests control over public education in local school boards. The court held that by failing to give local school boards any" input whatsoever into the instruction to be offered by the private schools" that accepted voucher students, the state had violated the constitutional provision that grants local boards "control of instruction in the public schools of their respective …
Madisonian Equal Protection, James S. Liebman, Brandon L. Garrett
Madisonian Equal Protection, James S. Liebman, Brandon L. Garrett
Faculty Scholarship
James Madison is considered the "Father of the Constitution," but his progeny disappointed him. It had no effective defense against self-government's "mortal disease" – the oppression of minorities by local majorities. This Article explores Madison's writings in an effort to reclaim the deep conception of equal protection at the core of his constitutional aspirations. At the Convention, Madison passionately advocated a radical structural approach to equal protection under which the "extended republic's" broadly focused legislature would have monitored local laws and vetoed those that were parochial and "unjust." Rejecting this proposal to structure equal protection into the "interior" operation of …