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Full-Text Articles in Law
Scotus Short Title Turmoil: Time For A Congressional Bill Naming Authority, Brian Christopher Jones
Scotus Short Title Turmoil: Time For A Congressional Bill Naming Authority, Brian Christopher Jones
Brian Christopher Jones
This past summer saw the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision in United States v. Windsor, and while the case has generated copious amounts of commentary and scholarship, relatively little attention has been paid to the case’s discussion of bill short titles. Central to the case’s analysis was a dispute over the role of short titles in inferring legislative purpose, and given this dispute, this Remark will argue that it’s time for a Congressional bill naming authority to ensure sensible, descriptive bill names.
Don’T Be Silly: Lawmakers “Rarely” Read Legislation And Oftentimes Don’T Understand It . . . But That’S Okay, Brian Christopher Jones
Don’T Be Silly: Lawmakers “Rarely” Read Legislation And Oftentimes Don’T Understand It . . . But That’S Okay, Brian Christopher Jones
Brian Christopher Jones
During the debate over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare"), the reading and understanding of legislation became one of the most controversial issues mentioned in Congress and throughout the media. This led many to state that lawmakers should “read the bill,” and led one academic to propose a read-the-bill rule for Congress, where legislators would not vote or vote “no” if they had not read the full text of the legislation. My essay argues that in contemporary legislatures such proposals are unfeasible, and would ultimately produce lower quality legislation. In doing so, the piece uses interviews with legislative …
Personalized Bills As Commemorations: A Problem For House Rules?, Brian Christopher Jones
Personalized Bills As Commemorations: A Problem For House Rules?, Brian Christopher Jones
Brian Christopher Jones
The proliferation of personalized bills in Congress has occurred despite a prohibition on commemorations in the House of Representatives. This Essay provides a close examination of the wording behind the ban, especially the definition of “commemoration.” It uses examples from the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006 and other statutes to demonstrate how many contemporary personalized bills fall underneath the prohibition, and therefore should not be introduced or considered in the House.
Baker V. State And The Promise Of The New Judicial Federalism, Charles Baron, Lawrence Friedman
Baker V. State And The Promise Of The New Judicial Federalism, Charles Baron, Lawrence Friedman
Charles H. Baron
In Baker v. State, the Supreme Court of Vermont ruled that the state constitution’s Common Benefits Clause prohibits the exclusion of same-sex couples from the benefits and protections of marriage. Baker has been praised by constitutional scholars as a prototypical example of the New Judicial Federalism. The authors agree, asserting that the decision sets a standard for constitutional discourse by dint of the manner in which each of the opinions connects and responds to the others, pulls together arguments from other state and federal constitutional authorities, and provides a clear basis for subsequent development of constitutional principle. This Article explores …
Milk And Other Intoxicating Choices: Official State Symbol Adoption, Ryan Valentin
Milk And Other Intoxicating Choices: Official State Symbol Adoption, Ryan Valentin
Ryan Valentin
No abstract provided.
Restoring The Right To Organize In The Private Sector, James Newell
Restoring The Right To Organize In The Private Sector, James Newell
James Newell
No abstract provided.
One Redeeming Quality About The 112th Congress: Refocusing On Descriptive Rather Than Evocative Short Titles, Brian Christopher Jones
One Redeeming Quality About The 112th Congress: Refocusing On Descriptive Rather Than Evocative Short Titles, Brian Christopher Jones
Brian Christopher Jones
For all intents and purposes the 112th Congress has been deemed a massive failure by most; fewer laws enacted and contemptuous debates characterized the session’s most lambasted qualities. However, one redeemable aspect was present: a focus back on descriptive and technical words for short titles, rather than evocative or tendentious terms. When compared to the 111th Congress, the use of evocative words slowed while the use of technical terms increased. This is the first time this has happened since the 101st-102nd Congress (1989-1993). Additionally, it is the largest separation between technical and evocative words since the 103rd Congress (1993-1995). Yet …
The Implausibility Of Secrecy, Mark Fenster
The Implausibility Of Secrecy, Mark Fenster
Mark Fenster
Government secrecy frequently fails. Despite the executive branch’s obsessive hoarding of certain kinds of documents and its constitutional authority to do so, recent high-profile events—among them the WikiLeaks episode, the Obama administration’s celebrated leak prosecutions, and the widespread disclosure by high-level officials of flattering confidential information to sympathetic reporters—undercut the image of a state that can classify and control its information. The effort to control government information requires human, bureaucratic, technological, and textual mechanisms that regularly founder or collapse in an administrative state, sometimes immediately and sometimes after an interval. Leaks, mistakes, open sources—each of these constitutes a path out …
Functional Government In 3-D, Robert L. Glicksman, Alejandro E. Camacho
Functional Government In 3-D, Robert L. Glicksman, Alejandro E. Camacho
Robert L. Glicksman
The creation of new administrative agencies and the realignment of existing governmental authority are commonplace and high-stakes events, as illustrated by the recent creation of the Department of Homeland Security after 9/11 and of new financial regulatory agencies after the global recession of 2009. Scholars and policymakers have not devoted sufficient attention to this subject, failing to clearly identify the different dimensions along which government authority may be structured or to consider the relationships among them. Analysis of these institutional design issues typically also gives short shrift to whether authority should be allocated differently based on agency function. These failures …
Manipulating Public Law Favorability: Is It Really This Easy?, Brian Christopher Jones
Manipulating Public Law Favorability: Is It Really This Easy?, Brian Christopher Jones
Brian Christopher Jones
Can favorability for public laws be manipulated merely by changing the short title of the bill or act? Based on an exploratory survey of undergraduate students from the University of Stirling, the results suggest that naming may indeed play a small but significant part of the assessment. Employing five different types of short titles, it was found that “evocative” titles attracted higher favorability ratings than the “descriptive/ technical” titles. Additionally, the survey found that most participants were satisfied with a short vignette of information on the bill or law rather than further explanation, and a notable number of participants supported …
Book Review: 'Living Legislation' By Jeffery A. Jenkins & Eric M. Patashnik (Eds), Brian Christopher Jones
Book Review: 'Living Legislation' By Jeffery A. Jenkins & Eric M. Patashnik (Eds), Brian Christopher Jones
Brian Christopher Jones
No abstract provided.