Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 9 of 9
Full-Text Articles in Law
The Illiberal Court, David F. Forte
The Illiberal Court, David F. Forte
Law Faculty Articles and Essays
Justice Scalia casts up a dire warning that not only has the Supreme Court in many ways removed the Constitution from the Framers, it is also removing the democratic process from the people and their representatives.
At Loggerheads: The Supreme Court And Racial Equality In Public School Education After Missouri V. Jenkins, Roberta M. Harding
At Loggerheads: The Supreme Court And Racial Equality In Public School Education After Missouri V. Jenkins, Roberta M. Harding
Law Faculty Scholarly Articles
June 12th of 1995 marked a somber occasion in the annals of school desegregation litigation. On that day, the United States Supreme Court sent disturbing messages in its opinion in Missouri v. Jenkins. The Court's decision hinders achievement of the objective of school desegregation litigation—providing equal educational opportunities for African-American public school children—and detrimentally impacts other substantive areas of civil rights litigation. This article examines what I believe are several important general consequences of Jenkins's the impairment of a trial judge's discretionary equitable remedial powers; the Court's establishment of a new agenda that sacrifices the interests of African-American …
Consistently Inconsistent: The Supreme Court And The Confusion Surrounding Proportionality In Non-Capital Sentencing, Steven P. Grossman
Consistently Inconsistent: The Supreme Court And The Confusion Surrounding Proportionality In Non-Capital Sentencing, Steven P. Grossman
All Faculty Scholarship
(Adapted by permission from 84 Ky. L. J. 107 (1995)) This article examines the Supreme Court's treatment of the Eighth Amendment with respect to claims of excessiveness regarding prison sentences. Specifically, it addresses the issue of whether and to what degree the Eighth Amendment requires that a punishment not be disproportional to the crime punished. In analyzing all of the modern holdings of the Court in this area, one finds significant fault with each. The result of this series of flawed opinions from the Supreme Court is that the state of the law with respect to proportionality in sentencing is …
Toward A "Due Foundation" For The Separation Of Powers: The Federalist Papers As Political Narrative, Victoria Nourse
Toward A "Due Foundation" For The Separation Of Powers: The Federalist Papers As Political Narrative, Victoria Nourse
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
During the past quarter century, lawyers have become strangely comfortable with descriptions of our government's structure that would, to an untutored ear, speak contradiction. We are quite satisfied to say that governmental powers are separate and shared, departments distinct and overlapping, functions autonomous and interdependent. We have settled into these contradictions as we would a roomy chair: talking this way is no longer controversial but taken for granted, uttered with a knowing wink, perceived as the starting point of sophisticated analysis. A not "entirely separate," but "entirely free," set of departments is the only way we can think about the …
Is A Textualist Approach To Statutory Interpretation Pro-Environmentalist?: Why Pragmatic Agency Decisionmaking Is Better Than Judicial Literalism, Bradford Mank
Faculty Articles and Other Publications
This Article provides both anecdotal evidence and a more theoretical argument for why textualist statutory interpretation is not the best approach to address environmental. issues.
The New Activist Court, Donald H. Zeigler
Term Limits On Original Intent--An Essay On Legal Debate And Historical Understanding, Polly J. Price
Term Limits On Original Intent--An Essay On Legal Debate And Historical Understanding, Polly J. Price
Faculty Articles
This Essay is divided into five Parts. Part I sets the stage for the historical debate by evaluating the text of the Qualifications Clauses as well as the limited evidence of what the Framers and the ratifiers thought about these provisions. Part II shows that many states, immediately after the federal Constitution was ratified, behaved as though the Qualifications Clauses did not prevent them from adding qualifications for congressional office-holding. Part III compares this early evidence of state behavior with a debate in Congress after the Civil War concerning the meaning of the Qualifications Clauses. Part IV returns to the …
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
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, …
Section 1983 Litigation, Martin A. Schwartz