Law Commons^™

Private Remedies For Public Wrongs Under Section 5 (Symposium: New Directions In Federalism), Evan H. Caminker

Articles

The Supreme Court has ushered in the new millennium with a renewed emphasis on federalism-based limits to Congress's regulatory authority in general, and Congress's Section 5 power to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment in particular. In a recent string of cases, the Court has refined and narrowed Section 5's enforcement power in two significant ways.1 First, the Court made clear that Congress lacks the authority to interpret the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment's substantive provisions themselves, and may only "enforce" the judiciary's definition of Fourteenth Amendment violations. 2 Second, the Court embraced a relatively stringent requirement concerning the relationship between means …

Constitutions And Spontaneous Orders: A Response To Professor Mcginnis, Adam C. Pritchard, Todd J. Zywicki

Articles

Professor John McGinnis has written a perceptive and provocative comment on our economic analysis of the role of tradition in constitutional interpretation.1 A brief summary of our areas of agreement and disagreement may help set the stage for this response. It appears that Professor McGinnis substantially agrees with the two central propositions of our article. First, he appears to agree with our definition of efficient traditions as those evolving over long periods of time from decentralized processes.2 Second, he explicitly agrees that Justices Scalia and Souter have adopted sub-optimal models of tradition because they rely on sources that lack the …

State Immunity Waivers For Suits By The United States, Evan H. Caminker

Articles

The Supreme Court closed this millennium with a virtual celebration of state sovereignty, protecting state authority from the reach of congressional power in several significant ways. In a pair of cases, Seminole Tribe v. Florida1 and Alden v. Maine,2 the Court held that states enjoy a constitutional immunity from being sued without their consent. In Seminole Tribe, the Court opined that "the background principle of state sovereign immunity embodied in the Eleventh Amendment"3 protects states from unconsented suits in federal court. In Alden, the Court held that this principle is not merely embodied in the Eleventh Amendment but rather is …

Finding The Constitution: An Economic Analysis Of Tradition's Role In Constitutional Interpretation, Adam C. Pritchard, Todd J. Zywicki

Articles

In this Article, Professor Pritchard and Professor Zywicki examine the role of tradition in constitutional interpretation, a topic that has received significant attention in recent years. After outlining the current debate over the use of tradition, the authors discuss the efficiency purposes of constitutionalism--precommitment and the reduction of agency costs--and demonstrate how the use of tradition in constitutional interpretation can serve these purposes. Rejecting both Justice Scalia's majoritarian model, which focuses on legislative sources of tradition, and Justice Souter's common-law model, which focuses on Supreme Court precedent as a source of tradition, the authors propose an alternative model--the "finding model"-- …

A Matter Of Power: Structural Federalism And Separation Doctrine In The Present, Frances Howell Rudko

Faculty Publications

Public reaction to the 1823 Supreme Court decision in Green v. Biddle prompted John Marshall’s letter to Henry Clay, who had argued the case as amicus curiae for the defendant. The letter is significant because Marshall, who had been a legislator himself, candidly expresses not only his personal dissatisfaction with the congressional assault on the 1823 decision but also the constitutional basis for his opinion. The significance of Marshall’s extrajudicial opinion becomes more apparent when it is considered in the aftermath of the recent tug-of-war between Congress and the Court which culminated in the decision in City of Boerne v. …

Justices Take The 11th, Richard C. Reuben

Faculty Publications

Until not long ago, the 11th Amendment with its barrier to some citizen suits in federal courts was a largely ignored provision of the U.S. Constitution. Those days may be coming to an end, however, as the Supreme Court has resurrected the dusty old amendment in its steady, if not always consistent, march toward a new federalism or what some scholars are calling the "antifederalist revival."

International Jurisdiction In Products Liability Cases (Analysis Of Asahi And Post-Asahi Cases), Tsutomu Kuribayashi

LLM Theses and Essays

With the increase of foreign trade, there has also been an increase in the number of foreign manufacturers and distributors involved in product liability litigation in the United States. In many cases, the products from these foreign manufacturers and distributors reach the forum states through the stream of commerce, and are distributed to the customers by regional distributors, wholesalers, and retailers. Therefore, in many product liability cases where defective products from these foreign manufacturers and distributors cause injuries to people in the United States, those foreign companies do not have a direct relationship with the forum states. In these cases, …

Regulation Of Water Use And Takings: A Growing Battlefield, Barton H. Thompson, Jr.

Regulatory Takings and Resources: What Are the Constitutional Limits? (Summer Conference, June 13-15)

43 pages.

Contains references.

The Regulatory Takings Doctrine: A Critical Overview, J. Peter Byrne

Regulatory Takings and Resources: What Are the Constitutional Limits? (Summer Conference, June 13-15)

15 pages.

Initiative Enigmas, Richard Collins

Publications

No abstract provided.

Federalism Myth, Fernando Laguarda

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

INTRODUCTION: The late Justice Louis Brandeis once remarked on the benefit that our system of government derives from the states acting as the "laboratories of democracy."' This remark not only implies that states should be given the discretion to experiment, it presumes that states actually have the ability to do so. In order to understand Justice Brandeis and those who have followed in his rhetorical footprints, it is important to understand federalism, which is the organizing principle of American government.

The Aspirational Constitution, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Firmly embedded in every theory of judicial decisionmaking lies an important set of assumptions about the way government is supposed to work. Sometimes these theories about government are made explicit. More often they are not. Moreover, deeply embedded in every theory of government is a theory of human nature. Although these assumptions about human nature generally remain latent within the larger theory, because they provide the underpinnings for our ideas about the way government is supposed to work, they drive our notions about judicial decisionmaking. For example, the theory of government reflected in the United States Constitution reveals what one …

Comments On Professor Rotunda's Essay, Richard H. Underwood

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In this comment, Professor Richard H. Underwood provides a response to An Essay on the Constitutional Parameters of Federal Impeachment, by Professor Ronald D. Rotunda. Rotunda’s essay was published in the Kentucky Law Journal, Vol. 76, No. 3, pp. 707-732.

Planning As A Major Tool Of Public Land Management, John D. Leshy

The Public Lands During the Remainder of the 20th Century: Planning, Law, and Policy in the Federal Land Agencies (Summer Conference, June 8-10)

25 pages.

Integrity And Circumspection: The Labor Law Vision Of Bernard D. Meltzer, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

Bernard Meltzer has testified under oath that he "rarely take[s] absolute positions." The record bears him out. While his colleagues among labor law scholars often strain to demonstrate that the labor relations statutes and even the Constitution support their hearts' desires, the typical Meltzer stance is one of cool detachment, pragmatic assessment, and cautious, balanced judgment. The "itch to do good," Meltzer has remarked wryly, "is a doubtful basis for jurisdiction" -or, he would likely add, for any other legal conclusion. In this brief commentary I propose to examine the Meltzer approach to four broad areas of labor law: (1) …

Should Federal Courts Give Greater Effect To State Judgments Than Would The Courts That Rendered Them?, Gene R. Shreve

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Separation Of Powers And The Scope Of Federal Equitable Remedies, Robert F. Nagel

Publications

No abstract provided.

Preliminary Injunctions And Abstention: Some Problems In Federalism, Michael L. Wells

Scholarly Works

Suppose a federal district court faces a challenge to state action that presents an unsettled issue of state law, a federal constitutional issue, and a plaintiff who will be irreparably harmed if the state is not immediately enjoined. May the court abstain from a decision on the merits, remand the case to the state courts for resolution of the state law issue, and yet grant a preliminary injunction against the challenged state action? Does it follow from the paucity of reported opinions coupling such interim relief with abstention that such a procedure is inconsistent with the policies underlying the abstention …

Punitive Conditions Of Prison Confinement: An Analysis Of Pugh V. Locke And Federal Court Supervision Of State Penal Administration Under The Eighth Amendment, Ira P. Robbins, Michael B. Buser

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Citizen Access To Judicial Review Of Administrative Action In A Transnational And Federal Context, Eric Stein, Joseph Vining

Articles

In an international legal order dominated by states, the individual citizen is generally viewed as lacking international legal personality. It is true with little exception that an individual cannot appear in an international forum, political or judicial, to press his rights. Despite the dramatically increased emphasis upon international protection of basic human rights, individuals have been given access to international dispute-settlement machinery in only a few isolated instances within the United Nations system, and on a regional level pursuant to the European Convention on Human Rights. The Paris Treaty establishing the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and the Rome …

Note, The Preemption Doctrine: Shifting Perspectives On Federalism And The Burger Court, William W. Bratton

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Reapportionment Cases: Cognitive Lag, The Malady And Its Cure, E. F. Roberts, Paul T. Shultz Iii

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The reapportionment cases have been considered by many to be the product of a liberal, activist Court which is endeavoring to reshape America’s political life according to its own views. The authors of this article assert that, to the contrary, the Court actually is reacting to the incontrovertible fact of the modern predominance of urban complexities which have rendered inappropriate our older political boundaries. In this sense, they consider the Court’s decisions conservative rather than liberal- because the Court’s purpose is to maintain a version of federalism along state boundaries which may have become outmoded even before the Court entered …