Law Commons^™

Executive Federalism Comes To America, Jessica Bulman-Pozen

Faculty Scholarship

This Article proposes a different way of thinking about contemporary American governance, looking to an established foreign practice. Executive federalism – “processes of intergovernmental negotiation that are dominated by the executives of the different governments within the federal system” – is pervasive in parliamentary federations, such as Canada, Australia, and the European Union. Given the American separation of powers arrangement, executive federalism has been thought absent, even “impossible,” in the United States. But the partisan dynamics that have gridlocked Congress and empowered both federal and state executives have generated a distinctive American variant.

Viewing American law and politics through the …

Unconstitutional Conditions: The Irrelevance Of Consent, Philip A. Hamburger

Faculty Scholarship

Unconstitutional conditions are a conundrum. On the one hand, if government can spend, why can't it place whatever conditions it wants on its spending? On the other hand, if it can place any conditions on spending, won't it be able to impose restrictions that evade much of the Constitution, including most constitutional rights? This enigma is notoriously complex, and unconstitutional conditions therefore are considered a sort of Gordian knot.

The standard solution is to slice through the knot with consent to conclude that consent excuses otherwise unconstitutional restrictions. This solution, however, is problematic, for it concedes that the government can …

Democratic Participation And The Freedom Of Speech: A Response To Post And Weinstein Responses, Vincent A. Blasi

Faculty Scholarship

I think it is useful to search for a theory that has as one of its justifications its superior fit with either the case law or the fundamental commitments and shared understandings of the political community, preferably with both. So even if someone were to convince me that she has in hand a normatively superior theory of free speech, whether grounded in the commitment to democracy or otherwise, I would still be interested in what Professors Post and Weinstein are trying to do.

From Langdell To Law And Economics: Two Conceptions Of Stare Decisis In Contract Law And Theory, Jody S. Kraus

Faculty Scholarship

In his classic monograph, The Death of Contract, Grant Gilmore argued that Christopher Columbus Langdell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Samuel Williston trumped up the legal credentials for their classical bargain theory of contract law. Gilmore's analysis has been subjected to extensive criticism, but its specific, sustained, and fundamental charge that the bargain theory was based on a fraudulent misrepresentation of precedential authority has never been questioned. In this Essay, I argue that Gilmore's case against the classical theorists rests on the suppressed premise that the precedential authority of cases resides in the express judicial reasoning used to decide them. In …

The Landscape Of Constitutional Property, Thomas W. Merrill

Faculty Scholarship

The Constitution contains two clauses that protect persons against governmental interference with their property. The Due Process Clause provides that "No person shall ... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." The Takings Clause adds, "nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." Both provisions appear to impose a threshold condition that a claimant have some "property" at stake before the protections associated with the Clause apply. Thus, under the Due Process Clause, it would seem that a claimant must have an interest in "property" (or in "life" or "liberty") before …

Old Chief V. United States: Stipulating Away Prosecutorial Accountability?, Daniel Richman

Faculty Scholarship

Earlier this year, in Old Chief v. United States, the Supreme Court finally resolved a circuit split on a nagging evidentiary issue: When a defendant charged with being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm offers to satisfy one of the statute's elements by stipulating to the existence of a prior felony conviction, may the government decline the stipulation and prove the existence and the nature of that prior felony?

The question of evidence law resolved in Old Chief is not particularly earth-shattering. Indeed, while the Court divided five to four on the issue, neither Justice Souter's opinion …

Foreign States And The Constitution, Lori Fisler Damrosch

Faculty Scholarship

This article does not advocate judicial abstention from deciding the constitutional claims of foreign sovereigns. Rather, the argument is that constitutional claims against the actions of the federal political branches must fail on the merits because of the relationship of foreign states to the federal structure. When, on the other hand, a claim does not directly confront or conflict with the political branches' foreign policy, the federal courts should adjudicate the merits of foreign state claims by applying constitutional jurisprudence to sustain or reject the claim. Part III of this article elaborates upon the relationship between the thesis in Part …

Constitutional Regulation Of Provisional Creditor Remedies: The Cost Of Procedural Due Process, Robert E. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

In recent years a series of Supreme Court decisions has purported to envelop the rights of defaulting debtors in an enlarged concept of procedural due process. The central theme underlying this development is clearly an attempt by the Court to impose some degree of constitutional control on the exercise of provisional creditor remedies. The path that leads from Sniadach v. Family Finance Corp. to North Georgia Finishing, Inc. v. Di-Chem, Inc., is however, far from clear and the cases have provoked serious questioning of the meaning and impact of this doctrine. Due process as reflected in Sniadach and Fuentes …

The Truth-In-Negotiations Act – An Examination Of Defective Pricing In Government Contracts, Michael J. Graetz

Faculty Scholarship

Charges of excessive profitmaking on government contracts have issued from the Senate floor and the nation's press and have provided the impetus for recent congressional investigations and proposals for remedial legislation. Profiteering by government contractors is a problem of potentially enormous dimensions since purchases by the federal government total more than seventy-seven billion dollars – over ten per cent of the gross national product. Because the greatest part of these purchases are made by the Department of Defense, congressional action aimed at minimizing excessive profits has focused upon Defense Department procurement activities under the Armed Services Procurement Act (ASPA).