Law Commons^™

The Rehnquist Court, Structural Due Process, And Semisubstantive Constitutional Review, Dan T. Coenen

Scholarly Works

Semisubstantive review, as I use that label, entails four key features. First, the subject matter of judicial inquiry is not the process applied in adjudicating a discrete dispute; rather, the matter at hand is the constitutionality of a statute or other generalized expression of legal policy. Second, some procedural omission by the lawmaker -- rather than an incurably substantive flaw in the end product of its work -- lays the groundwork for a judicial intervention that invalidates the challenged rule or negates how that rule otherwise would operate. It may be, for example, that a federal statute read as a …

Federal Guilty Pleas Under Rule 11: The Unfilled Promise Of The Post-Boykin Era, Julian A. Cook

Scholarly Works

Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure governs perhaps the most essential and common practice in the federal criminal justice system--the guilty plea. Despite the public's focus on the excitement and drama engendered by real and fictional criminal trials, the overwhelming majority of criminal matters reach a negotiated resolution. Indeed, the importance of the guilty plea to the judiciary, prosecutors, and even defense attorneys cannot be overstated. Without guilty pleas, the criminal justice system would malfunction; the system is simply incapable of accommodating the constitutional exercise of a defendant's trial right in each instance.

The federal plea process …

A Common Private Law For Europe, Alan Watson

Scholarly Works

A satisfactory private law for Europe is not primarily to be sought for in the most common solutions, themselves the result of borrowing. Nor in established rules, themselves the result of longevity, and lack of governmental incentive in innovating. Nor should it be sought in intermediate positions of various mixed systems, themselves the results of the features just above described. Rather it is to be found in the need for authority. This means that a common law for Europe requires the acceptance of a uniform system of adjudicating differences within a standard framework of the necessary sources of law. Authority …