Law Commons^™

Reply Brief For Petitioner. Kloeckner V. Solis, 568 U.S. 41 (2012) (No. 11-184), 2011 U.S. S. Ct. Briefs Lexis 2894, Eric Schnapper, Larry J. Stein, Antony J. Franze, R. Reeves Anderson, R. Stanton Jones

Court Briefs

No abstract provided.

Antitrust's "Jurisdictional" Reach Abroad, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

In its Arbaugh decision the Supreme Court insisted that a federal statute’s limitation on reach be regarded as “jurisdictional” only if the legislature was clear that this is what it had in mind. The Foreign Trade Antitrust Improvement Act (FTAIA) presents a puzzle in this regard, because Congress seems to have been quite clear about what it had in mind; it simply failed to use the correct set of buzzwords in the statute itself, and well before Arbaugh assessed this requirement.

Even if the FTAIA is to be regarded as non-jurisdictional, the constitutional extraterritorial reach of the Sherman Act is …

Securing Sovereign State Standing, Katherine Mims Crocker

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Judicial Power And The Inferior Federal Courts: Exploring The Constitutional Vesting Thesis, A. Benjamin Spencer

Faculty Publications

Although the Constitution vests the "Judicial Power" of the United States in the Supreme Court and in any inferior courts that Congress establishes, both Congress and the Court have long propounded the traditional view that the inferior courts may be deprived cognizance of some of the cases and controversies that fall within that power. Is this view fully consonant with the history and text of Article III? One possible reading of those sources suggests that the Constitution vests the full Judicial Power of the United States in the inferior federal courts, directly extending to them jurisdiction over matters that Congress …

Series Llcs In Real Estate Transactions, Bradley T. Borden, Mathews Vattamala

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Repressible Myth Of Shady Grove, Kevin M. Clermont

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This Article untangles the effects of the Supreme Court's latest word on the Erie doctrine, by taking the vantage point of a lower court trying to uncover the logical implications of the Court's new pronouncement. First, Shady Grove lightly confirms the limited role of constitutional constraints. Second, it sheds only a little light on judicial choice-of-law methodology. Third, by contrast, it does considerably clarify the conflict between Federal Rules and state law: if a Rule regulates procedure, then it is valid and applicable without exception in all federal cases, to the extent of its coverage; in determining the Rule's coverage, …

State Law Holocaust-Era Art Claims And Federal Executive Power, Jennifer Anglim Kreder

NULR Online

No abstract provided.

Israel's Supreme Court Appellate Jurisdiction: An Empirical Study, Theodore Eisenberg, Talia Fisher, Issi Rosen-Zvi

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This Essay reports the results of an empirical study of the Israel Supreme Court (ISC). It covers the outcomes of 3,562 cases (as of this writing), all decided in 2006 and 2007, and describes the cases by subject area, litigant-pair characteristics, and source of jurisdiction - mandatory or discretionary. In mandatory-jurisdiction cases ending with clear affirmances or reversals, the ISC affirmed lower court rulings in about 75% of district court criminal case appeals and about 67% of district court civil case appeals. In discretionary- jurisdiction cases, the ISC rarely granted review. It agreed to review about 6 % of petitions …

Citizenship And Worldwide Taxation: Citizenship As An Administrable Proxy For Domicile, Edward A. Zelinsky

Articles

The United States' worldwide taxation of its citizens is less different from international, residence-based norms than is widely believed and is sensible as a matter of tax policy. An individual's citizenship is an administrable, if sometimes overly broad, proxy for his domicile, his permanent home. Both citizenship and domicile measure an individual's permanent allegiance rather than his immediate physical presence. Because citizenship and domicile resemble each other, and because other nations often define residence for tax purposes as domicile, the U.S. system of citizenship-based taxation typically reaches the same results as the residence-based systems of these other nations, but reaches …

Name Calling On The Internet: The Problems Faced By Victims Of Defamatory Content In Cyberspace, Sarudzai Chitsa

Cornell Law School Inter-University Graduate Student Conference Papers

In the past decade or so, internet libel has become one of the hot topics in internet law. Internationally, courts have dealt with an enormous amount of cases brought by both the suppliers and consumers of the internet services. Although the advent of the World Wide Web has come with many legal problems; this paper will only focus at the problems that are being faced by the victims of defamatory speech on the internet in trying to seek compensation through the courts. These problems include, inter alia, the reluctance of the courts in unmasking the identity of the authors of …

The Complexity Of Jurisdictional Clarity, Scott Dodson

Faculty Publications

The ideal of clear and simple jurisdictional rules seems like a no-brainer. Clarity in areas of subject-matter jurisdiction generally reduces the cost of litigating those issues and thus preserves litigant and judicial resources for the merits of a dispute. As a result, scholars and justices regularly promote the rhetoric of jurisdictional clarity. Yet no one has probed that rhetoric or reconciled it with the reality of subject-matter jurisdiction doctrine, which is anything but clear and simple. This Article begins to fill that gap, and, in the process, shifts the perspective of existing conversations between rules and standards and between mandates …

The Structural Safeguards Of Federal Jurisdiction, Tara Leigh Grove

Faculty Publications

Scholars have long debated Congress’s power to curb federal jurisdiction and have consistently assumed that the constitutional limits on Congress’s authority (if any) must be judicially enforceable and found in the text and structure of Article III. In this Article, I challenge that fundamental assumption. I argue that the primary constitutional protection for the federal judiciary lies instead in the bicameralism and presentment requirements of Article I. These Article I lawmaking procedures give competing political factions (even political minorities) considerable power to “veto” legislation. Drawing on recent social science and legal scholarship, I argue that political factions are particularly likely …

After Deference: Formalizing The Judicial Power For Foreign Relations Law, Deborah Pearlstein

Articles

How much deference should courts afford executive branch interpretations of statutes and treaties? The question that has long engaged foreign relations scholars has found new salience as it has become apparent in recent years that the Supreme Court will neither abstain nor reliably defer to presidential judgment even in cases implicating national security. As the courts grapple with the scope of detention authority granted by Congress’ 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force, or the limits on that authority under the Geneva Conventions, a number of scholars have embraced administrative law deference doctrines such as that in Chevron v. …

The Demise Of “Drive-By Jurisdictional Rulings”, Howard M. Wasserman

NULR Online

In an October 2009 Term marked by several significant constitutional rulings, the Supreme Court quietly continued an important multi-term effort towards defining which legal rules properly should be called "jurisdictional." In each of four cases that considered the issue, the Court unanimously rejected a jurisdictional characterization of the challenged legal rule. These cases continue an almost uninterrupted retreat from the Court's admittedly "profligate" and "less than meticulous" use of the term. The Court now rejects "drive-by jurisdictional rulings," in which a legal rule has been labeled as jurisdictional only through "unrefined" analysis, without rigorous consideration of the label's meaning or …

Negotiating Federalism, Erin Ryan

Faculty Publications

Bridging the fields of federalism and negotiation theory, Negotiating Federalism analyzes how public actors navigate difficult federalism terrain by negotiating directly with counterparts across state-federal lines. In contrast to the stylized, zero-sum model of federalism that pervades political discourse and judicial doctrine, the Article demonstrates that the boundary between state and federal power is negotiated on scales large and small, and on an ongoing basis. It is also the first to recognize the procedural tools that bilateral federalism bargaining offers to supplement unilateral federalism interpretation in contexts of jurisdictional overlap.

The Article begins by situating its inquiry within the age-old …

Foreign Official Immunity And The "Baseline" Problem, Chimène Keitner

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Transnational Class Actions And The Illusory Search For Res Judicata, Tanya J. Monestier

Journal Articles

The transnational class action—a class action in which a portion of the class consists of non-U.S. claimants—is here to stay. Defendants typically resist the certification of transnational class actions on the basis that such actions provide no assurance of finality for a defendant, as it will always be possible for a non-U.S. class member to initiate subsequent proceedings in a foreign court. In response to this concern, many U.S. courts will analyze whether the “home” courts of the foreign class members would accord res judicata effect to an eventual U.S. judgment prior to certifying a U.S. class action containing foreign …

Benefits Of Opt-In Federalism, The, Brendan Maher

Faculty Articles and Papers

The Affordable Care Act (“ACA”) is a controversial and historic statute that mandates people make insurance bargains. Unacknowledged is an innovative mechanism ACA uses to select the law that governs those bargains: opt-in federalism. Opt-in federalism – in which individuals choose between federal and state rules – is a promising theoretical means to make and choose law. This Article explains why, and concludes that the appeal of opt-in federalism is independent of ACA. Whatever the statute’s constitutional fate, future policymakers should consider opt-in federalist approaches to answer fundamental but exceedingly difficult questions of health and retirement law.

The Reason Behind The Rules: From Description To Normativity In International Criminal Procedure, Noah Weisbord

Faculty Publications

As the International Criminal Court (ICC) continues to mature in its practices, it provokes discussion on whether the comfortable framework of adversarial and inquisitorial systems should be used to evaluate an institution that exists in a fundamentally different context from that of national criminal justice systems. In order to avoid entangling the ICC in rules that are not tailored to fit its specific goals and institutional context, the normative purposes underlying procedural rules derived from domestic institutions should be reexamined.

This article draws out basic principles that may be of use in reexamining the reasoning behind the rules of procedure …

Bowman Lives: The Extraterritorial Application Of U.S. Criminal Law After Morrison V. National Australia Bank, Zachary D. Clopton

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

End-Of-Life Decision-Making In Canada: The Report By The Royal Society Of Canada Expert Panel On End-Of-Life Decision-Making, Udo Schuklenk, Johannes J. M. Van Delden, Jocelyn Downie, Sheila Mclean, Ross Upshur, Daniel Marc Weinstock

Reports & Public Policy Documents

This report on end-of-life decision-making in Canada was produced by an international expert panel and commissioned by the Royal Society of Canada. It consists of five chapters: Chapter 1 reviews what is known about end-of-life care and opinions about assisted dying in Canada, Chapter 2 reviews the legal status quo in Canada with regard to various forms of assisted death, Chapter 3 reviews ethical issues pertaining to assisted death. The analysis is grounded in core values central to Canada’s constitutional order, Chapter 4 reviews the experiences had in a number of jurisdictions that have decriminalized or recently reviewed assisted dying …

Jurisdictional Discovery In Transnational Litigation: Extraterritorial Effects Of United States Federal Practice, S. I. Strong

Faculty Publications

This article describes the device in detail, distinguishing it both practically and theoretically from methods used in other common law systems to establish jurisdiction, and discusses how recent US Supreme Court precedent provides international actors with the means of limiting or avoiding this potentially burdensome procedure.

Forum, Federalism, And Free Markets: An Empirical Study Of Judicial Behavior Under The Dormant Commerce Clause Doctrine, Mehmet K. Konar-Steenberg, Anne F. Peterson

Faculty Scholarship

This study examines judicial behavior under the dormant Commerce Clause doctrine by drawing on an original database of 459 state and Federal appellate cases decided between 1970 and 2009. The authors use logit regression to show that state judges are more likely to uphold state and local laws against dormant Commerce Clause attack than their Federal judicial counterparts, a result that is consistent with the interstate rivalry issues animating the doctrine. The study also finds that Republican-dominated judicial panels at the state level are more likely to side with tax challengers invoking the dormant Commerce Clause doctrine than are Democratic …

A Realist Defense Of The Alien Tort Statute, Robert Knowles

Law Faculty Publications

This Article offers a new justification for modern litigation under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), a provision from the 1789 Judiciary Act that permits victims of human rights violations anywhere in the world to sue tortfeasors in U.S. courts. The ATS, moribund for nearly 200 years, has recently emerged as an important but controversial tool for the enforcement of human rights norms. “Realist” critics contend that ATS litigation exasperates U.S. allies and rivals, weakens efforts to combat terrorism, and threatens U.S. sovereignty by importing into our jurisprudence undemocratic international law norms. Defenders of the statute, largely because they do not …

Differentiating The Federal Circuit, Elizabeth I. Winston

Scholarly Articles

In 1982, Congress created the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Often referred to as an experiment, the Federal Circuit has flourished. Born again from the ashes of its predecessors, the aptly nicknamed Phoenix Court continues to grow in significance, stature, and strength. As it grows, however, the court remains rooted in its history and in its unique nature. This Article explores the Federal Circuit’s structure and its impact on the development of Federal Circuit jurisprudence. The Federal Circuit is distinguishable by more than its national jurisdiction – the very essence of the court sets it apart …

In Defense Of The Substance-Procedure Dichotomy, Jennifer S. Hendricks

Publications

John Hart Ely famously observed, "We were all brought up on sophisticated talk about the fluidity of the line between substance and procedure," but for most of Erie's history, the Supreme Court has answered the question "Does this state law govern in federal court? " with a "yes" or a "no." Beginning, however, with Gasperini v. Center for Humanities, and continuing with Semtek v. Lockheed Martin and the dissenting opinion in Shady Grove v. Allstate, a shifting coalition of justices has pursued a third path. Instead of declaring state law applicable or inapplicable, they have claimed for …

Assessing The State Of State Constitutionalism, Jim Rossi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

State constitutions are terribly important legal documents, but their interpretation is remarkably understudied (and, of course, highly undertheorized) in the academic literature. This review essay discusses Robert Williams’s welcome new book, The Law of American State Constitutions (Oxford University Press, 2009). After summarizing the content of Williams’s book, it discusses the normative significance of his work, focusing especially on his discussion of independent state constitutions and the positive theory of interpretation he advances. The essay concludes by highlighting some areas where the field of state constitutional law is in need of further advancement, including research that positions state constitutions within …

New First Principles? Assessing The Internet's Challenges To Jurisdiction, Teresa Scassa, Robert J. Currie

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The globalized and decentralized Internet has become the new locus for a wide range of human activity, including commerce, crime, communications and cultural production. Activities which were once at the core of domestic jurisdiction have moved onto the Internet, and in doing so, have presented numerous challenges to the ability of states to exercise jurisdiction. In writing about these challenges, some scholars have characterized the Internet as a separate “space” and many refer to state jurisdiction over Internet activities as “extraterritorial.” This article examines these challenges in the context of the overall international law of jurisdiction, rather than focusing on …

Symposium Introduction – Beyond Borders: Extraterritoriality In American Law, Austen L. Parrish

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Clear Rules - Not Necessarily Simple Or Accessible Ones, Lumen N. Mulligan

Faculty Works

In The Complexity of Jurisdictional Clarity, 97 VA. L. REV. 1 (2011), Professor Dodson argues that the traditional call for clear and simple rules über alles in subject matter jurisdiction is misplaced. In this response essay, I begin by arguing that Dodson, while offering many valuable insights, does not adequately distinguish between the separate notions of simplicity, clarity, and accessibility. Second, I note that crafting a clarity enhancing rule, even if complex and inaccessible, may be a more promising endeavor than the search for a regime that is at once clear, simple and accessible. In the third section, I contend …