Law Commons^™

The Mexican Constitution And Its Safeguards Against Foreign Investments, Álvaro Ramírez Martínez

Cornell Law School Inter-University Graduate Student Conference Papers

Every state has safeguards against foreign investment in its country. Most of the times these safeguards are contained in a main document which governs said countries. This document can take the form of a Constitution.

The Mexican constitution contains a safeguard against foreign investments in Article 27, where it is stated that the Mexican state can expropriate private property among other things, due to public interest. Any expropriation must be followed by an indemnification. The price to pay as indemnification shall not exceed the assessment for tax purposes.

Mexico has an invaluable opportunity to attract foreign investments but it must …

An Evaluation Of The Need For And Functioning Of The Federal Sentencing Guidelines In The United States And Nigeria, Victoria T. Kajo

Cornell Law School Inter-University Graduate Student Conference Papers

The United States Federal Sentencing Guidelines, in use since 1987, was set up to reduce disparity in sentencing and its application was made mandatory. Though there are a few who are in favor of the guidelines, the guidelines as mandatory have been severely criticized and many have called for their abolition. Consequently, in the twin cases of United States v. Booker and United States v. Fanfan (2005) 125 S.Ct. 738, the US Supreme Court delivered judgment that had the effect of making the guidelines discretionary.

While the Nigerian legal system shares a Common Law background with the United States, Nigeria …

The Tropicalization Of Proportionality Balancing: The Colombian And Mexican Examples, Luisa Conesa

Cornell Law School Inter-University Graduate Student Conference Papers

In “The Tropicalization of Proportionality Balancing: the Colombian and Mexican Examples” the author analyzes how the German based proportionality balancing test was exported to Latin America, by studying the Colombian Constitutional Court and the Mexican Supreme Court. This work is guided by the following questions: what is proportionality balancing? How has it been used by the Colombian and Mexican jurisprudences and what are its influences? Do the Courts cite other jurisdictions when using the test? Have they imported a traditional European test? Or, have they “tropicalized” it?

The study of the Latin American examples leads to the conclusion that the …

Suspension And The Extrajudicial Constitution, Trevor W. Morrison

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

What happens when Congress suspends the writ of habeas corpus? Everyone agrees that suspending habeas makes that particular - and particularly important - judicial remedy unavailable for those detained by the government. But does suspension also affect the underlying legality of the detention? That is, in addition to making the habeas remedy unavailable, does suspension convert an otherwise unlawful detention into a lawful one? Some, including Justice Scalia in the 2004 case Hamdi v. Rumsfeld and Professor David Shapiro in an important recent article, answer yes.

This Article answers no. I previously offered that same answer in a symposium essay; …

The Story Of San Antonio Independent School Dist. V. Rodriguez: School Finance, Local Control, And Constitutional Limits, Michael Heise

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Part of the Education Law Stories, this book chapter tells the story behind San Antonio Independent School Dist. v. Rodriguez. Mindful of the challenges incident to the federal courts' effort to dismantle de jure and de facto school segregation, the Rodriguez decision evidences reluctance by some of the Justices to become ensnarled in an effort to dismantle school finance systems in way that would affect an overwhelming majority of the nation's public schools. By side-stepping such a confrontation, Rodriguez implicitly reveals important aspects about the federal courts and, in particular, how the Justices view their role in our federal system …

Restoring The Right Constitution?, Eduardo M. Peñalver

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

After years of relative neglect, the past few decades have witnessed a dramatic renewal of interest in the natural law tradition within philosophical circles. This natural law renaissance, however, has yet to bear much fruit within American constitutional discourse, especially among commentators on the left. In light of its low profile within contemporary constitutional debates, an effort to formulate a natural law constitutionalism is almost by definition an event worthy of sustained attention. In "Restoring the Lost Constitution," Randy Barnett draws heavily upon a natural law theory of constitutional legitimacy to argue in favor of a radically libertarian reading of …

Economic Emergency And The Rule Of Law, Bernadette A. Meyler

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Academic work extolling the merits of the "rule of law" both domestically and internationally abounds today, yet the meanings of the phrase itself seem to proliferate. Two of the most prominent contexts in which rule of law rhetoric appears are those of economic development and states of emergency. In the area of private law, dissemination of the rule of law across the globe and, in particular, among emerging market countries is often deemed a prerequisite for enhancing economic development, partly because it ensures that foreign investments will not be summarily expropriated and that contractual rights will not be frustrated by …

Constitutional Avoidance In The Executive Branch, Trevor W. Morrison

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

When executive actors interpret statutes, the prevailing assumption is that they can and should use the tools that courts use. Is that assumption sound? This Article takes up the question by considering a rule frequently invoked by the courts - the canon of constitutional avoidance.

Executive branch actors regularly use the avoidance canon. Indeed, some of the most hotly debated episodes of executive branch statutory interpretation in recent years - including the initial torture memorandum issued by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, the President's signing statement regarding the McCain Amendment's ban on the mistreatment of detainees, and the …

Towards A Common Law Originalism, Bernadette A. Meyler

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Originalists' emphasis upon William Blackstone's "Commentaries on the Laws of England" tends to suggest that the common law of the Founding era consisted in a set of determinate rules that can be mined for the purposes of constitutional interpretation. This Article argues instead that disparate strands of the common law, some emanating from the colonies and others from England, some more archaic and others more innovative, co-existed at the time of the Founding. Furthermore, jurists and politicians of the Founding generation were not unaware that the common law constituted a disunified field; indeed, the jurisprudence of the common law suggested …

The Political Economy Of Education Federalism, Michael Heise

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The No Child Left Behind Act represents the federal government's most significant foray into the nation's elementary and secondary public school policymaking terrain. Although the Act undertakes unassailable policy goals, its critics argue that it represents an unwarranted federal intrusion into education policymaking, generates unintended policy consequences, and amounts to an unfunded federal mandate. Constitutionalists dwell on the Act's threat to structural federalism as it plausibly strains Congress's conditional spending authority. The coercive force that federal education funds exert on local school districts and states attracts particular attention. The No Child Left Behind Act, however, safely navigates through an even …

Property As A Fundamental Constitutional Right? The German Example, Gregory S. Alexander

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

This article examines an apparent paradox in comparative constitutional law. Property rights are not treated as a fundamental right in American constitutional law; they are, however, under the Basic Law (i.e., constitution) of Germany, a social-welfare state that otherwise gives less weight to property. The article uses this apparent paradox as a vehicle for considering the different reasons why constitutions protect property. It explains the difference between the German and American constitutional treatment of property on the basis of the quite different approaches taken in the two systems to the purposes of constitutional protection of property.