Law Commons^™

Interest-Based Incorporation: Statutory Realism Exploring Federalism, Delegation, And Democratic Design, Sheldon Evans

Faculty Publications

Statutory interpretation is a unique legal field that appreciates fiction as much as fact. For years, judges and scholars have acknowledged that canons of interpretation are often based on erudite assumptions of how Congress drafts federal statutes. But a recent surge in legal realism has shown just how erroneous many of these assumptions are. Scholars have created a robust study of congressional practices that challenge many formalist canons of interpretation that are divorced from how Congress thinks about, drafts, and enacts federal statutes. This conversation, however, has yet to confront statutory incorporation, which describes when Congress incorporates state law into …

Choice Of Law And Jurisdictional Policy In The Federal Courts, Tobias Barrington Wolff

All Faculty Scholarship

For seventy-five years, Klaxon v. Stentor Electric Manufacturing has provided a one-line answer to choice-of-law questions in federal diversity cases: Erie requires the federal court to employ the same law that a court of the state would select. The simplicity of the proposition likely accounts for the unqualified breadth with which federal courts now apply it. Choice of law doctrine is difficult, consensus in hard cases is elusive, and the anxiety that Erie produces over the demands of federalism tends to stifle any reexamination of core assumptions. The attraction of a simple answer is obvious. But Klaxon cannot bear the …

Choice Of Law, The Constitution And Lochner, James Y. Stern

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Forum Shopping And The Infrastructure Of Federalism., James E. Pfander

Faculty Working Papers

The recent effort of environmentalists and others to secure progressive social change at the state level enacts a familiar ritual in the history of American federalism. Political actors who have found their initiatives blunted at the national level have often turned to the states. With the ebb and flow of political power between two parties over time, arguments about the relative authority of federal and state governments display far more expediency than principle, far more mutability than predictability. States may be more or less progressive than the national government, depending in good measure on the temper of the times and …

Rules And Institutions In Developing A Law Market: Views From The United States And Europe, Erin O'Hara O'Connor, Larry E. Ribstein

Scholarly Publications

Developments in European choice of law seem to offer the United States a tantalizing opportunity for escape from the chaos of state-by-state choice-of-law rules. Specifically, the Rome Regulations provide the sort of uniform choice-of-law rules that have eluded the United States. Also, decisions of the European Court of Justice that permit firms to adopt home-country rules in some situations seem to facilitate jurisdictional choice by private parties. This top-down ordering of choice-of-law rules contrasts with the seemingly chaotic and decentralized system that prevails in the United States. However, decentralized American-style federalism might have something to offer Europe because choice of …

Anti-Federalist Procedure, A. Benjamin Spencer

Faculty Publications

"[T]he new federal government will ... be disinclined to invade the rights of the individual States, or the prerogatives of their governments."

"[T]he Constitution of the United States ... recognizes and preserves the autonomy and independence of the States-independence in their legislative and independence in their judicial departments. . . . Any interference with either, except as [constitutionally] permitted, is an invasion of the authority of the State and, to that extent, a denial of its independence."

The understanding expressed by these opening quotes-that the national government was designed to be one of limited powers that would refrain from encroaching …

The Populist Safeguards Of Federalism, Robert A. Mikos

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Extant legal scholarship often portrays citizens as the catalysts of federalization. Scholars say that citizens pressure Congress to impose their morals on people living in other states, to trump home-state laws with which they disagree, or to shift the costs of regulatory programs onto out-of-state taxpayers, all to the demise of states' rights. Since Congress (usually) gives citizens what they want, scholars insist the courts must step in to protect states from federal encroachments. By contrast, this Article proposes a new theory of the populist safeguards of federalism. It develops two distinct but mutually reinforcing reasons why populist demands on …

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

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.