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Full-Text Articles in Law

Taking Section 10(B) Seriously: Criminal Enforcement Of Sec Rules, Steve Thel Jan 2014

Taking Section 10(B) Seriously: Criminal Enforcement Of Sec Rules, Steve Thel

Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court has determined the scope of federal securities laws in a series of cases in which it has read section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act as either prohibiting certain misconduct or authorizing the SEC to regulate that conduct and only that conduct. Judging by the language, structure and history of the Exchange Act, the Court’s reading is wrong. Section 10(b) does not prohibit anything, and it neither grants the SEC rulemaking power nor limits the rulemaking power granted to the SEC elsewhere in the Exchange Act. Instead, section 10(b) simply triggers criminal sanctions for certain rule violations. …


The Public’S Constitutional Thinking And The Fate Of Health Care Reform: Ppaca As Case Study, Bruce G. Peabody, Peter J. Woolley Jan 2013

The Public’S Constitutional Thinking And The Fate Of Health Care Reform: Ppaca As Case Study, Bruce G. Peabody, Peter J. Woolley

Res Gestae

No abstract provided.


Popular Constitutional Values: The Links Between Public Opinion And The Supreme Court's 2011 Term, Peter J. Woolley, Bruce G. Peabody Jan 2013

Popular Constitutional Values: The Links Between Public Opinion And The Supreme Court's 2011 Term, Peter J. Woolley, Bruce G. Peabody

Res Gestae

No abstract provided.


The Right To Plea Bargain With Competent Counsel After Cooper And Frye: Is The Supreme Court Making The Ordinary Criminal Process Too Long, Too Expensive, And Unpredictable In Pursuit Of Perfect Justice, Bruce A. Green Jan 2013

The Right To Plea Bargain With Competent Counsel After Cooper And Frye: Is The Supreme Court Making The Ordinary Criminal Process Too Long, Too Expensive, And Unpredictable In Pursuit Of Perfect Justice, Bruce A. Green

Faculty Scholarship

In Lafler v. Cooper and Missouri v. Frye, the Supreme Court recently ruled in favor of criminal defendants who were deprived of a favorable plea offer because of their lawyers’ professional lapses. In dissent, Justice Scalia complained that “[t]he ordinary criminal process has become too long, too expensive, and unpredictable,” because of the Court’s criminal procedure jurisprudence; that plea bargaining is “the alternative in which...defendants have sought relief,” and that the two new decisions on the Sixth Amendment right to effective representation in plea bargaining would add to the burden on the criminal process. This essay examines several aspects of …


Oasis Or Mirage: The Supreme Court's Thirst For Dictionaries In The Rehnquist And Roberts Eras, James J. Brudney, Lawrence Baum Jan 2013

Oasis Or Mirage: The Supreme Court's Thirst For Dictionaries In The Rehnquist And Roberts Eras, James J. Brudney, Lawrence Baum

Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court’s use of dictionaries, virtually non-existent before 1987, has dramatically increased during the Rehnquist and Roberts Court eras to the point where as many as one-third of statutory decisions invoke dictionary definitions. The increase is linked to the rise of textualism and its intense focus on ordinary meaning. This Article explores the Court’s new dictionary culture in depth from empirical and doctrinal perspectives. We find that while textualist justices are heavy dictionary users, purposivist justices invoke dictionary definitions with comparable frequency. Further, dictionary use overall is strikingly ad hoc and subjective. We demonstrate how the Court’s patterns of …


Polls, The Public, And Popular Perspectives On Constitutional Issues, Bruce G. Peabody, Peter J. Woolley Sep 2011

Polls, The Public, And Popular Perspectives On Constitutional Issues, Bruce G. Peabody, Peter J. Woolley

Res Gestae

No abstract provided.


Constitution And The Laws Of War During The Civil War, The Federal Courts, Practice & Procedure, Andrew Kent Jan 2009

Constitution And The Laws Of War During The Civil War, The Federal Courts, Practice & Procedure, Andrew Kent

Faculty Scholarship

This Article uncovers the forgotten complex of relationships between the U.S. Constitution, citizenship and the laws of war. The Supreme Court today believes that both noncitizens and citizens who are military enemies in a congressionally-authorized war are entitled to judicially-enforceable rights under the Constitution. The older view was that the U.S. government’s military actions against noncitizen enemies were not limited by the Constitution, but only by the international laws of war. On the other hand, in the antebellum period, the prevailing view was U.S. citizenship should carry with it protection from ever being treated as a military enemy under the …


Imagining Gun Control In America: Understanding The Remainder Problem Article And Essay, Nicholas J. Johnson Jan 2008

Imagining Gun Control In America: Understanding The Remainder Problem Article And Essay, Nicholas J. Johnson

Faculty Scholarship

Gun control in the United States generally has meant some type of supply regulation. Supply restrictions ranging from one-gun-a-month schemes to flat gun bans cannot work without a willingness and ability to reduce total inventory to levels approaching zero ("the supply-side ideal"). This is an impossible feat in a country that already has 300 million guns tightly held by people who think they are uniquely important tools. The average defiance ratio in places that have attempted gun confiscation and registration is 2.6 illegal guns for every legal one. In many countries defiance is far higher. None of those countries has …


Congress's Power To Enforce Fourteenth Amendment Rights: Lessons From Federal Remedies The Framers Enacted , Robert J. Kaczorowski Jan 2005

Congress's Power To Enforce Fourteenth Amendment Rights: Lessons From Federal Remedies The Framers Enacted , Robert J. Kaczorowski

Faculty Scholarship

Professor Robert Kaczorowski argues for an expansive originalist interpretation of Congressional power under the Fourteenth Amendment. Before the Civil War Congress actually exercised, and the Supreme Court repeatedly upheld plenary Congressional power to enforce the constitutional rights of slaveholders. After the Civil War, the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment copied the antebellum statutes and exercised plenary power to enforce the constitutional rights of all American citizens when they enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and then incorporated the Act into the Fourteenth Amendment. The framers of the Fourteenth Amendment thereby exercised the plenary power the Rehnquist Court claims the …


Canons Of Construction And The Elusive Quest For Neutral Reasoning, James J. Brudney, Corey Distlear Jan 2005

Canons Of Construction And The Elusive Quest For Neutral Reasoning, James J. Brudney, Corey Distlear

Faculty Scholarship

Over the past 15 years, the canons of construction have experienced a remarkable revival in the courts and the legal academy. While the role of this interpretive resource has been heavily theorized, it has until now been under-explored from an empirical standpoint. This article adopts a novel combination of empirical and doctrinal analysis to uncover the Supreme Court's complex patterns of reliance on the canons over a 34-year period. We focus on whether the canons are favored across different time periods, in particular subject matter areas, by individual justices, and in close cases. Our approach - identifying ten different interpretive …


Revenge Of Mullaney V. Wilbur: United States V. Booker And The Reassertion Of Judicial Limits On Legislative Power To Define Crimes, The, Ian Weinstein Jan 2005

Revenge Of Mullaney V. Wilbur: United States V. Booker And The Reassertion Of Judicial Limits On Legislative Power To Define Crimes, The, Ian Weinstein

Faculty Scholarship

This article offers a historically grounded account of the twists and turns in the Supreme Court's sentencing jurisprudence from the end of World War II to the Court's stunning rejection of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. The doctrinal shifts that have roiled this area of the law can best be understood as the Court's effort to respond to the changing political and social landscape of crime in America. In the mid 1970's, legislative activity in the criminal law was largely focused on Model Penal Code influenced recodification. In that era, the Supreme Court took power from an ascendant judiciary and gave …


Foreseeing Greatness - Measurable Performance Criteria And The Selection Of Supreme Court Justices Symposium: Empirical Measures Of Judicial Performance, James J. Brudney Jan 2004

Foreseeing Greatness - Measurable Performance Criteria And The Selection Of Supreme Court Justices Symposium: Empirical Measures Of Judicial Performance, James J. Brudney

Faculty Scholarship

This article contributes to an ongoing debate about the feasibility and desirability of measuring the merit of appellate judges - and their consequent Supreme Court potential - by using objective performance variables. Relying on the provocative and controversial tournament criteria proposed by Professors Stephen Choi and Mitu Gulati in two recent articles, Brudney assesses the Supreme Court potential of Warren Burger and Harry Blackmun based on their appellate court records. He finds that Burger's appellate performance appears more promising under the Choi and Gulati criteria, but then demonstrates how little guidance these quantitative assessments actually provide when reviewing the two …


The Changing Complexion Of Workplace Law: Labor And Employment Decisions Of The Supreme Court's 1999-2000 Term , James J. Brudney Jan 2000

The Changing Complexion Of Workplace Law: Labor And Employment Decisions Of The Supreme Court's 1999-2000 Term , James J. Brudney

Faculty Scholarship

At the dawn of a new century of Supreme Court workplace law, it seems especially appropriate to offer some perspective on the recent and relatively recent past. Before addressing the seven cases involving labor and employment issues decided by the Supreme Court in the Term just ended, I want briefly to describe (in what I hope are not mechanical terms) how the Court's interests in labor and employment law have evolved from the start of the Burger Era in 1969 to the current, mature stage of the Rehnquist Court.


Agency, Equality, And Antidiscrimination Law , Tracy E. Higgins, Laura A. Rosenbury Jan 1999

Agency, Equality, And Antidiscrimination Law , Tracy E. Higgins, Laura A. Rosenbury

Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court increasingly has interpreted the Equal Protection Clause as a mandate for the state to treat citizens as if they were equal-as a limitation on the state's ability to draw distinctions on the basis of characteristics such as race and, to a lesser extent, gender. In the context of race, the Court has struck down not only race-specific policies designed to harm the historically oppressed, but race conscious policies designed to foster racial equality. Although in theory the Court has left open the possibility that benign uses of race may be constitutional under some set of facts, in …


Discontinuous Tradition Of Sentencing Discretion: Koon's Failure To Recognize The Reshaping Of Judicial Discretion Under The Guidelines, The, Ian Weinstein Jan 1999

Discontinuous Tradition Of Sentencing Discretion: Koon's Failure To Recognize The Reshaping Of Judicial Discretion Under The Guidelines, The, Ian Weinstein

Faculty Scholarship

Can a judge exercise discretion and follow the law? Some think it impossible, seeing discretion as the opposite of law. Others have harmonized the two ideas, viewing discretion as the exercise of judgment according to and within the bounds of the law. Those who decry judicial discretion urge legislatures to enact more specific laws and leave less room for the vice of inconsistent results. Those who defend discretion would channel it to achieve the virtue of individualized justice. The tension between individualization and uniformity in the law is often unnecessarily heightened by an inadequate analysis of judicial discretion. The exercise …


Tragic Irony Of American Federalism: National Sovereignty Versus State Sovereignty In Slavery And In Freedom, The Federalism In The 21st Century: Historical Perspectives, Robert J. Kaczorowski Jan 1996

Tragic Irony Of American Federalism: National Sovereignty Versus State Sovereignty In Slavery And In Freedom, The Federalism In The 21st Century: Historical Perspectives, Robert J. Kaczorowski

Faculty Scholarship

A plurality on the Supreme Court seeks to establish a state-sovereignty based theory of federalism that imposes sharp limitations on Congress's legislative powers. Using history as authority, they admonish a return to the constitutional "first principles" of the Founders. These "first principles," in their view, attribute all governmental authority to "the consent of the people of each individual state, not the consent of the undifferentiated people of the Nation as a whole." Because the people of each state are the source of all governmental power, they maintain, "where the Constitution is silent about the exercise of a particular power-that is, …


By Reason Of Their Sex: Feminist Theory Postmodernism And Justice , Tracy E. Higgins Jan 1994

By Reason Of Their Sex: Feminist Theory Postmodernism And Justice , Tracy E. Higgins

Faculty Scholarship

Both the Supreme Court's jurisprudence of gender and feminist legal theory have generally assumed that some identifiable and describable category of woman exists prior to the construction of legal categories. For the Court, this woman-whose characteristics admittedly have changed over time-serves as the standard against which gendered legal classifications are measured. For feminism, her existence has served a different but equally important purpose as the subject for whom political goals are pursued. To the extent that the definitions of the category diverge, the differences among definitions are played out in feminist critiques of the Court's gender jurisprudence, and, occasionally, in …


Chase Court And Fundamental Rights: A Watershed In American Constitutionalism, The , Robert J. Kaczorowski Jan 1993

Chase Court And Fundamental Rights: A Watershed In American Constitutionalism, The , Robert J. Kaczorowski

Faculty Scholarship

Three weeks before he died in May 1873, the frail and ailing Salmon P. Chase joined three of his brethren in dissent in one of the most important cases ever decided by the United States Supreme Court, the Slaughter-House Cases.1 This decision was a watershed in United States constitutional history for several reasons. Doctrinally, it represented a rejection of the virtually unanimous decisions of the lower federal courts upholding the constitutionality of revolutionary federal civil rights laws enacted in the aftermath of the Civil War. Institutionally, it was an example of extraordinary judicial activism in overriding the legislative will of …


Power Not Reason: Justice Marshall's Valedictory And The Fourth Amendment In The Supreme Court's 1990 Term , Bruce A. Green Jan 1991

Power Not Reason: Justice Marshall's Valedictory And The Fourth Amendment In The Supreme Court's 1990 Term , Bruce A. Green

Faculty Scholarship

In its 1990 Term, the United States Supreme Court heard five cases involving the Fourth Amendment. In this article, Professor Bruce Green analyzes these five search-and-seizure decisions in light of Justice Marshall's criticism that '[Plower, not reason, is the new currency of this Court's decision-making." He examines the various considerations the Court advances in its Fourth Amendment analysis-interpretive principle, policy, and precedent--and discovers inconsistencies in the importance assigned to each of these considerations in a series of cases decided very close together by virtually the same Justices. Each approach controlled, Professor Green argues, only when it could be said to …


Nineteenth Century Interpretations Of The Federal Contract Clause: The Transformation From Vested To Substantive Rights Against The State , James L. Kainen Jan 1982

Nineteenth Century Interpretations Of The Federal Contract Clause: The Transformation From Vested To Substantive Rights Against The State , James L. Kainen

Faculty Scholarship

During the early nineteenth century, the contract clause served as the fundamental source of federally protected rights against the state. Yet the Supreme Court gradually eased many of the restrictions on state power enforced in the contract clause cases while developing the doctrine of substantive due process after the Civil War. By the end of the nineteenth century, the due process clause had usurped the place of the contract clause as the centerpiece in litigation about individual rights. Most analyses of the history of federally protected rights against the state have emphasized the rise of substantive due process to the …


Searching For The Intent Of The Framers Of Fourteenth Amendment , Robert J. Kaczorowski Jan 1972

Searching For The Intent Of The Framers Of Fourteenth Amendment , Robert J. Kaczorowski

Faculty Scholarship

IN 1946 JUSTICE HUGO BLACK DECLARED that one of the objects of the fourteenth amendment was to apply the Bill of Rights to the States. He was confident that an analysis of the intent of the framers of the amendment would support his assertion. A few years later the Supreme Court requested such an investigation, but when the analysis was made and the results presented to it, the Supreme Court concluded that the framers' intent could not be determined. The uncertainty surrounding the intent of the framers of the fourteenth amendment has had profound implications on the application of that …