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Articles 1 - 15 of 15
Full-Text Articles in Law
Labor And The Supreme Court: Review Of The 1996-1997 Term, Keith N. Hylton
Labor And The Supreme Court: Review Of The 1996-1997 Term, Keith N. Hylton
Faculty Scholarship
The U.S. Supreme Court's 1996-1997 Term will surely not be remembered among lawyers for its decisions in the employment area. Most of these decisions involved narrow questions of statutory interpretation, and for the most part the Court has handed down opinions consistent with existing case law. There was not one National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) decision this Term and the two employment discrimination cases involved fairly technical issues of statutory interpretation. The feeling of a quiet year is put across by simply reading the statutes at issue other than Title VII: the Federal Employers' Liability Act (FELA) (one case), the …
Plain Meaning, The Tax Code, And Doctrinal Incoherence, Mary L. Heen
Plain Meaning, The Tax Code, And Doctrinal Incoherence, Mary L. Heen
Law Faculty Publications
This Article examines the Supreme Court's interpretive approach in recent tax cases. Part I of the Article sets the stage by describing the Court's interpretive approach, its focus on the relative determinacy of statutory language, and the backdrop of Chevron. Part II examines the effect of these issues on tax law, focusing on three cases that construe the same Code provision, section 104(a)(2), but apply quite different interpretive approaches. In United States v. Burke, the Court appeared to find the provision ambiguous and relied in part upon an interpretation of the statute contained in a Treasury regulation. Subsequently, in Commissioner …
Textualism's Selective Canons Of Statutory Construction: Reinvigorating Individual Liberties, Legislative Authority, And Deference To Executive Agencies, Bradford Mank
Faculty Articles and Other Publications
This Article demonstrates that textualist Judges, most notably Justices Scalia, Thomas, and, to a lesser extent, Kennedy, have applied some canons too aggressively, and slighted others. Textualist Judges have overused clear-statement rules that narrow statutory meaning, especially as a means to promote federalism and states' rights. On the other hand, textualists have neglected canons that promote individual liberty or executive authority Because canons must be applied on a case-by-case basis and different canons can conflict, it is impossible to formulate one rule for how they should be applied. Nevertheless, the common textualist approach of selectively favoring some canons at the …
Will The Punishment Fit The Victims? The Case For Pre-Trial Disclosure, And The Uncharted Future Of Victim Impact Information In Capital Jury Sentencing, José F. Anderson
Will The Punishment Fit The Victims? The Case For Pre-Trial Disclosure, And The Uncharted Future Of Victim Impact Information In Capital Jury Sentencing, José F. Anderson
All Faculty Scholarship
The United States Supreme Court decision in Payne v. Tennessee, upholding the use of victim impact statements in capital jury sentencing proceedings, marked one of the most dramatic reversals of a precedent in the history of United States constitutional jurisprudence. The decision in Payne expressly overruled Booth v. Maryland decided only four years earlier. The Booth case rejected the use of victim impact statements in capital sentencing cases that involved juries. In Payne, the Supreme Court made it clear that victims were entitled to offer, and juries were permitted to consider, the effect that a "death eligible" homicide had on …
Thurgood Marshall: Legal Strategist For The Civil Rights Movement, F. Michael Higginbotham, José F. Anderson
Thurgood Marshall: Legal Strategist For The Civil Rights Movement, F. Michael Higginbotham, José F. Anderson
All Faculty Scholarship
This brief article covers the career of attorney and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, covering his early days as an attorney working for the NAACP, up to his career on the nation's highest court. Of particular interest are the hardships of his early days as a lawyer, as one of only 32 African American lawyers in Maryland in 1935. The key cases during his career are touched upon, along with the legal strategies used to further the cause of civil rights.
Human Dignity, Privacy, And Personality In German And American Constitutional Law, Edward J. Eberle
Human Dignity, Privacy, And Personality In German And American Constitutional Law, Edward J. Eberle
Law Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Writing In The Margins: Brennan, Marshall, And The Inherent Weaknesses Of Liberal Judicial Decision-Making (Essay), Donna F. Coltharp
Writing In The Margins: Brennan, Marshall, And The Inherent Weaknesses Of Liberal Judicial Decision-Making (Essay), Donna F. Coltharp
Faculty Articles
No abstract provided.
Limits On Preemption And Punitive Damages: Can They Be Related?, Peter Zablotsky
Limits On Preemption And Punitive Damages: Can They Be Related?, Peter Zablotsky
Scholarly Works
No abstract provided.
Section 1983 Litigation, Martin A. Schwartz
Common Law Elements Of The Section 1983 Action, Jack M. Beermann
Common Law Elements Of The Section 1983 Action, Jack M. Beermann
Faculty Scholarship
This Article explores the role of the common law in Supreme Court interpretation and application of § 1983, which grants a cause of action for violations of constitutional rights committed "under color of any [state] statute, ordinance, regulation, custom or usage."' I argue that the common law has served primarily to narrow the reach of § 1983, and that this is inappropriate in light of the broad statutory language and the absence of good evidence that the enacting Congress intended a narrower application than the statutory language indicates.
Book Review. American Constitutionalism: From Theory To Politics, Daniel O. Conkle
Book Review. American Constitutionalism: From Theory To Politics, Daniel O. Conkle
Articles by Maurer Faculty
No abstract provided.
Making Constitutional Doctrine In A Realist Age, Victoria Nourse
Making Constitutional Doctrine In A Realist Age, Victoria Nourse
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
In this article the author considers three examples of modern constitutional doctrine that show how judges have stolen bits and pieces from popularized skepticisms about the job of judging and have molded this stolen rhetoric into doctrine. In the first example, she asks whether constitutional law's recent penchant for doctrinal rules based on "clear law" could have existed without the modern age's obsession with legal uncertainty. In the second, the author considers whether our contemporary rhetoric of constitutional "interests" and "expectations" reflects modern critiques of doctrine as failing to address social needs. In the third, she asks how an offhand …
Congressional Self-Discipline: The Constitutionality Of Supermajority Rules, Susan Low Bloch
Congressional Self-Discipline: The Constitutionality Of Supermajority Rules, Susan Low Bloch
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Congress needs to be more disciplined. It has at times become sloppy and even cavalier. When, for example, Congress enacted the federal Gun-Free School Zone Act of 1990, it was asking for trouble. Neither the legislation nor the legislative history said anything about any effect on interstate commerce. It was therefore not surprising to see the Supreme Court strike the law down in United States v. Lopez.
The Constitutional Right To Die: Ethical Considerations, Lawrence O. Gostin
The Constitutional Right To Die: Ethical Considerations, Lawrence O. Gostin
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
In this commentary, the author first looks at some ethical reasoning supporting physician-assisted dying. Second, he examines some of the lines that have been drawn between withdrawing and withholding life-sustaining treatment on the one hand, and physician-assisted dying on the other. Finally, he relates both of these matters to constitutional reasoning, beginning with Cruzan and ending with the cases before the Supreme Court at the time of the article's publication.
What Is Eleventh Amendment Immunity?, Carlos Manuel Vázquez
What Is Eleventh Amendment Immunity?, Carlos Manuel Vázquez
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
The Supreme Court's Eleventh Amendment decisions give conflicting signals about what the Amendment does. On one view, the Amendment functions as a forum-allocation principle--immunizing states from liability in suits filed in federal court, but leaving open the possibility that states may be compelled to entertain suits against themselves in their own courts. A separate line of cases, however, implies that state courts enjoy an immunity from suit in their own courts and that nothing in the Constitution withdraws such immunity; on this view, the Eleventh Amendment, by protecting the states from suit in the federal courts, effectively immunizes the states …