Law Commons^™

Commerce Clause Restraints On State Tax Incentives, Walter Hellerstein

Scholarly Works

The states' provision of tax incentives designed to encourage economic development within their borders has long been a feature of the American legislative landscape. Today every state provides tax incentives as an inducement to local industrial location and expansion. Indeed, scarcely a day goes by without some state offering yet another tax incentive to spur economic development, often in an effort to attract a particular enterprise to the state.

The debate over the efficacy and wisdom of state tax and other business incentives is intense and important, as other articles in this Symposium plainly reveal. My purpose here, however, is …

Taking Federalism Seriously: Lopez And The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, Glenn Harlan Reynolds

Scholarly Works

In United States v. Lopez, the United States Supreme Court struck down the federal Gun Free School Zones law as not within congressional power to regulate interstate commerce. This article examines post-Lopez jurisprudence regarding the permissible scope of federal criminal law. Analyzing a wide variety of federal criminal laws challenged in post-Lopez cases (including arson, robbery, gun possession, drugs, violence against women, and abortion clinic disruption), the article shows how courts have followed or evaded Lopez. Studying the proposed federal ban on partial birth abortions, the article suggests that the ban is not a lawful exercise of Congress' interstate commerce …

Ulysses At The Mast: Democracy, Federalism, And The Sirens' Song Of The Seventeenth Amendment, Jay S. Bybee

Scholarly Works

One of the most remarkable aspects of the Constitution is the manner in which it marbles together people and states. By ratifying the Constitution, the states agreed to cede a portion of their sovereignty to a new entity, the ‘United States.’ The states granted to Congress their collective powers to impose taxes, incur debt, issue coin and securities, regulate commerce among the states and with other sovereigns, and control the engines of war. The states further relinquished their rights to act as independent sovereigns and enter into treaties with foreign countries, coin money, grant titles of nobility, and wage war. …