Law Commons^™

Horizontal Federalism In An Age Of Criminal Justice Interconnectedness, Wayne A. Logan

Scholarly Publications

Despite their status as independent sovereigns, states increasingly exhibit a willingness to interact when it comes to crime control matters. This Article examines the two foremost examples of this phenomenon: criminal recidivist enhancement laws and sex offender registration laws. Both types of laws have been around for decades and have evolved to accommodate ex-offenders, who, consistent with constitutional freedom of movement, can (and often do) change state residences. This effort at accommodation, however, puts states in the unusual position of having to interpret and apply the criminal laws and outcomes of their fellow sovereigns. As the Article makes clear, recidivist …

"So Long As Our System Shall Exist": Myth, History, And The New Federalism, Paul D. Moreno

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

This article provides the broad historical context necessary to understand contemporary developments in federalism doctrine. It shows that dual federalism has a long and varied history and that federalism is a content-neutral principle to which both sides in major political contests have appealed. It seeks to show that the predominant perspective on federalism today - that it is an inherently conservative principle - is the result of historical misperception. This article reinterprets the history of American federalism in light of recent historical scholarship concerning various periods: principally the country's founding; slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction; the late nineteenth-century social …

Federalism And Antitrust Reform, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

Currently the Antitrust Modernization Commission is considering numerous proposals for adjusting the relationship between federal antitrust authority and state regulation. This essay examines two areas that have produced a significant amount of state-federal conflict: state regulation of insurance and the state action immunity for general state regulation. It argues that no principle of efficiency, regulatory theory, or federalism justifies the McCarran-Ferguson Act, which creates an antitrust immunity for state regulation of insurance. What few benefits the Act confers could be fully realized by an appropriate interpretation of the state action doctrine. Second, the current formulation of the antitrust state action …

Federalism, The Commerce Clause, And The Constitutionality Of The Unborn Victims Of Violence Act Of 2004, Ryan R. Wilmering

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Supreme Court And The Federalist Papers: Is There Less Here Than Meets The Eye?, Melvyn R. Durchslag

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

Symbiotic Federalism And The Structure Of Corporate Law, Marcel Kahan, Edward Rock

Vanderbilt Law Review

Enron. Worldcom. Adelphia. Global Crossing. Tyco. Corporate scandals have made the front pages. Congress has gotten in the act. Members have held numerous hearings, given speeches, and, ultimately, passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. The Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") has been busy writing regulations and leaning on the stock exchanges to modify their listing requirements, all in order to restore "investor confidence." Federal prosecutors have indicted executives of Enron, Worldcom, and Adelphia and their minions in the auditing and investment banking industries. State officials have also been active. Several states have passed statutes that resemble or go beyond the strictures of …

Towards A Basal Tenth Amendment: A Riposte To National Bank Preemption Of State Consumer Protection Laws, Keith R. Fisher

ExpressO

Recent regulations promulgated by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency assert a sweeping authority to preempt a broad array of state laws, including consumer protection laws, applicable not only to national banks but to their state-chartered operating subsidiaries. These regulations threaten to disrupt state efforts to combat predatory lending and other abusive practices and to interfere with a state’s sovereign authority over corporations chartered under its laws. Yet federal courts faced with challenges to these initiatives have failed to devote any substantial analysis to claims based on the Tenth Amendment. The problem with such claims is the absence …

Section 5: Federalism, Institute Of Bill Of Rights Law, William & Mary Law School

Supreme Court Preview

No abstract provided.

The Constitutional Right Not To Cooperate? Local Sovereignty And The Federal Immigration Power, Huyen Pham

ExpressO

May the federal government require local governments to cooperate with the enforcement of immigration law or other federal scheme? Or may local governments constitutionally refuse to provide that cooperation?

I use immigration law enforcement as a case study to argue that the current legal framework, which allows the federal government to mandate local cooperation, ignores the significant federalism harms that federal cooperation laws impose. And these federalism harms are not simply limited to the immigration field. In other areas where federal and local governments disagree (e.g., medical marijuana, stem cell research, and physician-assisted suicide), there is similar potential for conflict …

U.S. Supreme Court Tort Reform: Limiting State Power To Articulate And Develop Its Own Tort Law–Defamation, Preemption, And Punitive Damages, Thomas C. Galligan

ExpressO

U.S. Supreme Court Tort Reform: Limiting State Power to Articulate and Develop Its Own Tort Law–Defamation, Preemption, and Punitive Damages analyzes and critiques the three primary areas in which the U.S. Supreme Court has found federal constitutional limits on a state’s power to articulate, develop, and apply its common law of torts. It is the first piece to consider all three areas together as an emerging body of jurisprudence which Professor Galligan calls U.S. Supreme Court tort reform. After setting forth a modest model of adjudication, the article applies that model to each of the three areas: defamation and related …

The Constitutional Limits To Court-Stripping, Michael J. Gerhardt

Faculty Publications

This Article is part of a colloquy between Professor Michael J. Gerhardt and Professor Martin Redish about the constitutionality of court-stripping measures. Court-stripping measures are laws restricting federal court jurisdiction over particular subject matters. In particular, the authors discuss the constitutionality of the Marriage Protection Act of 2004. Professor Gerhardt argues that the Act is unconstitutional and threatens to destroy the principles of separation of powers, federalism and due process. It prevents Supreme Court review of Congressional action and hinders the uniformity and finality of constitutional law. Furthermore, the Act violates the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment Due …

Fourth Amendment Federalism? The Court's Vacillating Mistrust And Trust Of State Search And Seizure Laws, Kathryn R. Urbonya

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

From "Federalization" To "Mixed Governance" In Corporate Law: A Defense Of Sarbanes-Oxley, Robert B. Ahdieh

Faculty Scholarship

Since the very moment of its adoption, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 has been subject to a litany of critiques, many of them seemingly well-placed. The almost universal condemnation of the Act for its asserted 'federalization' of corporate law, by contrast, deserves short shrift. Though widely invoked - and blithely accepted - dissection of this argument against the legislation shows it to rely either on flawed assumptions or on normative preferences not ordinarily acknowledged (or perhaps even accepted) by those who criticize Sarbanes-Oxley for its federalization of state corporate law.

Once we appreciate as much, we can begin by replacing …

Lochner: Another Time, Another Place Symposium: Lochner Centennial Conference, Larry Yackle

Faculty Scholarship

Professor Lynn Baker's contribution to this symposium' extends her longterm project both to defend and to critique the Supreme Court's decisions on the scope of congressional power.2 I find this work valuable and not a little provocative. If Baker's account of the decisions thus far is even partly right, the Court is poised to assume decision-making responsibility that has long been ceded to Congress. If her proposals for the future are adopted, we are in for a cataclysmic constitutional event that rivals the convulsive period when the nation confronted the judicial arrogation of authority associated (rightly or wrongly) with the …

Toward A New Federalism In State Civil Justice: Developing A Uniform Code Of State Civil Procedure Through A Collaborative Rule-Making Process, Glenn S. Koppel

Vanderbilt Law Review

There is a sense of "deja vu" to the vision of a uniform body of state procedural law applicable in every state court throughout the nation. "Swift v. Tysons'" dream of a nationally uniform body of state substantive common law that mirrored an evolving body of uniform federal common law never materialized because state courts refused to defer to federal common law, which was applied only in federal court. Swift itself was overturned in 1938 by the Supreme Court's ruling in "Erie Railroad v. Tompkins" that federal courts must defer to the substantive lawmaking authority of state courts. But almost …

The Case For Federal Anti-Gerrymandering Legislation, Brian O'Neill

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Partisan gerrymandering is a political tradition the United States can no longer afford. Due in part to the effects of partisan gerrymandering, very few congressional elections are meaningfully competitive. This Note argues that partisan gerrymandering damages both the quality of American democracy and the federal system of the United States. This Note concludes that the important federal interests at stake warrant action by Congress to halt partisan gerrymandering. The Note further concludes that any action by Congress should incorporate the principles of federalism by resisting the temptation to micromanage and Congress should instead require state commissions to draft the boundaries …

Federalism's Fallacy: The Early Tradition Of Federal Family Law And The Invention Of States' Rights, Kristin Collins

Faculty Scholarship

By examining the history of the federal government's role in the regulation of the family, this article joins the work of others who in recent years have begun to piece together the history of the federal government's role in crafting domestic relations law and policy.'⁸ Much of this attention has focused on federal involvement in domestic relations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with relatively less consideration given to the pre-Civil War period. Though recent contributions to this field have helped to cure this imbalance, ¹⁹ there remains a strong sense, especially among lawyers and judges, that …

Treaty Solutions From The Land Down Under: Reconciling American Federalism And International Law, Cyril R. Emery

ExpressO

No abstract provided.

Making Federalism Doctrine: Fidelity, Institutional Competence, And Compensating Adjustments, Ernest A. Young

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Cool Federalism And The Life-Cycle Of Moral Progress, Lawrence G. Sager

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Interjurisdictional Enforcement Of Rights In A Post-Erie World, Robert A. Schapiro

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Whose Constitution Is It? Why Federalism And Constitutional Positivism Don't Mix, James A. Gardner

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Federalizing The First Responders To Acts Of Terrorism Via The Militia Clauses, Brian C. Brook

Duke Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Whose Constitution Is It? Why Federalism And Constitutional Positivism Don't Mix, James A. Gardner

Journal Articles

It is frequently argued that state constitutions ought to be interpreted using a methodology of constitutional positivism, a familiar and commonplace theory of interpretational legitimacy that requires courts to treat a constitution as an authoritative expression of the will of the people who made it. I argue, contrary to this view, that orthodox constitutional positivism is not a viable interpretational methodology for subnational constitutions in a federal system. Although constitutional positivism makes sense for national constitutions, which furnish the paradigm case, subnational constitutions pose important problems for the political theory upon which constitutional positivism relies. According to that theory, the …

Bridging The Enforcement Gap In Constitutional Law: A Critique Of The Supreme Court's Theory That Self-Restraint Promotes Federalism, Robert J. Pushaw Jr.

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Federal Marriage Amendment: To Protect The Sanctity Of Marriage Or Destroy Constitutional Democracy?, Joan Schaffner

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Supreme Court, Democracy And Institutional Reform Litigation, Ross Sandler, David Schoenbrod

Articles & Chapters

In an unexpected portion of its unanimous opinion in Frew v. Hawkins, 540 U.S. 431 (2004), the SupremeCourt broke new ground on an important question involving consent decrees. The case began when Texas state officials invoked the Eleventh Amendment in their resistance to a federal Medicaid consent decree. TheCourt quickly disposed of that argument, but Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the unanimous Court,took the opportunity to forcefully state that consent decrees that intrude on the policy making prerogatives of state and local officials more than is necessary to protect rights undercut the effective functioning of elected state and local governments. …

Teaching New Federalism, Allison H. Eid

Saint Louis University Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Impact Of Federalism Over The Formation Of Personal Jurisdiction Rules In Two Different Legal Traditions: Limited Comparison To The Civil Law Model Of The United Arab Emirates And The Common Law Model Of The United States, Abaid Al-Mutairi

SJD Dissertation Abstracts

In the last decade, a massive growth of international trade and cross-border commercial and civil transactions occur among individuals and entities of different jurisdictions and legal backgrounds, this international trend results in corresponding conflicts. This fact makes it critical to identify the nature of process involving the dispute resolution mechanisms under the various legal systems especially those rules addressing the instances in which a person is held subject to certain foreign adjudicative authority because of the contact.

In general, there is always a need in some circumstances to analyze the frameworks under one system to explore the nature of the …

The Wisdom We Have Lost: Sentencing Information And Its Uses, Marc L. Miller, Ronald F. Wright

Ronald F. Wright

Both federal and state experience in sentencing over the last three decades suggest that sentencing data and knowledge most often lead to wisdom when they are collected with particular uses and users in mind. Ironically, greater reliance on data and expertise can democratize the making and testing of sentencing policy. When data are collected and published with many different users in mind, a variety of participants in the sentencing process can join the Commission as creators of sentencing wisdom, including Congress, state legislatures, state sentencing commissions, sentencing judges, and scholars.

Under the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, Congress envisioned federal …