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Articles 1 - 18 of 18
Full-Text Articles in Law
The Constitution According To Justices Scalia And Thomas: Alive And Kickin', Eric J. Segall
The Constitution According To Justices Scalia And Thomas: Alive And Kickin', Eric J. Segall
Eric J. Segall
No abstract provided.
Closing The Doors To Justice: A Critique Of Pimentel V. Dreyfus And The Application Of Legal Formalism To The Elimination Of Food Assistance Benefits For Legal Immigrants, Hannah Zommick
Seattle University Law Review
This Comment contends that the Ninth Circuit’s opinion in Pimentel v. Dreyfus employed a legal formalist approach and that by applying this framework, the court prevented legal immigrants, who were caught between the strict eligibility restrictions of welfare reform, from asserting their rights through the justice system. The legal formalist approach “treats the law as a set of scientific formulae or principles that are derived from the study of case law. These principles create an internal analytical framework which, when applied to a set of facts, leads the decision maker, through logical deduction, to the correct outcome in a case.” …
Supreme Court, Bronx County, People V. Butler, Courtney Weinberger
Supreme Court, Bronx County, People V. Butler, Courtney Weinberger
Touro Law Review
No abstract provided.
The Scope Of Precedent, Randy J. Kozel
The Scope Of Precedent, Randy J. Kozel
Michigan Law Review
The scope of Supreme Court precedent is capacious. Justices of the Court commonly defer to sweeping rationales and elaborate doctrinal frameworks articulated by their predecessors. This practice infuses judicial precedent with the prescriptive power of enacted constitutional and statutory text. The lower federal courts follow suit, regularly abiding by the Supreme Court’s broad pronouncements. These phenomena cannot be explained by—and, indeed, oftentimes subvert—the classic distinction between binding holdings and dispensable dicta. This Article connects the scope of precedent with recurring and foundational debates about the proper ends of judicial interpretation. A precedent’s forward- looking effect should not depend on the …
Mexico's Legal Revolution: An Appraisal Of Its Recent Constitutional Changes, 1988-1995, Jorge A. Vargas
Mexico's Legal Revolution: An Appraisal Of Its Recent Constitutional Changes, 1988-1995, Jorge A. Vargas
Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law
No abstract provided.
Separation Of Powers Crisis: The Case Of Argentina, Manuel José J. García-Mansilla
Separation Of Powers Crisis: The Case Of Argentina, Manuel José J. García-Mansilla
Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law
No abstract provided.
Qualified Immunity And Statutory Interpretation, Ilan Wurman
Qualified Immunity And Statutory Interpretation, Ilan Wurman
Seattle University Law Review
Before the 1989 case of Graham v. Connor, excessive force cases were pursued under either state law or the insuperable “shocks the conscience” test of the Fourteenth Amendment. Only after Graham did excessive force cases—now under the Fourth Amendment and 42 U.S.C. § 1983—inundate the federal courts, which had by then granted far-reaching immunities to officers for their constitutional torts. As a result of federal qualified immunity doctrine, which many states have adopted for themselves, excessive force cases rarely get to trial, plaintiffs often cannot recover, and courts struggle to find principled distinctions from one qualified immunity case to the …
The Importance Of Interpretation: How The Language Of The Constitution Allows For Differing Opinions, Christina J. Banfield
The Importance Of Interpretation: How The Language Of The Constitution Allows For Differing Opinions, Christina J. Banfield
Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects
No abstract provided.
Targeted Killing: United States Policy, Constitional Law, And Due Process, Mark Febrizio
Targeted Killing: United States Policy, Constitional Law, And Due Process, Mark Febrizio
Senior Honors Theses
The increased incorporation of targeted killing, primarily through the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, into United States policy raises salient questions regarding its consistency with the U.S. Constitution. This paper contrasts interpretations of constitutional due process with the current legal framework for conducting targeted killing operations. The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution establishes the due process owed to U.S. citizens. This paper determines that the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen, was accomplished in a manner inconsistent with constitutional due process and demonstrates an over-extension of executive branch power. This paper examines one scholarly recommendation that seeks to increase …
Taxing Judicial Restraint: How Washington's Supreme Court Misinterpreted Its Role And The Washington State Constitution, Nicholas Carlson
Taxing Judicial Restraint: How Washington's Supreme Court Misinterpreted Its Role And The Washington State Constitution, Nicholas Carlson
Seattle University Law Review
In the realm of constitutional interpretation, the judicial department reigns supreme. League of Education Voters v. State exemplifies the judiciary’s potential abuse of its interpretative role: The Washington Supreme Court misinterpreted its judicial function because it ignored the text of Washington State’s constitution and held a statute unconstitutional. The court, therefore, voided a statute because of judicial volition, not because Washington’s constitution demanded that outcome. This Note challenges the reasoning in League and makes a novel suggestion for Washington State constitutional analysis, an approach that may apply to other states. This Note details a new analytical framework for constitutional analysis …
Transgender Inpportunity And Inequality: Evaluating The Crossroads Between Immigration And Transgender Individuals, Alexandra Caggiano
Transgender Inpportunity And Inequality: Evaluating The Crossroads Between Immigration And Transgender Individuals, Alexandra Caggiano
Seattle University Law Review
Despite being married to a U.S. citizen, non-citizen transgender individuals and non-citizen spouses married to transgender U.S. citizens still face deportation today due to current immigration policies. When forced to return to their home countries, transgender individuals are likely to encounter violence from those who perpetuate hate towards transgender and gender non-conforming individuals. Instead of protecting these individuals, the United States continues to send people back to their native countries solely because those individuals do not fall within the narrowly constructed definition of marriage some states use that is legally recognized by federal courts. Transgender individuals receive disparate treatment as …
Enacted Legislative Findings And The Deference Problem, Daniel A. Crane
Enacted Legislative Findings And The Deference Problem, Daniel A. Crane
Articles
The constitutionality of federal legislation sometimes turns on the presence and sufficiency of congressional findings of predicate facts, such as the effects of conduct on interstate commerce, state discrimination justifying the abrogation of sovereign immunity, or market failures justifying intrusions on free speech. Sometimes a congressional committee makes these findings in legislative history. Other times, Congress recites its findings in a statutory preamble, thus enacting its findings as law. Surprisingly, the Supreme Court has not distinguished between enacted and unenacted findings in deciding how much deference to accord congressional findings. This is striking because the difference between enactedness and unenactedness …
The Puzzling Presumption Of Reviewability, Nicholas Bagley
The Puzzling Presumption Of Reviewability, Nicholas Bagley
Articles
The presumption in favor of judicial review of agency action is a cornerstone of administrative law, accepted by courts and commentators alike as both legally appropriate and obviously desirable. Yet the presumption is puzzling. As with any canon of statutory construction that serves a substantive end, it should find a source in history, positive law, the Constitution, or sound policy considerations. None of these, however, offers a plausible justification for the presumption. As for history, the sort of judicial review that the presumption favors - appellate-style arbitrariness review - was not only unheard of prior to the twentieth century, but …
From Commonwealth To Constitutional Limitations: Thomas Cooley's Michigan, 1805-1886, Robert Allan Olender
From Commonwealth To Constitutional Limitations: Thomas Cooley's Michigan, 1805-1886, Robert Allan Olender
SJD Dissertations
In response to what he perceived as the challenges associated with republican governance in the later portions of the nineteenth century, Michigan’s Thomas McIntyre Cooley penned his treatise concerning constitutional limitations on legislative power. In it, Cooley offered a vision of government where courts would check government power and would raise constitutional barriers against the impact of improper influences on legislators. As a student of history, Cooley grounded his beliefs and doctrines in experience, not philosophical reflections. Believing that “the fruits of speculative genius in government are of little value,” Cooley submitted that governing structures and law “must be the …
Supreme Court Alchemy: Turning Law And Politics Into Mayonnaise, Stephen Feldman
Supreme Court Alchemy: Turning Law And Politics Into Mayonnaise, Stephen Feldman
Stephen M. Feldman
How do law and politics intertwine in Supreme Court adjudication? Traditionally, in law schools and political science departments, scholars refused to mix law and politics. Law professors insisted that legal texts and doctrines controlled Supreme Court decision making, while political scientists maintained that political ideologies dictated the justices' votes. In the late twentieth century, some scholars in both disciplines sought to combine law and politics but still conceived of the two as distinct. They attempted to stir law and politics together, but ended with an oil-and-water type of mix; law and politics settled apart. The best approach, as presented in …
Universities As Constitutional Law Makers (And Other Hidden Actors In Our Constitutional Orders), Adam J. Macleod
Universities As Constitutional Law Makers (And Other Hidden Actors In Our Constitutional Orders), Adam J. Macleod
Faculty Articles
In the stories told by opinion makers and many law professors, American constitutional law is concerned with two things-individual rights and the powers of government-and it is settled by the Court, which was established by Article III of our national Constitution. In those now-familiar tales, the United States Supreme Court creates constitutional law when heroic individuals assert their fundamental rights against an overreaching state and when Congress, state legislatures, and executive agencies are called upon to justify their expert enactments to an overreaching judiciary. To settle these constitutional disputes the Court looks either to the text of the written Constitution …
Election Law's Lochnerian Turn, Ellen D. Katz
Election Law's Lochnerian Turn, Ellen D. Katz
Articles
This panel has been asked to consider whether "the Constitution [is] responsible for electoral dysfunction."' My answer is no. The electoral process undeniably falls well short of our aspirations, but it strikes me that we should look to the Supreme Court for an accounting before blaming the Constitution for the deeply unsatisfactory condition in which we find ourselves.
The Jurisprudence Of Union, Gil Seinfeld
The Jurisprudence Of Union, Gil Seinfeld
Articles
The primary goal of this Article is to demonstrate that the interest in national unity does important, independent work in the law of vertical federalism. We have long been accustomed to treating union as a constitutionally operative value in cases involving the duties states owe one another (i.e. horizontal federalism cases), but in cases involving the relationship between the federal government and the states, the interest in union is routinely ignored. This Article shows that, across a wide range of cases relating to the allocation of power between the federal government and the states, the states are constrained by a …