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Full-Text Articles in Law

Methodological Gerrymandering, David Simson Dec 2023

Methodological Gerrymandering, David Simson

Cleveland State Law Review

The U.S. Supreme Court has come to decide many of the most consequential and contentious aspects of social policy via its interpretations of the U.S. Constitution. Institutional features of the Court create significant pressure on the Justices to justify their decisions as applications of “law” rather than the practice of “politics.” Their perceived failure to do so calls forth criticism sounding in a variety of registers—ranging from allegations of a lack of neutrality, lack of impartiality, or lack of “principle,” to allegations of opportunism, disingenuousness, and hypocrisy. Analyzing the Justices’ choices in relation to interpretational “methodology”—choosing one lens through which …


The Power To Exclude And The Power To Expel, Donald J. Smythe Apr 2018

The Power To Exclude And The Power To Expel, Donald J. Smythe

Cleveland State Law Review

Property laws have far-reaching implications for the way people live and for the opportunities they and their children will have. They also have important consequences for property developers and businesses, both large and small. It is not surprising, therefore, that modern developments in property law have been so strongly influenced by political pressures. Unfortunately, those with the most economic resources and political power have had the most telling influences on the development of property laws in the United States during the twentieth century. This Article introduces a simple game—the "Not-In-My-Backyard Game"—to illustrate the motivations of various parties with interests in …


The Politicization Of Judicial Elections And Its Effect On Judicial Independence, Matthew W. Green Jr., Susan J. Becker, Marsha K. Ternus, Camilla B. Taylor Jan 2012

The Politicization Of Judicial Elections And Its Effect On Judicial Independence, Matthew W. Green Jr., Susan J. Becker, Marsha K. Ternus, Camilla B. Taylor

Cleveland State Law Review

This article presents the proceedings of the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law Symposium, The Politicization of Judicial Elections and Its Effect on Judicial Independence and LGBT Rights, held October 21, 2011. The idea for the conference stemmed from the November 2010 Iowa judicial election, in which three justices were voted out of office as a result of joining a unanimous ruling, Varnum v. Brien, that struck down, on equal protection grounds, a state statute limiting marriage rights to heterosexual couples. The conference addresses whether the backlash that occurred in Iowa after the Varnum decision might undermine judicial independence in jurisdictions where …


Writing Checks Or Righting Wrongs: Election Funding And The Tort Decisions Of The Ohio Supreme Court, James T. O'Reilly Jan 2004

Writing Checks Or Righting Wrongs: Election Funding And The Tort Decisions Of The Ohio Supreme Court, James T. O'Reilly

Cleveland State Law Review

This paper will try to address the court's present and future course in tort law, with particular focus on products liability, malpractice, and employer tort liability. These are the most intriguing segments of modern tort law in Ohio. The paper concludes that stare decisis and the precedential accretion of the common law no longer seem to matter to the Ohio Supreme Court. Instead, the cacophony of a fractured court has imperiled predictability and imperiled the court's national reputation. Instead, the topic of a prospective justice's view of the tort system is unfortunately an early and frequent conversation in recruitment, selection, …


The Origins Of American Democracy, Or How The People Became Judges In Their Own Causes, The Sixty-Ninth Cleveland-Marshall Fund Lecture , Gordon S. Wood Jan 1999

The Origins Of American Democracy, Or How The People Became Judges In Their Own Causes, The Sixty-Ninth Cleveland-Marshall Fund Lecture , Gordon S. Wood

Cleveland State Law Review

The awesome power of this democratic polity, with people becoming judges in their own causes, was such that our political leaders over the past two centuries have struggled to constrain and mitigate its effects. In fact, that is what our current concern with campaign financing is all about. From the very beginning of our national history we Americans have used a variety of devices and institutions to immunize ourselves from the harmful consequences of too much democracy, too much factious promotion of private interests in the name of the people. No doubt the most important of these devices has been …