Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Constitutional Law Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 12 of 12

Full-Text Articles in Constitutional Law

Delivering The Goods: Herein Of Mead, Delegations, And Authority, Patrick Mckinley Brennan Mar 2009

Delivering The Goods: Herein Of Mead, Delegations, And Authority, Patrick Mckinley Brennan

Working Paper Series

This paper argues, first, that the natural law position, according to which it is the function of human law and political authorities to instantiate certain individual goods and the common good of the political community, does not entail judges' having the power or authority to speak the natural law directly. It goes on to argue, second, that lawmaking power/authority must be delegated by the people or their representatives. It then argues, third, that success in making law depends not just on the exercise of delegated power/authority, but also on the exercise of care and deliberation or, in the article's terms, …


Deconstructing The Bill Of Rights In Administrative Adjudication--Enfranchising Constitutional Principles In The Process, Shiv Narayan Persaud Jan 2009

Deconstructing The Bill Of Rights In Administrative Adjudication--Enfranchising Constitutional Principles In The Process, Shiv Narayan Persaud

Journal Publications

With the increased tendency toward governmental oversight in modern society, Congress deemed it fit to delegate some of its lawmaking authority to the other branches of government. While this action has effectuated the promulgation of regulations and resolution of disputes through adjudicatory proceedings, the area of administrative law continues to be challenging, especially where it poses concerns regarding an individual’s basic rights. This Article will focus discussion on some fundamental issues relating to the administrative process and explore the ramifications on the individual.


Robert George’S The Clash Of Orthodoxies: Law, Religion, And Morality In Crisis, Jeffrey C. Tuomala Jan 2009

Robert George’S The Clash Of Orthodoxies: Law, Religion, And Morality In Crisis, Jeffrey C. Tuomala

Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.


The Ideology Of Legal Interpretation, Jason J. Czarnezki Jan 2009

The Ideology Of Legal Interpretation, Jason J. Czarnezki

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article questions whether consistency in legal interpretation is truly a manifestation of the influence of law or instead a means to a preferred policy end. Part I of this Article discusses the legal interpretive tools of originalism and legislative history and how they might influence outcomes in cases. Part II discusses judicial decision-making in the U.S. Courts of Appeals and justifies their use in the analysis. Parts III and IV offer information on our data and methodology, as well as a discussion of the results. Finally, in Part V, we find that the use of legal interpretive strategies are …


Adding Social Condition To The Canadian Human Rights Act, A. Wayne Mackay, Natasha Kim Jan 2009

Adding Social Condition To The Canadian Human Rights Act, A. Wayne Mackay, Natasha Kim

Reports & Public Policy Documents

Almost a decade ago, in June 2000, the Canadian Human Rights Act Review Panel conducted a comprehensive review of the Canadian Human Rights Act [CHRA] and recommended that “social condition” be added as a prohibited ground of discrimination. Since then, no action has been taken to implement this recommendation, despite calls for action from international bodies, political actors, human rights agencies and organizations, and academic commentators to provide protections from discrimination for those suffering from social and economic disadvantage. The authors analyze the experiences at the provincial level with socio-economic grounds of discrimination, jurisprudential developments under the Canadian Charter of …


Ideological Plaintiffs, Administrative Lawmaking, Standing And The Petition Clause, Karl S. Coplan Jan 2009

Ideological Plaintiffs, Administrative Lawmaking, Standing And The Petition Clause, Karl S. Coplan

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In the 1992 Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife decision, Justice Scalia declared that business interests subject to regulation had automatic standing to challenge regulations in court, but that where “the plaintiff is not himself the object of the government action or inaction he challenges, standing is not precluded, but it is ordinarily ‘substantially more difficult’ to establish.” This article explores the impact this differential standard for court access has on ideologically-motivated public interest plaintiffs, and suggest heightened scrutiny of standing rules under the Petition Clause of the First Amendment based on the viewpoint differential effect of current standing doctrine. This …


The Framers' Search Power: The Misunderstood Statutory History Of Suspicion & Probable Cause, Fabio Arcila, Jr. Jan 2009

The Framers' Search Power: The Misunderstood Statutory History Of Suspicion & Probable Cause, Fabio Arcila, Jr.

Scholarly Works

Originalist analyses of the Framers’ views about governmental search power have devoted insufficient attention to the civil search statutes they promulgated for regulatory purposes. What attention has been paid concludes that the Framers were divided about how accessible search remedies should be. This Article explains why this conventional account is mostly wrong and explores the lessons to be learned from the statutory choices the Framers made with regard to search and seizure law. In enacting civil search statutes, the Framers chose to depart from common law standards and instead largely followed the patterns of preceding British civil search statutes. The …


Rulemaking And The American Constitution, Peter L. Strauss Jan 2009

Rulemaking And The American Constitution, Peter L. Strauss

Faculty Scholarship

A Constitution that strongly separates legislative from executive activity makes it difficult to reconcile executive adoption of regulations (that is, departmentally adopted texts resembling statutes and having the force of law, if valid) with the proposition that the President is not ‘to be a lawmaker’. Such activity is, of course, an essential of government in the era of the regulatory state. United States courts readily accept the delegation to responsible agencies of authority to engage in it, what we call ‘rulemaking’, so long as it occurs in a framework that permits them to assess the legality of any particular exercise. …


Geier V. American Honda Motor Co.: A Story Of Statutes, Regulation And The Common Law, Peter L. Strauss Jan 2009

Geier V. American Honda Motor Co.: A Story Of Statutes, Regulation And The Common Law, Peter L. Strauss

Faculty Scholarship

This essay was written as a contribution to one of Foundation's "Story" series. In Geier, a lawsuit had been brought on behalf of a teenager whose injuries from an accident might have been lessened if her car had contained an airbag. Plaintiffs sued on the straightforward basis that the design choice to omit a safety device of proven merit made the car unreasonably hazardous. Federal safety regulations had required the maker of her car to install some such device as an airbag in at least 10% of the cars it made the year it made her car – but her …


Federal Powers And The Principle Of Subsidiarity., Daniel Halberstam Jan 2009

Federal Powers And The Principle Of Subsidiarity., Daniel Halberstam

Book Chapters

Federal systems across the world are generally designed according to the principle of subsidiarity, which in one form or another holds that the central government should play only a supporting role in governance, acting if and only if the constituent units of government are incapable of acting on their own. The word itself is related to the idea of assistance, as in “subsidy,” and is derived from the Latin “subsidium,” which referred to auxiliary troops in the Roman military. See Oxford Latin Dictionary s.v. (1983).


The Interdependent Relationship Between Internal And External Separation Of Powers, Gillian E. Metzger Jan 2009

The Interdependent Relationship Between Internal And External Separation Of Powers, Gillian E. Metzger

Faculty Scholarship

It has been the best of times and the worst of times for internal separation of powers. Over the past few years, internal checks on executive power have been a central topic of legal academic debate – rarely have details of public administrative structure received so much attention. To some extent, this sudden popularity reflects growing interest in questions of institutional design. Unfortunately, however, another reason for this attention is the prominent erosion and impotence of such internal constraints under the recent administration of President George W. Bush.


Administrative Detention Of Terrorists: Why Detain, And Detain Whom?, Matthew C. Waxman Jan 2009

Administrative Detention Of Terrorists: Why Detain, And Detain Whom?, Matthew C. Waxman

Faculty Scholarship

This article aims to reframe the administrative detention debate, not to resolve it. In doing so, however, it aspires to advance the discussion by highlighting the critical substantive choices embedded in calls for legal procedural reform and by pointing the way toward appropriately tailored legislative options. It argues that the current debate’s focus on procedural and institutional questions of how to detain suspected terrorists has been allowed to overshadow the questions of why administratively detain, and whom to detain. Not only are the answers to these questions at least as important as the procedural rules in safeguarding and balancing liberty …