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Articles 31 - 60 of 75
Full-Text Articles in Courts
Federalism As A Way Station: Windsor As Exemplar Of Doctrine In Motion, Neil S. Siegel
Federalism As A Way Station: Windsor As Exemplar Of Doctrine In Motion, Neil S. Siegel
Faculty Scholarship
This Article asks what the Supreme Court’s opinion in United States v. Windsor stands for. It first shows that the opinion leans in the direction of marriage equality but ultimately resists any dispositive “equality” or “federalism” interpretation. The Article next examines why the opinion seems intended to preserve for itself a Delphic obscurity. The Article reads Windsor as an exemplar of what judicial opinions may look like in transition periods, when a Bickelian Court seeks to invite, not end, a national conversation, and to nudge it in a certain direction. In such times, federalism rhetoric—like manipulating the tiers of scrutiny …
A General Defense Of Erie Railroad Co. V. Tompkins, Ernest A. Young
A General Defense Of Erie Railroad Co. V. Tompkins, Ernest A. Young
Faculty Scholarship
Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins was the most important federalism decision of the Twentieth Century. Justice Brandeis’s opinion for the Court stated unequivocally that “[e]xcept in matters governed by the Federal Constitution or by acts of Congress, the law to be applied in any case is the law of the state. . . . There is no federal general common law.” Seventy-five years later, however, Erie finds itself under siege. Critics have claimed that it is “bereft of serious intellectual or constitutional support” (Michael Greve), based on a “myth” that must be “repressed” (Craig Green), and even “the worst decision …
In Praise Of Judge Fletcher-And Of General Standing Principles, Ernest A. Young
In Praise Of Judge Fletcher-And Of General Standing Principles, Ernest A. Young
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Equality Arguments For Abortion Rights, Neil S. Siegel, Reva B. Siegel
Equality Arguments For Abortion Rights, Neil S. Siegel, Reva B. Siegel
Faculty Scholarship
Roe v. Wade grounds constitutional protections for women’s decision whether to end a pregnancy in the Due Process Clauses. But in the four decades since Roe, the U.S. Supreme Court has come to recognize the abortion right as an equality right as well as a liberty right. In this Essay, we describe some distinctive features of equality arguments for abortion rights. We then show how, over time, the Court and individual Justices have begun to employ equality arguments in analyzing the constitutionality of abortion restrictions. These arguments first appear inside of substantive due process case law, and then as claims …
A Research Agenda For Uncooperative Federalists, Ernest A. Young
A Research Agenda For Uncooperative Federalists, Ernest A. Young
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
The New Textualism, Progressive Constitutionalism, And Abortion Rights: A Reply To Jeffrey Rosen, Neil S. Siegel
The New Textualism, Progressive Constitutionalism, And Abortion Rights: A Reply To Jeffrey Rosen, Neil S. Siegel
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Exhuming The “Diversity Explanation” Of The Eleventh Amendment, Thomas D. Rowe Jr.
Exhuming The “Diversity Explanation” Of The Eleventh Amendment, Thomas D. Rowe Jr.
Faculty Scholarship
This essay, in a symposium honoring the scholarship of Ninth Circuit Judge William A. Fletcher, explores the “diversity explanation” of the Eleventh Amendment that he had advanced in articles while he was a UC-Berkeley law professor. That explanation, contrary to existing Supreme Court doctrine that heavily constitutionalizes state sovereign immunity from suits by private parties and foreign countries, would view the Eleventh Amendment as having solely to do with federal courts’ constitutional jurisdiction and nothing to do with states’ sovereign immunity. The essay notes the cleanness of interpretation provided by the diversity explanation, in contrast with the convoluted nature of …
Its Hour Come Round At Last? State Sovereign Immunity And The Great State Debt Crisis Of The Early Twenty-First Century, Ernest A. Young
Its Hour Come Round At Last? State Sovereign Immunity And The Great State Debt Crisis Of The Early Twenty-First Century, Ernest A. Young
Faculty Scholarship
State sovereign immunity is a sort of constitutional comet, streaking across the sky once a century to the amazement and consternation of legal commentators. The comet’s appearance has usually coincided with major state debt crises: The Revolutionary War debts brought us Chisholm v. Georgia and the Eleventh Amendment, and the Reconstruction debts brought us Hans v. Louisiana and the Amendment’s extension to federal question cases. This essay argues that much of our law of state sovereign immunity, including its odd fictions and otherwise-incongruous exceptions, can be understood as an effort to maintain immunity’s core purpose — protecting the states from …
‘The Ordinary Diet Of The Law’: The Presumption Against Preemption In The Roberts Court, Ernest A. Young
‘The Ordinary Diet Of The Law’: The Presumption Against Preemption In The Roberts Court, Ernest A. Young
Faculty Scholarship
In a preemption case decided over a decade ago, Justice Breyer wrote that “in today’s world, filled with legal complexity, the true test of federalist principle may lie . . . in those many statutory cases where courts interpret the mass of technical detail that is the ordinary diet of the law.” This article surveys the Roberts Court’s preemption jurisprudence, focusing on five cases decided in OT 2010. Young argues that Justice Breyer was right — that is, that because current federalism jurisprudence largely eschews any effort to define exclusive spheres of state and federal regulatory jurisdiction, the most important …
Sorrell V. Ims Health And The End Of The Constitutional Double Standard, Ernest A. Young
Sorrell V. Ims Health And The End Of The Constitutional Double Standard, Ernest A. Young
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Slavery In The United States: Persons Or Property?, Paul Finkelman
Slavery In The United States: Persons Or Property?, Paul Finkelman
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Reasoning About The Irrational: The Roberts Court And The Future Of Constitutional Law, H. Jefferson Powell
Reasoning About The Irrational: The Roberts Court And The Future Of Constitutional Law, H. Jefferson Powell
Faculty Scholarship
Commentary on the future direction of the Roberts Court generally falls along lines that correlate with the commentators' political views on the desirability of the Court's recent decisions. A more informative approach is to look for opinions suggesting changes in the presuppositions with which the Justices approach constitutional decision making. In footnote 27 in his opinion for the Court in the District of Columbia v. Heller Second Amendment decision, Justice Scalia suggested a fundamental revision of the Court's assumptions about the role of judicial doctrine, and the concept of rationality, in constitutional law. Justice Scalia would eliminate the normative aspects …
Roberts’ Rules: The Assertiveness Of Rules-Based Jurisprudence, Joseph Blocher
Roberts’ Rules: The Assertiveness Of Rules-Based Jurisprudence, Joseph Blocher
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
The Conflicted Assumptions Of Modern Constitutional Law, H. Jefferson Powell
The Conflicted Assumptions Of Modern Constitutional Law, H. Jefferson Powell
Faculty Scholarship
Contribution to Symposium - The Nature of Judicial Authority: A Reflection on Philip Hamburger's Law and Judicial Duty
Legal Integration In The Andes: Law-Making By The Andean Tribunal Of Justice, Laurence R. Helfer, Karen J. Alter
Legal Integration In The Andes: Law-Making By The Andean Tribunal Of Justice, Laurence R. Helfer, Karen J. Alter
Faculty Scholarship
The Andean Tribunal of Justice (ATJ) is a copy of the European Court of Justice (ECJ), and the third most active international court. This article reviews our findings based on an original coding of all ATJ preliminary rulings from 1984 to 2007, and over forty interviews in the region. We then compare Andean and European jurisprudence in three key areas: whether the tribunals treat the founding integration treaties as constitutions for their respective communities, whether the ATJ and ECJ have implied powers for community institutions that are not expressly enumerated in the founding treaties, and how the tribunals conceive of …
Reverse Incorporation Of State Constitutional Law, Joseph Blocher
Reverse Incorporation Of State Constitutional Law, Joseph Blocher
Faculty Scholarship
State supreme courts and the United States Supreme Court are the independent and final arbiters of their respective constitutions, and may therefore take different approaches to analogous state and federal constitutional issues. Such issues arise often, because the documents were modeled on each other and share many of the same guarantees. In answering them, state courts have, as a matter of practice, generally adopted federal constitutional doctrine as their own. Federal courts, by contrast, have largely ignored state constitutional law when interpreting the federal constitution. In McDonald v. Chicago, to take only the most recent example, the Court declined to …
What State Constitutional Law Can Tell Us About The Federal Constitution, Joseph Blocher
What State Constitutional Law Can Tell Us About The Federal Constitution, Joseph Blocher
Faculty Scholarship
Courts and scholars have long sought to illuminate the relationship between state and federal constitutional law. Yet their attention, like the relationship itself, has largely been one-sided: State courts have consistently adopted federal constitutional law as their own, and scholars have attempted to illuminate why this is, and why it should or should not be so. By contrast, federal courts tend not to look to state constitutional law, even for persuasive authority. Nor have scholars argued at any length that federal courts can or should look to state constitutional law for guidance in answering the many constitutional questions common to …
Further Reflections On Not Being “Not An Originalist”, H. Jefferson Powell
Further Reflections On Not Being “Not An Originalist”, H. Jefferson Powell
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
All Rise! Standing In Judge Betty Fletcher’S Court, Thomas D. Rowe Jr.
All Rise! Standing In Judge Betty Fletcher’S Court, Thomas D. Rowe Jr.
Faculty Scholarship
In this essay, based on a talk given at the Washington Law Review’s March 2009 symposium in honor of Senior Ninth Circuit Judge Betty Binns Fletcher and her three decades of service on that court, I selectively survey her opinions on justiciability issues: standing, ripeness, mootness, and political questions. A significant starting point for this survey is Professor Richard Pierce’s 1999 law review article, Is Standing Law or Politics?, arguing that many Supreme Court votes in standing cases generally, and appellate judges’ votes in environmental-standing cases specifically, can be explained better on the basis of politics than by reference to …
A Coase Theorem For Constitutional Theory, Neil S. Siegel
A Coase Theorem For Constitutional Theory, Neil S. Siegel
Faculty Scholarship
There is much to admire about Barry Friedman’s new book, The Will of the People. Explaining how the institution of judicial review was made safe for democracy in America, Friedman’s story is extensively researched, beautifully written, scrupulously nonpartisan about the modern Court, and frequently humorous. What is more, his primary claim—that the Supreme Court of the United States is very much a democratic institution because judicial review always has been responsive to public opinion—is, to a large extent, convincing. I have taught The Will of the People in my first-year constitutional law course, and I plan to do so again. …
On Not Being “Not An Originalist”, H. Jefferson Powell
On Not Being “Not An Originalist”, H. Jefferson Powell
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Treaties As "Part Of Our Law", Ernest A. Young
Treaties As "Part Of Our Law", Ernest A. Young
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Preemption And Federal Common Law, Ernest A. Young
Preemption And Federal Common Law, Ernest A. Young
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
A System Of Wholesale Denial Of Rights, Michael E. Tigar
A System Of Wholesale Denial Of Rights, Michael E. Tigar
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
The Federal Judicial Power And The International Legal Order, Curtis A. Bradley
The Federal Judicial Power And The International Legal Order, Curtis A. Bradley
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Checks And Balances: Congress And The Federal Court, Paul D. Carrington
Checks And Balances: Congress And The Federal Court, Paul D. Carrington
Faculty Scholarship
This essay was published as a chapter in Reforming the Supreme Court: Term Limits for Justices (Paul D. Carrington & Roger Cramton eds, Carolina Academic Press 2006). Its point is that Congress has long neglected its duty implicit in the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers to constrain the tendency of the Court, the academy and the legal profession to inflate the Court's status and power. The term "life tenure" is a significant source of a sense of royal status having not only the adverse cultural effects noted by Nagel, but also doleful effects on the administration and enforcement of …
Congressional Authorization And The War On Terrorism, Curtis A. Bradley, Jack L. Goldsmith
Congressional Authorization And The War On Terrorism, Curtis A. Bradley, Jack L. Goldsmith
Faculty Scholarship
This Article presents a framework for interpreting Congress's September 18, 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), the central statutory enactment related to the war on terrorism. Although both constitutional theory and constitutional practice suggest that the validity of presidential wartime actions depends to a significant degree on their relationship to congressional authorization, the meaning and implications of the AUMF have received little attention in the academic debates over the war on terrorism. The framework presented in this Article builds on the analysis in the Supreme Court's plurality opinion in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, which devoted significant attention to the …
Medellin V. Dretke: Federalism And International Law, Curtis A. Bradley, Lori Fisler Damrosch, Martin Flaherty
Medellin V. Dretke: Federalism And International Law, Curtis A. Bradley, Lori Fisler Damrosch, Martin Flaherty
Faculty Scholarship
This is an edited version of a debate held at Columbia Law School on February 21, 2005.
Constitutional Existence Conditions And Judicial Review, Matthew D. Adler, Michael C. Dorf
Constitutional Existence Conditions And Judicial Review, Matthew D. Adler, Michael C. Dorf
Faculty Scholarship
Although critics of judicial review sometimes call for making the entire Constitution nonjusticiable, many familiar norms of constitutional law state what we call "existence conditions" that are necessarily enforced by judicial actors charged with the responsibility of applying, and thus as a preliminary step, identifying, propositions of sub-constitutional law such as statutes. Article I, Section 7, which sets forth the procedures by which a bill becomes a law, is an example: a putative law that did not go through the Article I, Section 7 process and does not satisfy an alternative test for legal validity (such as the treaty-making provision …
Constitutional Pluralism And Democratic Politics: Reflections On The Interpretive Approach Of Baker V. Carr, Guy-Uriel Charles
Constitutional Pluralism And Democratic Politics: Reflections On The Interpretive Approach Of Baker V. Carr, Guy-Uriel Charles
Faculty Scholarship
Baker v. Carr is one of the Supreme Court's most important opinions, not least because its advent signaled the constitutionalization of democracy. Unfortunately, as is typical of the Court's numerous forays into democratic politics, the decision is not accompanied by an apparent vision of the relationship among democratic practice, constitutional law, and democratic theory. In this Article, Professor Charles revisits Baker and provides several democratic principles that he argues justifies the Court's decision to engage the democratic process. He examines the decision from the perspective of one of its chief contemporary critics, Justice Frankfurter. He sketches an approach, described as …