Fourteenth Amendment Commons^™

A History Of Corporate Law Federalism In The Twentieth Century, William W. Bratton

Seattle University Law Review

This Article describes the emergence of corporate law federalism across a long twentieth century. The period begins with New Jersey’s successful initiation of charter competition in 1888 and ends with the enactment of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002. The federalism in question describes the interrelation of state and federal regulation of corporate internal affairs. This Article takes a positive approach, pursuing no normative bottom line. It makes six observations: (1) the federalism describes a division of subject matter, with internal affairs regulated by the states and securities issuance and trading regulated by the federal government; (2) the federalism is an …

The Marijuana Insurgency: Federalism And Social Reframing In Policy Reform, Matthew P. Cavedon

Seattle University Law Review

After fifty years of federal prohibition, marijuana reform efforts have won political and legal success. These victories hold lessons for anyone seeking to resist federal law without being able to directly affect it.

Victory can come from reframing an issue. For marijuana reform, social reframing—not formal legal analysis or material factors—provides the best explanation for how advocates achieved change. Their unconventional political tactics, akin to those used by insurgents in wartime, undercut federal prohibition by winning hearts and minds.

This is an analysis of the sociology of legal change. It is also the story of how ordinary Americans retook personal …

Of Swords, Shields, And A Gun To The Head: Coercing Individuals, But Not States, Aviam Soifer

Seattle University Law Review

This Article begins with a brief reprise of what should be a textual “gotcha” about the Enforcement Clauses of the post-Civil War Amendments—if our current Supreme Court Justices actually cared about original texts, originalism, or a combination of the two. Next, the Article focuses on the gnarled issue of “coercion.” It argues that, contrary to a great deal of Anglo-American legal doctrine, coercion is best understood along a spectrum rather than as a binary phenomenon. Coercion is actually much contested and highly contextual across many legal categories. Federal coercion—also described as commandeering or dragooning— has become a particular constitutional focus …