Jurisdiction Commons^™

Erie’S Four Functions: Reframing Choice Of Law In Federal Courts, Allan Erbsen

Notre Dame Law Review

This Article seeks to mitigate decades of confusion about the Erie doctrine’s purposes, justifications, and content. The Article shows that “Erie” is a misleading label encompassing four distinct components. Jumbling these components under a single heading obscures their individual nuances. Analyzing each component separately helps to clarify questions and values that should animate judicial analysis. The Article thus reconceptualizes the Erie doctrine, offers a more precise account of how Erie operates, and provides a framework for rethinking several foundational aspects of Erie jurisprudence.

2013 marks Erie’s seventy-fifth anniversary. The years have not been kind to Erie and its progeny. Decades …

The Rule Of Law And The Judicial Function In The World Today, Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain

Notre Dame Law Review

The world’s oldest written constitution still in effect has many inspiring lines, but perhaps the one that most stirs the souls of the patriotic appears in Article 30. Delineating a familiar separation of powers, that Article forbids the legislative, executive, and judicial branches from swapping or mixing functions. “[T]o that end”—and here’s the line—“it may be a government of laws and not of men.” John Adams, the author of that line and most of the rest of the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, penned those words in 1779, eight years before the adoption of the second oldest written constitution …