Jurisprudence Commons^™

Social Costs Of Dobbs' Pro-Adoption Agenda, Malinda L. Seymore

Faculty Scholarship

Abortion opponents have long claimed that women denied access to abortion can simply give their children up for adoption. Justice Alito repeated this argument in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health. Of course, this claim assumes away the burdens of the pregnancy itself, which can result in economic strife, domestic violence, health risks, and potentially death in childbirth. But even on its own terms, the argument that adoption is an adequate substitute for abortion access makes normative assumptions about adoption as a social good in and of itself, ignoring the social costs of adoption for birth parents and adoptees. Idealizing adoption …

Originalism After Dobbs, Bruen, And Kennedy: The Role Of History And Tradition, Randy E. Barnett, Lawrence B. Solum

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In three recent cases, the constitutional concepts of history and tradition have played important roles in the reasoning of the Supreme Court. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization relied on history and tradition to overrule Roe v. Wade. New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen articulated a history and tradition test for the validity of laws regulating the right to bear arms recognized by the Second Amendment. Kennedy v. Bremerton School District looked to history and tradition in formulating the test for the consistency of state action with the Establishment Clause.

These cases raise important questions about …

Twenty Years After Krieger V Law Society Of Alberta: Law Society Discipline Of Crown Prosecutors And Government Lawyers, Andrew Flavelle Martin

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Krieger v. Law Society of Alberta held that provincial and territorial law societies have disciplinary jurisdiction over Crown prosecutors for conduct outside of prosecutorial discretion. The reasoning in Krieger would also apply to government lawyers. The apparent consensus is that law societies rarely exercise that jurisdiction. But in those rare instances, what conduct do Canadian law societies discipline Crown prosecutors and government lawyers for? In this article, I canvass reported disciplinary decisions to demonstrate that, while law societies sometimes discipline Crown prosecutors for violations unique to those lawyers, they often do so for violations applicable to all lawyers — particularly …

Brief Of Amici Curiae Administrative And Federal Regulatory Law Professors In Support Of Respondents, Andrew F. Popper

Amicus Briefs

Amici write to address the first question presented: whether Chevron should be overruled. Properly understood, it should not. Chevron has been much discussed but not always understood. On the one hand, courts have sometimes misapplied the doctrine or failed to understand its legal foundations. On the other, courts and commentators alike have criticized Chevron, often as a result of such aggressive applications. This case provides an opportunity for the Court to clarify what Chevron does and does not entail, while reaffirming the essential role that judicial recognition of constitutionally delegated policymaking authority plays in federal statutory programs. Many of …

Brief Of Scholars Of Administrative Law And The Administrative Procedure Act As Amici Curiae In Support Of Respondents, Jeffrey Lubbers

Amicus Briefs

The principle of judicial deference to agency interpretations of law has been a pillar of this Court's administrative law doctrine for more than a century. This Court's decision in Chevron, U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837 (1984), formalized one version of that principle, creating the two-step framework that is now subject to a multifaceted attack. Among other things, Chevron's opponents argue that the doctrine is at odds with the original public meaning of the Administrative Procedure Act. This is wrong, and the text and history of that landmark statute provide no basis for …

Let The Right Ones In: The Supreme Court's Changing Approach To Justiciability, Richard L. Heppner

Law Faculty Publications

The power of federal courts to act is circumscribed not only by the limits of subject matter jurisdiction, but also by various justiciability doctrines. Article III of the Constitution vests the judicial power of the United States in the Supreme Court and such inferior courts as Congress creates. That power is limited to deciding cases and controversies. It does not permit federal courts to provide advisory opinions when there is not a real dispute between the parties. Based on that constitutional limit, and related prudential concerns, the Court has developed a variety of justiciability requirements limiting which cases can be …

The Court And The Private Plaintiff, Elizabeth Beske

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Two seemingly irreconcilable story arcs have emerged from the Supreme Court over the past decade. First, the Court has definitively taken itself out of the business of creating private rights of action under statutes and the Constitution, decrying such moves as relics of an “ancient regime.” Thus, the Supreme Court has slammed the door on its own ability to craft rights of action under federal statutes and put Bivens, which recognized implied constitutional remedies, into an ever-smaller box. The Court has justified these moves as necessary to keep judges from overstepping their bounds and wading into the province of the …

The Constitution As A Source Of Remedial Law, Carlos Manuel Vázquez

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In Equity’s Constitutional Source, Owen W. Gallogly argues that Article III is the source of a constitutional default rule for equitable remedies—specifically, that Article III’s vesting of the “judicial Power” “in Equity” empowers federal courts to afford the remedies traditionally afforded by the English Court of Chancery at the time of the Founding, and to develop such remedies in an incremental fashion. This Response questions the current plausibility of locating such a default rule in Article III, since remedies having their source in Article III would be available in federal but not state courts and would apply to state-law …

Jazz Improvisation And The Law: Constrained Choice, Sequence, And Strategic Movement Within Rules, William W. Buzbee

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This Article argues that a richer understanding of the nature of law is possible through comparative, analogical examination of legal work and the art of jazz improvisation. This exploration illuminates a middle ground between rule of law aspirations emphasizing stability and determinate meanings and contrasting claims that the untenable alternative is pervasive discretionary or politicized law. In both the law and jazz improvisation settings, the work involves constraining rules, others’ unpredictable actions, and strategic choosing with attention to where a collective creation is going. One expects change and creativity in improvisation, but the many analogous characteristics of law illuminate why …

Walking The Line: The Politics Of Federalism And Environmental Change, Allan C. Hutchinson

Articles & Book Chapters

This short paper looks at the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act decision through a wider and more critical jurisprudential lens. In so doing, I demonstrate that the courts are no less political than legislatures in making decisions about who has the constitutional capacity to decide on how the challenges of climate change should be met. This is not so much a criticism of the Supreme Court of Canada, but an inevitable feature of constitutional law. After introducing the traditional and received explanation of the differences between political decision-making and judicial decision-making, I delve deeper into the Court's opinions and show …

The Fourth Amendment's Constitutional Home, Gerald S. Dickinson

Articles

The home enjoys omnipresent status in American constitutional law. The Bill of Rights, peculiarly, has served as the central refuge for special protections to the home. This constitutional sanctuary has elicited an intriguing textual and doctrinal puzzle. A distinct thread has emerged that runs through the first five amendments delineating the home as a zone where rights emanating from speech, smut, gods, guns, soldiers, searches, sex, and self-incrimination enjoy special protections. However, the thread inexplicably unravels upon arriving at takings. There, the constitutional text omits and the Supreme Court’s doctrine excludes a special zone of safeguards to the home. This …

Alexander Hamilton And Administrative Law: How America’S First Great Public Administrator Informs And Challenges Our Understanding Of Contemporary Administrative Law, Rodger D. Citron

Scholarly Works

Alexander Hamilton’s recognition and reputation have soared since the premiere of “Hamilton,” Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical about him in 2015. For lawyers, Hamilton’s work on the Federalist Papers and service as the nation’s first Treasury Secretary likely stand out more than other aspects of his extraordinary life. Politics and economics were fundamental concerns addressed by the Framers in a number of ways, including what we now refer to as administrative law—the laws and procedures that guide government departments (or, as we say today, agencies). Indeed, “Hamilton” reminds us that questions of administration and administrative law have been with us since the …

Law And Redemption: Expounding And Expanding Robert Cover’S Nomos And Narrative, Samuel J. Levine

Scholarly Works

This Article explores two interrelated themes that distinguish much of Robert Cover's scholarship: reliance on Jewish sources and the redemption of American constitutionalism. Two pieces of Cover's, Nomos and Narrative and Bringing the Messiah Through the Law: A Case Study, explore these themes, providing complementary views on the potential and limitations of the redemptive power of law. In Nomos and Narrative, Cover develops a metaphor of the law as a bridge, linking the actual to the potential. Bringing the Messiah Through the Law: A Case Study extends the metaphor through the lens of Jewish legal history. Building on Cover's foundation, …

The Rule Of Law Under Challenge: The Enmeshment Of National And International Trends, Gregory Shaffer, Wayne Sandholtz

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In a period of rising threats to constitutional government within countries and among them, it is a crucial time to study the rule of law in transnational context. This framework paper defines core concepts, analyzes the relation of national and international law and institutions from a rule-of-law perspective, and assesses the extent to which rule-of-law practices are shifting at the domestic and international levels in parallel. Part I explains our conceptualization of the rule of law, necessary for the orientation of empirical study and policy responses. Following Martin Krygier, we formulate a teleological conception of the rule of law in …

Textualism In Practice, Anita S. Krishnakumar

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

It is by now axiomatic to note that textualism has won the statutory interpretation wars. But contrary to what textualists long have promised, the widespread embrace of textualism as an interpretive methodology has not resulted in any real clarity or predictability about the interpretive path—or even the specific interpretive tools—that courts will invoke in a particular case. Part of the reason for this lack of predictability is that textualism-in-practice often differs significantly from the approach that textualism-in-theory advertises; and part of the reason is that textualism-in-theory is sometimes in tension with itself. In light of textualism’s ascendance—and now dominance—on the …