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Full-Text Articles in Jurisprudence
Is Progressive Constitutionalism Possible?, Robin West
Is Progressive Constitutionalism Possible?, Robin West
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Progressivism is in part a particular moral and political response to the sadness of lesser lives, lives unnecessarily diminished by economic, psychic and physical insecurity in the midst of a society or world that offers plenty. This insecurity is unjust and should end; the suffering should be alleviated, and those lives should be enriched. To do so must be one of the goals of a morally just or justifiable state. Not all suffering and not all lesser lives, of course, give rise to such a response. The suffering attendant to accident, disease, war and happenstance is neither entirely chargeable to …
The Vertical Separation Of Powers, Victoria Nourse
The Vertical Separation Of Powers, Victoria Nourse
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Standard understandings of the separation of powers begin with the concept of function. The author argues that function alone cannot predict important changes in structural incentives and thus serves as a poor proxy for assessing real risks to governmental structure. To illustrate this point, the article returns to proposals considered at the Constitutional Convention and considers difficult contemporary cases such as Morrison v. Olson, Clinton v. Jones, and the Supreme Court's more recent federalism decisions. In each instance, function appears to steer us wrong because it fails to understand separation of powers questions as ones of structural incentive …