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Full-Text Articles in Jurisprudence
The Constitution As A Source Of Remedial Law, Carlos Manuel Vázquez
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
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 …
Textualism In Practice, Anita S. Krishnakumar
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 …
The Common Law As Statutory Backdrop, Anita S. Krishnakumar
The Common Law As Statutory Backdrop, Anita S. Krishnakumar
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Amidst the whirl of commentary about how the U.S. Supreme Court has become increasingly textualist and what precise shape modern textualism should take, the Court’s continued reliance on one decidedly atextual interpretive tool has gone largely unnoticed — the common law. Indeed, the common law has played an underappreciated, often dispositive, gap-filling role in statutory interpretation for decades, even as the textualist revolution has sidelined other non-text-focused interpretive tools. But despite the persistent role that the common law has played in statutory interpretation cases, the use of common law rules and definitions as an interpretive resource is surprisingly understudied and …
Deep-State Constitutionalism, Randy E. Barnett
Deep-State Constitutionalism, Randy E. Barnett
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
In this review, I explain how "Common Good Constitutionalism" taps into a deficiency of the conservative legal movement: namely, its exclusive focus on the law "as it is" at the expense of the underlying abstract normative principles that justify the positive law of our written Constitution. Due to this deficiency, the conservative legal movement gives short shrift to the Declaration of Independence and the Ninth Amendment and the natural rights to which both refer. This deficiency is in need of correction. But any such correction does not justify the jettisoning of originalism as Vermeule proposes. Nor does Vermeule defend his …
The Missing Jurisprudence Of The Legislated Constitution, Robin West
The Missing Jurisprudence Of The Legislated Constitution, Robin West
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Does the fourteenth Amendment and its Equal Protection Clause — the promise that "no state shall deny equal protection of the laws" — have any relevance to the progressive project of reducing economic inequality in various spheres of life or, more modestly, of ameliorating the multiple vulnerabilities of this country's poor people? The short answer, I believe, is, it depends. It will depend, in 2020, just as it depends now, on what we mean by the Constitution we are expounding: the Constitution as read and interpreted by courts — the adjudicated Constitution — or what I propose to call the …
"Meet The New Boss": The New Judicial Center, Mark V. Tushnet
"Meet The New Boss": The New Judicial Center, Mark V. Tushnet
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
A document entitled ‘Guidelines on Constitutional Litigation’ published in 1988 by the Reagan era Department of Justice is the springboard for Professor Tushnet's discussion of the Supreme Court's "new center. " The Guidelines urged Department of Justice litigators to foster a nearly exclusive reliance on original understanding in constitutional interpretation and to resort to legislative history only as a last resort. The Guidelines also advised Department of Justice litigators to seek substantive legal changes including more restrictive standing requirements, an end to the creation of unenumerated individual rights, greater constitutional protection of property rights, and greater limits on congressional power. …
The Ideal Of Liberty: A Comment On Michael H. V. Gerald D., Robin West
The Ideal Of Liberty: A Comment On Michael H. V. Gerald D., Robin West
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
What is the meaning and content of the "liberty" protected by the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment? In Michael H. v. Gerald D. Justices Brennan and Scalia spelled out what at first blush appear to be sharply contrasting understandings of the meaning of liberty and of the substantive limits liberty imposes on state action. Justice Scalia argued that the "liberty" protected by a substantive interpretation of due process is only the liberty to engage in activities historically protected against state intervention by firmly entrenched societal traditions. I will sometimes call this the "traditionalist" interpretation of liberty. Justice Brennan, …
The Meaning Of Equality And The Interpretive Turn, Robin West
The Meaning Of Equality And The Interpretive Turn, Robin West
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
The turn to hermeneutics and interpretation in contemporary legal theory has contributed at least two central ideas to modern jurisprudential thought: first, that the "meaning" of a text is invariably indeterminate -- what might be called the indeterminacy claim -- and second, that the unavoidably malleable essence of texts -- their essential inessentiality -- entails that interpreting a text is a necessary part of the process of creating the text's meaning. These insights have generated both considerable angst, and considerable excitement among traditional constitutional scholars, primarily because at least on first blush these two claims seem to inescapably imply a …
Equality Theory, Marital Rape, And The Promise Of The Fourteenth Amendment, Robin West
Equality Theory, Marital Rape, And The Promise Of The Fourteenth Amendment, Robin West
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
During the 1980s a handful of state judges either held or opined in dicta what must be incontrovertible to the feminist community, as well as to most progressive legal advocates and academics: the so-called marital rape exemption, whether statutory or common law in origin, constitutes a denial of a married woman's constitutional right to equal protection under the law. Indeed, a more obvious denial of equal protection is difficult to imagine: the marital rape exemption denies married women protection against violent crime solely on the basis of gender and marital status. What possibly could be less rational than a statute …
Beacon Theatres And The Constitutional Right To Jury Trial, Paul F. Rothstein
Beacon Theatres And The Constitutional Right To Jury Trial, Paul F. Rothstein
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
No abstract provided.