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Full-Text Articles in Jurisprudence
Communis Opinio And The Methods Of Statutory Interpretation: Interpreting Law Or Changing Law, Michael P. Healy
Communis Opinio And The Methods Of Statutory Interpretation: Interpreting Law Or Changing Law, Michael P. Healy
Law Faculty Scholarly Articles
Interpretive methodology lies at the core of the Supreme Court's persistent modern debate about statutory interpretation. Supreme Court Justices have applied two fundamentally different methods of interpretation. One is the formalist method, which seeks to promote rule-of-law values and purports to constrain the discretion of judges by limiting them to the autonomous legal text. The second is the nonformalist or antiformalist method, which may consider the legislature's intent or purpose or other evidence as context for understanding the statutory text. The debate within the current Court is commonly framed and advanced by Justices Stevens and Scalia. Justice Scalia is now …
Privatization And Political Accountability, Jack M. Beermann
Privatization And Political Accountability, Jack M. Beermann
Faculty Scholarship
This article is an attempt to draw some general connections between privatization and political accountability. Political accountability is to be understood as the amenability of a government policy or activity to monitoring through the political process. Although the main focus of the article is to examine different types of privatization, specifically exploring the ramifications for political accountability of each type, I also engage in some speculation as to whether there are there situations in which privatization might raise constitutional concerns related to the degree to which the particular privatization reduces political accountability for the actions or decisions of the newly …