Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 4 of 4
Full-Text Articles in Jurisprudence
Samantar And Executive Power, Peter B. Rutledge
Samantar And Executive Power, Peter B. Rutledge
Scholarly Works
This essay examines Samantar v. Yousuf in the context of broader debate about the relationship between federal common law and executive power. Samantar represents simply the latest effort by the Executive Branch to literally shape the meaning of law through a process referred to in the literature as “executive lawmaking.” While traditional accounts of executive lawmaking typically have treated the idea as a singular concept, Samantar demonstrates the need to bifurcate the concept into at least two different categories: acts of executive lawmaking decoupled from pending litigation and acts of executive lawmaking taken expressly in response to litigation. As Samantar …
Samantar, Official Immunity And Federal Common Law, Peter B. Rutledge
Samantar, Official Immunity And Federal Common Law, Peter B. Rutledge
Scholarly Works
This essay examines the theoretical underpinnings of the immunity of foreign government officials following the Supreme Court's recent decision in Samantar. Part of a forthcoming symposium with the Lewis and Clark Law Review, the paper tackles the federal common law in the Court's decision and, more broadly, international civil litigation. It criticizes the Court's unexamined assumption that its federal common law power extended to create an immunity that, at best, coexists only uncomfortably alongside the legislative framework of the FSIA. It explains the problematic implications of this assertion of federal common law, both for suits against foreign officials and for …
Self-Conscious Dicta: The Origins Of Roe V. Wade’S Trimester Framework, Randy Beck
Self-Conscious Dicta: The Origins Of Roe V. Wade’S Trimester Framework, Randy Beck
Scholarly Works
One of the controversies arising from Roe v. Wade (1973), has concerned whether the conclusions undergirding the opinion's “trimester framework” should be considered part of the holding of the case, or instead classified as dicta. Different Supreme Court opinions have spoken to this question in different ways. This article reviews materials from the files of Justices who participated in Roe, seeking insight as to what the Court thought about the issue at the time. The article concludes that Justices in the Roe majority understood the opinion’s trimester framework to consist largely of dicta, unnecessary to a ruling on the constitutionality …
Wilderness, The Courts And The Effect Of Politics On Judicial Decisionmaking, Peter A. Appel
Wilderness, The Courts And The Effect Of Politics On Judicial Decisionmaking, Peter A. Appel
Scholarly Works
Empirical analyses of cases from federal courts have attempted to determine the effect of judges’ political ideology on their decisions. This question holds interest for scholars from many disciplines. Investigating judicial review of the actions of administrative agencies should provide strong evidence on the question of political influence because applicable rules of judicial deference to administrative decisions ought to lead judges to reach politically neutral results. Yet several studies have found a strong correlation between results in these cases and proxies for political ideology. Cases involving the interpretation of environmental law have been of particular interest as a subset of …