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Full-Text Articles in Jurisprudence

Escaping The Expression-Equality Conundrum: Toward Anti-Orthodoxy And Inclusion, Nan D. Hunter Jan 2000

Escaping The Expression-Equality Conundrum: Toward Anti-Orthodoxy And Inclusion, Nan D. Hunter

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this article, Professor Hunter questions the naturalness and inevitability of the dichotomy in constitutional law between freedom of expression and the right to equality. She places the origin of this doctrinal divergence in the history of American social protest movements in the first half of the twentieth century, which began with ideologically-based claims and shifted to a primary emphasis on identity-based equality claims. During the interim period between World War I and World War I, the wave of seminal First Amendment cases was ebbing and the wave of equality claims was beginning to swell. Close examination of the constitutional …


Eleventh Amendment Schizophrenia, Carlos Manuel Vázquez Jan 2000

Eleventh Amendment Schizophrenia, Carlos Manuel Vázquez

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article argues that conflicting analytical strains run through the Supreme Court's recent majority opinions in the area of state sovereign immunity. The "supremacy" strain stresses that, despite the Eleventh Amendment, the states remain obligated to comply with federal law, and that the Constitution envisions the "necessary judicial means" to enforce these obligations against the state. These means include suits by the federal government, private suits for injunctive relief, and suits seeking damages from state officials in their individual capacities. Thus, according to the supremacy strain, state sovereign immunity is unimportant because it merely bars unnecessary means of enforcing the …


Impeachment As Congressional Constitutional Interpretation, Neal K. Katyal Jan 2000

Impeachment As Congressional Constitutional Interpretation, Neal K. Katyal

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Constitutionalists have assumed, too quickly in my view, that symmetry should exist between the interpretive styles of the courts and Congress. This assumption, which I shall call the myth of interpretive symmetry, slights the many reasons why an interpretive method may work well in one area and not work as well in another. Instead of mapping out all these possible divergences, I illustrate the point with three examples: the roles of history, precedent, and moral philosophy. I show how, in each instance, arguments can be made to suggest that divergent institutional roles should be taken into account in formulating a …


Are There Nothing But Texts In This Class? Interpreting The Interpretive Turns In Legal Thought, Robin West Jan 2000

Are There Nothing But Texts In This Class? Interpreting The Interpretive Turns In Legal Thought, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Allan Hutchinson remarks at the beginning of his interesting article that Gadamer's writings have had only a peripheral influence on legal scholarship -- only occasionally cited, and then begrudgingly so, and never given the serious attention they deserve or require. Nevertheless, Hutchinson acknowledges, Gadamerian influences can be noted -- particularly in the now widely shared understanding that adjudication is, fundamentally, an interpretive exercise. Even with this qualification, though, I think Hutchinson understates Gadamer's impact. Whatever may be true of Gadamer's influence in other disciplines, his influence in law has been unambiguously both broad and deep -- although it has come …