Legal History Commons^™

Statutory Interpretation In Econotopia, Nathan B. Oman

Nathan B. Oman

Much of the debate in the recent revival of interest in statutory interpretation centers on whether or not courts should use legislative history in construing statutes. The consensus in favor of this practice has come under sharp attack from public choice critics who argue that traditional models of legislative intent are positively and normatively incoherent. This paper argues that in actual practice, courts look at a fairly narrow subset of legislative history. By thinking about the power to write that legislative history as a property right and legislatures as markets, it is possible to use Coase's Theorem and the concept …

The History Of The Florida Supreme Court, Volume 0, M. C. Mirow

M. C. Mirow

The Court-Packing Plan As Symptom, Casualty, And Cause Of Gridlock, Barry Cushman

Barry Cushman

This essay, prepared for the Notre Dame Law Review's Symposium, “The American Congress: Legal Implications of Gridlock,” considers three ways in which President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1937 Court-packing bill was related to the phenomenon of gridlock in the 1930s. First, as FDR's public remarks on the subject demonstrate, he believed that the early New Deal was a victim of partisan gridlock between the Democrat-controlled political branches and the Republican-controlled judiciary. Moreover, he did not believe that the impasse could be overcome through an amendment to the Constitution, for he regarded Article V's supermajority requirements as virtually encoding gridlock into the …

Class Actions And The Counterrevolution Against Federal Litigation, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang

Sean Farhang

In this article we situate consideration of class actions in a framework, and fortify it with data, that we have developed as part of a larger project, the goal of which is to assess the counterrevolution against private enforcement of federal law from an institutional perspective. In a series of articles emerging from the project, we have documented how the Executive, Congress and the Supreme Court (wielding both judicial power under Article III of the Constitution and delegated legislative power under the Rules Enabling Act) fared in efforts to reverse or dull the effects of statutory and other incentives for …

Foreword, 37 J. Marshall L. Rev. 317 (2004), Samuel R. Olken

Samuel R. Olken

No abstract provided.

Justice George Sutherland And Economic Liberty: Constitutional Conservatism And The Problem Of Factions, 6 Wm. & Mary Bill Rts. J. 1 (1997), Samuel R. Olken

Samuel R. Olken

Most scholars have viewed Justice George Sutherland as a conservative jurist who opposed government regulation because of his adherence to laissez-faire economics and Social Darwinism, or because of his devotion to natural rights. In this Article, Professor Olken analyzes these widely held misperceptions of Justice Sutherland's economic liberty jurisprudence, which was based not on socio-economic theory, but on historical experience and common law. Justice Sutherland, consistent with the judicial conservatism of the Lochner era, wanted to protect individual rights from the whims of political factions and changing democratic majorities. The Lochner era differentiation between government regulations enacted for the public …

The Ironies Of Marbury V. Madison And John Marshall's Judicial Statesmanship, 37 J. Marshall L. Rev. 391 (2004), Samuel R. Olken

Samuel R. Olken

No abstract provided.

The Business Of Expression: Economic Liberty, Political Factions And The Forgotten First Amendment Legacy Of Justice George Sutherland, 10 Wm. & Mary Bill Rts. J. 249 (2002), Samuel R. Olken

Samuel R. Olken

In The Business of Expression: Economic Liberty, Political Factions And The Forgotten First Amendment Legacy of Justice George Sutherland, Samuel Olken traces the dichotomy that emerged in constitutional law in the aftermath of the Lochner era between economic liberty and freedom of expression. During the 1930s, while a deeply divided United States Supreme Court adopted a laissez faire approach to economic regulation, it viewed with great suspicion laws that restricted the manner and content of expression. During this period, Justice George Sutherland often clashed with the majority consistently insisting that state regulation of private economic rights bear a close and …

Chief Justice John Marshall And The Course Of American Constitutional History, 33 J. Marshall L. Rev. 743 (2000), Samuel R. Olken

Samuel R. Olken

No abstract provided.

Chief Justice John Marshall In Historical Perspective, 31 J. Marshall L. Rev. 137 (1997), Samuel R. Olken

Samuel R. Olken

No abstract provided.

America The Eusocial, 49 New Eng. L. Rev. On Remand 71 (2015), Timothy P. O'Neill

Timothy P. O'Neill

No abstract provided.

“Stop Me Before I Get Reversed Again”: The Failure Of Illinois Appellate Courts To Protect Their Criminal Decisions From United States Supreme Court Review, 36 Loy. U. Chi. L.J. 893 (2005), Timothy P. O'Neill

Timothy P. O'Neill

No abstract provided.

How Leadership In International Criminal Law Is Shifting From The United States To Europe And Asia: An Analysis Of Spending On And Contributions To International Criminal Courts, 55 St. Louis U. L.J. 953 (2011), Stuart K. Ford

Stuart Ford

No abstract provided.

The Supreme Court 1997 Term -- Foreword: The Limits Of Socratic Deliberation, Michael C. Dorf

Michael C. Dorf

No abstract provided.

Preliminary Thoughts On The Virtues Of Passive Dialogue, Michael Heise

Michael Heise

The judicial, legislative, and executive branches interact in many ways. These interactions fuel a constitutional dialogue that serves as a backdrop to myriad governmental activities, both large and small. The judiciary's participation is necessary, desirable, and, as a practical matter, inevitable. In my article I analyze two competing models that bear on the normative question: What form should the judiciary's participation take? Debates over the judiciary's appropriate role in the public constitutional dialogue have captured scholarly attention for decades. Recent attention has focused on a growing distinction between the active and passive models of judicial participation. My article approaches this …

Designing Judicial Review: A Comment On Schauer, Emily Sherwin

Emily L Sherwin

In his characteristically lucid paper, Neutrality and Judicial Review, Frederick Schauer revisits the meaning and plausibility of Herbert Wechsler’s argument for neutral principles in constitutional adjudication. Unlike some critics, Schauer takes the argument seriously, on its own terms, and does an excellent job of sorting through the different ideas that lie behind it. Schauer identifies four different versions of the argument for neutrality. At least three of these are drawn from Wechsler’s 1959 article. Schauer is particularly interested in a fourth version, which favors neutrality in the design and management of the institution of judicial review.

Some Observations On The Role Of Social Change On The Courts, Gerald Torres

Gerald Torres

No abstract provided.

A Framework For Understanding Property Regulation And Land Use Control From A Dynamic Perspective, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

A Cognitive Theory Of Fiduciary Relationships, Gregory S. Alexander

Gregory S Alexander

Is there anything special or distinctive about fiduciary relationships? Or is the term "fiduciary" nothing more than a label that obscures rather than clarifies? Recently, several law-and-economics scholars, building on the economic literature on agency costs, have argued that nothing categorically distinguishes fiduciary from nonfiduciary legal relationships. So-called fiduciary relationships, they argue, are nothing more or less than contractual relationships. This Essay hypothesizes that courts possess a fairly well-developed schema of the fiduciary role, but have not developed a comparable schema for ordinary contracting parties. The fiduciary role-schema often makes courts more likely to over-interpret behavior of fiduciaries than in …

Historical Framework For Reviving Constitutional Protection For Property And Contract Rights , James L. Kainen

James L. Kainen

Post-New Deal constitutionalism is in search of a theory that justifies judicial intervention on behalf of individual rights while simultaneously avoiding the charge of "Lochnerism."' The dominant historical view dismisses post-bellum substantive due process as an anomalous development in the American constitutional tradition. Under this approach, Lochner represents unbounded protection for economic rights that permitted the judiciary to read laissez faire, pro-business policy preferences into the constitutional text. Today's revisionists have mounted a substantial challenge to the dismissive views of traditionalists. Indeed, some claim Lochner reached the right result, but for the wrong reason. The revisionists characterize substantive due process …

Impeachment Exception To The Exclusionary Rules: Policies, Principles, And Politics, The , James L. Kainen

James L. Kainen

The exclusionary evidence rules derived from the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments continue to play an important role in constitutional criminal procedure, despite the intense controversy that surrounds them. The primary justification for these rules has shifted from an "imperative of judicial integrity" to the "deterrence of police conduct that violates... [constitutional] rights." Regardless of the justification it uses for the rules' existence, the Supreme Court continues to limit their breadth "at the margin," when "the acknowledged costs to other values vital to a rational system of criminal justice" outweigh the deterrent effects of exclusion. The most notable limitation on …

Truth, Deterrence, And The Impeachment Exception , James L. Kainen

James L. Kainen

James v. Illinois permits illegally-obtained evidence to impeach defendants, but not defense witnesses. Thus far, all courts have construed James to allow impeachment of defendants' hearsay declarations. This article argues against allowing illegally-obtained evidence to impeach defendants' hearsay declarations because doing so unduly diminishes the exclusionary rule's deterrent effect. The distinction between impeaching defendants and defense witnesses disappears when courts allow prosecutors to impeach defendants' hearsay declarations. Because defense witnesses report exculpatory conduct of a defendant who always has a substantial interest in disguising his criminality, their testimony routinely incorporates defendant hearsay. Defense witness testimony thus routinely paves the way …

Nineteenth Century Interpretations Of The Federal Contract Clause: The Transformation From Vested To Substantive Rights Against The State , James L. Kainen

James L. Kainen

During the early nineteenth century, the contract clause served as the fundamental source of federally protected rights against the state. Yet the Supreme Court gradually eased many of the restrictions on state power enforced in the contract clause cases while developing the doctrine of substantive due process after the Civil War. By the end of the nineteenth century, the due process clause had usurped the place of the contract clause as the centerpiece in litigation about individual rights. Most analyses of the history of federally protected rights against the state have emphasized the rise of substantive due process to the …

The Jurisprudence Of The Hughes Court: The Recent Literature, Barry Cushman

Barry Cushman

No abstract provided.

Court-Packing And Compromise, Barry Cushman

Barry Cushman

President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1937 Court-packing bill would have permitted him to appoint six additional justices to the Supreme Court, thereby expanding its membership to fifteen immediately. Throughout the ultimately unsuccessful campaign to enact the measure, Roosevelt was presented with numerous opportunities to compromise for a measure authorizing the appointment of fewer additional justices. The President rejected each of these proposals, and his refusal to compromise often has been attributed to stubbornness, overconfidence, or hubris. Yet an examination of the papers of Attorney General Homer S. Cummings reveals why FDR and his advisors believed that he required no fewer than …

Mr. Dooley And Mr. Gallup: Public Opinion And Constitutional Change In The 1930s, Barry Cushman

Barry Cushman

Scholars interested in the development of political and constitutional culture during the 1930s sometimes draw inferences about popular preferences on various issues of social and economic policy from the results of presidential and congressional elections. A review of contemporary public opinion polls taken by George Gallup for the American Institute of Public Opinion and by Elmo Roper for the Fortune Magazine survey offers a more granular understanding of popular views on the public policy issues of the day. This article canvasses all of the public opinion polls taken by Gallup and Roper between 1935, when they began publishing their results, …

Tell Us A Story, But Don't Make It A Good One: Resolving The Confusion Regarding Emotional Stories And Federal Rule Of Evidence 403, Cathren Page

Cathren Page

Abstract: Tell Us a Story, But Don’t Make It A Good One: Resolving the Confusion Regarding Emotional Stories and Federal Rule of Evidence 403 by Cathren Koehlert-Page Courts need to reword their opinions regarding Rule 403 to address the tension between the advice to tell an emotionally evocative story at trial and the notion that evidence can be excluded if it is too emotional. In the murder mystery Mystic River, Dave Boyle is kidnapped in the beginning. The audience feels empathy for Dave who as an adult becomes one of the main suspects in the murder of his friend Jimmy’s …

Conclusion — The Migration Of Legal Ideas: Legislative Design And The Lawmaking Process, Robert Tsai

Robert L Tsai

This is the conclusion for an edited volume on legislative usage of foreign and international law, N. Lupo & L. Scaffardi, Legal Transplants and Parliaments: A Possible Dialogue Amongst Legislators? (2014). I assess the general turn in comparative law studies towards the behavior of elected officials, as well as the preference for increased formality in the use of foreign law. The essays in this book analyze the legal experiences of Brazil, Namibia, Australia, South Africa, Spain, the European Union, China, Canada, Portugal, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Italy. Many of these countries (but not all, especially the U.S.) …

The Mask Of Virtue: Theories Of Aretaic Legislation In A Public Choice Perspective, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

Imagining The Past And Remembering The Future: The Supreme Court's History Of The Establishment Clause, Gerard V. Bradley

Gerard V. Bradley

No abstract provided.