Legal History Commons^™

The Limits Of Process, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article presents four major objections to Jeremy Waldron’s claim that for “Rule of Law” to exist it we must move beyond basic formal requirements that laws be general and knowable rules we can all comply with, towards substantive requirements that when the law imposes its censorial and punitive will upon us, it is applied in a way that acknowledges our intelligence and respects our individual dignity. After challenging Waldron’s claim, the author suggests that if Rule of Law theorizing is intended to capture our ideals of law, then the three paradigms of Rule of Law scholarship that Waldron has …

Originalism And The Natural Born Citizen Clause, Lawrence B. Solum

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The enigmatic phrase "natural born citizen" poses a series of problems for contemporary originalism. New originalists, like Justice Scalia, focus on the public meaning of the constitutional text, but the notion of a "natural born citizen" was likely a term of art, derived from the idea of a "natural born subject" in English law--a category that most likely did not extend to persons, like John McCain, who were born outside sovereign territory. But the constitution speaks of "citizens" and not "subjects," introducing uncertainties and ambiguities that might (or might not) make McCain eligible for the presidency.

What was the original …

Re-Imagining Justice: Progressive Interpretations Of Formal Equality, Rights, And The Rule Of Law, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Resurrecting the neglected question of what we mean by legal justice, this book seeks to re-imagine rather than simply critique contemporary notions of the rule of law, rights and legal equality. A work of reconstruction, it offers a progressive and egalitarian approach to concepts that have become overly associated with the idea of limited government and social conservatism. Focusing on the necessary conditions of cooperative community life, the book presents a vision of law that facilitates rather than frustrates politics, an analysis of rights that boosts our capacities for caring, and an idea of equality that captures a cosmopolitan vision …

Coping With Partiality: Justice, The Rule Of Law, And The Role Of Lawyers, Randy E. Barnett

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Lawyers help ameliorate a particular instance of what the author calls the problem of interest--the partiality problem. For he believes that it falls to law professors to imbue in their students an understanding of the important role that lawyers play in society, if for no other reason than they will need some emotional armament from the slings and arrows of incessant lawyer jokes and worse. In explaining how the existence of lawyers helps address the problem of partiality, the author also explains how adherence to property rights, freedom of contract, and the rule of law--concepts long disparaged by law professors--help …