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Full-Text Articles in Public Law and Legal Theory

Is It Time To Bury Barry? Why An Old Change At The Legislature Requires A New Look At Washington's Nondelegation Doctrine, Daniel A. Himebaugh Sep 2022

Is It Time To Bury Barry? Why An Old Change At The Legislature Requires A New Look At Washington's Nondelegation Doctrine, Daniel A. Himebaugh

Washington Law Review Online

Fifty years ago, the Supreme Court of Washington adopted a relaxed version of the nondelegation doctrine in a case called Barry and Barry v. Department of Motor Vehicles. The Barry rule, which only loosely restricts the delegation of policy-making power from the Legislature to other bodies, is now widely applied in Washington State. However, the Barry Court’s reasons for adjusting the nondelegation doctrine were based on an outdated understanding of the Legislature, especially its regular session schedule. While the Legislature’s regular sessions have changed since 1972—becoming longer and more frequent due to constitutional amendment—the Court has not considered how …


Reasoning V. Rhetoric: The Strange Case Of “Unconstitutional Beyond A Reasonable Doubt”, Hugh D. Spitzer Jan 2022

Reasoning V. Rhetoric: The Strange Case Of “Unconstitutional Beyond A Reasonable Doubt”, Hugh D. Spitzer

Articles

An odd formulation has frequented American constitutional discourse for 125 years: a declaration that courts should not overturn a statute on constitutional grounds unless it is “unconstitutional beyond a reasonable doubt.” This concept has been thought of as a presumption, a standard, a doctrine, or a philosophy of coordinate branch respect and judicial restraint. Yet it has been criticized because “beyond a reasonable doubt” is at root an evidentiary standard of proof in criminal cases rather than a workable theory or standard for deciding constitutional law cases. This article discusses the history and use of “unconstitutional beyond a reasonable doubt,” …


Autonomous Corporate Personhood, Carla L. Reyes Dec 2021

Autonomous Corporate Personhood, Carla L. Reyes

Washington Law Review

Several states have recently changed their business organization law to accommodate autonomous businesses—businesses operated entirely through computer code. A variety of international civil society groups are also actively developing new frameworks— and a model law—for enabling decentralized, autonomous businesses to achieve a corporate or corporate-like status that bestows legal personhood. Meanwhile, various jurisdictions, including the European Union, have considered whether and to what extent artificial intelligence (AI) more broadly should be endowed with personhood to respond to AI’s increasing presence in society. Despite the fairly obvious overlap between the two sets of inquiries, the legal and policy discussions between the …


How Far Will Fara Go? The Foreign Agents Registration Act And The Criminalization Of Global Human Rights Advocacy, Monica Romero Jun 2021

How Far Will Fara Go? The Foreign Agents Registration Act And The Criminalization Of Global Human Rights Advocacy, Monica Romero

Washington Law Review

The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) was enacted and enforced during World War II to protect the American public from foreign propaganda, especially from the Nazi party. Following the war, FARA was scarcely used for over half a century. But in the past five years, there has been a significant uptick in FARA enforcement, particularly against major political personalities. The revival of FARA has led many legislators and scholars to advocate for expansions of FARA’s scope and enforcement mechanisms in the name of national security. But most have failed to acknowledge the risk and likelihood of politicized enforcement. The United …


“Unconstitutional Beyond A Reasonable Doubt” – A Misleading Mantra That Should Be Gone For Good, Hugh Spitzer Jan 2021

“Unconstitutional Beyond A Reasonable Doubt” – A Misleading Mantra That Should Be Gone For Good, Hugh Spitzer

Washington Law Review Online

For a century, Washington State Supreme Court opinions periodically have intoned that the body will not invalidate a statute on constitutional grounds unless it is “unconstitutional beyond a reasonable doubt.” This odd declaration invokes an evidentiary standard of proof as a rule of decision for a legal question of constitutionality, and it confuses practitioners and the public alike. “Unconstitutional beyond a reasonable doubt” is not peculiar to Washington State. Indeed, it began appearing in state court decisions in the early nineteenth century and, rarely, in opinions of the United States Supreme Court. But the use of the phrase rapidly increased …


Breaking The Equilibrium: From Distrust Of Representative Government To An Authoritarian Executive, Gábor Attila Tóth Apr 2019

Breaking The Equilibrium: From Distrust Of Representative Government To An Authoritarian Executive, Gábor Attila Tóth

Washington International Law Journal

Although contemporary populist authoritarians have not entirely abandoned the aims and methods of their ancestors, authoritarianism has been undergoing a reinvention in recent years. Behind a façade of constitutionalism, new authoritarianism claims to abide by democratic principles. Populist authoritarians legitimize themselves through popular elections and maintain the entire set of formal institutions associated with constitutional democracy, using them as both an appearance of representation and a tool of authoritarian imposition. The article focuses on the concepts of trust and distrust of representative government to afford a better understanding of populist authoritarianism. The paper describes two rival theoretical conceptions of government, …


The Resurgence Of Executive Primacy In The Age Of Populism: Introduction To The Symposium, Peter Cane Apr 2019

The Resurgence Of Executive Primacy In The Age Of Populism: Introduction To The Symposium, Peter Cane

Washington International Law Journal

The articles in this issue, devoted to legal and constitutional issues around executive primacy and populism, were first presented at an Advanced Workshop on the Resurgence of Executive Primacy in the Age of Populism, organised by Professor Cheng-Yi Huang and held at the Institutum Jurisprudentiae of the Academica Sinica in Taipei, Taiwan on June 21 and 22, 2018. Scholarly interest in populism has grown over the past thirty years to the point where it could recently be the subject of The Oxford Handbook of Populism, published late in 2017. According to the editors of that volume, the bulk of …


Executive Primacy, Populism, And Public Law, Peter Cane Apr 2019

Executive Primacy, Populism, And Public Law, Peter Cane

Washington International Law Journal

As the articles in this Symposium suggest, populism and authoritarianism present ongoing challenges not only to liberal democracy but also to its legal underpinnings. Manipulation, avoidance, evasion, and outright rejection of the constitutional and legal frameworks of liberal democracy are features of populist authoritarianism. The basic argument of this article is that liberal-democratic public law and legal theory no longer satisfy human needs and desires because they were conceived in worlds that no longer exist, when the main pre-occupation was to secure liberty, not equality. The aim of the article is to explain the inherited structure of our public law …