The Problem Of Democracy In Contexts Of Polarization, 2013 Georgetown Law Center
The Problem Of Democracy In Contexts Of Polarization, Imer Flores
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
In this paper I argue that contemporary democracies all over the world are more polarized than ever and intend to analyze not only the conditions of possibility of a democracy, in general, and in contexts of polarization, in particular, but also the relationship between democracy and polarization. My claim is that polarization, if certain conditions are met, more than a problem it is a great opportunity to democracy and a greater democratization. Hence, I bring to mind that it was Ronald Dworkin, who recently asked about the conditions of possibility of a democracy and its relationship with polarization by developing …
Toward A Jurisprudence Of Law, Peace, Justice, And A Tilt Toward Non-Violent And Empathic Means Of Human Problem Solving, 2013 Georgetown University Law Center
Toward A Jurisprudence Of Law, Peace, Justice, And A Tilt Toward Non-Violent And Empathic Means Of Human Problem Solving, Carrie Menkel-Meadow
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
In this essay the author sets out some questions about whether law can be made a site of encouraging more positive, peace seeking, non-violent, and pro-social behaviors. These questions derive from my own family history, as well as from my experience as a social and political activist, and also as a practicing lawyer and legal scholar. She begins in the introduction by setting out these questions in light of current conditions of domestic and international violence and some past considerations of categories of law. In the second section of this essay the author explains where her questions come from—her personal …
Communicative Content And Legal Content, 2013 Georgetown University Law Center
Communicative Content And Legal Content, Lawrence B. Solum
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
This essay investigates a familiar set of questions about the relationship between legal texts (e.g., constitutions, statutes, opinions, orders, and contracts) and the content of the law (e.g., norms, rules, standards, doctrines, and mandates). Is the original meaning of the constitutional text binding on the Supreme Court when it develops doctrines of constitutional law? Should statutes be given their plain meaning or should judges devise statutory constructions that depart from the text to serve a purpose? What role should default rules play in the interpretation and construction of contracts? This essay makes two moves that can help lawyers and legal …
Bond V. United States: Can The President Increase Congress's Legislative Power By Entering Into A Treaty?, 2013 Georgetown University Law Center
Bond V. United States: Can The President Increase Congress's Legislative Power By Entering Into A Treaty?, Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
The proposition that treaties can increase the power of Congress is inconsistent with the text of the Treaty Clause, the Necessary and Proper Clause, and the Tenth Amendment. It is inconsistent with the fundamental structural principle that "[t]he powers of the legislature are defined, and limited."S It implies, insidiously, that that the President and the Senate can increase their own power by treaty. And it implies, bizarrely, that the President alone--or a foreign government alone--can decrease Congress's power and render federal statutes unconstitutional. Finally, it creates a doubly perverse incentive: an incentive to enter into foreign entanglements simply to increase …
Where Do The Prophets Stand?: Hamdi, Myth And The Master's Tools, 2013 University of Nevada, Las Vegas -- William S. Boyd School of Law
Where Do The Prophets Stand?: Hamdi, Myth And The Master's Tools, Linda H. Edwards
Scholarly Works
No abstract provided.
The Mighty Work Of Making Nations Happy: A Response To James Davison Hunter, 2013 1567
The Mighty Work Of Making Nations Happy: A Response To James Davison Hunter, Patrick Mckinley Brennan
Working Paper Series
This article is an invited response to James Davison Hunter’s much-discussed book To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World (Oxford University Press, 2010). Hunter, a sociologist at UVA and a believing Protestant, claims that law’s capacity to contribute to social change is “mostly illusory” and that Christians, therefore, should practice “faithful presence” in the public square rather than seek to influence law directly. My response is that it is, in fact, law’s stunning ability to alter and limit available choices that makes it an object of deservedly fierce contest. The wild …
Cooperation In Legal Education And Legal Reform, 2013 University of Pittsburgh School of Law
Cooperation In Legal Education And Legal Reform, Ronald A. Brand
Articles
This contribution to the symposium Special Report on Kosovo After the ICJ Opinion focuses on legal education and its role in the legal reform necessary to any state that is transitioning to a new system of government. It does so by considering first the importance of legal education as a U.S. export to transition countries. This necessarily requires a reciprocal consideration of the importance to U.S. law schools of considering the external, international effect of implementing changes in the traditional structure of U.S. legal education, and about how teaching methods both distinguish differing legal systems and require cross-system consideration of …
Comment On “Excessive Ambitions (Ii)” By (Jon Elster), 2013 Duke Law School
Comment On “Excessive Ambitions (Ii)” By (Jon Elster), Donald L. Horowitz
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Error Costs & Ip Law, 2013 University of Georgia School of Law
Error Costs & Ip Law, Joseph S. Miller
Scholarly Works
A court in doubt about an ip statute’s scope can err in two ways. It can wrongly narrow the ip right’s reach, or wrongly broaden it. The latter error, however, is worse: A wrongly broadened ip statute effectively creates new property. To correct erroneous broadening, unlike erroneous narrowing, the legislature must thus eliminate a now-established property right. And that is very hard to do. Courts cannot, of course, avoid making at least some mistakes. Courts can, however, prefer the mistakes that are easier, not harder, for the legislature to correct. This essay explores this error-cost-based approach to ip statutes, as …
State Interests And The Duration Of Abortion Rights, 2013 University of Georgia School of Law
State Interests And The Duration Of Abortion Rights, Randy Beck
Scholarly Works
Few areas of the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence have attracted as much attention in recent decades as the case law recognizing a constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy has exercised more influence over the Court’s abortion jurisprudence than perhaps any other sitting Justice. His jointly authored plurality opinion in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey reaffirmed the basic right to an abortion first recognized in Roe v. Wade, applying that right to regulations effective from the outset of pregnancy. Later opinions, particularly Justice Kennedy’s dissent in Stenberg v. Carhart and his majority opinion in Gonzales v. …
Justice Kennedy's Sixth Amendment Pragmatism, 2013 University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School
Justice Kennedy's Sixth Amendment Pragmatism, Stephanos Bibas
All Faculty Scholarship
This essay, written as part of a symposium on the evolution of Justice Kennedy’s jurisprudence, surveys three areas of criminal procedure under the Sixth Amendment: sentence enhancements, the admissibility of hearsay, and the regulation of defense counsel’s responsibilities. In each area, Justice Kennedy has been a notable voice of pragmatism, focusing not on bygone analogies to the eighteenth century but on a hard-headed appreciation of the twenty-first. He has shown sensitivity to modern criminal practice, prevailing professional norms, and practical constraints, as befits a Justice who came to the bench with many years of private-practice experience. His touchstone is not …
Political And Constitutional Obligation, 2013 Georgetown University Law Center
Political And Constitutional Obligation, Louis Michael Seidman
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
In his provocative, courageous, and original new book, "Against Obligation: The Multiple Sources of Authority in a Liberal Democracy," Abner Greene argues that there is “no successful general case for a presumptive (or ‘prima facie’) moral duty to obey the law.” In my own book, "On Constitutional Disobedience," I argue that there is no moral duty to obey our foundational law–the Constitution of the United States. This brief article, prepared for a symposium on the two books to be published by the Boston University Law Review, I address three issues related to these claims. First, I discuss what seem to …
The Promises Of Freedom: The Contemporary Relevance Of The Thirteenth Amendment, 2013 University of PIttsburgh School of Law
The Promises Of Freedom: The Contemporary Relevance Of The Thirteenth Amendment, William M. Carter Jr.
Articles
This article, an expanded version of the author's remarks at the 2013 Honorable Clifford Scott Green Lecture at the Temple University Beasley School of Law, illuminates the history and the context of the Thirteenth Amendment. This article contends that the full scope of the Thirteenth Amendment has yet to be realized and offers reflections on why it remains an underenforced constitutional norm. Finally, this article demonstrates the relevance of the Thirteenth Amendment to addressing contemporary forms of racial inequality and subordination.
The Moonscape Of Tax Equality: Windsor And Behyond, 2013 University of Pittsburgh School of Law
The Moonscape Of Tax Equality: Windsor And Behyond, Anthony C. Infanti
Articles
This essay takes a critical look at the tax fallout from the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Windsor, which declared section three of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutional. The essay is important because, while other federal laws will apply to some same-sex couples some of the time, the federal tax laws are a concern for all same-sex couples all of the time. The essay is timely because it addresses the recently issued IRS guidance regarding the tax treatment of same-sex couples.
In this essay, I first describe the path that led to the decision …
Special Report: Kosovo After The Icj Opinion, Introduction, 2013 University of Pittsburgh School of Law
Special Report: Kosovo After The Icj Opinion, Introduction, Ronald A. Brand
Articles
On October 22-25, 2012, judges, government officials, and scholars from Kosovo and the United States gathered at the University of Pittsburgh for a conference on “Kosovo after the ICJ Opinion.” The conference was organized by the Center for International Legal Education (CILE) at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, and the University of Prishtina Faculty of Law. It was co-sponsored by the Ministry of Justice, Kosovo; the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Kosovo; the Forum for Civic Initiatives, Kosovo; the American Society of International Law (ASIL); and the Center for Russian and Eastern European Studies at the University of Pittsburgh …
Prosecutor V. Perišić, Case No. It-04-81-A, International Criminal Tribunal For The Former Yugoslavia, 2013 Southern Methodist University, Dedman School of Law
Prosecutor V. Perišić, Case No. It-04-81-A, International Criminal Tribunal For The Former Yugoslavia, Chris Jenks
Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters
This note introduces a controversial ICTY decision which attempted to clarify the requisite elements required to convict the former head of the Army of Yugoslavia with aiding and abetting war crimes committed by other organizations in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia. The Perišić judgment serves as a reminder of the still unsettled nature of international criminal law on even threshold issues like the elements for a mode of liability. Given that the Special Court for Sierra Leone has already affirmatively rejected the Perišić formulation the case may, sadly, signal the fragmentation of international criminal law.
Introductory Note To Prosecutor V. Perišić, International Criminal Tribunal For The Former Yugoslavia (Icty), 2013 Southern Methodist University, Dedman School of Law
Introductory Note To Prosecutor V. Perišić, International Criminal Tribunal For The Former Yugoslavia (Icty), Chris Jenks
Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters
This note introduces a controversial ICTY decision which attempted to clarify the requisite elements required to convict the former head of the Army of Yugoslavia with aiding and abetting war crimes committed by other organizations in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia. The Perišić judgment serves as a reminder of the still unsettled nature of international criminal law on even threshold issues like the elements for a mode of liability. Given that the Special Court for Sierra Leone has already affirmatively rejected the Perišić fomulation the case may, sadly, signal the fragmentation of international criminal law.
The New Textualism, Progressive Constitutionalism, And Abortion Rights: A Reply To Jeffrey Rosen, 2013 Duke Law School
The New Textualism, Progressive Constitutionalism, And Abortion Rights: A Reply To Jeffrey Rosen, Neil S. Siegel
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Concepts Of Law, 2013 Duke Law School
Concepts Of Law, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Mark Turner
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Suboptimal Social Science And Judicial Precedent, 2013 Duke Law
Suboptimal Social Science And Judicial Precedent, Ben Grunwald
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.