Law Commons^™

Mending Holes In The Rule Of (Administrative) Law, Evan J. Criddle

NULR Online

The past decade has witnessed a surge of interest in Carl Schmitt’s controversial assertion that the rule of law inevitably bends under the demands of state necessity during national emergencies. According to Schmitt, legal norms cannot constrain sovereign discretion during emergencies because “the precise details of an emergency cannot be anticipated” in advance. The sovereign must therefore possess unfettered discretion to determine both “whether there is an extreme emergency” and “what must be done to eliminate it.”

Few legal scholars have embraced Schmitt’s theory of emergencies with the enthusiasm and sophistication of Adrian Vermeule, the John H. Watson, Jr. Professor …

Evolutionary Due Process, Louis J. Virelli Iii

NULR Online

The issue of evolution instruction in American public schools is becoming increasingly complex, both legally and politically. Until recently, the controversy over whether and how to teach evolution in public school science classes has been singularly focused on the constitutional limits of government support for religion under the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. Current measures in Louisiana and Texas, however, represent a shift toward a new “adjudicative model” for addressing questions of evolution instruction. This adjudicative model permits individual educators to treat evolution issues on a case-by-case basis, which, in turn, implicates a new constitutional issue in the evolution education debate: …