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Full-Text Articles in Law

Presidential Primacy Amidst Democratic Decline, Ashraf Ahmed, Karen M. Tani Jan 2021

Presidential Primacy Amidst Democratic Decline, Ashraf Ahmed, Karen M. Tani

Faculty Scholarship

Fifty years ago, when the Harvard Law Review asked Professor Harry Kalven, Jr., to take stock of the Supreme Court’s 1970 Term, Kalven faced a task not unlike Professor Cristina Rodríguez’s. That Term’s Court had two new members, Justices Harry Blackmun and Warren Burger. The Nixon Administration was young, but clearly bent on making its own stamp on American law, including via the Supreme Court. Kalven thus expected to see “dislocations” when he reviewed the Court’s recent handiwork. He reported the opposite. Surveying a Term that included such cases as Palmer v. Thompson, Younger v. Harris, Boddie v. …


Deregulation And Private Enforcement, Brian T. Fitzpatrick Jan 2020

Deregulation And Private Enforcement, Brian T. Fitzpatrick

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Many conservatives oppose much of the administrative state. But many also oppose much of our private enforcement regime. This raises the questions of whether conservatives believe the marketplace should be policed at all, and if so, who exactly should do that policing? In this Essay, based on my new book, The Conservative Case for Class Actions, I take a deep dive into conservative principles to try to answer these questions. I conclude that almost all conservatives believe the marketplace needs at least some legal constraints, and I argue that ex post, private enforcement is superior to the alternatives. Not only …


Towards Optimal Enforcement, Kent H. Barnett Jan 2019

Towards Optimal Enforcement, Kent H. Barnett

Scholarly Works

In Private Enforcement in Administrative Courts, Professor Michael Sant'Ambrogio argues that a hybrid private/public enforcement model in agency proceedings may provide the best hope of achieving optimal federal law enforcement. In other words, a blunderbuss approach of choosing public enforcement or private enforcement (whether in judicial or agency proceedings) is unlikely to prove ideal. He identifies various tools--such as agencies' role in the review or initiation of proceedings, or the use of class-wide proceedings--that Congress or agencies can use to calibrate agency enforcement to its optimal design. I consider three additional tools that may optimize enforcement goals with hybrid public …


Public Regulation Of Private Enforcement: Empirical Analysis Of Doj Oversight Of Qui Tam Litigation Under The False Claims Act, David Freeman Engstrom Jan 2015

Public Regulation Of Private Enforcement: Empirical Analysis Of Doj Oversight Of Qui Tam Litigation Under The False Claims Act, David Freeman Engstrom

Northwestern University Law Review

In recent years, a growing chorus of commentators has called on Congress to vest agencies with litigation “gatekeeper” authority across a range of regulatory areas, from civil rights and antitrust to financial and securities regulation. Agencies, it is said, can rationalize private enforcement regimes through the power to evaluate lawsuits on a case-bycase basis, blocking bad cases, aiding good ones, and otherwise husbanding private enforcement capacity in ways that conserve scarce public resources for other uses. Yet there exists strikingly little theory or evidence on how agency gatekeeper authority might work in practice. This Article begins to fill that gap …


In Defense Of Idea Due Process, Mark Weber Jan 2014

In Defense Of Idea Due Process, Mark Weber

College of Law Faculty

Due Process hearing rights under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act are under attack. A major professional group and several academic commentators charge that the hearings system advantages middle class parents, that it is expensive, that it is futile, and that it is unmanageable. Some critics would abandon individual rights to a hearing and review in favor of bureaucratic enforcement or administrative mechanisms that do not include the right to an individual hearing before a neutral decision maker. This Article defends the right to a due process hearing. It contends that some criticisms of hearing rights are simply erroneous, and …


In Defense Of Idea Due Process, Mark C. Weber Jan 2014

In Defense Of Idea Due Process, Mark C. Weber

Mark C. Weber

Due Process hearing rights under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act are under attack. A major professional group and several academic commentators charge that the hearings system advantages middle class parents, that it is expensive, that it is futile, and that it is unmanageable. Some critics would abandon individual rights to a hearing and review in favor of bureaucratic enforcement or administrative mechanisms that do not include the right to an individual hearing before a neutral decision maker. This Article defends the right to a due process hearing. It contends that some criticisms of hearing rights are simply erroneous, and …


Beyond The Private Attorney General: Equality Directives In American Law, Olatunde C.A. Johnson Jan 2012

Beyond The Private Attorney General: Equality Directives In American Law, Olatunde C.A. Johnson

Faculty Scholarship

American civil rights regulation is generally understood as relying on private enforcement in courts rather than imposing positive duties on state actors to further equity goals. This Article argues that this dominant conception of American civil rights regulation is incomplete. American civil rights regulation also contains a set of "equality directives," whose emergence and reach in recent years have gone unrecognized in the commentary. These federal-level equality directives use administrative tools of conditioned spending, policymaking, and oversight powerfully to promote substantive inclusion with regard to race, ethnicity, language, and disability. These directives move beyond the constraints of the standard private …