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State Action Doctrine And The Logic Of Constitutional Containment, Jud Mathews
State Action Doctrine And The Logic Of Constitutional Containment, Jud Mathews
Jud Mathews
Deriding the state action doctrine is one of the great pastimes of American constitutional law. It has been described as a shamble and "incoherent." On its face, the core concept seems straightforward enough constitutional rights are rights against the government. But what counts as the "state action" that triggers the protection of rights seems to shift, maddeningly, from case to case in the Supreme Court's state action jurisprudence.In this article, I aim to help make some sense of why the state action doctrine has developed as it has by setting it in a comparative and historical frame. It can be …
All Things In Proportion - American Rights Review And The Problem Of Balancing, Jud Mathews, Alec Stone Sweet
All Things In Proportion - American Rights Review And The Problem Of Balancing, Jud Mathews, Alec Stone Sweet
Jud Mathews
This paper describes and evaluates the evolution of rights doctrines in the United States, focusing on the problem of balancing as a mode of rights adjudication. In the current Supreme Court, deep conflict over whether, when, and how courts balance is omnipresent. Elsewhere, we find that the world’s most powerful constitutional courts have embraced a stable, analytical procedure for balancing, known as proportionality. Today, proportionality analysis (PA) constitutes the defining doctrinal core of a transnational, rights-based constitutionalism. This Article critically examines alleged American exceptionalism, from the standpoint of comparative constitutional law and practice. Part II provides an overview of how …
Proportionality Balancing And Global Constitutionalism, Jud Mathews, Alec Stone Sweet
Proportionality Balancing And Global Constitutionalism, Jud Mathews, Alec Stone Sweet
Jud Mathews
Over the past fifty years, proportionality balancing – an analytical procedure akin to strict scrutiny in the United States – has become a dominant technique of rights adjudication in the world. From German origins, proportionality analysis spread across Europe, into Commonwealth systems (Canada, New Zealand, South Africa), and Israel; it has also migrated to treaty-based regimes, including the European Union, the European Convention on Human Rights, and the World Trade Organization. Part II proposes a theory of why judges are attracted to the procedure, an account that blends strategic and normative elements. Parts III and IV provide a genealogy of …