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Full-Text Articles in Law
Recovering The Lost General Welfare Clause, David S. Schwartz
Recovering The Lost General Welfare Clause, David S. Schwartz
William & Mary Law Review
The General Welfare Clause of Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 of the Constitution enumerates a power to “provide for the common defense and general welfare.” A literal interpretation of this clause (“the general welfare interpretation”) would authorize Congress to legislate for any national purpose, and therefore to address all national problems— for example, the COVID-19 pandemic—in ways that would be precluded under the prevailing understanding of limited enumerated powers. But conventional doctrine rejects the general welfare interpretation and construes the General Welfare Clause to confer the so-called “Spending Power,” a power only to spend, but not to regulate, for …
State Regulations Are Failing Our Children: An Analysis Of Child Marriage Laws In The United States, Rachel L. Schuman
State Regulations Are Failing Our Children: An Analysis Of Child Marriage Laws In The United States, Rachel L. Schuman
William & Mary Law Review
No abstract provided.
Enforcing Principled Constitutional Limits On Federal Power: A Neo-Federalist Refinement Of Justice Cardozo's Jurisprudence, Robert J. Pushaw Jr.
Enforcing Principled Constitutional Limits On Federal Power: A Neo-Federalist Refinement Of Justice Cardozo's Jurisprudence, Robert J. Pushaw Jr.
William & Mary Law Review
Since the New Deal of the mid-1930s, Congress has asserted virtually absolute power to (1) “regulate Commerce ... among the States,” (2) tax and spend for the “general Welfare,” and (3) delegate “legislative Power[ ]” to the executive branch. From 1937 until 1994, the Supreme Court rejected every claim that such statutes had exceeded Congress’s Article I authority and usurped the states’ reserved powers under the Tenth Amendment. Over the past quarter century, conservative Justices have tried, and failed, to develop principled constitutional limits on the federal government while keeping the modern administrative and social welfare state largely intact.
The …
The Theory And Practice Of Contestatory Federalism, James A. Gardner
The Theory And Practice Of Contestatory Federalism, James A. Gardner
William & Mary Law Review
Madisonian theory holds that a federal division of power is necessary to the protection of liberty, but that federalism is a naturally unstable form of government organization that is in constant danger of collapsing into either unitarism or fragmentation. Despite its inherent instability, this condition may be permanently maintained, according to Madison, through a constitutional design that keeps the system in equipoise by institutionalizing a form of perpetual contestation between national and subnational governments. The theory, however, does not specify how that contestation actually occurs, and by what means.
This paper investigates Madison’s hypothesis by documenting the methods actually deployed …
Pricing The Fourth Amendment, Miriam H. Baer
Pricing The Fourth Amendment, Miriam H. Baer
William & Mary Law Review
Critics have long decried the Fourth Amendment’s lack of an adequate remedy to secure its compliance. Neither the exclusionary rule nor the threat of civil liability deters police misconduct, leaving scholars to cast about for alternative measures. The emphasis on penalties, however, overlooks a different problem: detection. Because of policing’s fast-paced nature, even so-called “flagrant” Fourth Amendment violations trigger insufficient liability due to low probabilities of detection.
This Article addresses this problem by drawing on the Pigouvian tax literature. The Pigouvian tax—sometimes referred to as a “corrective tax”—is a pricing instrument imposed by regulators in an amount equal to the …
Implementing Enumeration, Andrew Coan
Implementing Enumeration, Andrew Coan
William & Mary Law Review
The enumeration of legislative powers in Article I of the U.S. Constitution implies that those powers must have limits. This familiar “enumeration principle” has deep roots in American constitutional history and has played a central role in recent federalism decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court. Courts and commentators, however, have seldom rigorously considered what follows from embracing it. The answer is by no means straightforward. The enumeration principle tells us that federal power must be subject to some limit, but it does not tell us what that limit should be. Nor does it tell us how the Constitution’s commitment to …
The Federal Circuit As A Federal Court, Paul R. Gugliuzza
The Federal Circuit As A Federal Court, Paul R. Gugliuzza
William & Mary Law Review
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has exclusive jurisdiction over patent appeals and, as a consequence, the last word on many legal issues important to innovation policy. This Article shows how the Federal Circuit augments its already significant power by impeding other government institutions from influencing the patent system. Specifically, the Federal Circuit has shaped patent-law doctrine, along with rules of jurisdiction, procedure, and administrative law, to preserve and expand the court's power in four interinstitutional relationships: the court's federalism relationship with state courts, its separation of powers relationship with the executive and legislative branches, its vertical …
Valid Rule Due Process Challenges: Bond V. United States And Erie's Constitutional Source, Kermit Roosevelt Iii
Valid Rule Due Process Challenges: Bond V. United States And Erie's Constitutional Source, Kermit Roosevelt Iii
William & Mary Law Review
No abstract provided.
A General Theory Of Governance: Due Process And Lawmaking Power, Louise Weinberg
A General Theory Of Governance: Due Process And Lawmaking Power, Louise Weinberg
William & Mary Law Review
This Article proposes a general theory describing the nature and sources of law in American courts. Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins is rejected for this purpose. Better, more general theory is available, flowing from the Due Process Clauses. At its narrowest, the proposed theory is consonant with Erie but generalizes it, embracing federal as well as state law and statutory as well as decisional law in both state and federal courts. More broadly, beyond this unification of systemic thinking, the interest-analytic methodology characteristic of due process extends to a range of substantive constitutional problems. These include problems concerning both the …
Our Federalism(S), Heather K. Gerken
The Role Of Charity In A Federal System, Brian Galle
The Role Of Charity In A Federal System, Brian Galle
William & Mary Law Review
This Article critiques the prevailing justification for subsidies for the charitable sector and suggests a new alternative. Existing rationales are based on an economic model that assumes a single government whose decisions are guided by a single median voter. I argue that this theory is unpersuasive when translated to federal systems, such as the United States, in which there may instead be thousands of competing local governments.
I then attempt to construct a theory of the charitable sector that takes account of interactions between charity, local government, and national government. In this revised account, charity is most important when federalism …
Federalism Under Obama, Gillian E. Metzger
Federalism Under Obama, Gillian E. Metzger
William & Mary Law Review
No abstract provided.
Laws For Learning In An Age Of Acceleration, John O. Mcginnis
Laws For Learning In An Age Of Acceleration, John O. Mcginnis
William & Mary Law Review
No abstract provided.
Globalization And Structure, Julian Ku, John Yoo
Globalization And Structure, Julian Ku, John Yoo
William & Mary Law Review
No abstract provided.
Federalism, Forum Shopping, And The Foreign Injury Paradox, Elizabeth T. Lear
Federalism, Forum Shopping, And The Foreign Injury Paradox, Elizabeth T. Lear
William & Mary Law Review
This Article explores the contours of state regulatory power in the foreign injury context. The Supreme Court has long declined to question forum choice in domestic cases, apparently concluding that any other response would be inconsistent with our federalism. But move the injury offshore and the judicial deference to state regulatory supremacy evaporates. Federal judges subject forum choice in transnational tort actions to exacting scrutiny, routinely dismissing such claims on forum non conveniens grounds with no examination of the state interests at stake. This Article first considers whether the offshore nature of a foreign injury diminishes or even extinguishes traditional …
Contingent Constitutionalism: State And Local Criminal Laws And The Applicability Of Federal Constitutional Rights, Wayne A. Logan
Contingent Constitutionalism: State And Local Criminal Laws And The Applicability Of Federal Constitutional Rights, Wayne A. Logan
William & Mary Law Review
Americans have long been bound by a shared sense of constitutional commonality, and the Supreme Court has repeatedly condemned the notion that federal constitutional rights should be allowed to depend on distinct state and local legal norms. In reality, however, federal rights do indeed vary, and they do so as a result of their contingent relationship to the diversity of state and local laws on which they rely. Focusing on criminal procedure rights in particular, this Article examines the benefits and detriments of constitutional contingency, and casts in new light many enduring understandings of American constitutionalism, including the effects of …
Political Judges And Popular Justice: A Conservative Victory Or A Conservative Dilemma?, George D. Brown
Political Judges And Popular Justice: A Conservative Victory Or A Conservative Dilemma?, George D. Brown
William & Mary Law Review
Most of the judges in America are elected. Yet the institution of the elected judiciary is in trouble, perhaps in crisis. The pressures of campaigning, particularly raising money, have produced an intensity of electioneering that many observers see as damaging to the institution itself. In an extraordinary development, four justices of the Supreme Court recently expressed concern over possible loss of trust in state judicial systems. Yet mechanisms that states have put in place to strike a balance between the accountability values of an elected judiciary and rule of law values of unbiased adjudication are increasingly invalidated by the federal …
Federalism, Positive Law, And The Emergence Of The American Administrative State: Prohibition In The Taft Court Era, Robert Post
Federalism, Positive Law, And The Emergence Of The American Administrative State: Prohibition In The Taft Court Era, Robert Post
William & Mary Law Review
This Article offers a detailed analysis of major Taft Court decisions involving prohibition, including Olmstead v. United States, Carroll v. United States, United States v. Lanza, Lambert v. Yellowley, and Tumey v. Ohio. Prohibition, and the Eighteenth Amendment by which it was constitutionally entrenched, was the result of a social movement that fused progressive beliefs in efficiency with conservative beliefs in individual responsibility and self-control.
During the 1920s the Supreme Court was a strictly "bone-dry"institution that regularly sustained the administrative and law enforcement techniques deployed by the federal government in its losing effort to prevent the manufacture and sale of …
"Tucker's Rule": St. George Tucker And The Limited Construction Of Federal Power, Kurt T. Lash
"Tucker's Rule": St. George Tucker And The Limited Construction Of Federal Power, Kurt T. Lash
William & Mary Law Review
No abstract provided.
St. George Tucker And The Limits Of States' Rights Constitutionalism: Understanding The Federal Compact In The Early Republic, David Thomas Konig
St. George Tucker And The Limits Of States' Rights Constitutionalism: Understanding The Federal Compact In The Early Republic, David Thomas Konig
William & Mary Law Review
No abstract provided.
Making Federalism Doctrine: Fidelity, Institutional Competence, And Compensating Adjustments, Ernest A. Young
Making Federalism Doctrine: Fidelity, Institutional Competence, And Compensating Adjustments, Ernest A. Young
William & Mary Law Review
No abstract provided.
Cool Federalism And The Life-Cycle Of Moral Progress, Lawrence G. Sager
Cool Federalism And The Life-Cycle Of Moral Progress, Lawrence G. Sager
William & Mary Law Review
No abstract provided.
Interjurisdictional Enforcement Of Rights In A Post-Erie World, Robert A. Schapiro
Interjurisdictional Enforcement Of Rights In A Post-Erie World, Robert A. Schapiro
William & Mary Law Review
No abstract provided.
Whose Constitution Is It? Why Federalism And Constitutional Positivism Don't Mix, James A. Gardner
Whose Constitution Is It? Why Federalism And Constitutional Positivism Don't Mix, James A. Gardner
William & Mary Law Review
No abstract provided.
Bridging The Enforcement Gap In Constitutional Law: A Critique Of The Supreme Court's Theory That Self-Restraint Promotes Federalism, Robert J. Pushaw Jr.
Bridging The Enforcement Gap In Constitutional Law: A Critique Of The Supreme Court's Theory That Self-Restraint Promotes Federalism, Robert J. Pushaw Jr.
William & Mary Law Review
No abstract provided.
Statehood As The New Personhood: The Discovery Of Fundamental "States' Rights", Timothy Zick
Statehood As The New Personhood: The Discovery Of Fundamental "States' Rights", Timothy Zick
William & Mary Law Review
No abstract provided.
Connecting The Dots: Grutter, School Desegregation, And Federalism, Wendy Parker
Connecting The Dots: Grutter, School Desegregation, And Federalism, Wendy Parker
William & Mary Law Review
No abstract provided.
State Courts As Agents Of Federalism: Power And Interpretation In State Constitutional Law, James A. Gardner
State Courts As Agents Of Federalism: Power And Interpretation In State Constitutional Law, James A. Gardner
William & Mary Law Review
In the American constitutional tradition, federalism is commonly understood as a mechanism designed to institutionalize a kind of permanent struggle between state and national power. The same American constitutional tradition also holds that courts are basically passive institutions whose mission is to apply the law impartially while avoiding inherently political power struggles. These two commonplace understandings conflict on their face. The conflict may be dissolved for federal courts by conceiving their resistance to state authority as the impartial consequence of limitations on state power imposed by the United States Constitution. This reconciliation, however, is unavailable for state courts, which, by …
Federalism And Foreign Affairs: Congress's Power To "Define And Punish...Offenses Against The Law Of Nations", Beth Stephens
Federalism And Foreign Affairs: Congress's Power To "Define And Punish...Offenses Against The Law Of Nations", Beth Stephens
William & Mary Law Review
No abstract provided.
Alden V. Maine And The Jurisprudence Of Structure, Ernest A. Young
Alden V. Maine And The Jurisprudence Of Structure, Ernest A. Young
William & Mary Law Review
No abstract provided.