Law Commons^™

Congress's Power To Promote The Progress Of Science: Eldred V. Ashcroft, Lawrence B. Solum

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This essay investigates the issues raised by Eldred v. Ashcroft, in which the Supreme Court may decide whether the Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) exceeds Congress's authority under that clause. The essay frames the issues in Eldred v. Ashcroft by discussing the history of copyright legislation in general and the CTEA in particular and then summarizing the procedural history of Eldred v. Ashcroft. The essay then undertakes a detailed investigation of the text of the Intellectual Property Clause, with a special emphasis on the interpretation of the clause by the first Congress and early judicial decisions. Three elements …

How Apprendi Affects Institutional Allocations Of Power, Stephanos Bibas

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Commercial Speech And The Unconstitutional Conditions Doctrine: A Second Look At "The Greater Includes The Lesser", Mitchell N. Berman

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Treaties And The Eleventh Amendment, Carlos Manuel Vázquez

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Supreme Court's recent invigoration of federalism doctrine has revived a question that had long lain dormant in constitutional law: whether and to what extent federalism limits apply to exercises of the Treaty Power. In the days before the famous switch in time that saved nine, the Court in Missouri v. Holland upheld a statute passed by Congress to implement a treaty even though it assumed that the statute would exceed Congress's legislative power under Article I in the absence of the treaty. The significance of this holding abated considerably when the Court embraced a broader interpretation of the Commerce …

An Essay On The Professional Responsibility Of Affirmative Action In Higher Education, Emily Calhoun

Publications

No abstract provided.

What Bush V. Gore Means For Elections In The 21st Century, Helen Norton

Publications

No abstract provided.

Do Jury Trials Encourage Harsh Punishment In The United States?, William T. Pizzi

Publications

No abstract provided.

Beyond Interpretation, Pierre Schlag

Publications

No abstract provided.

Law And Information Platforms, Philip J. Weiser

Publications

No abstract provided.

Disciplining Delegation After "Whitman V. American Trucking Ass'ns", Lisa Schultz Bressman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The Supreme Court's recent reversal of the D.C. Circuit's decision in "Whitman v. American Trucking Ass'ns" brings to center stage the critical question for disciplining delegation of lawmaking authority to administrative agencies: Should courts use constitutional law or administrative law for requiring agencies to supply the standards that guide and limit their lawmaking discretion when Congress does not? Professor Bressman argues that "Ashwander v. TVA" provides a resolution. In Ashwander, Justice Brandeis directed courts to refrain from deciding constitutional questions unless absolutely necessary to decide a particular case. Following Justice Brandeis' now famous teaching, courts should refrain from using constitutional …

Public Benefits And Federal Authorization For Alienage Discrimination By The States, Howard F. Chang

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The War On Terrorism And Civil Liberties, Jules Lobel

Articles

Throughout American history, we have grappled with the problem of balancing liberty versus security in times of war or national emergency. Our history is littered with sordid examples of the Constitution's silence during war or perceived national emergency. The Bush Administration’s War on Terror has once again forced a reckoning requiring Americans to balance liberty and national security in wartime. President Bush has stated, "[w]e believe in democracy and rule of law and the Constitution. But we're under attack.” President Bush, Attorney General Ashcroft and other governmental leaders have argued that in war, "the Constitution does not give foreign enemies …

The Mote In Thy Brother’S Eye: A Review Of Human Rights As Politics And Idolatry, William M. Carter Jr.

Articles

Michael Ignatieffs provocatively titled collection of essays, Human Rights As Politics and Idolatry [hereinafter Human Rights], is a careful examination of the theoretical underpinnings and contradictions in the area of human rights. At bottom, both of his primary essays, Human Rights As Politics and Human Rights As Idolatry, make a claim that is perhaps contrary to the instincts of human rights thinkers and activists: namely, that international human rights can best be philosophically justified and effectively applied to the extent that they strive for minimal ism. Human rights activists generally argue for the opposite conclusion: that international human rights be …

Brandeis & Warren's 'The Right To Privacy And The Birth Of The Right To Privacy', Ben Bratman

Articles

Privacy law and conceptions of a right to privacy have, of course, evolved considerably since 1890 when future Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis and Boston attorney Samuel Warren penned their now ageless article, The Right to Privacy, 4 Harv. L. Rev. 193, in which they argued the law should recognize such a right and impose liability in tort for intrusions on it. But quite apart from any argument about how attenuated the link might be between Brandeis and Warren's specific proposals and the current state of privacy law, is it fair to say, as so many scholars and judges repeatedly …

Judicial Activism: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly, Arthur D. Hellman

Articles

No matter how judges are selected, sooner or later some unfortunate candidate will be labeled a "judicial activist." One has to wonder: Does the term have any identifiable core meaning? Or is it just an all-purpose term of opprobrium, reflecting whatever brand of judicial behavior the speaker regards as particularly pernicious? Implicit in this question are several important issues about the role of courts in our democratic society.

I take my definition from Judge Richard Posner, who describes activist decisions as those that expand judicial power over other branches of the national government or over state governments. Unlike other uses …

Pick A Number, Any Number: State Representation In Congress After The 2000 Census, Suzanna Sherry, Paul H. Edelman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In this essay, Professors Edelman and Sherry explain the mathematics behind the allocation of congressional seats to each state, and survey the different methods of allocation that Congress has used over the years. Using 2000 census figures, they calculate each state's allocation under five different methods, and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the various methods.

Federalism, Law Enforcement, And The Supremacy Clause: The Strange Case Of Ruby Ridge, Seth P. Waxman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

There is no "federalism clause" in the Constitution, and the case law ranges over a number of different provisions - the Commerce and General Welfare Clauses, and the Eleventh and Fourteenth Amendments, for example. But the two provisions that most directly implicate the doctrine are the Supremacy Clause and the Tenth Amendment. The former states that "[t]his Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof ... shall be the supreme Law of the Land ....”, The latter provides that "[t]he powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by …

How Is Constitutional Law Made?, Tracey E. George, Robert J. Pushaw, Jr.

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Professors George and Pushaw review Maxwell L. Stearns’ book, “Constitutional Process: A Social Choice Analysis of Supreme Court Decision-making.” In his book, Stearns demonstrates that the U.S. Supreme Court fashions constitutional law through process-based rules of decision such as outcome voting, stare decisis, and justiciability. Employing “social choice” economic theory, Professor Stearns argues that the Court strives to formulate rules that promote rationality and fairness. Perhaps the greatest strength of Stearns’ book is that he presents a grand unified theory of the Court’s rules of constitutional process and the resulting development of doctrine. This strength can also be a weakness, …

Enemy Aliens, David Cole

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In the wake of September 11, many have argued that the new sense of vulnerability that we all feel calls for a recalibration of the balance between liberty and security. In fact, however, much of what our government has done in the war on terrorism has not asked American citizens to make the difficult choice of deciding which of their liberties they are willing to sacrifice for increased security. Instead, the government has taken the politically easier route of selectively sacrificing the rights of aliens, and especially Arab and Muslim aliens, in the name of furthering national security. This is …

Tradition, Principle And Self-Sovereignty: Competing Conceptions Of Liberty In The United States Constitution, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The “liberty” protected by the United States Constitution has been variously interpreted as the “liberty” of thinking persons to speak, worship and associate with others, unimpeded by onerous state law; the liberty of consumers and producers to make individual market choices, including the choice to sell one’s labour at any price one sees fit, free of redistributive or paternalistic legislation that might restrict it; and the liberty of all of us in the domestic sphere to make choices regarding reproductive and family life, free of state law that might restrict it on grounds relating to public morals. Although the United …

The Law And Large Numbers, Paul H. Edelman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Can mathematics be used to inform legal analysis? This is not a ridiculous question. Law has certain superficial resem­blances to mathematics. One might view the Constitution and various statutes as providing "axioms" for a deductive legal sys­tem. From these axioms judges deduce "theorems" consisting of interpretation of these axioms in certain situations. Often these theorems are built on previously "proven" theorems, i.e. earlier decisions of the court. Of course some of the axioms might change, and occasionally a theorem that was once true becomes false; the former is a common feature of mathematics, the latter, though theoretically not possible in …

Ordered Liberty And The Homeland Security Mission, James E. Baker

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This paper will start with a brief discussion of the terrorism threat because the threat remains predicate for any serious discussion of where we draw our legal lines. I will then suggest a legal model for looking at questions of homeland security called ordered liberty. The model is simple. First, given the nature of the threat, the executive must have broad and flexible authority to detect and respond to terrorism-–to provide for our physical security. Second, the sine qua non for such authority is meaningful oversight. Oversight means the considered application of constitutional structure, executive process, legal substance, and relevant …

A Subversive Strand Of The Warren Court, Gary Peller

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The choice between "de jure" and "de facto" standards of review arises whenever a legal standard is needed to identify violations of specific constitutional rights or norms in particular cases. The issue is methodological in the sense that the question is faced regardless of the particular right or norm at issue (although it is not really true that the choice between these methodologies would have no influence on the choice of rights or norms to apply). A de Jure approach limits the imposition of constitutional norms to cases in which the state has affirmatively acted to help create a particular …

Special Division Agonistes, John Q. Barrett

Faculty Publications

When the independent counsel law sank, the casualties included a special "division" of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. This division was the special court that Congress had created "for the purpose of appointing independent counsels." The now-expired 1994 independent counsel statute had, like its three predecessors, directed the Chief Justice of the United States to appoint three judges from the Supreme Court and/or the federal Courts of Appeals to serve on the special court for two-year terms. This independent counsel court, which was located for administrative purposes in the United States Court of …