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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Individual Mandate, Sovereignty, And The Ends Of Good Government: A Reply To Professor Randy Barnett, Patrick Mckinley Brennan
The Individual Mandate, Sovereignty, And The Ends Of Good Government: A Reply To Professor Randy Barnett, Patrick Mckinley Brennan
Working Paper Series
Randy Barnett has recently argued that the individual mandate is unconstitutional because it is an improper regulation under the Necessary and Proper Clause (in conjunction with the Commerce Clause) because it improperly "commandeers" the people and thereby violates their sovereignty. In this paper, I counter that the argument from sovereignty is unavailing because it is, among other defects, hopelessly ambiguous. The variety of historically attested meanings of "sovereignty" renders the concept useless for purposes of answering questions of comparative authority, including the authority of the Congress to mandate that individuals purchase health insurance from a private market. There is no …
The Foggy Road For Evaluating Punitive Damages: Lifting The Haze From The Bmw/State Farm Guideposts, Steven L. Chanenson, John Y. Gotanda
The Foggy Road For Evaluating Punitive Damages: Lifting The Haze From The Bmw/State Farm Guideposts, Steven L. Chanenson, John Y. Gotanda
Working Paper Series
In light of increasing punitive damages awards, the United States Supreme Court formulated criteria for evaluating whether a punitive damages award is so unreasonably large that it violates substantive due process. Unfortunately, these "guideposts," which were first erected in BMW v. Gore and applied last term in State Farm v. Campbell, are difficult to use and have resulted in inconsistent decisions. Indeed, Justice Scalia stated that they "mark a road to nowhere." The authors argue that the problems with the guideposts can be fixed by refining the third guidepost, which compares the punitive damages award to the criminal (or civil) …
Fire, Metaphor, And Constitutional Myth-Making, Robert Tsai
Fire, Metaphor, And Constitutional Myth-Making, Robert Tsai
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
From the standpoint of traditional legal thought, metaphor is at best a dash of poetry adorning lawyerly analysis, and at worst an unjustifiable distraction from what is actually at stake in a legal contest. By contrast, in the eyes of those who view law as a close relative of ordinary language, metaphor is a basic building block of human understanding. This article accepts that metaphor helps us to comprehend a court's decision. At the same time, it argues that metaphor plays a special role in the realm of constitutional discourse. Metaphor in constitutional law not only reinforces doctrinal categories, but …