Law Commons^™

Constitutionalising An Overlapping Consensus: The Ecj And The Emergence Of A Coordinate Constitutional Order, Charles F. Sabel, Oliver H. Gerstenberg

Faculty Scholarship

The European Court of Justice's (ECJ's) jurisprudence of fundamental rights in cases such as Schmidberger and Omega extends the court's jurisdiction in ways that compete with that of Member States in matters of visceral concern. And just as the Member States require a guarantee that the ECJ respect fundamental rights rooted in national tradition, so the ECJ insists that international organisations respect rights constitutive of the EU. The demand of such guarantees reproduces between the ECJ and the international order the kinds of conflicting jurisdictional claims that have shadowed the relation between the ECJ and the courts of the Member …

Collective Action Federalism: A General Theory Of Article I, Section 8, Neil S. Siegel, Robert D. Cooter

Faculty Scholarship

The Framers of the United States Constitution wrote Article I, Section 8 in order to address some daunting collective action problems facing the young nation. They especially wanted to protect the states from military warfare by foreigners and from commercial warfare against one another. The states acted individually when they needed to act collectively, and Congress lacked power under the Articles of Confederation to address these problems. Section 8 thus authorized Congress to promote the “general Welfare” of the United States by tackling many collective action problems that the states could not solve on their own.

Subsequent interpretations of Section …

The Constitution And Our Debt To The Future, Rena I. Steinzor

Faculty Scholarship

Health and safety laws have always been justified as manifestations of congressional authority to regulate and protect the free flow of interstate commerce under Article I, section 8 of the Constitution. Professor Steinzor argues that reliance on the Commerce Clause can support next generation proposals, including a National Environmental Legacy Act proposed by Professor Alyson Flournoy, which would require that any action on federal land involving the consumption or destruction of resources must be sustainable, as well as pending climate change legislation. But, Steinzor says, a far more desirable constitutional foundation for such laws is the General Welfare Clause found …

Constitutional Limitations On Land Use Controls, Environmental Regulations And Governmental Exactions (2010 Ed.), Garrett Power

Faculty Scholarship

This electronic book is published in a searchable PDF format as a part of the E-scholarship Repository of the University of Maryland School of Law. It is an “open content” casebook intended for classroom use in courses in Land Use Control, Environmental Law and Constitutional Law. It consists of cases carefully selected from the two hundred years of American constitutional history which address the clash between public sovereignty and private property. It considers both the personal right to liberty and the personal right in property. The text consists of non-copyrighted material and readers are free to use it or re-mix …

On Not Being “Not An Originalist”, H. Jefferson Powell

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Clear Statement Rules And Executive War Powers, Curtis A. Bradley

Faculty Scholarship

This article is based on a presentation at the Annual Federalist Society National Student Symposium on Law and Public Policy that explored the theme of separation of powers in American constitutionalism.

The scope of the President’s independent war powers is notoriously unclear, and courts are understandably reluctant to issue constitutional rulings that might deprive the federal government as a whole of the flexibility needed to respond to crises. As a result, courts often look for signs that Congress has either supported or opposed the President’s actions and rest their decisions on statutory grounds. There have been both liberal and conservative …

“Equal Citizenship Stature”: Justice Ginsburg’S Constitutional Vision, Neil S. Siegel

Faculty Scholarship

In this essay, Professor Siegel examines the nature and function of constitutional visions in the American constitutional order. He argues that Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg possesses such a vision and that her vision is defined by her oft-stated commitment to “full human stature,” to “equal citizenship stature.” He then defends Justice Ginsburg’s characteristically incremental and moderate approach to realizing her vision. He does so in part by establishing that President Barack Obama articulated a similar vision and approach in his Philadelphia speech on American race relations and illustrated its capacity to succeed during the 2008 presidential election.

The Strange Origins Of The Constitutional Right Of Association, John D. Inazu

Faculty Scholarship

Although much has been written about the freedom of association and its ongoing importance to American constitutionalism, much recent scholarship mistakenly relies on a truncated history that begins with Roberts v. United States Jaycees, 468 U.S. 609 (1984), the case that divided constitutional association into intimate and expressive components. Roberts’s doctrinal framework has been rightly criticized. However, neither the right of association nor all of its doctrinal problems start there. The Supreme Court’s foray into the constitutional right of association began a generation earlier with NAACP v. Alabama ex rel. Patterson, 357 U.S. 449 (1958). This article offers a new …

Schrödinger’S Cross: The Quantum Mechanics Of The Establishment Clause, Joseph Blocher

Faculty Scholarship

Perhaps the most famous character in modern physics is Schrödinger’s Cat, an unfortunate feline trapped in a box alongside a flask containing deadly poison that may or may not have been released. Thanks to the wonders of quantum mechanics, the cat is both alive and dead — “mixed or smeared out in equal parts” — until the box is opened, at which point the act of observation causes its state to collapse into either life or death.

Far away in the Mojave Desert, the “life” of a six-foot-tall cross is disputed: it is either a religious symbol or it is …

The Politics Of Nature: Climate Change, Environmental Law, And Democracy, Jedediah S. Purdy

Faculty Scholarship

Legal scholars’ discussions of climate change assume that the issue is one mainly of engineering incentives, and that “environmental values” are too weak, vague, or both to spur political action to address the emerging crisis. This Article gives reason to believe otherwise. The major natural resource and environmental statutes, from the acts creating national forests and parks to the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, have emerged from precisely the activity that discussions of climate change neglect: democratic argument over the value of the natural world and its role in competing ideas of citizenship, national purpose, and the role and …

Embedded International Law And The Constitution Abroad, Sarah H. Cleveland

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay explores the role of "embedded" international law in U.S. constitutional interpretation, in the context of extraterritorial application of the Constitution. Traditional U.S. understandings of the Constitution's application abroad were informed by nineteenth-century international law principles of jurisdiction, which largely limited the authority of a sovereign state to its geographic territory. Both international law and constitutional law since have developed significantly away from strictly territorial understandings of governmental authority, however. Modern international law principles of jurisdiction and state responsibility now recognize that states legitimately may exercise power in a number of extraterritorial contexts, and that legal obligations may apply …

Constitutional Borrowing, Nelson Tebbe, Robert Tsai

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Is Ashcroft V. Iqbal The Death (Finally) Of The “Historical Test” For Interpreting The Seventh Amendment?, Kenneth S. Klein

Faculty Scholarship

There is the possibility that the recent Supreme Court decision of Ashcroft v. Iqbal finally will be the necessary impetus to revisit one of the more bizarre but enduring canards of American jurisprudence -- the way we interpret the Seventh Amendment's preservation of a right to a jury trial in federal civil litigation. The Seventh Amendment provides that "[i]n suits at common law ... the right of trial by jury shall be preserved." To this day, the way we apply the Seventh Amendment-in other words, what we interpret to be the constitutional intent and mandate of our Founders-is to postulate …

The Continuity Of Statutory And Constitutional Interpretation: An Essay For Phil Frickey, Ernest A. Young

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay seeks to honor Phil by exploring the contributions of his Legal Process approach to a problem near and dear to his heart: the uses and legitimacy of canons of statutory construction. I focus, as Phil did in his most recent work, on the canon of constitutional avoidance—that is, the rule that courts should construe statutes to avoid significant ―doubt as to their constitutionality.

This Essay largely supports Phil‘s defense of the avoidance canon, but links that defense to another set of canons that Phil has criticized: the various clear statement rules of statutory construction that Phil and Bill …

What Does It Take To Make A Federal System? On Constitutional Entrenchment, Separate Spheres, And Identity, Ernest A. Young

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

What Are We Doing To The Children?: An Essay On Juvenile (In)Justice, Michael E. Tigar

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

On Silence: A Reply To Professors Cribari And Judges, Ted Sampsell-Jones

Faculty Scholarship

In 2009, the author wrote an article on the Self-Incrimination Clause. In response to this article, Professors Cribari and Judges wrote a Response suggesting that the author was an abolitionist of the Self-Incrimination Clause. This article is intended to clarify the author's position on the Self-Incrimination Clause and on Griffin v. California. The article begins by explaining the purposes of the Self-Incrimination Clause and highlighting the differences between the right to testify and the right to remain silent. It then analyzes the "test the prosecution" reasoning for the Griffin rule, pointing out its shortcomings and lack of Constitutional basis. The …

Preventive Detention, Character Evidence, And The New Criminal Law, Ted Sampsell-Jones

Faculty Scholarship

A new criminal law has emerged in the last quarter century. The dominant goal of the new criminal law is preventive detention-incarceration to incapacitate dangerous persons. The emergence of the new criminal law has remade both sentencing law and definitions of crimes themselves. The new criminal law has also begun to remake the law of evidence. As incapacitation has become an accepted goal of criminal punishment, the rationale of the character rule has become less compelling, and the rule itself has begun to wane in criminal practice. These changes have been subtle, but they have also been both radical and …

The Role Of The Chief Executive In Domestic Administration, Peter L. Strauss

Faculty Scholarship

Written for an international working paper conference on administrative law, this paper sets the Supreme Court's decision in Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board in the context of general American concerns about the place of the President in domestic administration, a recurring theme in my writings.

Making Social Rights Conditional: Lessons From India, Madhav Khosla

Faculty Scholarship

Recent years have witnessed important advancements in the discussion on social rights. The South African experience with social rights has revealed how such rights can be protected without providing for an individualized remedy. Comparative constitutional lawyers now debate the promise of the South African approach, and the possibility of weak-form judicial review in social rights cases. This article considers the Indian experience with social rights, and explains how it exhibits a new form of social rights adjudication. This is the adjudication of a conditional social right; an approach that displays a rare private law model of public law adjudication. This …

Faithful Agent, Integrative, And Welfarist Interpretation, Thomas W. Merrill

Faculty Scholarship

We are in the midst of a series of lively debates about how to interpret enacted laws such as written constitutions and statutes. In constitutional law, there is a spirited clash between "originalists" and "nonoriginalists". In the statutory arena, we have a three-way battle between "textualists," "intentionalists", and "pragmatists." A common feature of these contending schools is an insistence on a single, correct approach to interpretation. In this respect, however, each of these rival theories deviates from the Practice of interpretation. Real world interpreters – to a person – deploy a variety of interpretative methods when they seek to resolve …

Direct Voting By Property Owners, Thomas W. Merrill

Faculty Scholarship

Direct voting by property owners is a widespread but controversial tool for resolving disputes over local collective goods. Direct voting has powerful advantages, in that it can harness the superior knowledge of many local minds, resolve controversies in a way that is perceived to be legitimate, and eliminate corrupt dealmaking. But it also has serious pitfalls, if local voters are poorly informed, or if they ignore external effects on other communities, or if the process is distorted by majoritarian or minoritarian bias. To capitalize on the advantages of local voting, and minimize the risks, this Article proposes that direct voting …

Guns, Originalism, And Cultural Cognition, Jamal Greene

Faculty Scholarship

In a legal regime whose canonical text is Marbury v. Madison, it should be unremarkable that the Supreme Court's actions are bounded rather severely by public opinion. What makes the proposition remarkable – enough to be well worth Barry Friedman's time – is also what makes Marbury remarkable: namely, that judges so often go out of their way to deny it. Though not unheard of, it is rare for a judge to advertise that the content of a constitutional rule she is announcing is motivated by public opinion. Such an admission would be self-defeating, since it invites the charge …

The So-Called Right To Privacy, Jamal Greene

Faculty Scholarship

The constitutional right to privacy has been a conservative bugaboo ever since Justice Douglas introduced it into the United States Reports in Griswold v. Connecticut. Reference to the "so-called" right to privacy has become code for the view that the right is doctrinally recognized but not in fact constitutionally enshrined. This Article argues that the constitutional right to privacy is no more. The two rights most associated historically with the right to privacy are abortion and intimate sexual conduct, yet Gonzales v. Carhart and Lawrence v. Texas made clear that neither of these rights is presently justified by its …

Supremacy Clause Textualism, Henry Paul Monaghan

Faculty Scholarship

Whatever its status in the statutory interpretation "wars," originalism-driven textualism has assumed an increasingly prominent role in constitutional interpretation, at least within the academy. The focus of this Article is on one such form, namely, "Supremacy Clause textualism", that is, recent textualist claims about the implications of the Supremacy Clause of Article VI. This Article addresses two such claims.

First, in important articles, Professor Bradford Clark argues that the clause is "at the epicenter of [our] constitutional structure" and it "recognizes only the 'Constitution,' 'Laws,' and 'Treaties' of the United States as 'the supreme Law of the Land."' Displacement of …

Judicial Elections As Popular Constitutionalism, David E. Pozen

Faculty Scholarship

One of the most important recent developments in American legal theory is the burgeoning interest in "popular constitutionalism." One of the most important features of the American legal system is the selection of state judges – judges who resolve thousands of state and federal constitutional questions each year – by popular election. Although a large literature addresses each of these subjects, scholarship has rarely bridged the two. Hardly anyone has evaluated judicial elections in light of popular constitutionalism, or vice versa.

This Article undertakes that thought experiment. Conceptualizing judicial elections as instruments of popular constitutionalism, the Article aims to show, …

Skelos V. Paterson: The Surprisingly Strong Case For The Governor's Surprising Power To Appoint A Lieutenant Governor, Richard Briffault

Faculty Scholarship

On July 8, 2009, Governor David Paterson surprised New York's legal and political world by announcing his intention to appoint Richard Ravitch to fill the vacancy in the office of lieutenant governor. No New York governor had ever appointed a lieutenant governor before. Paterson's action was widely denounced as unauthorized and unconstitutional. Four months later, observers were even more astonished when the Court of Appeals in Skelos v. Paterson upheld the governor's action. This article explains why the governor and Court of Appeals were right to conclude that the governor had statutory and constitutional authority for his action. Indeed, the …

Profiling And Consent: Stops, Searches And Seizures After Soto, Jeffrey Fagan, Amanda Geller

Faculty Scholarship

Following Soto v State (1999), New Jersey was among the first states to enter into a comprehensive Consent Decree with the U.S. Department of Justice to end racially selective enforcement on the state’s highways. The Consent Decree led to extensive reforms in the training and supervision of state police troopers, and the design of information technology to monitor the activities of the State Police. Compliance was assessed in part on the State’s progress toward the elimination of racial disparities in the patterns of highway stops and searches. We assess compliance by analyzing data on 257,000 vehicle stops on the New …

Meditaciones Postmodernas Sobre El Castigo: Acerca De Los Límites De La Razón Y De Las Virtudes De La Aleatoriedad (Una Polémica Y Un Manifiesto Para El Siglo Xxi), Bernard E. Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

Abstract in Spanish
Durante la Modernidad, el discurso sobre la pena ha girado circularmente en torno a tres grupos de interrogantes. El primero, surgido de la propia Ilustración, preguntaba: ¿En qué basa el soberano su derecho de penar? Nietzsche con mayor determinación, pero también otros, argumentaron que la propia pregunta implicaba ya su respuesta. Con el nacimiento de las ciencias sociales, este escepticismo hizo surgir un segundo conjunto de interrogantes: ¿Cuál es, entonces, la verdadera función de la pena? ¿Qué es lo que hacemos cuando penamos? Una serie de críticas ulteriores – de metanarrativas, funcionalistas o de objetividad científica – …

Burying The Constitution Under A Tarp, Gary S. Lawson

Faculty Scholarship

The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, a.k.a. 'the bank bailout bill,' engendered a fair degree of political controversy during and after its enactment but relatively little constitutional controversy. That is unfortunate, and at least a bit puzzling, because, as a matter of original meaning, the statute raises important constitutional questions along at least four dimensions: it is questionable whether Congress had the enumerated power to authorize the Treasury Department to purchase securities, the specific authorizations were sufficiently vague to raise serious questions under the nondelegation doctrine, the expansion of the powers of the Secretary of the Treasury under the …