Law Commons^™

The Wages Of Hitching Wagons, Thomas B. Bennett

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This article examines the challenges faced by states that align their constitutions with federal doctrine through the practice of "lockstepping"—adopting federal legal standards into state law. Lockstepping binds states to federal law, regardless of its trajectory. Part I traces the evolution of standing doctrine in both federal courts under Article III and Kentucky courts under its constitution. Part II presents an originalist critique of the federal injury-in-fact requirement, highlighting emerging efforts to abandon this requirement in federal courts. Part III discusses the dilemma states like Kentucky face, balancing constitutional interpretation, federalism, and legal stability.

Salmon, James M., 1834-1904 (Sc 1251), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 1251. Fee book kept by James M. Salmon while serving as a constable in Metcalfe County, Kentucky, from 1860-1864. Some personal accounts are included, as well as a summons, 1857, and a business note, 1888.

Monroe County, Kentucky - Court Records (Sc 1217), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 1217. Docket book, Monroe County, Kentucky, December 1832 - November 1838, listing judgments and warrants.

Rowan, John, 1773-1843 (Sc 1787), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 1787. Photocopy of will of prominent Kentucky jurist and Congressman John Rowan, written 28 June 1840 in Louisville, Kentucky.

Monroe County, Kentucky - Records, 1826-1842 (Sc 1761), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid for Manuscripts Small Collection 1761. Record book of William G. Howard documenting his duties as a Justice of the Peace. It includes stray notices, legal judgments, and marriages performed (Click on "Additional Files" below for typescripted list of marriages.)

Barren County, Kentucky - Court Records, 1916 (Mss 198), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 198. Three indices for Barren County, Kentucky Quarterly Court records; the actual court records are not part of this collection and are located in the Barren County courthouse. Two of the indices are not dated, and the third one marked "Executions" is dated 1916.

A Constitutional Amendment To Reform Kentucky’S Courts, Kurt Metzmeier

Faculty Scholarship

Responding to a confused patchwork of trial courts with overlapping jurisdiction, uneven justice around the state, and a growing backlog of appellate cases, voters in Kentucky went to the polls on November 4, 1975, to approve a sweeping constitutional amendment that radically revised Kentucky’s court system. Although reformers had decried Kentucky’s confusing court system since the 1940s, the real roots of the revision of the judicial article can be found in the failed movement in the late 1960s to replace Kentucky’s 1891 constitution. Unbowed by the defeat, judicial reformers immediately set out to pass a separate amendment reforming the courts, …

The Constitutionality Of An Executive Spending Plan, Paul E. Salamanca

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Operation of government in the absence of appropriations has become relatively common in the United States, particularly when projected expenses exceed projected revenue, making adoption of a budget a difficult task for the legislature. This Article focuses on the budget crisis in the Commonwealth of Kentucky from 2002 through 2003. In Part I, this Article recapitulates the history of the spending plan, including the action filed in Franklin Circuit Court to affirm its constitutionality. In Part II, this Article discusses certain theoretical, historical, and legal principles that inform analysis of the plan. In Part III, it considers certain deviations and …

Modifying The Kentucky Rules Of Evidence—A Separation Of Powers Issue, Robert G. Lawson

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

How do you modify laws that simultaneously exist as statutes and rules of court? For reasons that are described elsewhere and need not be repeated here, the Kentucky Rules of Evidence (K.R.E.) came into existence through concurrent enactment by the General Assembly and Kentucky Supreme Court and thus are endowed with all the attributes of both statutes and rules of court. So, how do you change them when the inevitable need to do so arises, a question made both interesting and difficult by the fact that there is no institutional mechanism for concurrent lawmaking by the General Assembly and supreme …

Interpretation Of The Kentucky Rules Of Evidence—What Happened To The Common Law?, Robert G. Lawson

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The Kentucky Rules of Evidence, which became effective on July 1, 1992, dramatically transformed the method by which lawyers and judges address evidence issues. Before the adoption of the Rules, the law of evidence consisted mostly of a vast collection of common law rulings, accumulated over two centuries and inaccessible to lawyers and judges for all practical purposes. In addressing an evidence issue, participants had to first deal with the problem of "finding" the law-distilling from a morass of conflicting common law precedents the ones applicable to the issue at hand, a task regularly producing contention rather than agreement and, …

What's Quality Got To Do With It?: Constitutional Theory, Politics, And Education Reform, Phil Weiser

Publications

No abstract provided.

Voir Dire In Kentucky: An Empirical Study Of Voir Dire In Kentucky Circuit Courts, William H. Fortune

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Voir dire is the stage of a jury trial at which prospective jurors are questioned under oath by court or counsel to determine their suitability as jurors in the case to be tried. Kentucky's high court has repeatedly recognized the importance of voir dire to the exercise of for-cause and peremptory challenges.

The trial judge's wide discretion in voir dire, however, necessarily makes a review of appellate decisions of minimal assistance in ascertaining what actually occurs during this important phase of a jury trial. Published opinions provide little guidance in this area; information about voir dire must come from a …