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Selected Works

2014

Supreme Court

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Law

Supreme Court Alchemy: Turning Law And Politics Into Mayonnaise, Stephen Feldman Jan 2014

Supreme Court Alchemy: Turning Law And Politics Into Mayonnaise, Stephen Feldman

Stephen M. Feldman

How do law and politics intertwine in Supreme Court adjudication? Traditionally, in law schools and political science departments, scholars refused to mix law and politics. Law professors insisted that legal texts and doctrines controlled Supreme Court decision making, while political scientists maintained that political ideologies dictated the justices' votes. In the late twentieth century, some scholars in both disciplines sought to combine law and politics but still conceived of the two as distinct. They attempted to stir law and politics together, but ended with an oil-and-water type of mix; law and politics settled apart. The best approach, as presented in …


Anti-Anti-Evasion In Constitutional Law, Brannon P. Denning, Michael B. Kent Jr. Jan 2014

Anti-Anti-Evasion In Constitutional Law, Brannon P. Denning, Michael B. Kent Jr.

Brannon P. Denning

In a previous paper, we identified “anti-evasion doctrines” (AEDs) that the U.S. Supreme Court develops in various areas of constitutional law to prevent the circumvention of constitutional principles the Court has sought to enforce. Typically, the Court employs an AED – crafted as an ex post standard – to bolster or backstop a previously-designed decision rule – crafted as an ex ante rule – so as to prevent government officials from complying with the form of the prior rule while evading the constitutional substance the rule was designed to implement. Although AEDs present benefits and tradeoffs in constitutional doctrine, their …