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Full-Text Articles in Law

Business Interests And The Long Arm In 2011, Paul D. Carrington Jan 2012

Business Interests And The Long Arm In 2011, Paul D. Carrington

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Advisory Adjudication, Girardeau A. Spann Jan 2012

Advisory Adjudication, Girardeau A. Spann

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Supreme Court decision in Camreta v. Greene is revealing. The Court first issues an opinion authorizing appeals by prevailing parties in qualified immunity cases, even though doing so entails the issuance of an advisory opinion that is not necessary to resolution of the dispute between the parties. And the Court then declines to reach the merits of the underlying constitutional claim in the case, because doing so would entail the issuance of an advisory opinion that was not necessary to the resolution of the dispute between the parties. The Court's decision, therefore, has the paradoxical effect of both honoring …


Clarity And Clarification: Grable Federal Questions In The Eyes Of Their Beholders, Elizabeth Mccuskey Jan 2012

Clarity And Clarification: Grable Federal Questions In The Eyes Of Their Beholders, Elizabeth Mccuskey

Faculty Scholarship

Jurists and commentators have repeated for centuries the refrain that jurisdictional rules should be clear.' Behind this mantra is the idea that clearly designed jurisdictional rules should enable trial courts to apply the law more easily and therefore allow litigants to predict more accurately how trial courts will rule.2 The mantra's ultimate goal is efficiency-that trial courts not labor too long on jurisdiction and, most important, that litigants can accurately predict the correct forum and choose to spend their money litigating the merits of their claim, rather than where it will be heard. Jurisdictional clarity largely is devoted …


Legal Process In A Box, Or What Class Action Waivers Teach Us About Law-Making, Rhonda Wasserman Jan 2012

Legal Process In A Box, Or What Class Action Waivers Teach Us About Law-Making, Rhonda Wasserman

Articles

The Supreme Court’s decision in AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion advanced an agenda found in neither the text nor the legislative history of the Federal Arbitration Act. Concepcion provoked a maelstrom of reactions not only from the press and the academy, but also from Congress, federal agencies and lower courts, as they struggled to interpret, apply, reverse, or cabin the Court’s blockbuster decision. These reactions raise a host of provocative questions about the relationships among the branches of government and between the Supreme Court and the lower courts. Among other questions, Concepcion and its aftermath force us to grapple with the …


The First Ever (Maybe) Original Jurisdiction Standings, Jay D. Wexler, David Hatton Jan 2012

The First Ever (Maybe) Original Jurisdiction Standings, Jay D. Wexler, David Hatton

Faculty Scholarship

One of the more interesting clauses of the Constitution is the one that gives the Supreme Court original jurisdiction to hear lawsuits brought by one state against another state. These cases have historically made up a consistent, though small, part of the Supreme Court’s docket, but nobody has yet to investigate how the various states have fared in these suits. In this article, we analyze all of the state versus state cases decided over the past 112 years and provide the first ever (we think) official standings of how the states stack up. Minnesota is the big winner.


Alien Tort Claims And The Status Of Customary International Law, Carlos Manuel Vázquez Jan 2012

Alien Tort Claims And The Status Of Customary International Law, Carlos Manuel Vázquez

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Much of the recent debate about the status of customary international law in the U.S. legal system has revolved around the alien tort provision of the Judiciary Act of 1789, currently section 1350 of Title 28. In Filártiga v. Peńa-Irala, the decision that launched modern human rights litigation in the United States, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit relied on the view that customary international law has the status of federal common law in upholding section 1350’s grant of federal jurisdiction over a suit between aliens. The court’s position that customary international law was federal law was …