Law Commons^™

The Intersection Of Judicial Interpretive Methods And Politics In Supreme Court Justices’ Due Process Opinions, Julie Castle

Capstone Showcase

The Supreme Court, a nine seat bench of unelected and lifetime tenured Justices, determines the constitutionality of dozens of cases each year. In this thesis, I research to what extent the political affiliation of the Justices affect the judicial decision making process and, ultimately, outcomes. Using pattern matching, I evaluate due process opinions from Justice Breyer, Justice O’Connor, and Justice Scalia, all of whom have established constitutional analysis methods, in order to determine if they reasonably adhere to their established method. Due to the highly political nature of due process cases, variance between the expected (adherence to the Justices’ established …

Dividing Crime, Multiplying Punishments, John F. Stinneford

John F. Stinneford

When the government wants to impose exceptionally harsh punishment on a criminal defendant, one of the ways it accomplishes this goal is to divide the defendant’s single course of conduct into multiple offenses that give rise to multiple punishments. The Supreme Court has rendered the Double Jeopardy Clause, the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause, and the rule of lenity incapable of handling this problem by emptying them of substantive content and transforming them into mere instruments for effectuation of legislative will. This Article demonstrates that all three doctrines originally reflected a substantive legal preference for life and liberty, and a …

Dividing Crime, Multiplying Punishments, John F. Stinneford

UF Law Faculty Publications

When the government wants to impose exceptionally harsh punishment on a criminal defendant, one of the ways it accomplishes this goal is to divide the defendant’s single course of conduct into multiple offenses that give rise to multiple punishments. The Supreme Court has rendered the Double Jeopardy Clause, the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause, and the rule of lenity incapable of handling this problem by emptying them of substantive content and transforming them into mere instruments for effectuation of legislative will.

This Article demonstrates that all three doctrines originally reflected a substantive legal preference for life and liberty, and a …

Legal Pragmatism In The People's Republic Of China, Xingzhong Yu

Xingzhong Yu

No abstract provided.

Separation Of Powers Doctrine On The Modern Supreme Court And Four Doctrinal Approaches To Judicial Decision-Making, R. Randall Kelso

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Agenda: Drafting Model Laws On Indoor Pollution For Developing And Developed Nations, University Of Colorado Boulder. Center For Energy & Environmental Security, Colorado Natural Resources, Energy And Environmental Law Review

Drafting Model Laws on Indoor Pollution for Developing and Developed Nations (July 12-13)

On July 12 and 13, 2012, experts convened at Colorado Law to demonstrate the extent to which a model law could help address the global problem of indoor air pollution from inefficient cook stoves. The air pollution that results from inefficiently burning biomass as fuel for cooking has serious health and climatic consequences. The workshop produced two sets of Model Laws and commentaries to help nations solve the problem, and the commentaries were published in the Colorado Natural Resources, Energy, and Environmental Law Review.

Drafting Model Laws On Indoor Pollution For Developing And Developed Nations Workshop, July 12-13, 2012, Boulder, Colorado: Introduction, Lakshman Guruswamy

Drafting Model Laws on Indoor Pollution for Developing and Developed Nations (July 12-13)

11 pages.

"This Essay introduces the framework for deliberation and legislative drafting undertaken at the workshop: Drafting Model Laws on Indoor Pollution for Developing and Developed Nations on July 12-13, 2012, in Boulder, Colorado. There are a number of fundamental premises upon which the workshop was based, and this Essay refers to the most salient among them."-- Excerpted from 24 Colo. Nat. Resources, Energy & Envtl. L. Rev. 319 (2013).

Post-Realist Blues: Formalism, Instrumentalism, And The Hybrid Nature Of Common Law Jurisprudence, Marin Roger Scordato

Scholarly Articles

At the beginning of the twentieth century, it was widely believed that appellate courts determined the outcome of disputed issues of law predominately by the application of pre-existing precedent and time honored legal maxims. The primary work of the common law courts was thought to be this distinctive identification, maintenance, inductive development and case specific deductive application of the body of precedent in its jurisdiction, sometimes known as formalism.

Starting with the influence of the legal realists in the 1920s, a profound shift took place in the dominant conception of the nature of common law jurisprudence. Here, at the beginning …

Legal Pragmatism In The People's Republic Of China, Xingzhong Yu

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Beyond Criticism, Guyora Binder

Journal Articles

During the 1980’s, Critical Legal Studies was frequently criticized for offering no policy prescriptions. This essay explained critical scholars’ reluctance to propose policy as a reflection of their epistemological and political critiques of instrumentalist policy analysis. Because critical scholars saw both causal relationships and interests as highly contingent on normative assumptions, they were skeptical of claims that well-intentioned law reforms would benefit the interests of the poor and the powerless. Valuing democratic participation, critical legal scholars were also reluctant to define the interests of the powerless for them. The essay proceeded to argue that critical legal scholars should see instrumentalism …