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Full-Text Articles in Law

Historical Gloss, Constitutional Convention, And The Judicial Separation Of Powers, Curtis A. Bradley, Neil S. Siegel Jan 2017

Historical Gloss, Constitutional Convention, And The Judicial Separation Of Powers, Curtis A. Bradley, Neil S. Siegel

Faculty Scholarship

Scholars have increasingly focused on the relevance of post-Founding historical practice to discern the separation of powers between Congress and the executive branch, and the Supreme Court has recently endorsed the relevance of such practice. Much less attention has been paid, however, to the relevance of historical practice to discerning the separation of powers between the political branches and the federal judiciary — what this Article calls the “judicial separation of powers.” As the Article explains, there are two ways that historical practice might be relevant to the judicial separation of powers. First, such practice might be invoked as an …


Sub-Regional Courts In Africa: Litigating The Hybrid Right To Freedom Of Movement, Laurence R. Helfer Jan 2017

Sub-Regional Courts In Africa: Litigating The Hybrid Right To Freedom Of Movement, Laurence R. Helfer

Faculty Scholarship

Human rights attorneys and civil society groups in Africa have recently focused their advocacy efforts on sub-regional courts associated with economic integration communities in East, West and Southern Africa. The East African Court of Justice (EACJ), the Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), and the Tribunal of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) have received few suits challenging trade restrictions and other barriers to sub-regional integration. Instead, and surprisingly, the courts’ dockets are dominated by complaints alleging violations of international human rights law.
This article offers the first analysis of EACJ, ECOWAS Court and …


Doing Gloss, Curtis A. Bradley Jan 2017

Doing Gloss, Curtis A. Bradley

Faculty Scholarship

It is common for courts, the political branches, and academic commentators to look to historical governmental practices when interpreting the separation of powers. There has been relatively little attention, however, to the proper methodology for invoking such “historical gloss.” This Essay contends that, in order to gain traction on the methodological questions, we need to begin by considering the potential justifications for crediting gloss. For judicial application of gloss, which is this Essay’s principal focus, there are at least four such justifications: deference to the constitutional views of nonjudicial actors; limits on judicial capacity; Burkean consequentialism; and reliance interests. As …


Patriotic Philanthropy? Financing The State With Gifts To Government, Margaret H. Lemos, Guy-Uriel Charles Jan 2017

Patriotic Philanthropy? Financing The State With Gifts To Government, Margaret H. Lemos, Guy-Uriel Charles

Faculty Scholarship

Federal and state law prohibit government officials from accepting gifts or “emoluments” from outside sources. The purpose of gift bans, like restrictions on more explicit forms of bribery, is to protect the integrity of political processes and to ensure that decisions about public policy are made in the public interest — not to advance a private agenda. Similar considerations animate regulations on campaign funding and lobbying. Yet private entities remain free to offer gifts to government itself, to foot the bill for particular public projects they would like to see government pursue. Such gifts — dubbed “patriotic philanthropy” by one …


Puerto Rico And The Netherworld Of Sovereign Debt Restructuring, Mitu Gulati, Robert K. Rasmussen Jan 2017

Puerto Rico And The Netherworld Of Sovereign Debt Restructuring, Mitu Gulati, Robert K. Rasmussen

Faculty Scholarship

Puerto Rico has incurred debt well beyond its ability to repay. It attempted to address its fiscal woes through legislation allowing the restructuring of some its debt. The Supreme Court put a stop to this effort, holding that Congress in the Bankruptcy Code barred the Commonwealth from enacting its own restructuring regime. Yet all agreed that the Bankruptcy Code did not provide anything in its place. While Congress quickly enacted PROMESA in an attempt to address the Puerto Rico’s fiscal ills, we explore in this paper whether Congress has the power to bar Puerto Rico from enacting a restructuring mechanism …


Adjudicating Death: Professionals Or Politicians?, Stephen J. Choi, Mitu Gulati Jan 2017

Adjudicating Death: Professionals Or Politicians?, Stephen J. Choi, Mitu Gulati

Faculty Scholarship

Variation exists in how death examinations take place in the United States. In some counties and states decisions about autopsies and the issuance of death certificates are made by a local coroner who often needs nothing more than a high school diploma to run for election to the job of coroner. In other counties and states, an appointed medical professional performs the death examination. We provide preliminary tests of the difference in performance between death examination offices run by appointed medical professionals compared with elected coroners. We find that death examiner offices in elected coroner states are less likely to …


Opposing International Justice: Kenya’S Integrated Backlash Strategy Against The Icc, Laurence R. Helfer, Anne E. Showalter Jan 2017

Opposing International Justice: Kenya’S Integrated Backlash Strategy Against The Icc, Laurence R. Helfer, Anne E. Showalter

Faculty Scholarship

The government of Kenya has employed a wide range of strategies to undermine the recently-dismissed prosecutions of President Uhuru Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto before the International Criminal Court (ICC). This Article argues that these strategies are part of an integrated backlash campaign against the ICC, one that encompasses seemingly unrelated actions in multiple global, regional and national venues. We identify three overarching themes that connect these diverse measures— politicizing complementarity, regionalizing political opposition, and pairing instances of cooperation and condemnation to diffuse accusations of impunity. By linking its discrete acts of opposition to these three themes, the government …


Voice And Exit As Accountability Mechanisms: Can Foot-Voting Be Made Safe For The Chinese Communist Party?, Roderick M. Hills Jr., Shitong Qiao Jan 2017

Voice And Exit As Accountability Mechanisms: Can Foot-Voting Be Made Safe For The Chinese Communist Party?, Roderick M. Hills Jr., Shitong Qiao

Faculty Scholarship

According to Albert 0. Hirschman's famous dichotomy, citizens can express their preferences with their "voice" (by voting with ballots to elect better representatives) or by "exit" (by voting with their feet to choose better places to live). Suppose, however, that ballot-voting is ineffective: Can exit not merely aid but also replace voice? Using the People's Republic of China, a party state without elective democracy as a case study, we argue that exit is not a substitute for, but rather a complement to, voice. China's bureaucratic promotion system plays the same role that local elections do in the United States, promoting …


Reciprocal Legitimation In The Federal Courts System, Neil S. Siegel Jan 2017

Reciprocal Legitimation In The Federal Courts System, Neil S. Siegel

Faculty Scholarship

Much scholarship in law and political science has long understood the U.S. Supreme Court to be the “apex” court in the federal judicial system, and so to relate hierarchically to “lower” federal courts. On that top-down view, exemplified by the work of Alexander Bickel and many subsequent scholars, the Court is the principal, and lower federal courts are its faithful agents. Other scholarship takes a bottom-up approach, viewing lower federal courts as faithless agents or analyzing the “percolation” of issues in those courts before the Court decides. This Article identifies circumstances in which the relationship between the Court and other …


Fear And Firearms, Darrell A. H. Miller Jan 2017

Fear And Firearms, Darrell A. H. Miller

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.