Law Commons^™

Gideon V. Wainwright--From A 1963 Perspective, Jerold H. Israel

Articles

Gideon v. Wainwright is more than a “landmark” Supreme Court ruling in the field of constitutional criminal procedure. As evidenced by the range of celebrators of Gideon’s Fiftieth Anniversary (extending far beyond the legal academy) and Gideon’s inclusion in the basic coverage of high school government courses, Gideon today is an icon of the American justice system. I have no quarrel with that iconic status, but I certainly did not see any such potential in Gideon when I analyzed the Court’s ruling shortly after it was announced in March of 1963. I had previously agreed to write an article for …

Judicial Activism: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly, Arthur D. Hellman

Articles

No matter how judges are selected, sooner or later some unfortunate candidate will be labeled a "judicial activist." One has to wonder: Does the term have any identifiable core meaning? Or is it just an all-purpose term of opprobrium, reflecting whatever brand of judicial behavior the speaker regards as particularly pernicious? Implicit in this question are several important issues about the role of courts in our democratic society.

I take my definition from Judge Richard Posner, who describes activist decisions as those that expand judicial power over other branches of the national government or over state governments. Unlike other uses …

Constitutional Federalism, Individual Liberty, And The Securities Litigation Uniform Standards Act Of 1998, Adam C. Pritchard

Articles

This Article proceeds in four parts. Part I provides background on the historical development of constitutional federalism, the Supreme Court's decisions in this area, and the apparent demise of constitutional limits on federal power. Part II then reviews the Court's revival of constitutional federalism over the last decade. Based on this review, I argue that the Supreme Court's current federalism doctrine can be understood as a "constrained libertarianism" that attempts to use constitutional structure as a check on government interference with individual liberty. In this model, states are respected in our constitutional system because of the counterbalance that they provide …

Corporations And Express Trusts As Business Organizations, Horace Lafayette Wilgus

Articles

PRESIDENT BUTLER of Columbia University is reported to have said in an address before the New York Chamber of Commerce in 1911, that "the limited liability corporation is the greatest single discovery of modem times, whether you judge it by its social, by its ethical, by its industrial, or, in the long run--after we understand it and know how to use it,--by its political, effects." 1