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Full-Text Articles in Law
Canons Of Construction And The Elusive Quest For Neutral Reasoning, James J. Brudney, Corey Distlear
Canons Of Construction And The Elusive Quest For Neutral Reasoning, James J. Brudney, Corey Distlear
Faculty Scholarship
Over the past 15 years, the canons of construction have experienced a remarkable revival in the courts and the legal academy. While the role of this interpretive resource has been heavily theorized, it has until now been under-explored from an empirical standpoint. This article adopts a novel combination of empirical and doctrinal analysis to uncover the Supreme Court's complex patterns of reliance on the canons over a 34-year period. We focus on whether the canons are favored across different time periods, in particular subject matter areas, by individual justices, and in close cases. Our approach - identifying ten different interpretive …
Revenge Of Mullaney V. Wilbur: United States V. Booker And The Reassertion Of Judicial Limits On Legislative Power To Define Crimes, The, Ian Weinstein
Faculty Scholarship
This article offers a historically grounded account of the twists and turns in the Supreme Court's sentencing jurisprudence from the end of World War II to the Court's stunning rejection of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. The doctrinal shifts that have roiled this area of the law can best be understood as the Court's effort to respond to the changing political and social landscape of crime in America. In the mid 1970's, legislative activity in the criminal law was largely focused on Model Penal Code influenced recodification. In that era, the Supreme Court took power from an ascendant judiciary and gave …
Decline And Fall Of Legislative History - Patterns Of Supreme Court Reliance In The Burger And Rehnquist Eras, The, James J. Brudney, Corey Distlear
Decline And Fall Of Legislative History - Patterns Of Supreme Court Reliance In The Burger And Rehnquist Eras, The, James J. Brudney, Corey Distlear
Faculty Scholarship
Reliance on legislative history in the Court's majority opinions has fallen from nearly 50 percent during the Burger era to less than 30 percent since 1985.