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The Unseen Track Of Erie Railroad: Why History And Jurisprudence Suggest A More Straightforward Form Of Erie Analysis, Donald L. Doernberg
The Unseen Track Of Erie Railroad: Why History And Jurisprudence Suggest A More Straightforward Form Of Erie Analysis, Donald L. Doernberg
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
This Article proceeds in four parts. Part I discusses federal law as a new category of law after ratification of the Constitution and what that connotes for the time before federal law existed. Part II examines the shift from the natural law perspective, which had dominated jurisprudence into the late nineteenth century, to legal positivism. It was that change more than anything else that doomed the doctrine of Swift v. Tyson, which controlled vertical choice-of-law questions in the federal courts for ninety-six years until the Erie Court declared it unconstitutional. Part III canvasses the development of the Erie doctrine in …
Juridical Chameleons In The "New Erie" Canal, Donald L. Doernberg
Juridical Chameleons In The "New Erie" Canal, Donald L. Doernberg
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
The New Erie doctrine, however, has become a doctrine of convenience, inconsistently applied by conservative and liberal Justices alike. It is the antithesis of a “neutral principle” of constitutional adjudication. To use Justice Jackson's term, the federal laws are not the “juridical chameleons”--the Justices are. Part II of this Article discusses the old and the New Erie doctrines as articulated by the United States Supreme Court. Part III demonstrates the difficulty of limiting the New Erie doctrine to the single area of implied rights of action and shows how the broad brush with which the doctrine's proponents paint necessarily touches …