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Full-Text Articles in Law
Disclosure's Effects: Wikileaks And Transparency, Mark Fenster
Disclosure's Effects: Wikileaks And Transparency, Mark Fenster
Mark Fenster
Reducing The Drug War's Damage To Government Budgets, David B. Kopel, Trevor Burrus
Reducing The Drug War's Damage To Government Budgets, David B. Kopel, Trevor Burrus
David B Kopel
This Article examines ways that governments can mitigate the economic damage caused by the drug war. Part I details four specific legal reforms enacted in Colorado, which aim to reduce the problems of over-criminalization: Requiring a fiscal note for the creation of new statutory crimes; reducing drug possession from a felony to a misdemeanor; narrowing the scope of 'three strikes' laws, and; adjusting old sentences in light of new laws.
Part II explores the fiscal benefits of ending prohibition, such as reduced law enforcement costs and substantially increased tax revenues.
Part III analyzes the conflict between congressionally-imposed prohibition, and state …
Collective Choice, Justin Schwartz
Collective Choice, Justin Schwartz
Justin Schwartz
This short nontechnical article reviews the Arrow Impossibility Theorem and its implications for rational democratic decisionmaking. In the 1950s, economist Kenneth J. Arrow proved that no method for producing a unique social choice involving at least three choices and three actors could satisfy four seemingly obvious constraints that are practically constitutive of democratic decisionmaking. Any such method must violate such a constraint and risks leading to disturbingly irrational results such and Condorcet cycling. I explain the theorem in plain, nonmathematical language, and discuss the history, range, and prospects of avoiding what seems like a fundamental theoretical challenge to the possibility …
Don’T’ Know Much About History: Constitutional Text, Practice, And Presidential Power, David A. Schultz
Don’T’ Know Much About History: Constitutional Text, Practice, And Presidential Power, David A. Schultz
David A Schultz
Assertions of presidential supremacy and power in affairs often invoke history, including events during the administration of George Washington, to defend their assertions. This article raises some questions regarding what we can learn from history for constitutional argument. It concedes generally that historical facts can support or buttress constitution argument, but more specifically it contends that acts undertaken by George Washington are problematic assertions for presidential power, especially those that assert “supremacist” or broad if not exclusive claims for presidential foreign policy authority. To do that, this article first describes how history is employed as constitutional argument for presidential power. …
The Opacity Of Transparency, Mark Fenster
The Opacity Of Transparency, Mark Fenster
Mark Fenster
Tench Coxe And The Right To Keep And Bear Arms, 1787-1823, David B. Kopel
Tench Coxe And The Right To Keep And Bear Arms, 1787-1823, David B. Kopel
David B Kopel
Tench Coxe, a member of the second rank of this nation's Founders and a leading proponent of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, wrote prolifically about the right to keep and bear arms. In this Article, the authors trace Coxe's story, from his early writings in support of the Constitution, through his years of public service, to his political writings in opposition to the presidential campaigns of John Adams and John Quincy Adams. The authors note that Coxe described the Second Amendment as guaranteeing an individual right, and believed that an individual right to bear arms was necessary for …
Relativism, Reflective Equilibrium, And Justice, Justin Schwartz
Relativism, Reflective Equilibrium, And Justice, Justin Schwartz
Justin Schwartz
THIS PAPER IS THE CO-WINNER OF THE FRED BERGER PRIZE IN PHILOSOPHY OF LAW FOR THE 1999 AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE BEST PUBLISHED PAPER IN THE PREVIOUS TWO YEARS.
The conflict between liberal legal theory and critical legal studies (CLS) is often framed as a matter of whether there is a theory of justice that the law should embody which all rational people could or must accept. In a divided society, the CLS critique of this view is overwhelming: there is no such justice that can command universal assent. But the liberal critique of CLS, that it degenerates into …