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Full-Text Articles in Law
Suspect Spheres, Not Enumerated Powers: A Guide For Leaving The Lamppost, Richard Primus, Roderick M. Hills Jr.
Suspect Spheres, Not Enumerated Powers: A Guide For Leaving The Lamppost, Richard Primus, Roderick M. Hills Jr.
Michigan Law Review
Despite longstanding orthodoxy, the Constitution’s enumeration of congressional powers does virtually nothing to limit federal lawmaking. That’s not because of some bizarrely persistent judicial failure to read the Constitution correctly. It’s because the enumeration of congressional powers is not a well-designed technology for limiting federal legislation. Rather than trying to make the enumeration do work that it will not do, decisionmakers should find better ways of thinking about what lawmaking should be done locally rather than nationally. This Article suggests such a rubric, one that asks not whether Congress has permission to do a certain thing but whether a certain …
Qualified Immunity And Constitutional Structure, Katherine Mims Crocker
Qualified Immunity And Constitutional Structure, Katherine Mims Crocker
Michigan Law Review
A range of scholars has subjected qualified immunity to a wave of criticism— and for good reasons. But the Supreme Court continues to apply the doctrine in ever more aggressive ways. By advancing two claims, this Article seeks to make some sense of this conflict and to suggest some thoughts toward a resolution.
First, while the Court has offered and scholars have rejected several rationales for the doctrine, layering in an account grounded in structural constitutional concerns provides a historically richer and analytically thicker understanding of the current qualified-immunity regime. For suits against federal officials, qualified immunity acts as a …
State Action And The Constitution's Middle Band, Louis Michael Seidman
State Action And The Constitution's Middle Band, Louis Michael Seidman
Michigan Law Review
On conventional accounts, the state action doctrine is dichotomous. When the government acts, constitutional limits take hold and the government action is invalid if those limits are exceeded. When the government fails to act, the state action doctrine leaves decisions to individuals, who are permitted to violate what would otherwise be constitutional constraints.
It turns out though that the modern state action doctrine creates three rather than two domains. There is indeed a private, inner band where there is thought to be insufficient government action to trigger constitutional constraints, but often there is also a public, outer band where there …
The Political Safeguards Of Horizontal Federalism, Heather K. Gerken, Ari Holtzblatt
The Political Safeguards Of Horizontal Federalism, Heather K. Gerken, Ari Holtzblatt
Michigan Law Review
For decades, we have debated whether “political safeguards” preserve healthy relations between the states and the federal government and thus reduce or eliminate the need for judges to referee state–federal tussles. No one has made such an argument about relations among the states, however, and the few scholars to have considered the question insist that such safeguards don’t exist. This Article takes the opposite view and lays down the intellectual foundations for the political safeguards of horizontal federalism. If you want to know what unites the burgeoning work on horizontal federalism and illuminates the hidden logic of its doctrine, you …
David Shapiro's Adversary Statement On Federalism, Patrick E. Higginbotham
David Shapiro's Adversary Statement On Federalism, Patrick E. Higginbotham
Michigan Law Review
A Review of David L. Shapiro, Federalism: A Dialogue
Montgomery & Smithies: Public Policy, Jameson W. Doig
Montgomery & Smithies: Public Policy, Jameson W. Doig
Michigan Law Review
A Review of Public Policy Volume XIV. Edited by John D. Montgomery and Arthur Smithies
Graves: American Intergovernmental Relations: Their Origins, Historical Development, And Current Status, Joseph E. Kallenbach
Graves: American Intergovernmental Relations: Their Origins, Historical Development, And Current Status, Joseph E. Kallenbach
Michigan Law Review
A Review of American Intergovernmental Relations: Their Origins, Historical Development, and Current Status. By W. Brooke Graves.