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Full-Text Articles in Law

Environmental Law In The Supreme Court: Highlights From The Blackmun Papers, Robert V. Percival Sep 2005

Environmental Law In The Supreme Court: Highlights From The Blackmun Papers, Robert V. Percival

Faculty Scholarship

The papers of the late Justice Harry A. Blackmun provide a remarkably rich archive that documents how the Court, for nearly a quarter century, handled environmental cases during a period crucial to the development of environmental law. This Article reviews highlights of what the Blackmun papers reveal about the U.S. Supreme Court’s handling of environmental cases during Justice Blackmun’s service on the Court from 1970 to 1994. The Article first examines what new light the Blackmun papers shed on some of the principal findings of the author’s October 1993 article Environmental Law in the Supreme Court: Highlights from the Marshall …


Lochner: Another Time, Another Place Symposium: Lochner Centennial Conference, Larry Yackle Jun 2005

Lochner: Another Time, Another Place Symposium: Lochner Centennial Conference, Larry Yackle

Faculty Scholarship

Professor Lynn Baker's contribution to this symposium' extends her longterm project both to defend and to critique the Supreme Court's decisions on the scope of congressional power.2 I find this work valuable and not a little provocative. If Baker's account of the decisions thus far is even partly right, the Court is poised to assume decision-making responsibility that has long been ceded to Congress. If her proposals for the future are adopted, we are in for a cataclysmic constitutional event that rivals the convulsive period when the nation confronted the judicial arrogation of authority associated (rightly or wrongly) with the …


Just Blowing Smoke? Politics, Doctrine, And The Federalist Revival After Gonzales V. Raich, Ernest A. Young Jan 2005

Just Blowing Smoke? Politics, Doctrine, And The Federalist Revival After Gonzales V. Raich, Ernest A. Young

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


A Criminal Procedure Regime Based On Instrumental Values: A Review Of 'About Guilt And Innocence: The Origins, Development, And Future Of Constitutional Criminal Procedure,' By Donald A. Dripps (Prager Publishers, 2003), Tracey Maclin Jan 2005

A Criminal Procedure Regime Based On Instrumental Values: A Review Of 'About Guilt And Innocence: The Origins, Development, And Future Of Constitutional Criminal Procedure,' By Donald A. Dripps (Prager Publishers, 2003), Tracey Maclin

Faculty Scholarship

Like many legal academics, Professor Donald Dripps believes that the Supreme Court's criminal procedure doctrine is a mess. Dripps believes that the Court's doctrine "is in large measure responsible for the failure of the criminal-procedure revolution" and contends that "current doctrine does not reflect prevailing (and justified) values about criminal process." To prove his claim, Dripps has written a book that expertly identifies the flaws, inconsistencies and missteps of the Court's constitutional criminal procedure cases dating back to the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. "About Guilt and Innocence: The Origins, Development, and Future of Constitutional Criminal Procedure" is a comprehensive …


Laugh Track, Jay D. Wexler Jan 2005

Laugh Track, Jay D. Wexler

Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court may have its own police force, its own museum curator, and even its own basketball court, but unlike the courts of yore it has no Jester. As a result, the responsibility of delivering humor within the hallowed halls of One First Street falls squarely on the backs of the nine Justices themselves. But which Justice provides the best comic entertainment for the court watchers, lawyers, and staff that make up the Court’s audience on any given argument day? Surely many believe that Justice Scalia, with his acerbic wit and quick tongue, has provided the most laughs from …


Untied States: American Expansion And Territorial Deannexation, Christina Duffy Ponsa-Kraus Jan 2005

Untied States: American Expansion And Territorial Deannexation, Christina Duffy Ponsa-Kraus

Faculty Scholarship

At the beginning of the twentieth century the United States laid claim to an overseas empire, consolidating its victory in the Spanish-American War by adopting novel structures of colonial rule over a brace of newly acquired island territories. A set of Supreme Court decisions known collectively as the Insular Cases established the legal authorization for this undertaking. As the traditional story goes, they did so by holding that the U.S. Constitution did not "follow the flag" to the recently annexed possessions in the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea: thus unfettered, an ambitiously imperial nation could attend to the business …


Judging Partisan Gerrymanders Under The Elections Clause, Jamal Greene Jan 2005

Judging Partisan Gerrymanders Under The Elections Clause, Jamal Greene

Faculty Scholarship

Twice in the last two decades, the Supreme Court has come within two votes of declaring partisan gerrymandering – the manipulation of district lines for partisan ends – a nonjusticiable political question. Last Term, in Vieth v. Jubelirer, Pennsylvania Democrats challenged an alleged Republican gerrymander of the state's congressional districts. Four members of the Court thought the question nonjusticiable, and one, Justice Kennedy, thought it justiciable under the Equal Protection Clause but nonetheless rejected the plaintiffs claims. Eighteen years earlier, in Davis v. Bandemer, a three-Justice plurality had held that a political group complaining of partisan gerrymandering – the Democratic …


The Decline Of The Juvenile Death Penalty: Scientific Evidence Of Evolving Norms, Jeffery Fagan Jan 2005

The Decline Of The Juvenile Death Penalty: Scientific Evidence Of Evolving Norms, Jeffery Fagan

Faculty Scholarship

Shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in Atkins v. Virginia holding that the execution of mentally retarded persons violated the Eighth Amendment, legal scholars, advocates, and journalists began to speculate that the Court would next turn its attention to the question of the execution of persons who were juveniles – below eighteen years of age – at the time they committed homicide. Following the Atkins decision, four Justices expressed the view that the rationale of Atkins also supported the conclusion that execution of juvenile offenders was unconstitutional. A constitutional test of capital punishment for juveniles was inevitable. …