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Full-Text Articles in Law

Staking Out The Border Between Comandeering And Conditional Preemption: Is The Driver's Privacy Protection Act Constitutional Under The Tenth Amendment?, Rachel F. Preiser Nov 1999

Staking Out The Border Between Comandeering And Conditional Preemption: Is The Driver's Privacy Protection Act Constitutional Under The Tenth Amendment?, Rachel F. Preiser

Michigan Law Review

Congress passed the Driver's Privacy Protection Act of 1994 ("DPPA") in response to state sales of personal information contained in motor vehicle records to individuals and to direct marketing companies who use it to identify select groups of prospective customers for particular products. Thirty-four states sell their department of motor vehicles ("DMV") records to individual citizens and to direct marketers, essentially allowing their unregulated distribution to any party seeking them. This practice of selling and distributing personal information has serious implications for the privacy and safety of individual citizens. In considering the DPP A, Congress dwelt in particular on the …


Citizen Suits Under The Resource Conservation And Recovery Act: Plotting Abstention On A Map Of Federalism, Charlotte Gibson Oct 1999

Citizen Suits Under The Resource Conservation And Recovery Act: Plotting Abstention On A Map Of Federalism, Charlotte Gibson

Michigan Law Review

In the shadow of the Supreme Court's constitutional federalism doctrines, lower federal courts have developed doctrines of common law federalism through vehicles such as abstention. In the environmental law arena, courts have employed a number of abstention theories to dismiss citizen suits brought under federal statutes. The appearance of primary jurisdiction and Burford abstention in citizen suits brought under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act ("RCRA") exemplifies this trend. In rejecting RCRA suits, some courts have relied on primary jurisdiction, a doctrine conceived as a mechanism to allocate responsibility for limited fact-finding between courts and agencies, to dismiss RCRA citizen …


Section 4: Federalism, Institute Of Bill Of Rights Law, William & Mary Law School Sep 1999

Section 4: Federalism, Institute Of Bill Of Rights Law, William & Mary Law School

Supreme Court Preview

No abstract provided.


Dissecting The State: The Use Of Federal Law To Free State And Local Officials From State Legislatures' Control, Roderick M. Hills Jr. Mar 1999

Dissecting The State: The Use Of Federal Law To Free State And Local Officials From State Legislatures' Control, Roderick M. Hills Jr.

Michigan Law Review

In discussions about American federalism, it is common to speak of a "state government" as if it were a black box, an individual speaking with a single voice. State governments are, of course, no such thing. Rather, a "state" actually incorporates a bundle of different subdivisions, branches, and agencies controlled by politicians who often compete with each other for electoral success and governmental power. In particular, these institutions compete with each other for the power to control federal funds and implement federal programs. This article explores one aspect of this intrastate competition - the extent to which federal law can …


Finding The Constitution: An Economic Analysis Of Tradition's Role In Constitutional Interpretation, Adam C. Pritchard, Todd J. Zywicki Jan 1999

Finding The Constitution: An Economic Analysis Of Tradition's Role In Constitutional Interpretation, Adam C. Pritchard, Todd J. Zywicki

Articles

In this Article, Professor Pritchard and Professor Zywicki examine the role of tradition in constitutional interpretation, a topic that has received significant attention in recent years. After outlining the current debate over the use of tradition, the authors discuss the efficiency purposes of constitutionalism--precommitment and the reduction of agency costs--and demonstrate how the use of tradition in constitutional interpretation can serve these purposes. Rejecting both Justice Scalia's majoritarian model, which focuses on legislative sources of tradition, and Justice Souter's common-law model, which focuses on Supreme Court precedent as a source of tradition, the authors propose an alternative model--the "finding model"-- …


Civics 2000: Process Constitutionalism At Yale, Daniel J. Hulsebosch Jan 1999

Civics 2000: Process Constitutionalism At Yale, Daniel J. Hulsebosch

Michigan Law Review

One or another form of historical fidelity has long been in the repetoire of constitutional interpretation, and during the last two decades conservative jurists have searched for the "original intent" of various clauses. Increasingly, however, it is liberal law professors who are turning to history to make sense of American constitutionalism. What they find there is not a document listing eternal rights or duties but rather a multidimensional structure of government, captured as much in practice as on paper, that has metamorphosed over time. It seems we have, in that familiar phrase, a living Constitution. But interest is shifting from …


Caste, Class, And Equal Citizenship, William E. Forbath Jan 1999

Caste, Class, And Equal Citizenship, William E. Forbath

Michigan Law Review

There is a familiar egalitarian constitutional tradition and another we have largely forgotten. The familiar one springs from Brown v. Board of Education; its roots lie in the Reconstruction era. Court-centered and countermajoritarian, it takes aim at caste and racial subordination. The forgotten one also originated with Reconstruction, but it was a majoritarian tradition, addressing its arguments to lawmakers and citizens, not to courts. Aimed against harsh class inequalities, it centered on decent work and livelihoods, social provision, and a measure of economic independence and democracy. Borrowing a phrase from its Progressive Era proponents, I will call it the social …


Nineteenth-Century Orthodoxy, Richard B. Collins Jan 1999

Nineteenth-Century Orthodoxy, Richard B. Collins

Publications

No abstract provided.