Law Commons^™

Multiplicity In Federalism And The Separation Of Powers, Josh Chafetz

Josh Chafetz

By highlighting multiplicity in the federalism context, Alison LaCroix’s new book does constitutional scholarship a great service. Her tracing of the federal idea in the 1760s and 1770s, as well as her tracing of jurisdictional ideas in the early Republic, is thorough and insightful. But it is unclear why her focus suddenly narrows from the federal idea—the idea that multiplicity in levels of government was a virtue rather than a vice—to federal jurisdiction. Certainly, as this Review has endeavored to show, her claim that federalism discourse after 1787 reduced entirely (or even primarily) to jurisdictional debates cannot stand. And this …

Collapsing Liberalism's Public/Private Divide: Voldemort's War On The Family, Danaya C. Wright

Danaya C. Wright

As a legal scholar setting out to explore themes of law in Harry Potter, I am acutely aware of the absence of family law conflicts in these different family structures and relationships. Rowling's obvious fascination with different family structures and her relatively strong sense of an isolated, private sphere that is free of state intervention seems in keeping with traditional liberal values of the public/private divide. Yet her rejection of state interference in the private sphere of the family does not correspond to an autonomous state that is focused on the public sphere. Where liberalism separates the private world of …

Was There An Alternative To Liberal Representative Government In 1856?, Terence Irving

Terry Irving

No abstract provided.

China's Regulatory Framework For Outward Foreign Direct Investment, Karl P. Sauvant, Victor Zitian Chen

Karl P. Sauvant

Relying On Government In Comparison: What Should The United States Learn From Abroad In Relation To Administrative Estoppel?, Dorit R. Reiss

Dorit R. Reiss

The United States’ Supreme Court had never upheld a claim of estoppel against the government. A citizen relying on government’s advice does that at her peril: if the government was wrong, if it misrepresented the statute or interpreted it wrongly, it can (by some interpretations, must) go back on its word and the citizen has no recourse. The Supreme Court provided many arguments for that position, but the core of them involves protection of what the Europeans refer to as “the principle of legality”: the executive does not have the ability to waive requirements from primary legislation or deviate from …

Orwellian Surveillance Of Vehicular Travels, Sam Hanna

Sam Hanna

What would someone learn about you if all your automobile travels were ubiquitously tracked beginning today? Creating an indefinite database of a person’s previous automobile travels to formulate deductions on intimate details of people's lives is precisely what law enforcement agencies are currently able to accomplish with automatic license plate recognition (“ALPR”). With the ubiquity of ALPR cameras, continuous government surveillance of automobile travels is no longer a figment of the imagination. Consequently, the judicial and legislative branches of government must embark on balancing the private and public interests implicated by this technology. Failure to set suitable boundaries around the …