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Full-Text Articles in Law
Disparity In Judicial Misconduct Cases: Color-Blind Diversity?, Athena D. Mutua
Disparity In Judicial Misconduct Cases: Color-Blind Diversity?, Athena D. Mutua
Journal Articles
This article presents and analyzes preliminary data on racial and gender disparities in state judicial disciplinary actions. Studies of demographic disparities in the context of judicial discipline do not exist. This paper presents a first past and preliminary look at the data collected on the issue and assembled into a database. The article is also motivated by the resistance encountered to inquiries into the demographic profile of the state bench and its judges. As such, it also tells the story of the journey undertaken to secure this information and critiques what the author terms a practice of colorblind diversity. Initially …
Why Federalism And Constitutional Positivism Don't Mix, James A. Gardner
Why Federalism And Constitutional Positivism Don't Mix, James A. Gardner
Contributions to Books
Published as Chapter 4 in New Frontiers of State Constitutional Law: Dual Enforcement of Norms, James A. Gardner & Jim Rossi, eds.
This chapter places the book's approach in its interpretational context by linking the federal structure of constitutional norm production to the ever-present problem of interpretational methodology. It begins by arguing that previous approaches to the interpretation of subnational constitutions have failed because they improperly attempted to apply the dominant jurisprudence of national constitutional interpretation—constitutional positivism—to the constitutions of the states. Yet constitutional positivism as a technique only makes sense where subnational units are autonomous, as independent nations are. …
State Courts As Agents Of Federalism: Power And Interpretation In State Constitutional Law, James A. Gardner
State Courts As Agents Of Federalism: Power And Interpretation In State Constitutional Law, James A. Gardner
Journal Articles
In the American constitutional tradition, federalism is commonly understood as a mechanism designed to institutionalize a kind of permanent struggle between state and national power. The same American constitutional tradition also holds that courts are basically passive institutions whose mission is to apply the law impartially while avoiding inherently political power struggles. These two commonplace understandings conflict on their face. The conflict may be dissolved for federal courts by conceiving their resistance to state authority as the impartial consequence of limitations on state power imposed by the U.S. Constitution. But this reconciliation is unavailable for state courts, which, by operation …