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Full-Text Articles in Law

Does Heller Protect A Right To Carry Guns Outside The Home?, Michael C. Dorf Dec 2008

Does Heller Protect A Right To Carry Guns Outside The Home?, Michael C. Dorf

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.


Daniel Defoe And The Written Constitution, Bernadette Meyler Nov 2008

Daniel Defoe And The Written Constitution, Bernadette Meyler

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Today, as constitutionalism spreads around the globe, it is embodied de rigueur in written documents. Even places that sustained polities for centuries without a written constitution have begun to succumb to the lure of writtenness. America, we think, spawned this worldwide force, inaugurating a radically new form of political organization when it adopted the U.S. Constitution as its foundational text. Yet the notion of the written constitution had, in fact, received an earlier imprimatur from the pen of Daniel Defoe, English novelist, political pamphleteer, and secret agent. Plying his trades in the early eighteenth century, Defoe, now known largely as …


Leaving The House: The Constitutional Status Of Resignation From The House Of Representatives, Josh Chafetz Nov 2008

Leaving The House: The Constitutional Status Of Resignation From The House Of Representatives, Josh Chafetz

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Do members of the House of Representatives have a constitutional right to resign their seats? This Article uses that question as a window onto broader issues about the relationship between legislators and citizens and the respective roles of liberalism and republicanism in the American constitutional order. The Constitution explicitly provides for the resignation of senators, presidents, and vice presidents, but, curiously, it does not say anything about resigning from the House of Representatives. Should we allow the expressio unius interpretive canon to govern and conclude that the inclusion of some resignation provisions implies the impermissibility of resignation when there is …


Judicial Decision-Making, Social Science Evidence, And Equal Educational Opportunity: Uneasy Relations And Uncertain Futures, Michael Heise Jul 2008

Judicial Decision-Making, Social Science Evidence, And Equal Educational Opportunity: Uneasy Relations And Uncertain Futures, Michael Heise

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.


Eclecticism, Nelson Tebbe Jul 2008

Eclecticism, Nelson Tebbe

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This short piece comments on Kent Greenawalt's new book, Religion and the Constitution: Establishment and Fairness. It argues that although Greenawalt's eclectic approach carries certain obvious costs, his theory cannot be evaluated without comparing its advantages and disadvantages to those of its competitors. It concludes by giving some sense of what that comparative calculus might look like.


Excluding Religion, Nelson Tebbe May 2008

Excluding Religion, Nelson Tebbe

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This Article considers whether government may single out religious actors and entities for exclusion from its support programs. The problem of selective exclusion has recently sparked interest in lower courts and in informal discussions among scholars, but the literature has not kept pace. Excluding Religion argues that government generally ought to be able to select religious actors and entities for omission from support without offending the Constitution. At the same time, the Article carefully circumscribes that power by delineating several limits. It concludes by drawing out some implications for the question of whether and how a constitutional democracy ought to …


Abortion Rights, Michael C. Dorf Mar 2008

Abortion Rights, Michael C. Dorf

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.


The Morality Of Prophylactic Legislation (With Special Reference To Speed Limits, Assisted Suicide, Torture, And Detention Without Trial), Michael C. Dorf Jan 2008

The Morality Of Prophylactic Legislation (With Special Reference To Speed Limits, Assisted Suicide, Torture, And Detention Without Trial), Michael C. Dorf

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

My subject is the morality of prophylactic legislation. What do I mean by ‘prophylactic’ legislation? Let me illustrate the concept by drawing a contrast with the most famous hypothetical case in the scholarly literature of Anglo-American jurisprudence. During the course of their debate over the relation between law and morality, Lon Fuller and H. L. A. Hart disagreed about what tools are needed to discern the meaning and scope of a rule barring vehicles from a public park. Hart and Fuller clashed over whether legislative purpose and considerations of morality enter into the process of discerning what Hart famously called …