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Full-Text Articles in Law
Dysfunction, Deference, And Judicial Review, Barry Friedman, Margaret H. Lemos
Dysfunction, Deference, And Judicial Review, Barry Friedman, Margaret H. Lemos
Faculty Scholarship
This symposium poses a provocative question: Should judges exercising the power of judicial review defer to the political branches as a means of giving voice to the “will of the people”? The inquiry assumes a connection between majority will and the outputs of the political branches—a connection we argue is frayed, at best, in the current political context.
In the first part of this Essay, we highlight how well-known aspects of our political system—ranging from representational distortions in federal and state governments to the relationship between partisan polarization and the behavior of elected officials—call into question whether political outcomes reliably …
Judges As Superheroes: The Danger Of Confusing Constitutional Decisions With Cosmic Battles, H. Jefferson Powell
Judges As Superheroes: The Danger Of Confusing Constitutional Decisions With Cosmic Battles, H. Jefferson Powell
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Historical Gloss, Madisonian Liquidation, And The Originalism Debate, Curtis A. Bradley, Neil S. Siegel
Historical Gloss, Madisonian Liquidation, And The Originalism Debate, Curtis A. Bradley, Neil S. Siegel
Faculty Scholarship
The U.S. Constitution is old, relatively brief, and very difficult to amend. In its original form, the Constitution was primarily a framework for a new national government, and for 230 years the national government has operated under that framework even as conditions have changed in ways beyond the Founders’ conceivable imaginations. The framework has survived in no small part because government institutions have themselves played an important role in helping to fill in and clarify the framework through their practices and interactions, informed by the realities of governance. Courts, the political branches, and academic commentators commonly give weight to such …
Theorizing The Judicialization Of International Relations, Karen J. Alter, Emilie M. Hafner-Burton, Laurence R. Helfer
Theorizing The Judicialization Of International Relations, Karen J. Alter, Emilie M. Hafner-Burton, Laurence R. Helfer
Faculty Scholarship
This article introduces a Thematic Section and theorizes the multiple ways that judicializing international relations shifts power away from national executives and legislatures toward litigants, judges, arbitrators, and other nonstate decision-makers. We identify two preconditions for judicialization to occur—(1) delegation to an adjudicatory body charged with applying designated legal rules, and (2) legal rights-claiming by actors who bring—or threaten to bring—a complaint to one or more of these bodies. We classify the adjudicatory bodies that do and do not contribute to judicializing international relations, including but not limited to international courts. We then explain how rights-claiming initiates a process for …
Delaware's Retreat: Exploring Developing Fissures And Tectonic Shifts In Delaware Corporate Law, James D. Cox, Randall S. Thomas
Delaware's Retreat: Exploring Developing Fissures And Tectonic Shifts In Delaware Corporate Law, James D. Cox, Randall S. Thomas
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Rethinking Family-Court Prosecutors: Elected And Agency Prosecutors And Prosecutorial Discretion In Juvenile Delinquency And Child Protection Cases, Joshua Gupta-Kagan
Rethinking Family-Court Prosecutors: Elected And Agency Prosecutors And Prosecutorial Discretion In Juvenile Delinquency And Child Protection Cases, Joshua Gupta-Kagan
Faculty Scholarship
Like criminal prosecutors, family-court prosecutors have immense power. Determining which cases to prosecute and which to divert or dismiss goes to the heart of the delinquency system’s balance between punishment and rehabilitation of children and the child protection system’s spectrum of family interventions. For instance, the 1990s shift to prosecute (rather than dismiss or divert) about 10 percent more delinquency cases annually is as significant a development as any other. Yet scholars have not examined the legal structures for these charging decisions or family-court prosecutors’ authority in much depth.
This Article shows how family-court prosecutors’ roles have never been fully …
Doing Gloss, Curtis A. Bradley
Doing Gloss, Curtis A. Bradley
Faculty Scholarship
It is common for courts, the political branches, and academic commentators to look to historical governmental practices when interpreting the separation of powers. There has been relatively little attention, however, to the proper methodology for invoking such “historical gloss.” This Essay contends that, in order to gain traction on the methodological questions, we need to begin by considering the potential justifications for crediting gloss. For judicial application of gloss, which is this Essay’s principal focus, there are at least four such justifications: deference to the constitutional views of nonjudicial actors; limits on judicial capacity; Burkean consequentialism; and reliance interests. As …
Agora: Reflections On Zivotofsky V. Kerry : Historical Gloss, The Recognition Power, And Judicial Review, Curtis A. Bradley
Agora: Reflections On Zivotofsky V. Kerry : Historical Gloss, The Recognition Power, And Judicial Review, Curtis A. Bradley
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Introduction To Agora: Reflections On Zivotofsky V. Kerry, Curtis A. Bradley, Carlos M. Vazquez
Introduction To Agora: Reflections On Zivotofsky V. Kerry, Curtis A. Bradley, Carlos M. Vazquez
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Constitutionalism Outside The Courts, Ernest A. Young
Constitutionalism Outside The Courts, Ernest A. Young
Faculty Scholarship
This essay is a chapter to be included in the forthcoming Oxford Handbook on the U.S. Constitution. Using the actions of Arkansas Governor Orville Faubus during the Little Rock crisis of 1957 and the U.S. Supreme Court’s subsequent decision in Cooper v. Aaron as a lens, it explores constitutional interpretation and enforcement by extrajudicial institutions. I explore the critique of Cooper’s notion of judicial supremacy by departmentalists like Walter Murphy, empirical scholars skeptical of judicial efficacy like Gerald Rosenberg, and popular constitutionalists like Larry Kramer and Mark Tushnet. I also consider four distinct institutional forms of extrajudicial constitutional interpretation and …
The National Security State: The End Of Separation Of Powers, Michael E. Tigar
The National Security State: The End Of Separation Of Powers, Michael E. Tigar
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Judicial Review For Enemy Fighters: The Court’S Fateful Turn In Ex Parte Quirin, The Nazi Saboteur Case, Andrew Kent
Judicial Review For Enemy Fighters: The Court’S Fateful Turn In Ex Parte Quirin, The Nazi Saboteur Case, Andrew Kent
Faculty Scholarship
The emerging conventional wisdom in the legal academy is that individual rights under the U.S. Constitution should be extended to noncitizens outside the United States. This claim - called globalism in my article - has been advanced with increasing vigor in recent years, most notably in response to legal positions taken by the Bush administration during the war on terror. Against a Global Constitution challenges the textual and historical grounds advanced to support the globalist conventional wisdom and demonstrates that they have remarkably little support. At the same time, the article adduces textual and historical evidence that noncitizens were among …
Sorrell V. Ims Health And The End Of The Constitutional Double Standard, Ernest A. Young
Sorrell V. Ims Health And The End Of The Constitutional Double Standard, Ernest A. Young
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
The Conflicted Assumptions Of Modern Constitutional Law, H. Jefferson Powell
The Conflicted Assumptions Of Modern Constitutional Law, H. Jefferson Powell
Faculty Scholarship
Contribution to Symposium - The Nature of Judicial Authority: A Reflection on Philip Hamburger's Law and Judicial Duty
The Supreme Common Law Court Of The United States, Jack M. Beermann
The Supreme Common Law Court Of The United States, Jack M. Beermann
Faculty Scholarship
The U.S. Supreme Court's primary role in the history of the United States, especially in constitutional cases (and cases hovering in the universe of the Constitution), has been to limit Congress's ability to redefine and redistribute rights in a direction most people would characterize as liberal. In other words, the Supreme Court, for most of the history of the United States since the adoption of the Constitution, has been a conservative force against change and redistribution. The Court has used five distinct devices to advance its control over the law. First, it has construed rights-creating constitutional provisions narrowly when those …
A Six-Three Rule: Reviving Consensus And Deference On The Supreme Court, Jed Handelsman Shugerman
A Six-Three Rule: Reviving Consensus And Deference On The Supreme Court, Jed Handelsman Shugerman
Faculty Scholarship
Over the past three decades, the Supreme Court has struck down federal statutes by a bare majority with unprecedented frequency. This Article shows that five-four decisions regularly overturning acts of Congress are a relatively recent phenomenon, whereas earlier Courts generally exercised judicial review by supermajority voting.
One option is to establish the following rule: The Supreme Court may not declare an act of Congress unconstitutional without a two-thirds majority. The Supreme Court itself could establish this rule internally, just as it has created its nonmajority rules for granting certiorari and holds, or one Justice who would otherwise be the fifth …
Constitutional Existence Conditions And Judicial Review, Matthew D. Adler, Michael C. Dorf
Constitutional Existence Conditions And Judicial Review, Matthew D. Adler, Michael C. Dorf
Faculty Scholarship
Although critics of judicial review sometimes call for making the entire Constitution nonjusticiable, many familiar norms of constitutional law state what we call "existence conditions" that are necessarily enforced by judicial actors charged with the responsibility of applying, and thus as a preliminary step, identifying, propositions of sub-constitutional law such as statutes. Article I, Section 7, which sets forth the procedures by which a bill becomes a law, is an example: a putative law that did not go through the Article I, Section 7 process and does not satisfy an alternative test for legal validity (such as the treaty-making provision …
Marbury And Judicial Deference: The Shadow Of Whittington V. Polk And The Maryland Judiciary Battle, Jed Handelsman Shugerman
Marbury And Judicial Deference: The Shadow Of Whittington V. Polk And The Maryland Judiciary Battle, Jed Handelsman Shugerman
Faculty Scholarship
On the 200th anniversary of Whittington and approaching the 200th anniversary of Marbury, this article revisits these two decisions and challenges legal scholars' assumptions that they were such strong precedents for judicial review.5 When one takes into account the broader contexts, both decisions were in fact judicial capitulations to aggressive legislatures and executives. The Maryland General Court asserted its judicial supremacy only in dicta, and the court failed to enforce judicial supremacy when it was legally justified. This article picks apart the court's reasoning step by step, using Whittington to illuminate Marbury and Marbury to illuminate Whittington. …
Piercing The Veil: William J. Brennan's Account Of Regents Of The University Of California V. Bakke, Lee Epstein, Jack Knight
Piercing The Veil: William J. Brennan's Account Of Regents Of The University Of California V. Bakke, Lee Epstein, Jack Knight
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Choosing Judges The Democratic Way, Larry Yackle
Choosing Judges The Democratic Way, Larry Yackle
Faculty Scholarship
A generation ago, the pressing question in constitutional law was the countermajoritarian difficulty.' Americans insisted their government was a democratic republic and took that to mean rule by a majority of elected representatives in various offices and bodies, federal and local. Yet courts whose members had not won election presumed to override the actions of executive and legislative officers who had. The conventional answer to this apparent paradox was the Constitution, which arguably owed its existence to the people directly. Judicial review was justified, accordingly, when court decisions were rooted firmly in the particular text, structure, or historical backdrop of …
Apartheid And The South African Judiciary, Lawrence G. Baxter
Apartheid And The South African Judiciary, Lawrence G. Baxter
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Distinguishing Justifications From Excuses, Kent Greenawalt
Distinguishing Justifications From Excuses, Kent Greenawalt
Faculty Scholarship
Ann swings her arm and injures Ben. She faces moral condemnation and legal liability unless she can offer an explanation that absolves her of full blame. She might make a claim of justification that, despite initial appearances, her action was desirable or proper, or she might make a claim of excuse that she does not bear full responsibility for injuring Ben. If Ann is fully justified, she will not be subject to blame or to classification as a weak or defective person. If Ann is excused, she may be regarded as wholly or partly free of blame, but she will …
A Political And Constitutional Review Of United States V. Nixon, William W. Van Alstyne
A Political And Constitutional Review Of United States V. Nixon, William W. Van Alstyne
Faculty Scholarship
This comparison of United States v. Nixon and the Pentagon Papers case finds the greatest similarity and significance shared by the two cases was the anti-climactic nature of their conclusions. While both cases concerned constitutional questions of the highest order, centered around the scope of the executive power, both cases were drawn on such narrow grounds that there was hardly any effect on constitutional law doctrine.