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Full-Text Articles in Law
Dissenting From The Bench, Christine Venter
Dissenting From The Bench, Christine Venter
Journal Articles
This paper examines the oral dissents of Justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg from the year 2000 to the times of their respective deaths. It explores the concept and purpose of oral dissent and details the kinds of cases in which each justice was more likely to orally dissent. The paper analyzes the kinds of rhetoric that each justice used to refer to their subject matter, and argues that Scalia's rhetoric evinces a view of the law as "autonomous", operating independently of the facts of the case. In contrast, Ginsburg's view espouses a view of the law as responsive …
Untangling Entanglement, Stephanie H. Barclay
Untangling Entanglement, Stephanie H. Barclay
Journal Articles
The Court has increasingly signaled its interest in taking a more historical approach to the Establishment Clause. And in its recent American Legion decision, the Supreme Court strongly suggested that the three-prong Lemon test is essentially dead letter. Such a result would make sense for the first two prongs of the Lemon test about secular purpose and the effects. Many scholars have observed that these aspects of the prong are judicial creations far afield of the Establishment Clause history. But what of the entanglement prong of the test? If we rejected all applications of this prong of the analysis, would …
Proximate Vs. Geographic Limits On Patent Damages, Stephen Yelderman
Proximate Vs. Geographic Limits On Patent Damages, Stephen Yelderman
Journal Articles
The exclusive rights of a U.S. patent are limited in two important ways. First, a patent has a technical scope—only the products and methods set out in the patent’s claims may constitute infringement. Second, a patent has a geographic scope—making, using, or selling the products or methods described in the patent’s claims will only constitute infringement if that activity takes place in the United States. These boundaries are foundational features of the patent system: there can be no liability for U.S. patent infringement without an act that falls within both the technical and geographic scope of the patent.
Why Federal Courts Apply The Law Of Nations Even Though It Is Not The Supreme Law Of The Land, Anthony J. Bellia, Bradford R. Clark
Why Federal Courts Apply The Law Of Nations Even Though It Is Not The Supreme Law Of The Land, Anthony J. Bellia, Bradford R. Clark
Journal Articles
We are grateful to the judges and scholars who participated in this Symposium examining our book, The Law of Nations and the United States Constitution. One of our goals in writing this book was to reinvigorate and advance the debate over the role of customary international law in U.S. courts. The papers in this Symposium advance this debate by deepening understandings of how the Constitution interacts with customary international law. Our goal in this Article is to address two questions raised by this Symposium that go to the heart of the status of the law of nations under the Constitution. …
Precedent And Constitutional Structure, Randy J. Kozel
Precedent And Constitutional Structure, Randy J. Kozel
Journal Articles
The Constitution does not talk about precedent, at least not explicitly, but several of its features suggest a place for deference to prior decisions. It isolates the judicial function and insulates federal courts from official and electoral control, promoting a vision of impersonality and continuity. It charges courts with applying a charter that is vague and ambiguous in important respects. And it was enacted at a time when prominent thinkers were already discussing the use of precedent to channel judicial discretion. Taken in combination, these features make deference to precedent a sound inference from the Constitution’s structure, text, and historical …
Discretionary Dockets, Randy J. Kozel, Jeffrey Pojanowski
Discretionary Dockets, Randy J. Kozel, Jeffrey Pojanowski
Journal Articles
The Supreme Court’s workload and its method for selecting cases have drawn increasing critical scrutiny. Similarly, and separately, recent commentary has focused on the disparate approaches the Court has taken to resolving cases on its (historically small) docket. In this Essay we draw these two lines of inquiry together to argue that the Court’s case selection should align with its approach to constitutional adjudication. In doing so, we discuss four modes of constitutional decisionmaking and then examine the interplay between those modes, the Court’s management of its docket, and its sense of institutional role. The Court, we argue, has neither …
Do Conservative Justices Favor Wall Street: Ideology And The Supreme Court's Securities Regulation Decisions, Marco Ventoruzzo, Johannes W. Fedderke
Do Conservative Justices Favor Wall Street: Ideology And The Supreme Court's Securities Regulation Decisions, Marco Ventoruzzo, Johannes W. Fedderke
Journal Articles
The appointment of Supreme Court justices is a politically-charged process and the "ideology" (or "judicial philosophy") of the nominees is perceived as playing a potentially relevant role in their future decision-making. It is fairly easy to intuit that ideology somehow enters the analysis with respect to politically divisive issues such as abortion and procreative rights, sexual conduct, freedom of speech, separation of church and state, gun control, procedural protections for the accused in criminal cases, governmental powers. Many studies have tackled the question of the relevance of the ideology of the justices or appellate judges on these issues, often finding …
Rules Against Rulification, Michael Coenen
Rules Against Rulification, Michael Coenen
Journal Articles
The Supreme Court often confronts the choice between bright-line rules and open-ended standards — a point well understood by commentators and the Court itself. Far less understood is a related choice that arises once the Court has opted for a standard over a rule: May lower courts develop subsidiary rules to facilitate their own application of the Supreme Court’s standard, or must they always apply that standard in its pure, un-“rulified” form? In several recent cases, spanning a range of legal contexts, the Court has endorsed the latter option, fortifying its first-order standards with second-order “rules against rulification.” Rules against …
When Enough Is Enough: Location Tracking, Machine Learning And The Mosaic Theory, Renee Mcdonald Hutchins, Steve Bellovin, Tony Jebara, Sebastian Zimmeck
When Enough Is Enough: Location Tracking, Machine Learning And The Mosaic Theory, Renee Mcdonald Hutchins, Steve Bellovin, Tony Jebara, Sebastian Zimmeck
Journal Articles
Since 1967, when it decided Katz v. United States, the Supreme Court has tied the right to be free of unwanted government scrutiny to the concept of reasonable expectations of privacy.1 An evaluation of reasonable expectations depends, among other factors, upon an assessment of the intrusiveness of government action. When making such assessment historically the Court considered police conduct with clear temporal, geographic, or substantive limits. However, in an era where new technologies permit the storage and compilation of vast amounts of personal data, things are becoming more complicated. A school of thought known as “mosaic theory” has stepped into …
William H. Rehnquist: A Life Lived Greatly, And Well, Richard W. Garnett
William H. Rehnquist: A Life Lived Greatly, And Well, Richard W. Garnett
Journal Articles
Chief Justice Rehnquist leaves behind a formidable and important legacy in constitutional law. His work on the Court was animated and guided by the view that We the People, through our Constitution, have authorized our federal courts, legislators, and administrators to do many things - but not everything. Because the Nation's powers are few and defined, Congress may not pursue every good idea or smart policy, nor should courts invalidate every foolish or immoral one. However, for those of us who knew, worked with, learned from, and cared about William Rehnquist, it is his unassuming manner, the care he took …
The Rise, Development And Future Directions Of Critical Race Theory And Related Scholarship, Athena D. Mutua
The Rise, Development And Future Directions Of Critical Race Theory And Related Scholarship, Athena D. Mutua
Journal Articles
This essay tells the story of the rise, development and future directions of critical race theory and related scholarship. In telling the story, I suggest that critical race theory (CRT) rises, in part, as a challenge to the emergence of colorblind ideology in law, a major theme of the scholarship. I also contend that conflict, as a process of intellectual and institutional growth, marks the development of critical race theory and provides concrete and experiential examples of some of its key insights and themes. These conflicts are waged in various institutional settings over the structural and discursive meanings of race …
Review Essay: Liberalism And The Supreme Court, Donald P. Kommers
Review Essay: Liberalism And The Supreme Court, Donald P. Kommers
Journal Articles
In Liberalism and American Constitutional Law, Rogers M. Smith of Yale University takes stock of the American liberal tradition and its impact on the Supreme Court's constitutional jurisprudence. It argues that the tradition's political vision lacks philosophical coherence and that our constitutional law, by reflecting this incoherence, has failed to provide the legal community with a public philosophy suited to the needs of American society in the late twentieth century.His goal is to demonstrate the superiority of "rational liberty," both as a philosophical theory and practical guide to constitutional policymaking, over three major competing versions of liberal constitutionalism. To wit: …
The Supreme Court And The Constitution: The Continuing Debate On Judicial Review, Donald P. Kommers
The Supreme Court And The Constitution: The Continuing Debate On Judicial Review, Donald P. Kommers
Journal Articles
The three books reviewed in this essay are recent contributions to the growing literature of constitutional theory (Michael J. Perry, The Constitution, the Courts, and Human Rights (New Ha- ven: Yale University Press, 1982); Sotirios A. Barber, On What the Constitution Means (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984); and John Agresto, The Supreme Court and Constitutional Democracy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984). They explore important questions about the role of the Supreme Court and the meaning of the Constitution.
Aussergesetzliche Masstabe In Der Rechtspreching Des Supreme Court Der Vereinigten Staaten, Donald P. Kommers, Kenneth Ripple
Aussergesetzliche Masstabe In Der Rechtspreching Des Supreme Court Der Vereinigten Staaten, Donald P. Kommers, Kenneth Ripple
Journal Articles
Zweck der folgenden Ausführungen ist die Darlegung der Bedeutung außergesetz licher Urteilsmaßstäbe in der amerikanischen Verfassungsrechtsprechung. Dabei sollen vor allem diejenigen Urteilskriterien untersucht werden, die den größten Einfluß auf das amerikanische Verfassungsrecht haben dürften; sie sollen im Kontext des gegen wärtigen case law untersucht werden.
The Supreme Court, Politics, And Modern Society, Donald P. Kommers
The Supreme Court, Politics, And Modern Society, Donald P. Kommers
Journal Articles
Donald P. Kommers reviews Charles S. Hyneman's The Supreme Court on Trial (New York: Atherton Press, 1963).