Law Commons^™

A Textualist Interpretation Of The Visual Artists Rights Act Of 1990, Brian L. Frye

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

For numberless generations, jurisprudes waged total war in the

conflict among textualism, intentionalism, and purposivism.

Textualists insisted that courts must interpret statutes based on the

meaning of their text, intentionalists insisted on the intention of the

legislature, and purposivists insisted on the purpose of the statute.

Eventually, textualism prevailed. Courts universally recognize

that they are obligated to interpret statutes in light of their text, or

at least pretend that the text of the statute determined their

interpretation. And the few remaining heretics are swiftly identified

and corrected by their superiors. As Justice Kagan famously

observed, “We’re all textualists now.” Whether …

Outlaws, Pirates, Judges: Judicial Activism As An Expression Of Antiauthoritarianism In Anglo-American Culture, Beau Steenken

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This article will argue that the rejection of what scholars otherwise

view as controlling legal authority lies at the heart of judicial activism.

Furthermore, it will argue that judicial activism itself channels the

antiauthoritarian current in American culture (and in English culture

predating its importation to America). Part II will examine the extensive

scholarly writings already existing on judicial activism in order to identify

common themes and to explore to what extent scholars have arrived at a

consensus definition of judicial activism. Part III will then show that

judicial activism may better be understood within the context of law as …

The Claims And Limits Of Justice Scalia's Textualism: Lessons From His Statutory Standing Decisions, Michael P. Healy

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Two decisions written by Justice Scalia near the end of his life, Lexmark International Inc. v. Static Control Components, Inc., 572 U.S. 479 (2014), and Thompson v. North American Stainless, LP, 562 U.S. 170 (2011), reshaped the law of statutory standing and provide important insights into the claims and limits of textualism. These decisions have reshaped the law of statutory standing in three ways. They have changed the legal terminology; expanded the range of cases to which the zone-of-interests test applies; and changed the application of the zone-of-interests test when it applies to determine statutory standing. This Article …

Legal Realism: Unfinished Business, Ramsi A. Woodcock

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Resorting To External Norms And Principles In Constitutional Decision-Making, Alvin L. Goldman

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Given the very significant role of constitutional law in the American political system and the fact that Supreme Court Justices are appointed through a political process, it is understandable that the appropriate judicial approach to resolving constitutional issues often is the subject of political commentary. Unfortunately, discourse by politicians concerning this issue seldom rises to the deserved level of wisdom. One of President George W. Bush's public mantras is illustrative of political commentary respecting federal judicial appointments: "I'm going to put strict constructionists on the bench." On its face, and as understood by politically naive audiences, the statement appears to …

The Constitutionality Of An Executive Spending Plan, Paul E. Salamanca

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Operation of government in the absence of appropriations has become relatively common in the United States, particularly when projected expenses exceed projected revenue, making adoption of a budget a difficult task for the legislature. This Article focuses on the budget crisis in the Commonwealth of Kentucky from 2002 through 2003. In Part I, this Article recapitulates the history of the spending plan, including the action filed in Franklin Circuit Court to affirm its constitutionality. In Part II, this Article discusses certain theoretical, historical, and legal principles that inform analysis of the plan. In Part III, it considers certain deviations and …

Communis Opinio And The Methods Of Statutory Interpretation: Interpreting Law Or Changing Law, Michael P. Healy

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Interpretive methodology lies at the core of the Supreme Court's persistent modern debate about statutory interpretation. Supreme Court Justices have applied two fundamentally different methods of interpretation. One is the formalist method, which seeks to promote rule-of-law values and purports to constrain the discretion of judges by limiting them to the autonomous legal text. The second is the nonformalist or antiformalist method, which may consider the legislature's intent or purpose or other evidence as context for understanding the statutory text. The debate within the current Court is commonly framed and advanced by Justices Stevens and Scalia. Justice Scalia is now …

"Intensional Contexts" And The Rule That Statutes Should Be Interpreted As Consistent With International Law, John M. Rogers

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Striving for consistency—for consistency, that is, properly understood—must characterize legal reasoning in order for the reasoning to deserve to be called "legal." It may conceivably be "good" or "moral" for identically situated persons to be treated differently by institutions with power, but doing so can hardly be called "legal." Very careful attention must be given, of course, to what is meant by "identically situated," as no two different persons can be 100% identically situated. Their names, for instance, are different. By identical, we must mean no relevant distinction, or no distinction that serves a purpose that we can articulate and …

Corporate Fiduciary Principles For The Post-Contractarian Era, Rutheford B. Campbell Jr.

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The impact of the law and economics movement on legal scholarship, legal analysis, and, ultimately, on the rules under which our society operates is substantial. The proponents of this movement ("Contractarians") articulate their positions skillfully and apply their principles broadly across the entire spectrum of our laws, including, of course, the area of corporate law.

The purpose of this Article is to propose, explain, and defend broad and unifying principles to guide the development of fiduciary duties of corporate managers in the post-Contractarian period. These principles are based on Pareto criteria, which are demonstrably appealing to society and provide workable …

"I Vote This Way Because I'M Wrong": The Supreme Court Justice As Epimenides, John M. Rogers

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Possibly the most unsettling phenomenon in the Supreme Court's 1988 term was Justice White's decision to vote contrary to his own exhaustively stated reasoning in Pennsylvania v. Union Gas Co. His unexplained decision to vote against the result of his own analysis lends support to those who argue that law, or at least constitutional law, is fundamentally indeterminate. Proponents of the indeterminacy argument sometimes base their position on the allegedly inescapable inconsistency of decisions made by a multi-member court. There is an answer to the inconsistency argument, but it founders if justices sometimes vote, without explanation, on the basis of …

Markets Overt, Voidable Titles, And Feckless Agents: Judges And Efficiency In The Antebellum Doctrine Of Good Faith Purchase, Harold R. Weinberg

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In considering American common law doctrines shaped during the nineteenth century, commentators have advanced differing theories on the primary judicial criteria employed by judges. Recent studies have argued that these doctrines reflect a criterion of economic efficiency. This work has been criticized for its failure to explain why there seems to be a correlation between efficiency and these decision rules or why judges might have preferred efficiency over other decisional criteria. Other studies have proposed that many judicial doctrines announced before the Civil War were intended to facilitate or ratify major shifts in the distribution of social wealth. This article …