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Full-Text Articles in Law
Letter From Iowa: Same-Sex Marriage And The Ouster Of Three Justices, Todd E. Pettys
Letter From Iowa: Same-Sex Marriage And The Ouster Of Three Justices, Todd E. Pettys
Todd E. Pettys
This article examines Iowa's 2010 judicial-retention election, in which Iowa voters ousted three members of the Iowa Supreme Court in response to that court's ruling that the state's statutory ban on same-sex marriage violated the Iowa Constitution.
Judicial Discretion In Constitutional Cases, Todd E. Pettys
Judicial Discretion In Constitutional Cases, Todd E. Pettys
Todd E. Pettys
A damaging dichotomy is hindering the nation’s ability to talk intelligently and constructively about the constitutional work of the courts. The “legitimacy dichotomy” holds that, when adjudicating constitutional disputes, judges either obey the sovereign people’s determinate constitutional instructions or illegitimately trump the sovereign people’s value judgments with their own. The legitimacy dichotomy leaves little or no room for the possibility that an array of conflicting interpretations of the Constitution might be reasonably available to a judge; it leaves little or no room, in other words, for judicial discretion. This article begins by examining the legitimacy dichotomy from three different vantage …