Law Commons^™

Communities, Texts, And Law: Reflections On The Law And Literature Movement, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

How do we form communities? How might we form better ones? What is the role of law in that process? In a recent series of books and articles, James Boyd White, arguably the modern law and literature movement's founder, has put forward distinctively literary answers to these questions. Perhaps because of the fluidity of the humanities, White's account of the nature of community is not nearly as axiomatic to the law and literature movement as is Posner's depiction of the "individual" to legal economists. Nevertheless, White's conception is increasingly representative of the literary-legalist's world view. Furthermore, with the exception of …

Adjudication Is Not Interpretation: Some Reservations About The Law-As-Literature Movement, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Among other achievements, the modern law-as-literature movement has prompted increasing numbers of legal scholars to embrace the claim that adjudication is interpretation, and more specifically, that constitutional adjudication is interpretation of the Constitution. That adjudication is interpretation -- that an adjudicative act is an interpretive act -- more than any other central commitment, unifies the otherwise diverse strands of the legal and constitutional theory of the late twentieth century.

In this article, I will argue in this article against both modern forms of interpretivism. The analogue of law to literature, on which much of modern interpretivism is based, although fruitful, …

Re Enumerated Constitutional Rights The Only Rights We Have? The Case Of Associational Freedom, Randy E. Barnett

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Much of contemporary constitutional thought assumes that the only rights individuals have are either those that they are given by the legislature or those that are explicitly specified in the Constitution of the United States (or in a state constitution). Such a view of rights is based on the jurisprudential philosophy known as legal positivism, a view that has dominated academic discussions about legal rights for at least fifty years and that has begun to wane only in the last fifteen years.' In this Paper, I will try to explain how adherence to this legal positivism taints and distorts constitutional …

The Nativity Scene Case: An Error Of Judgment, Norman Dorsen, Charles Sims

Philip A. Hart Memorial Lecture

On March 22, 1985, Professor of Law, Norman Dorsen of New York University School of Law, delivered the Georgetown Law Center’s fifth Annual Philip A. Hart Memorial Lecture: "Nativity Scenes and Judicial Responsibility."

Norman Dorsen is Counselor to the President of New York University and Stokes Professor of Law, NYU School of Law, where he has taught since 1961. He is co-director of the Arthur Garfield Hays Civil Liberties Program and was the founding director of NYU's Hauser Global Law School Program in 1994.

Dorsen performed military service in the office of the Secretary of the Army, where he assisted …

Less Than The Sum Of Its Parts, Charles F. Abernathy

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Constitutional Choices is not a newly created treatise but a collection of essays on a diverse range of topics. Most were printed previously in serial publications, and the others, one suspects, arose from projects undertaken independently of one another over the last few years. Such reprintings may strike some as a waste of paper and purchasers' money, but, as The New Yorker Album of Drawings amply proves, additional insight is often gained from seeing parts brought together as a whole. But that is not the case here, for the whole of Tribe's new book is less than the sum of …

The Origins And Original Significance Of The Just Compensation Clause Of The Fifth Amendment, William Michael Treanor

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The principle that the state necessarily owes compensation when it takes private property was not generally accepted in either colonial or revolutionary America. Uncompensated takings were frequent and found justification first in appeals to the crown and later in republicanism, the ideology of the Revolution. The post-independence movement for just compensation requirements at the state and national level was part of a broader ideological shift away from republicanism, which stressed the primacy of the common good, and toward liberalism. At the time the Bill of Rights was adopted, that shift had not been completed, but the trends of the revolutionary …

Deconstructing The Legislative Veto, Girardeau A. Spann

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

On June 23, 1983, the Supreme Court invalidated more federal statutes in a single day than it had in all of its prior history. In so doing, the Court also dramatically altered the allocation of governmental power between Congress and the President. At least that is how the press viewed the significance of INS v. Chadha, the decision invalidating the legislative veto device on which Congress had come to rely as an expedient method of controlling the exercise of executive discretion. Whether or not the hyperbole proves to have been warranted, the decision does possess a certain intrigue-it is not …

Spinning The Legislative Veto, Girardeau A. Spann

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

I am delighted to have been given the opportunity to comment on Judge Breyer's proposal for a fast-track substitute to the legislative veto. Although the Supreme Court invalidated the legislative veto device in INS v. Chadha, Judge Breyer's proposal demonstrates that innovative thinking may well permit those with enough determination to circumvent the apparent effect of the Court's decision. Even more important, the proposal illustrates why such circumvention is possible.

As a doctrinal matter, the legislative veto poses a real dilemma--one that is rooted in fundamental uncertainty about the proper relationship between the Supreme Court and the elected branches of …

Title Vi And The Constitution: A Regulatory Model For Defining ‘Discrimination’, Charles F. Abernathy

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In recent years confusion has surrounded the proper interpretation of title V1 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination in programs receiving federal financial assistance. Some courts have held that the title prohibits only intentional discrimination. Others have held that it proscribes actions having discriminatory effects as well, an interpretation that imposes a great burden on federal grantees. The Supreme Court heightened the confusion when five individual justices in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke questioned the propriety of the Court's earlier adoption of an "effects" test for title VI. Professor Abernathy argues that this …

Perils Of The Rulemaking Process: The Development, Application, And Unconstitutionality Of Rule 804(B)(3)'S Penal Interest Exception, Peter W. Tague

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

As the culmination of a decade of rulemaking, in 1975 Congress enacted the Federal Rules of Evidence, which include in rule 804(b)(3) an exception to the hearsay rule that allows federal courts to admit statements against penal interest. Having reviewed previously unpublished memoranda and nonpublic tape recordings of the deliberations of the Advisory and Standing Committees to the Judicial Conference and the Special Subcommittee on Reform of Federal Criminal Laws of the House Judiciary Committee, Professor Tague explores the development of rule 804(b)(3), one of the more controversial rules that emerged from that rulemaking process. After analyzing rule 804(b)(3) and …

Special Report - Federal Criminal Code Revision: Some Problems With Culpability Provisions, Paul F. Rothstein

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The age of federal codification is upon us. The Federal Rules of Evidence and the new bankruptcy and copyright revisions are but examples. By far the most ambitious undertaking in this regard is the effort to recodify federal criminal law.

The federal criminal code project, spanning more than a decade was most recently embodied in the last Congress in S. 1437, which passed the Senate, and H.R. 13959, which competed in the House with S. 1437. Neither bill passed the House. Thus, the Congress closed without a new Code. But both the bills will be back with us, introduced with …

Multiple Representation And Conflicts Of Interest In Criminal Cases, Peter W. Tague

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Conflicts of interest resulting from multiple representation in criminal cases impose heavy burdens on all the participants in the criminal justice system. Although the Supreme Court in Holloway v. Arkansas refused to hold that joint representation is unconstitutional per se, it recently approved Proposed Rule of Criminal Procedure 44(c), which would require trial courts to protect a defendant's right to counsel in this situation. After discussing the current approaches of the courts to the problems presented by joint representation, Professor Tague analyzes the proposed rule. He criticizes the proposed rule for its failure to define the role of the trial …

Federal Habeas Corpus And Ineffective Representation Of Counsel: The Supreme Court Has Work To Do, Peter W. Tague

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The availability of federal habeas corpus relief for state criminal defendants has always borne a complex relationship to state rules barring defendants from litigating constitutional claims in state court because of procedural defaults in raising those claims. The Warren Court's landmark attempt to resolve this relationship was the 1963 decision in Fay v. Noia, which asserted that a state procedural forfeiture rule could not bar federal habeas review of a constitutional claim unless the defendant had "deliberately bypassed" the procedural opportunity to raise the claim; the Court defined "deliberate bypass" in terms of a defendant's intentional and voluntary relinquishment of …

An Evidence Code: The American Experience, Paul F. Rothstein

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Professor Paul Rothstien's opening address at the Conference on Current Trends in Evidence, Dalhousie University, 26th November 1976.

Rothstein discusses the American Evidence Code, the American experience with it, and compares it to a proposed Code that Canada is considering.

The Constitutional Right To Free Communication Of The Institutionalized Resident, Lawrence O. Gostin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article comes from the notes and comments section of the North Carolina Central Law Journal from 1973.

Justified by the generic first amendment protection to unabridged expression and association, a United States citizen cannot be unreasonably denied the right to communicate by mail; by telephone; with legal counsel; with the opposite sex; with others. In most states where such a citizen becomes "mentally ill," the person may be involuntarily civilly committed. Although there is no justification for such a commitment beyond the fact that the individual is sick and is in need of care, often the individual's first amendment …

Causation In Common Sense: A Reply To Messrs. Hart And Honore, Paul F. Rothstein

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

No abstract provided.

Beacon Theatres And The Constitutional Right To Jury Trial, Paul F. Rothstein

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

No abstract provided.