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Experimenting With The "Right To Die" In The Laboratory Of The States, Thomas A. Eaton, Edward J. Larson
Experimenting With The "Right To Die" In The Laboratory Of The States, Thomas A. Eaton, Edward J. Larson
Scholarly Works
The purposes of this Article are twofold. Our first purpose is to reexamine the legal foundations of a patient's right to refuse treatment. The Court's equivocal handling of the federal constitutional issues in Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health invites a closer look at state constitutional, statutory and common law. The source of the underlying right will affect state experimentation with substantive and procedural rules in this area. Our second purpose is to describe the current status of the states' experiments with the right to die. That is, we elaborate in more detail on the state constitutional, statutory and …
Behind The Parity Debate: The Decline Of The Legal Process Tradition In The Law Of Federal Courts, Michael L. Wells
Behind The Parity Debate: The Decline Of The Legal Process Tradition In The Law Of Federal Courts, Michael L. Wells
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Whether there is parity between federal and state courts has become a central question in the law of federal courts, dividing judges and commentators into two well-defined camps. Although the issue rarely arose thirty years ago, it now enters into virtually every discussion of the rules concerning access to federal court for constitutional claims. On one side of the debate, advocates of broad federal jurisdiction over constitutional challenges to state action claim that federal courts are better than state courts at adjudicating these controversies. On the other side, advocates of state court jurisdiction insist that state courts are fully adequate …
Justice Scalia And The Commerce Clause: Reflections Of A State Tax Lawyer, Walter Hellerstein
Justice Scalia And The Commerce Clause: Reflections Of A State Tax Lawyer, Walter Hellerstein
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This paper considers Justice Scalia's substantive views of the restraints that the commerce clause imposes on state taxation. My purpose is to examine critically Justice Scalia's dormant or "negative" commerce clause analysis of the state tax issues on which he has opined and to draw from that examination some general conclusions about Justice Scalia's commerce clause jurisprudence.
Congress's Paramount Role In Setting The Scope Of Federal Jurisdiction, Michael L. Wells
Congress's Paramount Role In Setting The Scope Of Federal Jurisdiction, Michael L. Wells
Scholarly Works
Article III presents a conundrum for scholars seeking a coherent explanation of the federal courts' role in our system of government. On the one hand, the framers set up the judiciary as a separate branch with jurisdiction over federal law and other matters of federal interest. They granted federal judges life tenure and undiminishable salary in order to preserve judicial independence from executive and legislative pressure. It is evident from these provisions that the framers saw a need for a strong national judiciary. At the same time, article III explicitly leaves to Congress the decision whether to create any lower …
Governmental Inaction As A Constitutional Tort: Deshaney And Its Aftermath, Thomas A. Eaton, Michael Wells
Governmental Inaction As A Constitutional Tort: Deshaney And Its Aftermath, Thomas A. Eaton, Michael Wells
Scholarly Works
DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services is the Supreme Court's first major effort to define the scope of state and local governments' affirmative obligations under the fourteenth amendment. The Court rejected liability against a county welfare agency and a caseworker for failing to prevent a father from severely beating his four-year-old son. The Court intimated that constitutional affirmative duties exist only where the plaintiff is in the state's custody. Scholarly commentary reads the case as announcing a sweeping prohibition against the imposition of affirmative duties in other contexts. Professors Eaton and Wells demonstrate that the DeShaney opinion is …