Law Commons^™

Reasoning V. Rhetoric: The Strange Case Of “Unconstitutional Beyond A Reasonable Doubt”, Hugh D. Spitzer

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An odd formulation has frequented American constitutional discourse for 125 years: a declaration that courts should not overturn a statute on constitutional grounds unless it is “unconstitutional beyond a reasonable doubt.” This concept has been thought of as a presumption, a standard, a doctrine, or a philosophy of coordinate branch respect and judicial restraint. Yet it has been criticized because “beyond a reasonable doubt” is at root an evidentiary standard of proof in criminal cases rather than a workable theory or standard for deciding constitutional law cases. This article discusses the history and use of “unconstitutional beyond a reasonable doubt,” …

Separations Of Wealth: Inequality And The Erosion Of Checks And Balances, Kate Andrias

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American government is dysfunctional: Gridlock, filibusters, and expanding presidential power, everyone seems to agree, threaten our basic system of constitutional governance. Who, or what, is to blame? In the standard account, the fault lies with the increasing polarization of our political parties. That standard story, however, ignores an important culprit: Concentrated wealth and its organization to achieve political ends. The only way to understand our current constitutional predicament—and to rectify it—is to pay more attention to the role that organized wealth plays in our system of checks and balances. This Article shows that the increasing concentration of wealth and political …

Taking Care Of Federal Law, Leah Litman

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Article II of the Constitution vests the “executive power” in the President and directs the President to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” But do these provisions mean that only the President may execute federal law? Two lines of Supreme Court precedent suggest conflicting answers to that question. In several prominent separation-of-powers cases, the Court has suggested that only the President may execute federal law: “The Constitution requires that a President chosen by the entire Nation oversee the execution of the laws.” Therefore, the Court has reasoned, Congress may not create private rights of action that allow nonexecutive …

Congress Underestimated: The Case Of The World Bank, Kristina Daugirdas

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This article challenges the oft-repeated claim that international organizations undermine democracy by marginalizing national legislatures. Over the past forty years, Congress has established itself as a key player in setting U.S. policy toward the World Bank. Congress has done far more than restrain executive branch action with which it disagrees; it has affirmatively shaped the United States’ day-to-day participation in this key international organization and successfully defended its constitutional authority to do so.

Treaties And The Separation Of Powers In The United States: A Reassessment After Medellin V. Texas, Ronald A. Brand

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This article considers Chief Justice Roberts' majority opinion in the case of Medellin v. Texas. Like much of the commentary on this case, the article considers the international law implications of the opinion and its consideration of the doctrine of self-executing treaties. The primary focus here, however, consistent with the symposium in which this paper was presented, is on the opinion's implications for the separation of powers and for federalism. While the opinion's discussion of international law and treaty implementation can be considered dicta, the separation of powers and federalism portions may be seen as more directly necessary to …

Schiavo And Klein (Symposium), Evan H. Caminker

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When teaching federal courts, I sometimes find that students are slow to care about legal issues that initially seem picayune, hyper-technical, and unrelated to real-world concerns. It takes hard work to engage students in discussion of United States v. Klein,1 notwithstanding its apparent articulation of a foundational separation of powers principle that Congress may not dictate a "rule of decision" governing a case in federal court. A Civil War-era decision about the distribution of war spoils, one the Supreme Court has hardly ever cited since and then only to distinguish it, in cases involving takings and spotted owls? Yawn.

Trust Me, I’M A Judge: Why Binding Judicial Notice Of Jurisdictional Facts Violates The Right To Jury Trial, William M. Carter Jr.

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The conventional model of criminal trials holds that the prosecution is required to prove every element of the offense beyond the jury's reasonable doubt. The American criminal justice system is premised on the right of the accused to have all facts relevant to his guilt or innocence decided by a jury of his peers. The role of the judge is seen as limited to deciding issues of law and facilitating the jury's fact-finding. Despite these principles,judges are reluctant to submit to the jury elements of the offense that the judge perceives to be . routine, uncontroversial or uncontested.

One such …

Judicial Activism: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly, Arthur D. Hellman

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No matter how judges are selected, sooner or later some unfortunate candidate will be labeled a "judicial activist." One has to wonder: Does the term have any identifiable core meaning? Or is it just an all-purpose term of opprobrium, reflecting whatever brand of judicial behavior the speaker regards as particularly pernicious? Implicit in this question are several important issues about the role of courts in our democratic society.

I take my definition from Judge Richard Posner, who describes activist decisions as those that expand judicial power over other branches of the national government or over state governments. Unlike other uses …

Constitutions And Spontaneous Orders: A Response To Professor Mcginnis, Adam C. Pritchard, Todd J. Zywicki

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Professor John McGinnis has written a perceptive and provocative comment on our economic analysis of the role of tradition in constitutional interpretation.1 A brief summary of our areas of agreement and disagreement may help set the stage for this response. It appears that Professor McGinnis substantially agrees with the two central propositions of our article. First, he appears to agree with our definition of efficient traditions as those evolving over long periods of time from decentralized processes.2 Second, he explicitly agrees that Justices Scalia and Souter have adopted sub-optimal models of tradition because they rely on sources that lack the …

Finding The Constitution: An Economic Analysis Of Tradition's Role In Constitutional Interpretation, Adam C. Pritchard, Todd J. Zywicki

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In this Article, Professor Pritchard and Professor Zywicki examine the role of tradition in constitutional interpretation, a topic that has received significant attention in recent years. After outlining the current debate over the use of tradition, the authors discuss the efficiency purposes of constitutionalism--precommitment and the reduction of agency costs--and demonstrate how the use of tradition in constitutional interpretation can serve these purposes. Rejecting both Justice Scalia's majoritarian model, which focuses on legislative sources of tradition, and Justice Souter's common-law model, which focuses on Supreme Court precedent as a source of tradition, the authors propose an alternative model--the "finding model"-- …

Still Naked After All These Words, A. Michael Froomkin

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No abstract provided.