Law Commons^™

The Testimonial Component Of The Right Against Self-Incrimination, Charles G. Geyh

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Book Review. The New Right V. The Constitution; The Supreme Court And The Decline Of Constitutional Aspiration, Stephen A. Conrad

Articles by Maurer Faculty

These two books are much of a piece. Both advocate a libertarian jurisprudence of "Natural Rights"; and the rights in question are, they tell us, determinate and historic. It is primarily this distinctive historicism common to both books that I take as an invitation to consider them as a pair.

Symposium: Bowsher V. Synar: Introduction, Alfred C. Aman

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The papers in this symposium examine constitutionally significant separation-of-powers themes that were particularly controversial in Franklin Roosevelt's administrations and once again command our attention. The Supreme Court's decision in cases such as Immigration & Naturalization Services v. Chadha I and Bowsher v. Synar2 have helped to resurrect questions that have been ignored, if not resolved, since the 1930s. This symposium focuses on the contemporary debate that these issues have generated, and it provides us with an array of approaches to and perspectives on that debate. As this Introduction emphasizes, that these issues have arisen before is significant, both legally and …

Legislative Self-Constraint: A Reply To Professor Kahn, William D. Popkin

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Interest Analysis As Constitutional Law, Gene R. Shreve

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Statutes And Constitutions In An Age Of Common Law, Reed Dickerson

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

The Teaching Function Of The First Amendment, Vincent A. Blasi

Faculty Scholarship

In this important book, Professor Bollinger seeks to understand and remedy the inadequacy he perceives in the way our legal culture deals with extremist speech. He argues that the high level of protection the first amendment has been construed to require serves a social function that has not been fully recognized or carefully evaluated. His thesis is that the contemporary social function of the idea of freedom of speech is to help the society develop a general capacity for tolerance, a capacity that determines how we respond to many forms of conduct as well as speech. Once this function is …

On The Constitutional Status Of The Administrative Agencies, Harold H. Bruff

Publications

No abstract provided.

Constructive Murder And The Charter: In Search Of Principle, A. Wayne Mackay, Isabel Grant

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This article explores the principle of "constructive" murder and how it interacts with the sentencing and the parties sections of the Criminal Code. The authors re-examine these issues in light of the Charter. They conclude that constructive murder has no place in a post-Charter Canada.

The Illinois Bill Of Rights And Our Independent Legal Tradition: A Critique Of The Illinois Lockstep Doctrine, Thomas B. Mcaffee

Scholarly Works

Illinois’ highest court continues to follow the rule that courts of this state are strictly bound by Supreme Court decisions construing provisions that are substantially identical to provisions found in the Illinois Constitution. Increasingly, however, this rule has been challenged by dissenting justices who contend that it is contrary to the state’s independent legal tradition and rests upon an accurate view of the relationship between federal and state courts and their respective constitutions. These justices contend that the court may give independent attention to the provisions of the Illinois Constitution and need not slavishly adhere to decisions of the Supreme …

Shelly V. Kraemer: Herald Of Social Progress And Of The Coming Debate Over The Limits Of Constitutional Change, Thomas B. Mcaffee

Scholarly Works

The Supreme Court's decision in Shelley v. Kraemer, the Supreme Court held unconstitutional judicial enforcement of racially restrictive covenants. If Shelley marks an important point in the progress of American race relations, it may be even more significant as a symbol of the vexing search for the boundaries between purely private and state action and, more specifically, the reach of the protections of the Fourteenth Amendment in a changing world. In this article, the author argues that Shelley can be read as a watershed decision that in a single stroke (1) eliminated the independent significance of the Supreme Court's long-adopted …

Alternative Career Resolution: An Essay On The Removal Of Federal Judges, Stephen B. Burbank

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Scholarly Reflections On The Court And The Constitution, Michael Ashley Stein

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Siamese Essays: (I) Cts Corp. V. Dynamics Corp. Of America And Dormant Commerce Clause Doctrine; (Ii) Extraterritorial State Legislation, Donald H. Regan

Articles

What follows is two essays, related as Siamese twins. Both essays developed from a single conception. They are distinct, but they remain connected by a shared subtopic. The first essay is about CTS Corp. v. Dynamics Corp. of America1 as a contribution to dormant commerce clause doctrine. The second essay is about the constitutional principle that states may not legislate extraterritorially, which I shall refer to as the "extraterritoriality principle." The shared subtopic is the extraterritoriality problem in CTS. (There is an extraterritoriality problem in CTS, even though the Court does not discuss it in those terms.) I could have …

Comments On Standards Of Judicial Review, William W. Van Alstyne

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Value Of The Constitution, John H. Garvey

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Do The United States Sentencing Guidelines Deprive Defendants Of Due Process?, Bradford Mank

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

It is difficult to determine whether due process requires individualized sentencing because sentencing goals and practices have varied greatly during the course of this nation's history. A court applying Judge Bork's original intent doctrine of constitutional interpretation would probably reach a result different from that reached by a court employing a more liberal view of due process protections.1o It is likely that liberals and conservatives on the current Supreme Court would disagree on whether the Guidelines violate due process.

This article argues that the Guidelines can be saved and can satisfy due process requirements if the Supreme Court interprets the …

Constructing A Constitution: 'Orginal Intention' In The Slave Cases, James Boyd White

Other Publications

The question how our Constitution is to be interpreted is a living one for us today, both in the scholarly and in the political domains. Professors argue about "interpretivism" and "originalism" in law journals, they study hermeneutics and deconstruction to determine whether or not interpretation is possible at all, and if so on what premises, and they struggle to create theories that will tell us both what we do in fact and what we ought to do. Politicians and public figures (including Attorney General Edwin Meese) talk in the newspapers and elsewhere about the authority of the "original intention of …

Apartheid And The South African Judiciary, Lawrence G. Baxter

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Synthesis And Integration Of Supreme Court Precedent Regarding The Regulatory Taking Of Land, John W. Ragsdale Jr

Faculty Works

In the post World War II era of rapid land development, emergent environmental problems, and heightened legislative response, the taking clause has proved to be the most pervasive and significant limitation on the power of government over private land usage. The dimensions and implications of this provision and the interpretive Supreme Court opinions have attracted the attention of numerous scholars whose efforts, usually, have been rather critical. The authors have often sought to question the logic, language and premises of fundamental opinions, to warn of the economic, moral and ecological consequences of portended judicial trends, to pose new taking tests …

Taking Liberties: Privacy, Private Choice, And Social Contract Theory, Anita L. Allen

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Strict Constructionism And The Strike Zone, Douglas O. Linder

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

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, …

Foreign States And The Constitution, Lori Fisler Damrosch

Faculty Scholarship

This article does not advocate judicial abstention from deciding the constitutional claims of foreign sovereigns. Rather, the argument is that constitutional claims against the actions of the federal political branches must fail on the merits because of the relationship of foreign states to the federal structure. When, on the other hand, a claim does not directly confront or conflict with the political branches' foreign policy, the federal courts should adjudicate the merits of foreign state claims by applying constitutional jurisprudence to sustain or reject the claim. Part III of this article elaborates upon the relationship between the thesis in Part …

Formal And Functional Approaches To Separation-Of-Powers Questions – A Foolish Inconsistency?, Peter L. Strauss

Faculty Scholarship

Is it possible to give contemporary shape to the principles of constitutional structure we know as "separation of powers"? That question was sharply presented once again on the final day of the Supreme Court's most recent Term, when it decided two cases raising separation-of-powers issues. In Bowsher v. Synar, the subject of this symposium, the Court found constitutional fault in Congress's asserted expansion of its own powers at the expense of the President's article II authority. Commodity Future Trading Commission v. Schor, far less widely noted, upheld against constitutional challenge Congress's assignment to an administrative adjudicator of the …

The Court's Role In Congressional Federalism: A Play With (At Least) Three Acts, Philip C. Bobbitt

Faculty Scholarship

The constitutional drama that climaxed in the Garcia case can be usefully understood, by a theatrical metaphor, as a play in three acts. In the first act, the principal characters are introduced and the problematic nature of their relationship established; the way the characters understand their problems creates their problems. In the second act an attempt made to overcome the conflict of the first act serves only to intensify the struggle and even threatens values widely shared by the players. In the third act, a futile effort is made to resolve the tensions that now appear almost inevitable among such …

Constitutional Decisions And The Supreme Law, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

What status do Supreme Court decisions have for officials in the political branches of our government? Six months ago, Attorney General Edwin Meese III rekindled controversy over this enduring and troublesome question when he claimed in a widely reported lecture that Supreme Court decisions interpreting the Constitution are not the supreme law of the land, and are properly subject to forms of opposition by other governmental officials. The general reaction to the speech was that it was meant to reduce the perceived authority of Supreme Court opinions, and a close reading of the speech certainly leaves this impression. Yet, even …

Bargaining In The Shadow Of Eminent Domain: Valuing And Apportioning Condemnation Awards Between Landlord And Tenant, Victor P. Goldberg, Thomas W. Merrill, Daniel Unumb

Faculty Scholarship

Who has a constitutionally protected "property" interest when the government condemns land subject to a lease? Is it the landlord? The tenant? Or do both parties have property rights that entitle them to compensation? Further, how should the size of the total condemnation award be determined? Should we value the property rights of the landlord and the tenant separately and sum? Or should we value the entire parcel as if it were an undivided fee simple and apportion the award between the landlord and the tenant? If the condemnation award is based on the value of a fee simple and …

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 …