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Faculty Publications

2011

Constitutional law

Constitutional Law

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Full-Text Articles in Law

Lochner V. New York (1905) And Kennedy V. Louisiana (2008): Judicial Reliance On Adversary Argument, Douglas E. Abrams Oct 2011

Lochner V. New York (1905) And Kennedy V. Louisiana (2008): Judicial Reliance On Adversary Argument, Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist called Lochner v. New York (1905) “one of the most ill-starred decisions that [the Supreme Court ever rendered.” The Justices’ deliberations preceding the 5-4 decision demonstrate the courts’ reliance on advocacy in the adversary system of civil and criminal justice. The stark imbalance between the state’s “incredibly sketchy” brief and Joseph Lochner’s sterling submission may have determined Lochner’s outcome, and thus may have changed the course of constitutional history, by leading two Justices to join the majority on the central question of whether New York’s maximum-hours law for bakery workers was a reasonable public health …


A Tax Or Not A Tax: That Is The Question, Erik M. Jensen Jan 2011

A Tax Or Not A Tax: That Is The Question, Erik M. Jensen

Faculty Publications

This piece is part of the author’s probably misguided effort to take seriously the Sixteenth Amendment phrase “taxes on incomes.” The piece (in form a letter to the editor, but complete with footnotes!) responds to a reader who had noted that, because of a cap, the basic Social Security “tax” does not reach higher levels of income. Because the author had earlier argued that a tax “on” incomes should result in higher tax liability for higher-income persons, it might seem that the Social Security levy is unconstitutional (or the author just wrong). This piece makes several points: (1) The Social …