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Full-Text Articles in Law

Maintaining Consistency In The Law Of The Large Circuit: The Origins And Operation Of The Ninth Circuit's Limited En Banc Court, Arthur D. Hellman Jan 1990

Maintaining Consistency In The Law Of The Large Circuit: The Origins And Operation Of The Ninth Circuit's Limited En Banc Court, Arthur D. Hellman

Book Chapters

Once again, Congress is considering legislation to divide the largest of the federal judicial circuits, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The Ninth Circuit extends over nine western states, including California, and it has 29 active judges, almost twice the number of the next-largest circuit. Much of the debate over proposals for restructuring focuses on a feature unique to the Ninth Circuit, the limited en banc court (LEBC). In all of the other circuits, when the court of appeals grants rehearing en banc, the case is heard by all active judges. In the Ninth Circuit, the en banc court is …


The Meaning Of Equality And The Interpretive Turn, Robin West Jan 1990

The Meaning Of Equality And The Interpretive Turn, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The turn to hermeneutics and interpretation in contemporary legal theory has contributed at least two central ideas to modern jurisprudential thought: first, that the "meaning" of a text is invariably indeterminate -- what might be called the indeterminacy claim -- and second, that the unavoidably malleable essence of texts -- their essential inessentiality -- entails that interpreting a text is a necessary part of the process of creating the text's meaning. These insights have generated both considerable angst, and considerable excitement among traditional constitutional scholars, primarily because at least on first blush these two claims seem to inescapably imply a …