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Administrative Failure And Local Democracy: The Politics Of Deshaney, Jack M. Beermann

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay is an effort to construct a normative basis for a constitutional theory to resist the Supreme Court's recent decision in DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services.¹ In DeShaney, the Court decided that a local social service worker's failure to prevent child abuse did not violate the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment even though the social worker "had reason to believe" the abuse was occurring. ² Chief Justice Rehnquist's opinion for the Court held that government inaction cannot violate due process unless the state has custody of the victim, ³ thus settling a controversial …

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Indeterminacy And Incommensurability In Constitutional Law, Steven L. Winter

Law Faculty Research Publications

Progressive constitutional scholarship has yet fully to confront the implications of the conservative shift in constitutional law. Liberal critics continue to seek governing constitutional theories with which to constrain decisionmaking by judges of a notably different mind. Other, more radical scholars employ the indeterminacy and "law is politics" critiques in a more open attempt at displacement. Neither approach is viable, however. Each presumes the primacy of the autonomous, self-directing subject; each resists recognition of the situated nature of all human endeavor. This essay adopts the alternative strategy: exploring the implications of situatedness as they apply to the development, practice, and …

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