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Full-Text Articles in Law
Constitutional Referendum In The United States Of America, William B. Fisch
Constitutional Referendum In The United States Of America, William B. Fisch
Faculty Publications
The United States of America, as a federation of now 50 states each with its own constitution and legal system still enjoying a large degree of governmental autonomy within the national legal framework, presents a strikingly mixed picture regarding the use of direct democracy--the submission of proposed governmental action to a popular vote--in law- and constitution-making processes. At the national level, direct democracy has never been used for either type of enactment. At the state and local level, however, its use dates back to colonial times and has been increasing gradually (though still not universal) ever since. Since the mid-19th …
Innocent Of A Capital Crime: Parallels Between Innocence Of A Crime And Innocence Of The Death Penalty, Ellen Kreitzberg, Linda Carter
Innocent Of A Capital Crime: Parallels Between Innocence Of A Crime And Innocence Of The Death Penalty, Ellen Kreitzberg, Linda Carter
Faculty Publications
This analysis begins with an examination of the Court's Eighth Amendment jurisprudence and how this impacts the procedures that are required in a capital trial. Then we will present a brief review of habeas corpus law and the barriers that have been imposed to restrict federal court review of claims. We will explain how AEDPA modified the ability of a petitioner to get evidentiary hearings and imposed restrictions on the filling of second or successive petitions. Then, we will look at circumstances in which claims of innocence may be raised in a petition for habeas corpus. Finally, we will compare …
Law, Politics, And The Appointments Process, Bradley W. Joondeph
Law, Politics, And The Appointments Process, Bradley W. Joondeph
Faculty Publications
In recent years, many commentators have called for the "depoliticization" of the judicial appointments process, arguing that politics and ideology have wrongly displaced objective merit in the selection of federal judges. In their book, Advice and Consent: The Politics of Judicial Appointments, Lee Epstein and Jeffrey Segal demonstrate why such prescriptions are misguided. Epstein and Segal are political scientists, not law professors, and thus have no normative stake in protecting constitutional law from politics, the preoccupation of many constitutional theorists. Instead, their aim is purely positive: to explain how the appointments process has actually functioned over the course of the …