Law Commons^™

Jutstice Kennedy And The Environment: Property, States' Rights, And The Search For Nexus, Michael Blumm

ExpressO

Justice Anthony Kennedy, now clearly the pivot of the Roberts Court, is the Court’s crucial voice in environmental and natural resources law cases. Kennedy’s central role was never more evident than in the two most celebrated environmental and natural resources law cases of 2006: Kelo v. New London and Rapanos v. U.S., since he supplied the critical vote in both: upholding local use of the condemnation power for economic development under certain circumstances, and affirming federal regulatory authority over wetlands which have a significant nexus to navigable waters. In each case Kennedy’s sole concurrence was outcome determinative.

Justice Kennedy has …

Law And Heidegger’S Question Concerning Technology: A Prolegomenon To Future Law Librarianship, Paul D. Callister

ExpressO

Following World War II, the German philosopher Martin Heidegger offered one of the most potent criticisms of technology and modern life. His nightmare is a world whose essence has been reduced to the functional equivalent of “a giant gasoline station, an energy source for modern technology and industry. This relation of man to the world [is] in principle a technical one . . . . [It is] altogether alien to former ages and histories.” For Heidegger, the problem is not technology itself, but the technical mode of thinking that has accompanied it. Such a viewpoint of the world is a …

Patriots In Defense Of The 'Enemy', Daniel Coquillette

Daniel R. Coquillette

No abstract provided.

"Free" Religion And "Captive" Schools: Protestants, Catholics, And Education, 1945-1965, Sarah Barringer Gordon

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

In Defense Of The Roosevelt Court, Wilson R. Huhn

Akron Law Faculty Publications

The overriding purpose of the New Deal was to create opportunities for the common person to acquire a stake in society. The Roosevelt appointees to the Supreme Court were unwilling to allow either entrenched wealth or arbitrary governmental action to interfere with that objective. They remade the Constitution, but in so doing they returned the Constitution to its original purpose – the protection of personal liberty. The Roosevelt Court laid the foundation for a jurisprudence of human rights upon which the Warren Court and subsequent Supreme Courts have continued to build.

Two justices presently serving on the Supreme Court – …

Review: Calvin H. Johnson, Righteous Anger At The Wicked States: The Meaning Of The Founders’ Constitution, Kurt X. Metzmeier

Kurt X. Metzmeier

After nearly two centuries of scholarship, it is perhaps impossible to forward a new idea about the motivations behind the founding of the U.S. Constitution, but University of Texas law professor Calvin H. Johnson has brought a new emotion to the debate: “righteous anger.” This review examines his general thesis is that the Constitution was the result of a moral reaction to the inadequate funding of the national defense by the Continental Congress and the need for a strong central government with the power to tax. As the proponents of the “New Federalism” on the Supreme Court continue to read …

A Quandary In Law? A (Qualified) Catholic Denial, Patrick Mckinley Brennan

Patrick McKinley Brennan

A contribution to the second law review symposium dedicated to Steven Smith’s Law’s Quandary (Harvard 2004), this paper asks whether the “quandary” in which Smith finds modern law and jurisprudence is not, at least in part, the consequence of misunderstanding the classical natural law jurisprudence. The paper advances an interpretation of natural law according to which the natural law is the human person’s “participation” in the eternal law itself, with literally cosmic consequences for how we understand the ends and measures of human lawmaking. Mounting an argument against Justice Scalia’s thesis that “God applies the natural law,” the paper goes …

The Decreasing Ontological Density Of The State In Catholic Social Doctrine, Patrick Mckinley Brennan

Patrick McKinley Brennan

Over the last century-plus, Catholic social thought has gradually reduced the ontological density of the state, to the point that the state now appears to have only a tentative grasp on the natural law basis of its legitimacy. During the first part of the twentieth century, Catholic social doctrine tended to view the legitimate state as a participant in the divine rule; although draped in a sacred mantle, the state was subject to the limits imposed by the divine and natural law. In response to the totalitarian states’ transgressing of those limits at mid-century, Catholic thinkers reduced the scope and …

Judicial Review Of Special Interest Spending: The General Welfare Clause And The Fiduciary Law Of The Founders, Robert G. Natelson

Robert G. Natelson

This article surveys the principles of 18th century fiduciary law that the Founders incorporated into the U.S. Constitution-- principles they referred to as rules of "public trust." The article also suggests standards the courts can use to determine if particular congressional appropriations are within the "general welfare" limitation of the Constitution's so-called Spending Clause

Tempering The Commerce Power, Robert G. Natelson

Robert G. Natelson

The Supreme Court's modern interpretation of the Necessary and Proper Clause in the realm of interstate commerce is textually problematic, unfaithful to the Constitution's original meaning, and contains positive incentives for Congress to over-regulate. The Necessary and Proper Clause was intended to embody the common law doctrine of principals and incidents, and the Court should employ that doctrine as its interpretive benchmark. The common law doctrine contains less, although some, bias toward over-regulation, and it is flexible enough to adapt to changing social conditions. Adherence to the common law doctrine would markedly improve Commerce Power jurisprudence and reduce incentives for …

Las Milicias Novohispanas En La Segunda Mitad Del Siglo Xviii: El Reglamento Para Las Milicias De La Provincia De Tabasco, Óscar Cruz

Óscar Cruz Barney

No abstract provided.

Legal Reform And The English Industrial Revolution (In Hebrew), Ron Harris

Ron Harris

בשילוב מיוחד במינו של כלים הלקוחים מתחומי הכלכלה, המשפט וההיסטוריוגרפיה, בוחן רון חריס את אחת התמורות המרכזיות בתולדות המערב — המהפכה התעשייתית — ומציג תמיהה שהתעוררה בקרב חוקרים בעשורים האחרונים. דומה לכאורה, כי על אף ההתפתחויות הדרמטיות בייצור ובארגון של התעשייה והמסחר באנגליה בשלהי המאה השמונה-עשרה, לא חלו בהתאמה שינויים בחוקים הרלבנטיים ביותר להתפתחויות אלו, החוקים המסדירים את אופן הארגון של עסקים. אולם, לטענת המחבר, החוקרים שבחנו סוגיה זו חיפשו את השינויים בחוק האנגלי במקומות הלא-נכונים. התשובה לתעלומה מסתתרת לא בחקיקה של הפרלמנט ובכתיבה של בכירי המשפטנים, אלא בחקיקה ובפסיקה "מלמטה" — בדרכים שבהן הצליחו יזמים ועורכי-דין ליצור ארגונים עסקיים …

Article 106 Of The United Nations Charter, Theodore M. Cooperstein

Theodore M Cooperstein

Article 106 of the United Nations Charter began as an interim measure, designed to ensure that the Allies might continue to fight the Second World War and secure the post-war peace during the time that it took to make the new Organization fully operational. Althought the Organization never quite came into operation as expected, and Article 106 thereby remains in effect, the United Nations has not yet called upon Article 106 to justify any measure. Article 106's disappearance today would make little to no difference to the current arrangement. Its continued presence and valdity, however, does hold the potential of …

Book Review -- Making Indian Law: The Hualapai Land Case And The Birth Of Ethnohistory, Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

No abstract provided.

Self-Defense In Asian Religions, David B. Kopel

David B Kopel

This Article investigates the attitudes of six Far Eastern religions - Confucianism, Taoism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism, and Buddhism - towards the legitimacy of the use of force in individual and collective contexts. Self-defense is strongly legitimated in the theory and practice of the major Far Eastern religions. The finding is consistent with natural law theory that some aspects of the human personality, including the self-defense instinct, are inherent in human nature, rather than being entirely determined by culture.

Armed Resistance To The Holocaust, David B. Kopel

David B Kopel

Contrary to myth of Jewish passivity, many Jews did fight back during the Holocaust. They shut down the extermination camp at Sobibor, rose up in the Warsaw Ghetto, and fought in the woods and swamps all over Eastern Europe. Indeed, Jews resisted at a higher rate than did any other population under Nazi rule. The experience of the Holocaust shows why Jews, and all people of good will, should support the right of potential genocide victims to possess defensive arms, and refutes the notion that violence is necessarily immoral.

The Status Of Classical Natural Law: Plato And The Parochialism Of Modern Theory, Eric Heinze

Prof. Eric Heinze, Queen Mary University of London

The concept of modernity has long been central to legal theory. It is an intrinsically temporal concept, expressly or implicitly defined in contrast to pre-modernity.

Legal theorists sometimes draw comparisons between, on the one hand, various post-Renaissance positivist, liberal, realist or critical theories, and, on the other hand, the classical natural law or justice theories of antiquity or the middle ages, including such figures as Aristotle, Cicero, Augustine or Aquinas. Many theorists, however, while acknowledging superficial differences among the various classical theories, fail to appreciate the variety and complexity of pre-modern thought. Unduly simplifying pre-modern understandings of law, they end …

Epinomia: Plato And The First Legal Theory, Eric Heinze

Prof. Eric Heinze, Queen Mary University of London

In comparison to Aristotle, Plato’s general understanding of law receives little attention in legal theory, due in part to ongoing perceptions of him as a mystic or a totalitarian. However, some of the critical or communitarian themes that have guided theorists since Aristotle already find strong expression in Plato’s work. More than any thinker until the 19th and 20th centuries, Plato rejects the rank individualism and self-interest which, in his view, emerge within democratic legal culture. He rejects schisms between legal norms and community values, institutional separation of law from morals, intricate regimes of legislation and adjudication, and a culture …

The Original Understanding Of The Indian Commerce Clause, Robert G. Natelson

Robert G. Natelson

The United States Congress claims plenary and exclusive power over federal affairs with the Indian tribes, based primarily on the Constitution’s Indian Commerce Clause. This article is the first comprehensive analysis of the original meaning of, and understanding behind, that constitutional provision. The author concludes that, as originally understood, congressional power over the tribes was to be neither plenary nor exclusive.

In Defense Of The Roosevelt Court, Wilson R. Huhn

Wilson R. Huhn

The overriding purpose of the New Deal was to create opportunities for the common person to acquire a stake in society. The Roosevelt appointees to the Supreme Court were unwilling to allow either entrenched wealth or arbitrary governmental action to interfere with that objective. They remade the Constitution, but in so doing they returned the Constitution to its original purpose – the protection of personal liberty. The Roosevelt Court laid the foundation for a jurisprudence of human rights upon which the Warren Court and subsequent Supreme Courts have continued to build.

Two justices presently serving on the Supreme Court – …

Normative Nominalism: The Paradox Of Egalitarian Law In Inegalitarian Cultures - Some Lessons From Recent Latin American Historiography, Robert J. Cottrol

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This essay is a contribution to the discussion of the conflict that often exists between legal norms and legal practice in Latin America. It examines the conflict between equality under the law as a legal and constitutional norm in Latin America and the persistence of strong inequality as a social reality in Latin America. The essay examines this tension through a look at recent Latin American legal historiography. Essays include issues of race, class and the law in the nineteenth century Brazilian Empire, race and the law in early 20th century Cuba and Brazilian labor law in the middle and …

Georgia's Noble Revolution: Three Governors, Two Armies, The Georgia Supreme Court, And The Gubernatorial Election Of 1946, Lucian E. Dervan

Law Faculty Scholarship

In 1946, the governor-elect of Georgia died, sparking a constitutional battle that brought a state government to its knees and a state supreme court to the height of its power. As two armies drew up on the streets of Atlanta, fights erupted in the executive offices and two men stood head to head in a battle for the vacant governor's seat. Into this fray, however, came the rule of law in the form of the state courts, and what may have swelled into an armed conflict of unseen proportions in twentieth century American politics ended with the stirring strike of …

Langdell Upside-Down: James Coolidge Carter And The Anticlassical Jurisprudence Of Anticodification, Lewis Grossman

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

The (Futile) Search For A Common Law Right Of Confrontation: Beyond Brasier's Irrelevance To (Perhaps) Relevant American Cases, Randolph N. Jonakait

Articles & Chapters

After Crawford v. Washington asserted that the Confrontation Clause constitutionalized the common law right of confrontation, cases have been suggested that illustrate that right. This short essay considers whether the 1779 English case Rex v. Brasier is such a decision, as some contend. The essay concludes that Brasier says nothing about the right of confrontation and points to a comparable framing-era, American case that indicates that general rules about hearsay and confrontation were not at issue. The essay maintains that if the historical understandings of the right of confrontation and hearsay are to control the Confrontation Clause, then framing-era, American …

Portrait Of A Patriot: The Major Political And Legal Papers Of Josiah Quincy Junior. Volume Two, The Law Commonplace Book, Daniel Coquillette, Neil Longley York

Daniel R. Coquillette

No abstract provided.

Portrait Of A Patriot: The Major Political And Legal Papers Of Josiah Quincy Junior. Volume Three, The Southern Journal (1773), Daniel Coquillette, Neil Longley York

Daniel R. Coquillette

No abstract provided.

Judicial Policy - Making And The Peculiar Function Of Law, Richard Kay

Richard Kay

While the nature of legal systems is a perpetually contested question, it is fairly uncontroversial that each must contain certain essential characteristics. First, each must suppose some picture of the appropriate way for human beings subject to it to live together in society. Second, to secure that proper arrangement, each must employ, to a greater or lesser degree, the device of general rules of conduct. Finally, in all but the simplest systems, the effectiveness of those rules must be guaranteed by some process of adjudication. The relationships among these three factors – social values, legal rules and judging – comprise …

Georgia's Noble Revolution: Three Governors, Two Armies, The Georgia Supreme Court, And The Gubernatorial Election Of 1946, Lucian E. Dervan

Lucian E Dervan

In 1946, the governor-elect of Georgia died, sparking a constitutional battle that brought a state government to its knees and a state supreme court to the height of its power. As two armies drew up on the streets of Atlanta, fights erupted in the executive offices and two men stood head to head in a battle for the vacant governor's seat. Into this fray, however, came the rule of law in the form of the state courts, and what may have swelled into an armed conflict of unseen proportions in twentieth century American politics ended with the stirring strike of …

The Inheritance Process In San Bernardino County, California, 1964: A Research Note, Lawrence M. Friedman, Christopher J. Walker, Ben Hernandez-Stern

Christopher J. Walker

Probate records are ubiquitous. Virtually every American county has records of estates of the dead. These records contain rich source material for any study of American legal and social history. They have a lot to tell us about family life, about the economy, about love and death and every aspect of life in America. Yet very few scholars have tried to tap these records. There are very few empirical studies that use as their main source probate records, probably no more than a dozen or so, and even fewer in California. This research note is a modest attempt to add …