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Full-Text Articles in Law
Statutory Interpretation In Econotopia, Nathan B. Oman
Statutory Interpretation In Econotopia, Nathan B. Oman
Nathan B. Oman
Much of the debate in the recent revival of interest in statutory interpretation centers on whether or not courts should use legislative history in construing statutes. The consensus in favor of this practice has come under sharp attack from public choice critics who argue that traditional models of legislative intent are positively and normatively incoherent. This paper argues that in actual practice, courts look at a fairly narrow subset of legislative history. By thinking about the power to write that legislative history as a property right and legislatures as markets, it is possible to use Coase's Theorem and the concept …
Natural Law And The Rhetoric Of Empire: Reynolds V. United States, Polygamy, And Imperialism, Nathan B. Oman
Natural Law And The Rhetoric Of Empire: Reynolds V. United States, Polygamy, And Imperialism, Nathan B. Oman
Nathan B. Oman
In 1879, the U.S. Supreme Court construed the Free Exercise Clause for the first time, holding in Reynolds v. United States that Congress could punish Mormon polygamy. Historians have interpreted Reynolds, and the anti-polygamy legislation and litigation that it midwifed, as an extension of Reconstruction into the American West. This Article offers a new historical interpretation, one that places the birth of Free Exercise jurisprudence in Reynolds within an international context of Great Power imperialism and American international expansion at the end of the nineteenth century. It does this by recovering the lost theory of religious freedom that the Mormons …
A Theory Of Civil Liability, Nathan B. Oman