Law Commons^™

Standing Of Intervenor-Defendants In Public Law Litigation, Matthew I. Hall

Scholarly Works

Unless the plaintiff has a personal stake in the outcome, Article III of the United States Constitution requires federal courts to dismiss a plaintiff’s claim for lack of standing. That much is clearly established by decades of precedent. Less understood, however, is the degree to which Article III also requires defendants to possess a personal stake. The significance of defendant standing often goes unnoticed in case law and scholarship, because the standing of the defendant in most lawsuits is readily apparent:any defendant against whom the plaintiff seeks a remedy has a personal interest in defending against the plaintiff’s claim.

But …

The Word Commons And Foreign Laws, Thomas O. Main

Scholarly Works

Dual trends are colliding in U.S. courts. The first trend is a tidal wave of cases requiring courts to engage the domestic laws of foreign legal systems; globalization is the principal driver of this escalation. The second trend is a profound and ever-increasing skepticism of our ability to understand foreign law; the literature of pluralism and postmodernism has illuminated the uniquely local, language-dependent, and culturally embedded nature of law. Courts cope with this dissonance by finding some way to avoid the application of foreign law. But these outcomes are problematic because parties are denied access to court or have their …