Law Commons^™

Impeachment And Assassination, Josh Chafetz

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In 1998, the conservative provocateur Ann Coulter made waves when she wrote that President Clinton should be either impeached or assassinated. Coulter was roundly - and rightly - condemned for suggesting that the murder of the President might be justified, but her conceptual linking of presidential impeachment and assassination was not entirely unfounded. Indeed, Benjamin Franklin had made the same linkage over two hundred years earlier, when he noted at the Constitutional Convention that, historically, the removal of “obnoxious” chief executives had been accomplished by assassination. Franklin suggested that a proceduralized mechanism for removal - impeachment - would be preferable. …

Judges Playing Jury: Constitutional Conflicts In Deciding Fair Use On Summary Judgment, Ned Snow

Faculty Publications

Issues of fair use in copyright cases are usually decided at summary judgment. But it was not always so. For well over a century, juries routinely decided these issues. The law recognized that fair use issues were highly subjective and thereby inherently factual — unfit for summary disposition by a judge. Today, however, all this has been forgotten. Judges are characterizing factual issues as purely legal so that fair use may be decided at summary judgment. Even while judges acknowledge that reasonable minds may disagree on these issues, they characterize the issues as legal, preventing them from ever reaching a …

One New President, One New Patriarch And A Generous Disregard For The Constitution: A Recipe For The Continuing Decline Of Secular Russia, Robert C. Blitt

Scholarly Works

The government of Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) - the country’s predominant religious group - recently underwent back-to-back changes in each institution’s respective leadership. This coincidence of timing affords a unique opportunity to reassess the status of constitutional secularism and church–state relations in the Russian Federation.

Following a discussion of the presidential and patriarchal elections that occurred between March 2008 and January 2009, the Article surveys recent developments in Russia as they relate to the nation’s constitutional obligations. In the face of this analysis, the Article argues that the government and the ROC alike continue to willfully undermine …

Iftikhar Chaudhry’S Options: Can The Courts Remake Pakistani Democracy?, Shubhankar Dam

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

No abstract provided.

Northern Ireland And The Irish Constitution: Pragmatism Or Principle?:The Mcgimpsey Case, Rory Mcgimpsey

Dissertations

The central theme of my thesis concerns the case of McGimpsey v. Ireland [1990] I.R. 110 and its wider significance. All discussion in the thesis can be traced back to this seminal case. On a wider level, the thesis discusses Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution, tracing their history from their ideologically irredentist origins through to their amendment following the Good Friday Agreement, with its pluralist, inclusive re-definition of nationality. In essence, the thesis attempts to analyse the relationship between the two jurisdictions in Ireland, and how it evolved over time. I have endeavoured to explain how the 1937 …

Is The Filibuster Constitutional?, Josh Chafetz, Michael J. Gerhardt

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

With the help of the President, Democrats in Congress were able to pass historic healthcare-reform legislation in spite of - and thanks to - the significant structural obstacles presented by the Senate’s arcane parliamentary rules. After the passage of the bill, the current political climate appears to require sixty votes for the passage of any major legislation, a practice which many argue is unsustainable.

In this Debate, Professors Josh Chafetz and Michael Gerhardt debate the constitutionality of the Senate’s cloture rules by looking to the history of those rules in the United States and elsewhere. Professor Chafetz argues that the …

Constitutionalism: A Skeptical View, Jeremy Waldron

Philip A. Hart Memorial Lecture

On March 17, 2010, Professor Waldron, University Professor and Professor of Law at New York University, Chichele Chair of Social and Political Theory at All Souls College, Oxford delivered the Georgetown Law Center’s thirtith annual Philip A. Hart Lecture: “ Constitutionalism: A Skeptical View.”

Professor Waldron teaches legal and political philosophy at New York University School of Law. He was previously University Professor in the School of Law at Columbia University. He holds his NYU position conjointly with his position as Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at the University of Oxford (All Souls College). For 2011-2013, he is …

Islamic Law And The Making And Remaking Of The Iraqi Legal System, Kristen Stilt

Faculty Working Papers

This article examines the drafting process of the new Iraqi constitution, which took place in 2004 and 2005 as a result of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. It addresses the role of Islamic law in the Iraqi legal system prior to the invasion and considers how a new constitution may deal with the question and analyzes, based on Iraq's history, current situation, and the experience of other similar countries, how Islamic law may be retained or incorporated into the new Iraqi legal system. While the constitutional discussion is important, the Article also shows who debates over Islamic law in Iraq …

From Exclusivity To Concurrence, Mark D. Rosen

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Waging War Within The Constitution, Alberto R. Gonzales

Law Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines the United States' response to the September 11, 2001 attacks by Al Qaeda from my perspective as Counsel to the President and then later as Attorney General. It reviews the actions of government lawyers and how federal courts have judged the implementation of U.S. government policy. It explains that U.S. government officials quickly understood that our nation was confronted with a non-state enemy fighting an unconventional war. This forced us to make a number of difficult decisions quickly about how best to fight this threat in a manner consistent with the United States' domestic and international legal …

John Brown's Constitution, Robert L. Tsai

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

It will surprise many Americans to learn that before John Brown and his men briefly captured Harper’s Ferry, they authored and ratified a Provisional Constitution. This deliberative act built upon the achievements of the group to establish a Free Kansas, during which time Brown penned an analogue to the Declaration of Independence. These acts of writing, coupled with Brown’s trial tactics after his arrest, cast doubts on claims that the man was a lunatic or on a suicide mission. Instead, they suggest that John Brown aimed to be a radical statesman, one who turned to extreme tactics but nevertheless remained …

Constitutional Authority And Subversion: Egypt's New Presidential Election System, Kristen Stilt

Faculty Working Papers

This article examines the 2005 amendments to the Egyptian constitution that were intended to change the presidential selection system from a single-nominee referendum to a multi-candidate election. Through a careful study of the amendments and the related laws, it shows that while on the surface this amendment looks as though it opens the presidential elections to multiple candidates, its actual goal is to perpetuate the rule of President Mubarak and his National Democratic Party. Further, by entrenching the new election system through a detailed constitutional amendment, the Egyptian regime has subverted the powers of the Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC) to …

The Functions Of Ethical Originalism, Richard A. Primus

Articles

Supreme Court Justices frequently divide on questions of original meaning, and the divisions have a way of mapping what we might suspect are the Justices’ leanings about the merits of cases irrespective of originalist considerations. The same is true for law professors and other participants in constitutional discourse: people’s views of original constitutional meaning tend to align well with their (nonoriginalist) preferences for how present constitutional controversies should be resolved. To be sure, there are exceptions. Some people are better than others at suspending presentist considerations when examining historical materials, and some people are better than others at recognizing when …

Square Peg In A Round Hole: Government Contractor Battlefield Tort Liability And The Political Question Doctrine, Chris Jenks

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Recent assertions of the political question doctrine by battlefield contractor defendants in tort litigation have brought new life to the doctrine while raising new questions. The lawsuits stem from incidents in both Iraq and Afghanistan and include plaintiffs ranging from local nationals suing contract interrogators and interpreters, to contract employees suing another contractor following insurgent attacks, to U.S. service members suing contractors after vehicle and airplane crashes. The lawsuits involve tort claims, which on their face do not conjure up images of a constitutional power struggle, but in at least fifteen cases thus far contractor defendants have asserted the political …

From The Classroom To The Courtroom: Intelligent Design And The Constitution, Jay D. Wexler

Faculty Scholarship

Although the Supreme Court of the United States has never developed a single clear test for determining what kinds of state action violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, schools that attempt to teach or introduce intelligent design as a purportedly scientific alternative to evolution likely fall afoul of the First Amendment's commands. Under the Court's most relevant precedent, Edwards v. Aguillard, teaching intelligent design violates the Establishment Clause because, among other things, there is an enormous disconnect between the purpose of teaching intelligent design and its effect. Moreover, public school teachers do not possess any First Amendment right …

Taxing Civil Rights Gains, Anthony C. Infanti

Articles

In this article, I take a novel approach to the question of what constitutes a "tax." I argue that the unique burdens placed on same-sex couples by the federal and state "defense of marriage" acts (the DOMAs) constitute a tax on gay and lesbian families.

Classifying the DOMAs as a "tax" has important substantive and rhetorical consequences. As a tax, the DOMAs are subject to the same constitutional restrictions as other taxes. This opens them to challenge under the federal constitution's direct tax clauses and the uniformity clauses present in many state constitutions. Where such constitutional challenges are unavailable or …

A Critical Legal Rhetoric Approach To In Re African-American Slave Descendants Litigation, Lolita Buckner Inniss

Publications

In this paper I apply critical legal rhetoric to the judicial opinion rendered in response to the Defendants' Motion to Dismiss Plaintiffs' Second Amended and Consolidated Complaint in 'In Re African American Slave Descendants', a case concerning the efforts of a group of modern-day descendants of enslaved African-Americans to obtain redress for the harms of slavery. The chief methodological framework for performing critical legal rhetorical analysis comes from the work of Marouf Hasian, Jr. particularly his schema for analysis which he calls substantive units in critical legal rhetoric. Critical legal rhetoric is a potent tool for exposing the …

Two Masters, Carl E. Schneider

Articles

American government rests on the principle of distrust of government. Not only is power within the federal government checked and balanced. Power is divided between the federal government and the state governments. So what if a state law conflicts with a federal law? The Constitution says that the "Constitution, and the Laws of the United States ... shall be the supreme Law of the Land; ... any Thing in the ... Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding." Sometimes the conflict between federal and state law is obvious and the Supremacy Clause is easily applied. But sometimes ...

The Political Branches And The Law Of Nations, Bradford R. Clark, Anthony J. Bellia

Journal Articles

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the U.S. Supreme Court went out of its way to follow background rules of the law of nations, particularly the law of state-state relations. As we have recently argued, the Court followed the law of nations because adherence to such law preserved the constitutional prerogatives of the political branches to conduct foreign relations and decide momentous questions of war and peace. Although we focused primarily on the extent to which the Constitution obligated courts to follow the law of nations in the early republic, the explanation we offered rested on an important, …

The Political Branches And The Law Of Nations, Bradford R. Clark

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the U.S. Supreme Court went out of its way to follow background rules of the law of nations, particularly the law of state-state relations. As we have recently argued, the Court followed the law of nations because adherence to such law preserved the constitutional prerogatives of the political branches to conduct foreign relations and decide momentous questions of war and peace. Although we focused primarily on the extent to which the Constitution obligated courts to follow the law of nations in the early republic, the explanation we offered rested on an important, …

Article I, Article Iii, And The Limits Of Enumeration, Gil Seinfeld

Articles

Article I, Section 8 and Article Ill, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution deploy parallel strategies for constraining the power of the federal government. They enumerate powers that the national legislature and judiciary, respectively, are permitted to exercise and thereby implicitly prohibit these two branches of government from exercising powers not enumerated. According to conventional thinking, this strategy has failed in connection with Article I and succeeded in connection with Article III. That is, it is widely acknowledged that Congress routinely exercises powers that are difficult to square with the Article I enumeration; but it is commonly thought that the …

Conditional Spending And Compulsory Maternity, Nicole Huberfeld

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

More than forty-six million Americans are uninsured, and many more are seeking government assistance, which makes congressional spending for federal programs a significant issue. Federal funding often comes with prerequisites in the form of statutory conditions. This Article examines the impact that conditions placed on federal healthcare spending have on the individuals who rely on that spending by exploring the ongoing disconnect between Spending Clause jurisprudence and women's reproductive rights. The first Part reviews the foundational Supreme Court precedents and places them in context from both a statutory and theoretical perspective. The second Part studies what the author denominates "pure …

The Basic Law At 60 - Introduction To The Special Issue, Susanne Baer, Christian Boulanger, Alexander Klose, Rosemarie Will

Articles

For Germany 2009 was a year of constitutional anniversaries: the first democratic constitution (Paulskirchenverfassung of 1849) was promulgated 160 years ago; the 1919 Weimar Constitution would have turned 90; and finally, the country celebrated 60 years of the Basic Law, which was proclaimed and signed in Bonn on 23 May 1949. Despite its birth in the midst of economic and political turmoil and widespread disillusion with politics, the Basic Law has come to be regarded as a "success story." As is well known, it was never meant to last - the very term "Grundgesetz" (basic law) indicated that it was …

Public Consensus As Constitutional Authority, Richard A. Primus

Articles

Barry Friedman's new book The Will of the People attempts to dissolve constitutional law's countermajoritariand ifficulty by showing that, in practice,t he Supreme Court does only what the public will tolerate. His account succeeds if "the countermajoritarian difficulty" refers to the threat that courts will run the country in ways that contravene majority preference, but not if the "the countermajoritarian difficulty" refers to the need to explain the legitimate sources of judicial authority in cases where decisions do contravene majority preference. Friedman's book does not pursue the second possibility, and may suggest that doing so is unimportant, in part because …

Constitutional Expectations, Richard A. Primus

Articles

The inauguration of Barack Obama was marred by one of the smallest constitutional crises in American history. As we all remember, the President did not quite recite his oath as it appears in the Constitution. The error bothered enough people that the White House redid the ceremony a day later, taking care to get the constitutional text exactly right. Or that, at least, is what everyone thinks happened. What actually happened is more interesting. The second time through, the President again departed from the Constitution's text. But the second time, nobody minded. Or even noticed. In that unremarked feature of …

Constitutional Borrowing, Robert L. Tsai, Nelson Tebbe

Faculty Scholarship

Borrowing from one domain to promote ideas in another domain is a staple of constitutional decisionmaking. Precedents, arguments, concepts, tropes, and heuristics all can be carried across doctrinal boundaries for purposes of persuasion. Yet the practice itself remains underanalyzed. This Article seeks to bring greater theoretical attention to the matter. It defines what constitutional borrowing is and what it is not, presents a typology that describes its common forms, undertakes a principled defense of borrowing, and identifies some of the risks involved. Our examples draw particular attention to places where legal mechanisms and ideas migrate between fields of law associated …

From Words To Worlds: Exploring Constitutional Functionality By Beau Breslin, Robert L. Tsai

Faculty Scholarship

This is a review of Beau Breslin's book, "From Words to Worlds: Exploring Constitutional Functionality" (Johns Hopkins, 2009). As an antidote to what he believes to be scholarly marginalization of the "unique" aspects of a written constitution, Breslin focuses attention on seven functions of such a legal text: transforming existing orders, conveying collective aspirations, designing institutions, mediating conflict, recognizing claims of subnational communities, empowering social actors, and constraining governmental authority. This review briefly critiques Breslin's functional approach and discusses two of the more pressing goals of modern constitutionalism: managing social conflict and preserving cultural heritage.

John Brown's Constitution, Robert L. Tsai

Faculty Scholarship

It will surprise many Americans to learn that before John Brown and his men briefly captured Harper’s Ferry, they authored and ratified a Provisional Constitution. This deliberative act built upon the achievements of the group to establish a Free Kansas, during which time Brown penned an analogue to the Declaration of Independence. These acts of writing, coupled with Brown’s trial tactics after his arrest, cast doubts on claims that the man was a lunatic or on a suicide mission. Instead, they suggest that John Brown aimed to be a radical statesman, one who turned to extreme tactics but nevertheless remained …