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Full-Text Articles in Law
Our Anticompetitive Patriotism, Todd E. Pettys
Our Anticompetitive Patriotism, Todd E. Pettys
Todd E. Pettys
In this article, I contend that the nation’s seemingly exclusive claim to citizens’ patriotism significantly shields the federal government from the competitive forces that the Framers believed would restrain Congress’s and the President’s ability to govern in objectionable ways. I argue that, because America is a nation-state built upon certain core convictions about public life, there are strong connections in this country between the entity about which people feel patriotic and the sovereign that people would like to govern many—perhaps even most—of their important public affairs. I argue that American patriotism was constructed in a manner that led nineteenth- and …
Choosing A Chief Justice: Presidential Prerogative Or A Job For The Court?, Todd E. Pettys
Choosing A Chief Justice: Presidential Prerogative Or A Job For The Court?, Todd E. Pettys
Todd E. Pettys
After identifying the original rationales for our longstanding tradition of permitting the President and Senate to decide which of the Court’s nine members will serve as Chief Justice, I argue that those rationales are anachronistic, that the tradition creates unnecessary conflicts of interest and separation-of-powers concerns, and that the Court’s members should be permitted to decide for themselves which of them will serve as Chief Justice.