Law Commons^™

Constitutional Aspects Of Physician-Assisted Suicide After Lee V. Oregon, Simon Canick

Faculty Scholarship

On November 8, 1994, Oregon voters narrowly passed the highly controversial Death with Dignity Act (Measure 16), which marked the first time that physician-assisted suicide was explicitly legalized anywhere in the world. In Lee v. Oregon, a group of physicians, several terminally ill persons, a residential care facility, and individual operators of residential care facilities sought to enjoin enforcement of the new law, claiming various constitutional infirmities. The U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon enjoined enforcement of the law, acknowledging that it raised important constitutional issues including possible violations of the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of …

The Constitutional Law Scholarship Of Thomas Mcintyre Cooley, Paul D. Carrington

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Constitutional Limits Of Judicial Rulemaking: The Illegitimacy Of Mass-Tort Settlements Negotiated Under Federal Rule 23, Paul D. Carrington, Derek P. Apanovitch

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Formalism And Functionalism In Federalism Analysis, Erwin Chemerinsky

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

More Speech Is Better, Erwin Chemerinsky

Faculty Scholarship

In this Reply, Professor Chemerinsky argues that the application of First Amendment principles to private institutions is desirable. Under traditional law, the free speech interests of private institutions are always favored over the free speech interests of individuals. Transporting First Amendment norms to the private sector is desirable because more speech is generally best and private power can chill and prevent speech just as much as government actions. Courts should balance the competing free speech interests of institutions and individuals, rather than always siding with the institution over the individual.

Interpretation And Judgment, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

The major conclusions in Georgia Warnke's illuminating Essay, Law, Hermeneutics, and Public Debate are persuasive, but some that appear almost self-evident instead rest on controversial evaluative judgments. Many of my comments deal with these complexities, drawing from her book on interpretation and political theory as well as her Essay. Other remarks develop subjects Warnke barely touches. My thoughts are, thus, some combination of clarification, supplementation, and disagreement.

My initial effort is to refine in just what senses interpretations of texts, social practices, and legal rules must speak to our concerns. I next explore how interpretations of legal texts that are …

Toward A Conceptual Framework For Assessing Police Power Commitment Legislation, Eric S. Janus

Faculty Scholarship

Recent litigation and scholarship have begun to focus on the substantive limits of the state's power to use civil commitment as a social control tool. Courts and commentators describe civil commitment as grounded on two powers of the state: the parens patriae interest and the police power. This Article seeks an analytical framework for defining the boundaries of police power commitments in which justification rests on the interests of the public rather than on the interests of the committed individual.

Common Law Elements Of The Section 1983 Action, Jack M. Beermann

Faculty Scholarship

This Article explores the role of the common law in Supreme Court interpretation and application of § 1983, which grants a cause of action for violations of constitutional rights committed "under color of any [state] statute, ordinance, regulation, custom or usage."' I argue that the common law has served primarily to narrow the reach of § 1983, and that this is inappropriate in light of the broad statutory language and the absence of good evidence that the enacting Congress intended a narrower application than the statutory language indicates.