Law Commons^™

Choice Of Law, The Constitution And Lochner, James Y. Stern

James Y. Stern

No abstract provided.

Full Faith And Conflict Of Law: The Peculiar Legacy Of Legal Federalism, Sheldon D. Pollack

Sheldon D Pollack

The new constitution crafted by the delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 was a major improvement over its predecessor (the ill-fated Articles of Confederation), especially in concentrating greater political authority at the center of the confederation, it imposed a flawed constitutional structure on the new regime based on the same untenable proposition that undermined the national government of the Confederacy—namely, that it was possible to preserve the states as separate “sovereign” political organizations within the political union. In adopting a federal constitutional structure for the new republic (as opposed to a “consolidated” or “unitary” government), the Founders institutionalized a …

Something To Lex Loci Celebrationis: Federal Marriage Benefits Following United States V. Windsor, Meg Penrose

Meg Penrose

This article provides one of the first substantive treatments of United States v. Windsor, the Supreme Court's recent same-sex marriage case. The article's thesis proposes lex loci celebrationis (the place of marriage) as the proper method for determining marriage for federal law purposes. Failure to adopt lex loci celebrationis may violate the Fifth Amendment equal protection guarantee or the constitutional right to travel. Further, adoption of the lex loci celebrationis standard furthers marital stability and predictability.

Something To Lex Loci Celebrationis: Federal Marriage Benefits Following United States V. Windsor, Mary Margaret Meg Penrose

Meg Penrose

Something To Lex Loci Celebrationis: Federal Marriage Benefits Following United States V. Windsor, Meg Penrose

Meg Penrose

This article provides one of the first substantive treatments of United States v. Windsor, the Supreme Court's recent same-sex marriage case. The article's thesis proposes lex loci celebrationis (the place of marriage) as the proper method for determining marriage for federal law purposes. Failure to adopt lex loci celebrationis may violate the Fifth Amendment equal protection guarantee or the constitutional right to travel. Further, adoption of the lex loci celebrationis standard furthers marital stability and predictability.

Conflicting Federal And State Medical Marijuana Policies: A Threat To Cooperative Federalism, Todd Grabarsky

Todd Grabarsky

The legal status of medical marijuana in the United States is something of a paradox. On one hand, federal government has placed a ban on the drug with no exceptions. On the other hand, over one-third of the states have that legalizes the cultivation, distribution, and consumption of the drug for medical purposes. As such, the usage of medical marijuana is an activity that is at the same time proscribed (by the federal government) and encouraged (by state governments through their systems of regulation and taxation). This Article seeks to shed light on this unprecedented nebulous zone of legality in …

Ending Judgment Arbitrage: Jurisdictional Competition And The Enforcement Of Foreign Money Judgments In The United States, Gregory Shill

Gregory Shill

Recent multi-billion-dollar damage awards issued by foreign courts against large American companies have focused attention on the once-obscure, patchwork system of enforcing foreign-country judgments in the United States. That system’s structural problems are even more serious than its critics have charged. However, the leading proposals for reform overlook the positive potential embedded in its design.

In the United States, no treaty or federal law controls the domestication of foreign judgments; the process is instead governed by state law. Although they are often conflated in practice, the procedure consists of two formally and conceptually distinct stages: foreign judgments must first be …

Freedom Of Reincorporation And The Scope Of Corporate Law In The U.S. And The E.U., Federico Mucciarelli

Federico M. Mucciarelli

In the U.S. corporations can be incorporated in any of the 50 states and can “reincorporate” afterwards in any other state. In the E.U. such freedoms are a recent achievement: In the last decade, first the European Court of Justice has liberalized initial incorporations and only in 2005 the cross-border directive has open the doors to freedom of midstream reincorporation from one member state to another. Midstream reincorporations, however, in the E.U. have a much different impact than on the other side of the Atlantic. In the U.S., indeed, the competence of the state where a company is incorporated is …