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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Second Dimension Of The Supreme Court, Joshua B. Fischman, Tonja Jacobi
The Second Dimension Of The Supreme Court, Joshua B. Fischman, Tonja Jacobi
Tonja Jacobi
Describing the justices of the Supreme Court as ‘liberals’ and ‘conservatives’ has become so standard—and the left-right division on the Court is considered so entrenched—that any deviation from that pattern is treated with surprise. Attentive Court watchers know that the justices are not just politicians in robes, deciding each case on a purely ideological basis. Yet the increasingly influential empirical legal studies literature assumes just that—that a left-right ideological dimension fully describes the Supreme Court. We show that there is a second, more legally-focused dimension of judicial decision-making. A continuum between legalism and pragmatism also divides the justices, in ways …
Why Chief Justice Roy Moore And The Alabama Supreme Court Just Made The Best Case For Same-Sex Marriage, Adam Lamparello
Why Chief Justice Roy Moore And The Alabama Supreme Court Just Made The Best Case For Same-Sex Marriage, Adam Lamparello
Adam Lamparello
The Alabama Court of the Judiciary should remove Roy Moore from the Supreme Court of Alabama for a second and final time. Over ten years after being ousted from the Alabama Supreme Court, Chief Justice Moore is embroiled in yet another controversy that involves disregarding the federal courts and creating chaos in the legal system. In fact, Moore recently stated that he would ignore the Supremacy Clause and not respect a U.S. Supreme Court decision invalidating same-sex marriage bans. That statement brings back memories of Governor Wallace’s infamous stand at the schoolhouse door. At least Wallace had a change of …
It's The Constitution, Stupid: Two Liberals Pay Tribute To Antonin Scalia's Legacy, Adam Lamparello, Charles E. Maclean
It's The Constitution, Stupid: Two Liberals Pay Tribute To Antonin Scalia's Legacy, Adam Lamparello, Charles E. Maclean
Adam Lamparello
Living constitutionalism may achieve “good” results, but with each Roe v. Wade, and Bush v. Gore, the Constitution’s vision takes more shallow breaths, and democracy fades into elitism’s shadow. The debate over constitutional interpretation is, in many ways, reducible to this question: if a particular outcome is desirable, and the Constitution’s text is silent or ambiguous, should the United States Supreme Court (or any court) disregard constitutional constraints to achieve that outcome? If the answer is yes, nine unelected judges have the power to choose outcomes that are desirable. If the answer is no, then the focus must be on …
It's The Constitution, Stupid: Two Liberals Pay Tribute To Antonin Scalia's Legacy, Adam Lamparello, Charles E. Maclean
It's The Constitution, Stupid: Two Liberals Pay Tribute To Antonin Scalia's Legacy, Adam Lamparello, Charles E. Maclean
Adam Lamparello
Living constitutionalism may achieve “good” results, but with each Roe v. Wade, and Bush v. Gore, the Constitution’s vision takes more shallow breaths, and democracy fades into elitism’s shadow. The debate over constitutional interpretation is, in many ways, reducible to this question: if a particular outcome is desirable, and the Constitution’s text is silent or ambiguous, should the United States Supreme Court (or any court) disregard constitutional constraints to achieve that outcome? If the answer is yes, nine unelected judges have the power to choose outcomes that are desirable. If the answer is no, then the focus must be on …
Behavioral International Law, Tomer Broude
Behavioral International Law, Tomer Broude
Tomer Broude
Economic analysis and rational choice have in the last decade made significant inroads into the study of international law and institutions, relying upon standard assumptions of perfect rationality of states and decision-makers. This approach is inadequate, both empirically and in its tendency towards outdated formulations of political theory. This article presents an alternative behavioral approach that provides new hypotheses addressing problems in international law while introducing empirically grounded concepts of real, observed rationality. First, I address methodological objections to behavioral analysis of international law: the focus of behavioral research on the individual; the empirical foundations of behavioral economics; and behavioral …
Valuing Our Discordant Constitutional Discourse: Autonomous-Text Constitutionalism And The Jewish Legal Tradition, Shlomo C. Pill
Valuing Our Discordant Constitutional Discourse: Autonomous-Text Constitutionalism And The Jewish Legal Tradition, Shlomo C. Pill
Shlomo C. Pill
This paper considers the viability of autonomous-text constitutionalism, a constitutional interpretive and adjudicative theory based on Hans Georg-Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics. As the paper explains, this theory is premised on the subjectivity of all interpretive activity; it admits the legitimacy of a wide spectrum of reasonable interpretations of the Constitution, each given their unique character by the dialectical merging of experiential horizons between the fixed text and individual interpreter. This theory embraces a plurality of constitutional meanings in theory, limited by the need for unity in national spheres of constitutional practice. Such practical certainty is achieved by our empowering judicial institutions …
What’S Age Got To Do With It? Supreme Court Appointees And The Long Run Location Of The Supreme Court Median Justice, Matthew L. Spitzer
What’S Age Got To Do With It? Supreme Court Appointees And The Long Run Location Of The Supreme Court Median Justice, Matthew L. Spitzer
Matthew L Spitzer
For approximately the past 40 years Republican Presidents have appointed younger Justices than have Democratic Presidents. Depending on how one does the accounting, the average age difference will vary, but will not go away. This Article posits that Republicans appointing younger justices than Democrats may have caused a rightward shift in the Supreme Court. We use computer simulations to show that if the trend continues the rightward shift will likely increase. We also to produce some very rough estimates of the size of the ideological shift, contingent on the size of the age differential. In addition, we show that the …
Cause Judging, Justin Hansford
Cause Judging, Justin Hansford
Justin Hansford
Building on the framework of “cause lawyering” scholarship, this Article explores the fact that, in a similar tradition as a “cause lawyering” law practice animated by dedication to a cause, “cause judging” exists as well. This insight has implications for judicial ethics norms. The hyper-partisan nature of modern American life has already cast doubt on the possibility that politically appointed judges can ever truly attain the “appearance of impartiality” demanded by judicial recusal standards. Instead, judicial ethics norms should embrace the fact that judges have moral and political ideals that inform their rulings when they exercise judicial discretion, and that …
Ideological Voting Applied To The School Desegregation Cases In The Federal Courts Of Appeals From The 1960’S And 70’S, Joe Custer
Joe Custer
This paper considers a research suggestion from Cass Sunstein to analyze segregation cases from the 1960's and 1970's and whether three hypothesis he projected in the article "Ideological Voting on Federal Courts of Appeals: A Preliminary Investigation," 90 Va. L. Rev. 301 (2004), involving various models of judicial ideology, would pertain. My paper considers Sunstein’s three hypotheses in addition to other judicial ideologies to try to empirically determine what was influencing Federal Court of Appeals Judges in regard to Civil Rights issues, specifically school desegregation, in the 1960’s and 1970’s.
Captured Legislatures And Public-Interested Courts, Patrick Luff
Captured Legislatures And Public-Interested Courts, Patrick Luff
Patrick A. Luff
According to public choice, the predominant paradigm of modern regulatory theory, legislative activity provides benefits to small, organized interests at the expense of larger groups. In practice, this means that interest groups are often able to benefit themselves at the expense of the public good. This model has been extended to the courts, which are described as implicit or explicit actors in the wealth-transfer process. Applying public-choice theory to the courts, however, overlooks the structural differences between the federal judiciary and Congress, as well as the insights of judicial decisionmaking theory. Not only do judges receive better and more complete …
“Nixon’S Sabotage”: How Politics Pushed The “Discriminatory Purpose” Requirement Into Equal Protection Law, Danieli Evans
“Nixon’S Sabotage”: How Politics Pushed The “Discriminatory Purpose” Requirement Into Equal Protection Law, Danieli Evans
Danieli Evans
This article describes the way that politics—resistance from the elected branches coupled with President Nixon appointing Chief Justice Burger—shaped the Court’s unanimous decision in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg, 402 U.S. 1 (1971), a school desegregation case that played a crucial role in limiting the forms of state action considered unconstitutional discrimination. Chief Justice Burger defied longstanding Supreme Court procedure to assign himself the majority opinion even though he disagreed with the majority outcome. Justice Douglas alleged that he did this “in order to write Nixon’s view of freedom of choice into the law.” Justice Burger’s opinion laid the foundation for limiting …
Ideology, Qualifications, And Covert Senate Obstruction Of Federal Court Nominations, Ryan Owens, Daniel Walters, Ryan Black, Anthony Madonna
Ideology, Qualifications, And Covert Senate Obstruction Of Federal Court Nominations, Ryan Owens, Daniel Walters, Ryan Black, Anthony Madonna
Ryan Owens
Scholars, policymakers, and journalists have bemoaned the emphasis on ideology over qualifications and party over performance in the judicial appointment process. Though, for years, the acrimony between the two parties and between the Senate and President remained limited to appointments to the United States Supreme Court, the modern era of judicial appointments has seen the so-called “appointments rigor mortis” spread throughout all levels of judicial appointments. A host of studies have examined the causes and consequences of the growing acrimony and obstruction of lower federal court appointments, but few rely on archival data and empirical evidence to examine the underlying …