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Articles 1 - 9 of 9

Full-Text Articles in Law

Reducing The Overburden: The Doris Coal Presumption And Administrative Efficiency Under The Black Lung Benefits Act, Eric R. Olson Dec 2000

Reducing The Overburden: The Doris Coal Presumption And Administrative Efficiency Under The Black Lung Benefits Act, Eric R. Olson

Michigan Law Review

Coal dust build-up prevents many coal miners' lungs from functioning properly. This condition, commonly referred to as black lung or pneumoconiosis, can make common activities nearly impossible. The Black Lung Benefits Act covers the cost of medical treatment for many affected miners, though procedural impediments often prevent miners from receiving care. The miner's current or former employer, when identifiable, must pay for medical care relating to the miner's black lung. Most disputes over miners' claims for medical care arise when the miner has a history of cigarette smoking and the need for medical care could arise from either coal dust …


Assessing The New Judicial Minimalism, Christopher J. Peters Oct 2000

Assessing The New Judicial Minimalism, Christopher J. Peters

All Faculty Scholarship

In this article, which has been published in slightly revised form at 100 Colum. L. Rev. 1454 (2000), I critique some recently prominent arguments for "judicial minimalism" in constitutional decisionmaking. Current minimalist arguments, I contend, are primarily "policentric," that is, focused on the role the judiciary can play in bolstering the accountability and deliberativeness of the political branches. Drawing in part on a previous article, I offer an alternative approach to minimalism that is "juricentric" - focused on the inherent democratic legitimacy of the adjudicative process and the unique competence of that process to produce decisions about individual rights. I …


Losing Faith: America Without Judicial Review?, Erwin Chemerinsky May 2000

Losing Faith: America Without Judicial Review?, Erwin Chemerinsky

Michigan Law Review

In the last decade, it has become increasingly trendy to question whether the Supreme Court and constitutional judicial review really can make a difference. Gerald Rosenberg, for example, in The Hollow Hope, expressly questions whether judicial review achieves effective social change. Similarly, Michael Klarman explores whether the Supreme Court's desegregation decisions were effective, except insofar as they produced a right-wing backlash that induced action to desegregate. In Taking the Constitution Away from the Courts, Mark Tushnet approvingly invokes these arguments (pp. 137, 145), but he goes much further. Professor Tushnet contends that, on balance, constitutional judicial review is harmful. He …


Choosing Justices: A Political Appointments Process And The Wages Of Judicial Supremacy, John C. Yoo May 2000

Choosing Justices: A Political Appointments Process And The Wages Of Judicial Supremacy, John C. Yoo

Michigan Law Review

William H. Rehnquist is not going to be Chief Justice forever - much to the chagrin of Republicans, no doubt. In the last century, Supreme Court Justices have retired, on average, at the age of seventy-one after approximately fourteen years on the bench. By the end of the term of the President we elect this November, Chief Justice Rehnquist will have served on the Supreme Court for thirty-two years and reached the age of eighty. The law of averages suggests that Chief Justice Rehnquist is likely to retire in the next presidential term. In addition to replacing Chief Justice Rehnquist, …


Indirect Constitutional Discourse: A Comment On Meese, Robert F. Nagel Jan 2000

Indirect Constitutional Discourse: A Comment On Meese, Robert F. Nagel

Publications

No abstract provided.


Eleventh Amendment Schizophrenia, Carlos Manuel Vázquez Jan 2000

Eleventh Amendment Schizophrenia, Carlos Manuel Vázquez

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article argues that conflicting analytical strains run through the Supreme Court's recent majority opinions in the area of state sovereign immunity. The "supremacy" strain stresses that, despite the Eleventh Amendment, the states remain obligated to comply with federal law, and that the Constitution envisions the "necessary judicial means" to enforce these obligations against the state. These means include suits by the federal government, private suits for injunctive relief, and suits seeking damages from state officials in their individual capacities. Thus, according to the supremacy strain, state sovereign immunity is unimportant because it merely bars unnecessary means of enforcing the …


Thinking About The Constitution At The Cusp, Mark V. Tushnet Jan 2000

Thinking About The Constitution At The Cusp, Mark V. Tushnet

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

What do I mean in saying that we need to think about the Constitution "at the cusp?" I have in mind an image in which we have one way of thinking about the Constitution on one side of a line, and another way of thinking about the Constitution on the other. My sense is that we may have crossed such a line quite recently. I believe that we may be in a new constitutional order, different from the New Deal-Great Society constitutional order that existed from 1937 to sometime in the 1980s. If so, those of us who have been …


Writing Off Race, Girardeau A. Spann Jan 2000

Writing Off Race, Girardeau A. Spann

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The constitutionality of affirmative action has now become one of the central topics in the politics of race. Ironically, the United States Constitution says absolutely nothing about affirmative action. The text never mentions the term, and the equal protection language in the Fourteenth Amendment simply begs the question of whether equality requires or precludes the use of affirmative action. The intent of the Framers is similarly unhelpful. We know that the drafters of the Fifth Amendment owned slaves, and the drafters of the Fourteenth Amendment envisioned a racially stratified society. But the Fourteenth Amendment was itself an affirmative action measure, …


Regulatory Takings And "Judicial Supremacy", J. Peter Byrne Jan 2000

Regulatory Takings And "Judicial Supremacy", J. Peter Byrne

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The thesis of this Article is that the Court of Federal Claims and the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit have become exposed to this classic critique of constitutional decision-making through the recent expansions of the regulatory takings doctrine. Though the chief agent for this expansion has been the Supreme Court, these lower courts have made their own prominent contributions to broadening regulatory takings, and they are far more vulnerable to political reprisals. Like the Due Process Clause in the gilded age, the Takings Clause today can easily be and has been seen as an avenue for inappropriate judicial …