Law Commons^™

Jazz Improvisation And The Law: Constrained Choice, Sequence, And Strategic Movement Within Rules, William W. Buzbee

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This Article argues that a richer understanding of the nature of law is possible through comparative, analogical examination of legal work and the art of jazz improvisation. This exploration illuminates a middle ground between rule of law aspirations emphasizing stability and determinate meanings and contrasting claims that the untenable alternative is pervasive discretionary or politicized law. In both the law and jazz improvisation settings, the work involves constraining rules, others’ unpredictable actions, and strategic choosing with attention to where a collective creation is going. One expects change and creativity in improvisation, but the many analogous characteristics of law illuminate why …

Facts Versus Discretion: The Debate Over Immigration Adjudication, Jayanth K. Krishnan

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Justice Amy Coney Barrett recently issued her first majority-led immigration opinion in Patel v. Garland (2022). As background, some immigrants looking to avoid deportation may apply for what is called “discretionary relief’ (e.g., asylum or adjustment of status) initially in an immigration court and then, if they lose, at the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA). These immigration forums fall under the Department of Justice. Prior to Patel, immigrants who lost at the BIA could then ask a federal circuit court to review the factual findings of their case. Now, after Justice Barrett’s decision, Article III review is no longer available …

Rbg: Nonprofit Entrepreneur, David M. Schizer

Faculty Scholarship

It is exceedingly rare for one person to change the world almost single-handedly, but Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was one of those people. Even before her distinguished judicial career, RBG was a trailblazing advocate for women’s rights during the 1970s. She persuaded the Supreme Court that gender discrimination violates the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution, winning five of the six cases she argued there. To lead this historic effort, RBG served as general counsel of the ACLU and as co-founder and the first director of its Women’s Rights Project from 1972 until she became a judge in 1980. …

Kennedy's Legacy: A Principled Justice, Mitchell N. Berman, David Peters

All Faculty Scholarship

After three decades on the Court, Justice Anthony Kennedy remains its most widely maligned member. Concentrating on his constitutional jurisprudence, critics from across the ideological spectrum have derided Justice Kennedy as “a self-aggrandizing turncoat,” “an unprincipled weathervane,” and, succinctly, “America’s worst Justice.” We believe that Kennedy is not as bereft of a constitutional theory as common wisdom maintains. To the contrary, this Article argues, his constitutional decisionmaking reflects a genuine grasp (less than perfect, more than rudimentary) of a coherent and, we think, compelling theory of constitutional law—the account, more or less, that one of has introduced in other work …

The Missing Justice In Coleman V. Miller, Barry Cushman

Journal Articles

All nine of the sitting justices took part in the 1939 case of Coleman v. Miller, which concerned whether the Kansas legislature had ratified the pending Child Labor Amendment. One of the issues in the case was decided by a vote of 5-4, while another was resolved by a vote of 7-2. With respect to a third issue, however, Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes reported that it presented “a question upon which the Court is equally divided and therefore the Court expresses no opinion upon that point.”

Scholars understandably have been puzzled by how a decision in which a full …

Class Actions And The Counterrevolution Against Federal Litigation, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang

All Faculty Scholarship

In this article we situate consideration of class actions in a framework, and fortify it with data, that we have developed as part of a larger project, the goal of which is to assess the counterrevolution against private enforcement of federal law from an institutional perspective. In a series of articles emerging from the project, we have documented how the Executive, Congress and the Supreme Court (wielding both judicial power under Article III of the Constitution and delegated legislative power under the Rules Enabling Act) fared in efforts to reverse or dull the effects of statutory and other incentives for …

The Tragedy Of Justice Scalia, Mitchell N. Berman

All Faculty Scholarship

Justice Antonin Scalia was, by the time of his death last February, the Supreme Court’s best known and most influential member. He was also its most polarizing, a jurist whom most students of American law either love or hate. This essay, styled as a twenty-year retrospective on A Matter of Interpretation, Scalia’s Tanner lectures on statutory and constitutional interpretation, aims to prod partisans on both sides of our central legal and political divisions to better appreciate at least some of what their opponents see—the other side of Scalia’s legacy. Along the way, it critically assesses Scalia’s particular brand of …

Justice Scalia’S Originalism And Formalism: The Rule Of Criminal Law As A Law Of Rules, Stephanos Bibas

All Faculty Scholarship

Far too many reporters and pundits collapse law into politics, assuming that the left–right divide between Democratic and Republican appointees neatly explains politically liberal versus politically conservative outcomes at the Supreme Court. The late Justice Antonin Scalia defied such caricatures. His consistent judicial philosophy made him the leading exponent of originalism, textualism, and formalism in American law, and over the course of his three decades on the Court, he changed the terms of judicial debate. Now, as a result, supporters and critics alike start with the plain meaning of the statutory or constitutional text rather than loose appeals to legislative …

The Fight For Equal Protection: Reconstruction-Redemption Redux, Kermit Roosevelt Iii, Patricia Stottlemyer

All Faculty Scholarship

With Justice Scalia gone, and Justices Ginsburg and Kennedy in their late seventies, there is the possibility of significant movement on the Supreme Court in the next several years. A two-justice shift could upend almost any area of constitutional law, but the possible movement in race-based equal protection jurisprudence provides a particularly revealing window into the larger trends at work. In the battle over equal protection, two strongly opposed visions of the Constitution contend against each other, and a change in the Court’s composition may determine the outcome of that struggle. In this essay, we set out the current state …

Inside The Taft Court: Lessons From The Docket Books, Barry Cushman

Journal Articles

For many years, the docket books kept by certain of the Taft Court Justices have been held by the Office of the Curator of the Supreme Court. Though the existence of these docket books had been brought to the attention of the scholarly community, access to them was highly restricted. In April of 2014, however, the Court adopted new guidelines designed to increase access to the docket books for researchers. This article offers a report and analysis based on a review of all of the Taft Court docket books held by the Office of the Curator, which are the only …

Judicial Ethics And Supreme Court Exceptionalism, Amanda Frost

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

In his 2011 Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary, Chief Justice John Roberts cast doubt on Congress’s authority to regulate the Justices’ ethical conduct, declaring that the constitutionality of such legislation has “never been tested.” Roberts’ comments not only raise important questions about the relationship between Congress and the Supreme Court, they also call into question the constitutionality of a number of existing and proposed ethics statutes. Thus, the topic deserves close attention.

This Essay contends that Congress has broad constitutional authority to regulate the Justices’ ethical conduct, just as it has exercised control over other vital aspects of the …

Justice Kennedy's Sixth Amendment Pragmatism, Stephanos Bibas

All Faculty Scholarship

This essay, written as part of a symposium on the evolution of Justice Kennedy’s jurisprudence, surveys three areas of criminal procedure under the Sixth Amendment: sentence enhancements, the admissibility of hearsay, and the regulation of defense counsel’s responsibilities. In each area, Justice Kennedy has been a notable voice of pragmatism, focusing not on bygone analogies to the eighteenth century but on a hard-headed appreciation of the twenty-first. He has shown sensitivity to modern criminal practice, prevailing professional norms, and practical constraints, as befits a Justice who came to the bench with many years of private-practice experience. His touchstone is not …

Modern Odysseus Or Classic Fraud - Fourteen Years In Prison For Civil Contempt Without A Jury Trial, Judicial Power Without Limitation, And An Examination Of The Failure Of Due Process, Mitchell J. Frank

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Introductory Note To The Supreme Court Of The United States: Noriega V. Pastrana, Kenneth Anderson

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Defending The Majoritarian Court, Amanda Frost

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Misplaced Modifiers - Say What, David Spratt

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Justice Scalia's Constitution--And Ours, Kermit Roosevelt Iii

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Politics Of Meaning: Law Dictionaries And The Liberal Tradition Of Interpretation, Gary L. Mcdowell

Law Faculty Publications

At least since John Cowell's Interpreter was adjudged by the Committee on Grievances of the House of Commons in 1610 to be "very unadvised, and undiscreet, tending to the disreputation of the honour and power of the common laws" have law dictionaries been objects of occasional controversy. Yet legal dictionaries, as well as dictionaries more generally, have remained a constant resource in American law for those seeking to give meaning to the words of both statutes and constitutional provisions. They have appeared in the pages of the reports since the beginning of the republic; a majority of the justices of …

News Media Coverage Of The United States Supreme Court, Stephen Wermiel

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

"I Vote This Way Because I'M Wrong": The Supreme Court Justice As Epimenides, John M. Rogers

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Possibly the most unsettling phenomenon in the Supreme Court's 1988 term was Justice White's decision to vote contrary to his own exhaustively stated reasoning in Pennsylvania v. Union Gas Co. His unexplained decision to vote against the result of his own analysis lends support to those who argue that law, or at least constitutional law, is fundamentally indeterminate. Proponents of the indeterminacy argument sometimes base their position on the allegedly inescapable inconsistency of decisions made by a multi-member court. There is an answer to the inconsistency argument, but it founders if justices sometimes vote, without explanation, on the basis of …