Courts Commons^™

Enlisting The U.S. Courts In A New Front, Debra M. Strauss

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The time has come to extend the national approach that has been used successfully to dismantle the infrastructure of hate groups to the international realm against terrorist groups. The foundation of this approach is a private right to a cause of action apart from any military or diplomatic efforts by the government. In this Article, Professor Strauss analyzes case precedents under several federal statutes--the Antiterrorism Act of 1991, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, the Torture Victim Protection Act, the Alien Tort Claim Act--as well as state common-law tort claims, including aiding and abetting liability. Professor Strauss …

The Crime Victim's Right To Attend The Trial: The Reascendant National Consensus, Douglas Evan Beloof, Paul Cassell

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

This article contends that crime victims should have an unequivocal right to attend a criminal trial, even in cases where they will be called as witnesses. A victim's right to attend trial has strong historical support, as at common law victims attended trial as private prosecutors. More recently, crime victims' rights legislation passed in the majority of states recognizes the victim's right to attend. Nothing in the Constitution prevents victims from attending trial, and strong public policy reasons support such an approach. Observing the trial can have import therapeutic and other benefits for victims. Any risk of prejudice to a …

Crawford V. Washington: The End Of Victimless Prosecution?, Andrew King-Ries

Faculty Law Review Articles

Domestic violence offenses are difficult to prosecute because the batterer's actions often make the victim unavailable to testify. Since the mid- 1990s, prosecutors have pursued "victimless" prosecutions' to combat the problem.2 Victimless prosecutions seek to introduce reliable evidence without the victim's in-court testimony, often to maintain the victim's safety or to avoid re-victimizing the victim.3 The victimless prosecution is based largely on the admission of hearsay statements that a victim makes to 911 operators, police officers, doctors, nurses, paramedics, and social workers.4 Victimless prosecution has been a highly successful tool in society's efforts to eradicate domestic violence and it is …

Hail To The Chief: Former Law Clerks For William Rehnquist Recall What They Learned And How He Touched Their Lives, Craig M. Bradley, Laura E. Little, John C. Englander, Celestine Richards Mcconville

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who died Sept. 3, is remembered for his disarming warmth and humor, breadth of knowledge about the law, and insistence that there is life outside the office. Few knew him better than the legions of clerks who tolled with and learned from him. Indeed, the sheer number who attended his funeral testifies to how highly he was regarded. Here, four former clerks from the decades of the 1970s, '80s and '90s write about their own particular memories of the late chief justice.

A Great Writ Reduced: Why The Tenth Circuit’S Interpretation Of Congressional Intent And Supreme Court Precedent Portends Defeat For State Prisoners Seeking Federal Habeas Corpus Relief, Elizabeth J. Barnett

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

Reconsidering The Law Of Democracy: Of Political Questions, Prudence, And The Judicial Role, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In Vieth v. Jubelirer, the U.S. Supreme Court seemed poised to offer the Court's definitive position on political gerrymandering questions. Yet the Court splintered along familiar lines and failed to offer a definitive answer. This Article focuses on the plurality opinion, and particularly its conclusion that judicially manageable standards are wanting in this area. This conclusion is implausible and masks the real question at the heart of the case. The Vieth plurality is best understood by examining the Court's political and prudential concerns, as cabined by the political question doctrine. One understanding is simply that the plurality is making a …

Representing Children In Families, Bruce A. Green, Annette R. Appell

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Altmann V. Austria And The Retroactivity Of The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, Carlos Manuel Vázquez

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In Republic of Austria v. Altmann, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 (FSIA) generally applies to claims based on events that occurred before the Statute's enactment. To decide the retroactivity question, the Court had occasion to consider the essential nature of foreign sovereign immunity: is it merely a procedural immunity providing foreign states with present protection from the inconvenience and indignity of a lawsuit, or is it something more than that? The Court's examination of this question was brief and unsatisfying. Its analysis would have been enriched by a recognition that foreign …

Academics And The Federal Circuit: Is There A Gulf And How Do We Bridge It?, John R. Thomas

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Many of the great research universities of the United States enjoy a close relationship with innovators. Names like Carnegie, Cornell, Hopkins, Stanford, and Vanderbilt bring to mind not so much these men, but the academic institutions that they founded. The mention of other research institutions, such as the Universities of Chicago and Virginia, allows us to recall entrepreneurial founders such as Rockefeller and Jefferson. It is appropriate then, to consider how university research - and in particular, the work product of the law schools - is faring before that court whose rulings most directly impact American innovation policy.

Constitutionalization, Girardeau A. Spann

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Students of constitutional law tend to suspect pretty early on that the Constitution simply means whatever the Supreme Court says that it means. Rather than fight that intuition, I think it is best to treat the student insight as one of the basic starting assumptions when teaching a course in Constitutional Law. The goal then becomes to help students figure out how best to maneuver and feel comfortable in a legal universe where the Constitution has only contingent meaning.

What the Supreme Court does when it clothes its political policy preferences in the garb of constitutional law can be described …

Foreign Law And The Denominator Problem, Ernest A. Young

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Making Federalism Doctrine: Fidelity, Institutional Competence, And Compensating Adjustments, Ernest A. Young

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Why States Create International Tribunals: A Response To Professors Posner And Yoo, Laurence R. Helfer, Anne-Marie Slaughter

Faculty Scholarship

A recent article in the California Law Review by Professors Eric Posner and John Yoo, Judicial Independence in International Tribunals, argues that the only effective international tribunals are dependent tribunals, by which the authors mean ad hoc tribunals staffed by judges closely controlled by governments through the power of reappointment or threats of retaliation. Independent tribunals, by contrast, meaning tribunals staffed by judges appointed on similar terms as those in domestic courts, pose a danger to international cooperation. According to Posner and Yoo, independent tribunals are suspect because they are more likely to allow moral ideals, ideological imperatives or the …

Colored Speech: Cross Burnings, Epistemics, And The Triumph Of The Crits?, Guy-Uriel Charles

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay examines the Court's recent decision in Virginia v. Black. It argues that Black signifies a different approach to the constitutionality of statutes regulating cross burnings. It shows how the Court's conservatives have essentially accepted the intellectual framework and the mode of analysis suggested previously by the critical race theorists. In particular, this Essay explores the role that Justice Thomas plays in the case. The Essay explains Justice Thomas's active participation as a matter of epistemic authority and epistemic deference.

Judging The Law Of Politics, Guy-Uriel Charles

Faculty Scholarship

In this Review Essay I explore the rights-structure debate that has captivated the attention of election law scholars. The Essay juxtaposes the recent work of a leading individualist Professor Richard Hasen's new book, "The Supreme Court and Election Law," against the recent work of a leading structuralist, Professor Richard Pildes' recent Foreword to the Harvard Law Review. I argue that even though the rights-structure debate produces much heat, it does not significantly advance the goal of understanding and evaluating the role of the Court in democratic politics. I aim to return election law to a dualistic understanding of the relationship …

Congressional Authorization And The War On Terrorism, Curtis A. Bradley, Jack L. Goldsmith

Faculty Scholarship

This Article presents a framework for interpreting Congress's September 18, 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), the central statutory enactment related to the war on terrorism. Although both constitutional theory and constitutional practice suggest that the validity of presidential wartime actions depends to a significant degree on their relationship to congressional authorization, the meaning and implications of the AUMF have received little attention in the academic debates over the war on terrorism. The framework presented in this Article builds on the analysis in the Supreme Court's plurality opinion in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, which devoted significant attention to the …

Mr. Justice Posner? Unpacking The Statistics, Stephen J. Choi, Mitu Gulati

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Terrorism: The Politics Of Prosecution, Madeline Morris

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Judicial Triage: Reflections On The Debate Over Unpublished Opinions, Mitu Gulati, David C. Vladeck

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Medellin V. Dretke: Federalism And International Law, Curtis A. Bradley, Lori Fisler Damrosch, Martin Flaherty

Faculty Scholarship

This is an edited version of a debate held at Columbia Law School on February 21, 2005.

Congress's Power To Enforce Fourteenth Amendment Rights: Lessons From Federal Remedies The Framers Enacted , Robert J. Kaczorowski

Faculty Scholarship

Professor Robert Kaczorowski argues for an expansive originalist interpretation of Congressional power under the Fourteenth Amendment. Before the Civil War Congress actually exercised, and the Supreme Court repeatedly upheld plenary Congressional power to enforce the constitutional rights of slaveholders. After the Civil War, the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment copied the antebellum statutes and exercised plenary power to enforce the constitutional rights of all American citizens when they enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and then incorporated the Act into the Fourteenth Amendment. The framers of the Fourteenth Amendment thereby exercised the plenary power the Rehnquist Court claims the …

Legislating New Federalism: The Call For Grand Jury Reform In The States, John F. Decker

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Primer On The Doctrine Of Federal Sovereign Immunity, Gregory C. Sisk

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

Time Is Money--But Is It Compensable Work? An Analysis Of Ibp, Inc. V. Alvarez, Barbara J. Fick

Journal Articles

This article previews the Supreme Court case IBP, Inc. v. Alvarez, 546 U.S. 21 (2005). The issues raised in that case were: Is the time employees spend walking and waiting in line during the process of donning and doffing required safety equipment considered compensable work such that employers must pay them for that time?

Statutory Stare Decisis In The Courts Of Appeals, Amy Coney Barrett

Journal Articles

The Supreme Court has long given its cases interpreting statutes special protection from overruling. Two rationales exist for this practice. One line of thought interprets congressional silence following the Supreme Court's interpretation of a statute as approval of that interpretation. According to this way of thinking, a refusal to overrule statutory precedent is a refusal to veer from an interpretation that Congress has effectively approved. Another line of thought emphasizes that statutory interpretation inevitably involves policymaking, and that policymaking is an aspect of legislative, rather than judicial, power. According to this second way of thinking, the Supreme Court should refuse …

Unconstitutional Courses, Frederic M. Bloom

Publications

By now, we almost expect Congress to fail. Nearly every time the federal courts announce a controversial decision, Congress issues a call to rein in "runaway" federal judges. And nearly every time Congress makes a "jurisdiction-stripping" threat, it comes to nothing.

But if Congress's threats possess little fire, we have still been distracted by their smoke. This Article argues that Congress's noisy calls have obscured another potent threat to the "judicial Power": the Supreme Court itself. On occasion, this Article asserts, the Court reshapes and abuses the "judicial Power"--not through bold pronouncements or obvious doctrinal revisions, but through something more …