Courts Commons^™

The Wages Of Crying Judicial Restraint, Randy E. Barnett

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Five Justices voted to affirm the proposition that the Constitution creates a government of limited and enumerated powers and that the courts will enforce those limits. To understand why this victory was possible, it is important to understand that there are not just two versions of federalism, pre‐New Deal and post‐New Deal. There is also a third version. The failure to recognize the third version goes a long way to explain why most of my academic colleagues predicted that the right would have no chance to prevail in our constitutional challenge to the individual insurance mandate.

The first version of …

A General Defense Of Erie Railroad Co. V. Tompkins, Ernest A. Young

Faculty Scholarship

Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins was the most important federalism decision of the Twentieth Century. Justice Brandeis’s opinion for the Court stated unequivocally that “[e]xcept in matters governed by the Federal Constitution or by acts of Congress, the law to be applied in any case is the law of the state. . . . There is no federal general common law.” Seventy-five years later, however, Erie finds itself under siege. Critics have claimed that it is “bereft of serious intellectual or constitutional support” (Michael Greve), based on a “myth” that must be “repressed” (Craig Green), and even “the worst decision …

Exhuming The “Diversity Explanation” Of The Eleventh Amendment, Thomas D. Rowe Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

This essay, in a symposium honoring the scholarship of Ninth Circuit Judge William A. Fletcher, explores the “diversity explanation” of the Eleventh Amendment that he had advanced in articles while he was a UC-Berkeley law professor. That explanation, contrary to existing Supreme Court doctrine that heavily constitutionalizes state sovereign immunity from suits by private parties and foreign countries, would view the Eleventh Amendment as having solely to do with federal courts’ constitutional jurisdiction and nothing to do with states’ sovereign immunity. The essay notes the cleanness of interpretation provided by the diversity explanation, in contrast with the convoluted nature of …

Brief Of Professor Stephen E. Sachs As Amicus Curiae In Support Of Neither Party, Stephen E. Sachs

Faculty Scholarship

The parties in this case defend two sides of a many-sided circuit split. This brief argues that a third view is correct.

If a contract requires suit in a particular forum, and the plaintiff sues somewhere else, how may the defendant raise the issue? Petitioner Atlantic Marine Construction Company suggests a motion under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(3) or 28 U.S.C. § 1406, on the theory that the contract renders venue improper. Respondent J-Crew Management, Inc. contends that venue remains proper, and that the defendant¹s only remedy is a transfer motion under § 1404.

Both sides are wrong. Forum-selection …

The New Textualism, Progressive Constitutionalism, And Abortion Rights: A Reply To Jeffrey Rosen, Neil S. Siegel

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

United States V. Windsor And The Role Of State Law In Defining Rights Claims, Ernest A. Young

Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court’s recent decision in United States v. Windsor is best understood from a Legal Process perspective. Windsor struck down Section 3 of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (“DOMA”), which defined marriage as exclusively between a man and a woman for purposes of federal law. Much early commentary, including Professor Neomi Rao’s essay in these pages, has found Justice Kennedy’s opinion for the Court to be “muddled” and unclear as to its actual rationale. But the trouble with Windsor is not that the opinion is muddled or vague; the rationale is actually quite evident on the face of …

Federalism, Liberty, And Equality In United States V. Windsor, Ernest A. Young, Erin C. Blondel

Faculty Scholarship

This essay argues that federalism played a profoundly important role in the Supreme Court's decision in United States v. Windsor, which struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act. Arguments to the contrary have failed to appreciate how Justice Kennedy's opinion employed federalism not as a freestanding argument but as an essential component of his rights analysis. Far from being a "muddle," as many have claimed, Justice Kennedy's analysis offered one of the most sophisticated examples to date of the interconnections between federalism, liberty, and equality.

Interpretive Methodology And Delegations To Courts: Are "Common-Law Statutes" Different?, Margaret H. Lemos

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Legitimacy And Lawmaking: A Tale Of Three International Courts, Laurence R. Helfer, Karen J. Alter

Faculty Scholarship

This article explores the relationship between the legitimacy of international courts and expansive judicial lawmaking. We compare lawmaking by three regional integration courts — the European Court of Justice (ECJ), the Andean Tribunal of Justice (ATJ), and the ECOWAS Community Court of Justice (ECCJ). These courts have similar jurisdictional grants and access rules, yet each has behaved in a strikingly different way when faced with opportunities to engage in expansive judicial lawmaking. The ECJ is the most activist, but its audacious legal doctrines have been assimilated as part of the court’s legitimate authority. The ATJ and ECOWAS have been more …

Equality Arguments For Abortion Rights, Neil S. Siegel, Reva B. Siegel

Faculty Scholarship

Roe v. Wade grounds constitutional protections for women’s decision wheth­er to end a pregnancy in the Due Process Clauses. But in the four decades since Roe, the U.S. Supreme Court has come to recognize the abortion right as an equality right as well as a liberty right. In this Essay, we describe some distinctive features of equality arguments for abortion rights. We then show how, over time, the Court and individual Justices have begun to employ equal­ity arguments in analyzing the constitutionality of abortion restrictions. These arguments first appear inside of substantive due process case law, and then as claims …

Collapsing Suspect Class With Suspect Classification: Why Strict Scrutiny Is Too Strict And Maybe Not Strict Enough, Sonu Bedi

Georgia Law Review

While scholarly work often analyzes the nature and scope
of the Court's tiers of scrutiny approach to enforcing
equality, this Article examines the underlying theory of
equal protection. This Article mounts a challenge to the
theory of higher scrutiny, and, in particular,strict scrutiny.
It seeks to analyze two questions: (1) What principles trigger
heightened scrutiny? and (2) Why does the Court need to
subject laws that discriminate on the basis of race to strict
scrutiny? The first question concerns the underlying theory
of equal protection doctrine: the "what" of higher scrutiny.
Scholarly work that seeks to answer this question rightly …

Textualism And Obstacle Preemption, John D. Ohlendorf

Georgia Law Review

Commentators, both on the bench and in the academy,
have perceived an inconsistency between the Supreme
Court's trend, in recent decades, towards an increasingly
formalist approach to statutory interpretation and the
Court's continued willingness to find state laws preempted
as "obstacles to the accomplishment and execution of the
full purposes and objectives of Congress'"--so-called
"obstacle preemption." This Article argues that by giving
the meaning contextually implied in a statutory text
ordinary, operative legal force, we can justify most of the
current scope of obstacle preemption based solely on
theoretical moves textualism already is committed to
making.
The Article first sketches …

War Of The Words: Why False Statements Should Be Guaranteed First Amendment Protection, Virginia R. Priddy

Georgia Law Review

In Haley v. State, the Georgia Supreme Court upheld
the conviction of Andrew Scott Haley for making a false
statement. Haley created a username and posted videos to
the Internet in which he claimed to have committed a
series of murders, goading his audience to try to solve the
"mysteries." Haley was convicted under a Georgia statute
that proscribes the making of a false statement within the
jurisdiction of an agency or department of state of Georgia.
After discussing the historical legal and philosophical
underpinnings of the First Amendment right to free
speech, this Note argues that the Georgia statute …

The Modern Trial And Evidence Law: Has The "Rambling Altercation" Become A Pedantic Joust?, Daniel D. Blinka

Georgia Law Review

This Article places the relationship between evidence
rules and the modern trial in a historical context. The
trial's foundation is in popular culture-lay witnesses
testifying before a lay jury. Eighteenth-century trials were
a "rambling altercation" between the defendant and his
accusers-unruly (literally), unstructured, very brief, and
less concerned with the "truth"than a socially acceptable
judgment. The modern trial's emergence in the nineteenth
century coincided with the professionalization of law, the
active involvement of lawyers as advocates, and the
sprouting of evidence rules to regulate both lawyers and
lay juries. Nonetheless, evidence law accommodated
prevailing lay culture in order to foster …

The Withering Away Of Evidence Law: Notes On Theory And Practice, Robert P. Burns

Georgia Law Review

The plausibility of evidentiary regimes depends on more
basic understandings of the nature of the trial. 'Tough-
minded" evidence scholars may sometimes be reluctant to
concede the importance of more "tender-minded"
normative inquiries into the trial. Some implicit ideals of
evidence law, such as factual accuracy, are relatively
constant among theories of the trial, while others, such as
materiality, are significantly affected by the choice among
competing theories. This Article identifies the dominant
theory of the trial and then suggests an alternative. It
then offers a number of grounds for further relaxing the
exclusionary force of evidence law and for …

Judicial Gatekeeping Of Suspect Evidence: Due Process And Evidentiary Rules In The Age Of Innocence, Keith A. Findley

Georgia Law Review

The growing number of wrongful convictions exposed
over the past two-and-a-half decades, and the research
that points to a few recurring types of flawed evidence in
those cases, raise questions about the effectiveness of the
rules of evidence and the constitutional admissibility
standards that are designed to guard against unreliable
evidence. Drawing on emerging empirical data, this
Article concludes that the system can and should be

adjusted to do a better job of guarding against undue
reliance on flawed evidence. The Article first considers the
role of reliability screening as a constitutional concern.
The wrongful convictions data identify what might …

Searching For Truth In The American Law Of Evidence And Proof, D. Michael Risinger

Georgia Law Review

The ideology of the trial process puts discovery of truth
at center stage. This is made clear by the language of
Federal Rule of Evidence 102, upon which New Georgia
Rule of Evidence 24-1-1 is obviously based. Both of these
rules make the ascertainment of truth one of the two goals
of the trial (just determination being the other). However,
the term "truth" has been used in many ways in many
different contexts and traditions. What notion of truth did
the drafters have in mind?
This Article answers that question by reference to what
has come to be known as …

The Curious Case Of Differing Literary Emphases: The Contrast Between The Use Of Scientific Publications At Pretrial Daubert Hearings And At Trial, Ronald L. Carlson

Georgia Law Review

An expert's testimony at a pretrial Daubert hearing is
frequently supported by professional writings. Technical
literature is employed by litigants to buttress controversial
scientific theories and research. By way of example, a
plaintiff's attorney may urge that an alleged toxic
substance caused his or her client's cancer. The objective
in providing the court with learned texts and articles is to
convince the trial judge to admit expert opinions that
support causation. This Article reports appellate opinions
that strongly encourage production of professional
writings in the pretrial context. Indeed, in several cases
the absence of published research resulted in defeat of …

A Tale Of Two Dauberts, Julie A. Seaman

Georgia Law Review

Under the Federal Rules of Evidence and Supreme
Court precedent, a single standard ostensibly governs the
admissibility of scientific and other expert evidence in
criminal and civil cases. Although Georgia has recently
become the forty-fourth state to adopt the Federal Rules of
Evidence, it has declined to adopt Daubert for criminal
cases and has retained the prior, more lenient, standard.
While many commentators view this approach as perverse,
this Article considers the possible virtues not only of
explicitly applying a separate rule to scientific evidence in
criminal cases but also of applying a less stringent rule to
such evidence. Based …

A Reliance Approach To Precedent, Hillel Y. Levin

Georgia Law Review

Why and when should courts presumptively defer to their
own past precedents? The doctrine of precedent lies at the
core of American jurisprudence and legal practice, but the
source of its normative force remains unclear.
Consequently, its application is confused and contested.
In this Article, I argue that precedent matters because
and to the extent that it generates reliance interests on the
part of the public. Although I am not the first to suggest
that reliance is the foundational justification for deference
to precedent, this Article represents the first sustained effort
to defend the reliance approach in deontological terms and …

State Power To Define Jurisdiction, Samuel P. Jordan, Christopher K. Bader

Georgia Law Review

States should have broader authority to decline
jurisdiction over federal claims. The normative
considerations supporting this doctrine of "reverse
abstention" have been developed in previous work. But
what of the Constitution? The traditional reading,
reflected in existing precedent, asserts that the Supremacy
Clause, Article III, and perhaps Article I operate together
to create an inflexible obligation for state courts to hear
federal claims. This reading is misguided. The
Supremacy Clause contains no jurisdictional obligation of
its own force, but only gives supreme effect to other validly
enacted federal laws. And no other clause provides the
authority to impose such an …

Jurisdictional Sequencing, Alan M. Trammell

Georgia Law Review

The Supreme Court has begun to grapple with the
problems presented by the doctrine of jurisdictional
sequencing-the decision of certain issues, and even the
dismissal of cases, before a federal court has verified its
subject matter jurisdiction. Recent jurisprudence has
created confusion as to what, if anything, a federal court
may do before it verifies subject matter jurisdiction.
Moreover, scholars and courts have struggled to discern
an underlying rationale for jurisdictional sequencing, and
no theory has been able to explain the case law fully or
offer a satisfying normative defense of the doctrine.

This Article develops a theory of jurisdictional …

Interagency Litigation And Article Iii, Joseph W. Mead

Georgia Law Review

Agencies of the United States often find themselves on
opposite sides of the "v. " in disputes ranging from alleged
unfair labor practices in federal agencies, to competing
statutory interpretations, to run-of-the mill squabbles over
money. Yet Article III's case-or-controversy requirement

includes--at a minimum-adverse parties and standing.
Courts have disagreed with one another over the extent to
which litigation between the sovereign and itself meets
Article III standards. Despite the volume of scholarship
on Article III standing, relatively little attention has been
paid to Article III's requirement of adverse parties in
general, or the justiciability of intrabranch litigation in
particular. …

Safe Haven No Longer: The Role Of Georgia Courts And Private Probation Companies In Sustaining A De Facto Debtors' Prison System, Sarah D. Bellacicco

Georgia Law Review

Georgia was specifically established as a colony for debtors-a haven where they could be safe from imprisonment. It is a haven no longer. Georgia courts are regularly imprisoning people for failing to pay debts, often through probation revocation of probationers who have failed to pay a fine or fee imposed as a condition of probation. Some of these probationers are on probation solely because they could not pay a fine on the day of sentencing, a practice which greatly increases the amount they owe due to the additional probation fees imposed. In Bearden v. Georgia, the Supreme Court held that …

Protect Yourself: Why The Eleventh Circuit's Approach To Sanctions For Protective Order Violations Fails Litigants, Adam J. Fitzsimmons

Georgia Law Review

Litigants commonly struggle to balance the need to comply with discovery requests and the desire to protect valuable trade secrets. Protective orders to help strike that balance. Questions arise, however, when one of the parties violates that protective order and discloses the opponent's confidential information. Chiefly, what remedies are available for a party whose invaluable intellectual property has been disclosed? At least one circuit has held the most common sanction, payment of attorney's fees, is unavailable for a violation of a protective order. Generally, Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37(b)(2) governs sanctions for violations of discovery orders, but the text …

Judicial Review For Enemy Fighters: The Court’S Fateful Turn In Ex Parte Quirin, The Nazi Saboteur Case, Andrew Kent

Faculty Scholarship

The emerging conventional wisdom in the legal academy is that individual rights under the U.S. Constitution should be extended to noncitizens outside the United States. This claim - called globalism in my article - has been advanced with increasing vigor in recent years, most notably in response to legal positions taken by the Bush administration during the war on terror. Against a Global Constitution challenges the textual and historical grounds advanced to support the globalist conventional wisdom and demonstrates that they have remarkably little support. At the same time, the article adduces textual and historical evidence that noncitizens were among …

The Home-State Test For General Personal Jurisdiction, Howard M. Erichson

Faculty Scholarship

This article attempts to articulate the due process test for general in personam jurisdiction. It frames the question as what gives a state sufficiently plenary power over a person that the state may adjudicate claims against the person regardless of where the claims arose, and it answers that question in terms of a home-state relationship between the defendant and the forum state. Written for a roundtable on the upcoming Supreme Court case of DaimlerChrysler AG v. Bauman, the article urges the Court to state the home-state test for general jurisdiction more clearly than it did two years ago in Goodyear …

The Right To Plea Bargain With Competent Counsel After Cooper And Frye: Is The Supreme Court Making The Ordinary Criminal Process Too Long, Too Expensive, And Unpredictable In Pursuit Of Perfect Justice, Bruce A. Green

Faculty Scholarship

In Lafler v. Cooper and Missouri v. Frye, the Supreme Court recently ruled in favor of criminal defendants who were deprived of a favorable plea offer because of their lawyers’ professional lapses. In dissent, Justice Scalia complained that “[t]he ordinary criminal process has become too long, too expensive, and unpredictable,” because of the Court’s criminal procedure jurisprudence; that plea bargaining is “the alternative in which...defendants have sought relief,” and that the two new decisions on the Sixth Amendment right to effective representation in plea bargaining would add to the burden on the criminal process. This essay examines several aspects of …

Faithful Agency Versus Ordinary Meaning Advocacy, James J. Brudney

Faculty Scholarship

This Article contends that ordinary meaning analysis based on dictionaries and language canons cannot be reconciled with the faithful agent model. Fidelity to Congress as a principal entails fidelity to its lawmaking enterprise, not to words or sentences divorced from that enterprise. Congress has indicated that it does not value dictionaries as part of its lawmaking process, and it ascribes at most limited weight to language canons in that process. Further, Justices advocating ordinary meaning analysis too often use dictionary definitions, and language canons such as the rule against surplusage, the whole act rule, and ejusdem generis, in ways that …

The Omnipresent Specter Of Omnicare, Sean J. Griffith

Faculty Scholarship

In this Article, written for a symposium commemorating the tenth anniversary of the Delaware Supreme Court’s opinion in Omnicare, Inc. v. NCS Healthcare, Inc., I argue, notwithstanding reports to the contrary, that Omnicare is still very much with us. Although there is a line of cases that qualifies the narrow holding of the opinion, the strong reading of Omnicare, which requires a fiduciary out in every merger agreement and elevates the “unremitting” duty to remain “fully informed” to an absolute jurisprudential principle, lives on in Delaware law, animating the Court of Chancery’s controversial rulings in the recent standstill cases. Shifting …