Courts Commons^™

Beyond Reparations: An American Indian Theory Of Justice, William C. Bradford

ExpressO

The number of states, corporations, and religious groups formally disowning past records of egregious human injustice is mushrooming. Although the Age of Apology is a global phenomenon, the question of reparations—a tort-based mode of redress whereby a wrongdoing group accepts legal responsibility and compensates victims for the damage it inflicted upon them—likely consumes more energy, emotion, and resources in the U.S. than in any other jurisdiction. Since the final year of the Cold War, the U.S. and its political subdivisions have apologized or paid compensation to Japanese-American internees, native Hawaiians, civilians killed in the Korean War, and African American victims …

The Role Of Purposivism In The Delegation Of Rulemaking Authority To The Courts, Michael Rosensaft

ExpressO

The courts are often used by Congress as a “political lightning rod,” when Congress cannot decide how to resolve an issue. Congress relies on administrative agencies for their expertise, and it also makes sense for Congress to delegate some rulemaking authority to the courts, relying on a court’s expertise in developing caselaw in an incremental basis. However, this authority should not be lightly implied. A court can tell that Congress has delegated rulemaking authority to it when the purpose of the statute is clear and the text is broadly worded. It thus makes sense in these cases that purposivism should …

Beyond Rights: Legal Process And Ethnic Conflicts, Elena A. Baylis

ExpressO

Unresolved ethnic conflicts threaten the stability and the very existence of multi-ethnic states. The realities of ethnic conflict are daunting: ethnic disputes tend to be both persistent and complex, and efforts to use democracy or ethnic-blind policies to deal with those conflicts tend to fail. While multi-ethnic states have struggled to devise political solutions for ethnic conflict, they have largely ignored the role that legal processes might play in resolving ethnic discord. But at certain crucial moments in the development of ethnic conflicts, legal processes such as mediation, adjudication, and constitutional interpretation might effectively address these disputes.

This article explores …

Valuation Averaging: A New Procedure For Resolving Valuation Disputes, Keith Sharfman

Rutgers Law School (Newark) Faculty Papers

In this Article, Professor Sharfman addresses the problem of "discretionary valuation": that courts resolve valuation disputes arbitrarily and unpredictably, thus harming litigants and society. As a solution, he proposes the enactment of "valuation averaging," a new procedure for resolving valuation disputes modeled on the algorithmic valuation processes often agreed to by sophisticated private firms in advance of any dispute. He argues that by replacing the discretion of judges and juries with a mechanical valuation process, valuation averaging would cause litigants to introduce more plausible and conciliatory valuations into evidence and thereby reduce the cost of valuation litigation and increase the …

Trial Of The Accused Taliban And Al Qaeda Operatives Captured In Afghanistan And Detained On A U.S. Military Base In Cuba, Jaime Jackson

ExpressO

A timely piece proposing solutions for issues certain to be raised in the upcoming trials of the accused Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives captured in Afghanistan and detained on a U.S. military base in Cuba. In the article, I begin by examining the history and jurisdiction of Article I and Article III courts and then address the history and structure of the Al Qaeda and Taliban regimes. After considering the Constitution, federal statutes, politics, and geographical limitations, I conclude that Al Qaeda detainees should be tried in Article III courts under terrorism statutes and Taliban detainees, as military combatants, should …

Free? Exercise, Marci A. Hamilton

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Commercial Activity Exception Under The Fsia, Personhood Under The Fifth Amendment And Jurisdiction Over Foreign States: A Partial Roadmap For The Supreme Court In The New Millennium, Stephen J. Leacock

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Litigation In The United States And Mexico: A Comparative Overview, Robert M. Kossick, Jr.

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Law -- Due Process Clause -- Third Circuit Holds That $50 Million Punitive Damages Award In Context Of A $48 Million Compensatory Award Is Unconstitutionally Excessive -- Inter Medical Supplies, Ltd. V. Ebi Medical Systems, Inc., 181 F.3d 446 (3d Cir. 1999)., A. Benjamin Spencer

Faculty Publications

In 1996, the Supreme Court, in BMW of North America, Inc. v. Gore, struck down a punitive damages award on the ground that it was "grossly excessive" in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment . Since BMW, many courts have faced the challenge of applying its principles to determine whether punitive damages awards surpass the constitutional limit. Last June, in Inter Medical Supplies, Ltd. v. EBI Medical Systems, Inc., the Third Circuit faced this difficulty when it considered whether a $50 million punitive damages award, granted in conjunction with a $48 million compensatory damages award, was …

The Last Word Debate: How Social And Political Forces Shape Constitutional Values, Neal Devins

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Justices At Work: An Introduction, Michel Rosenfeld

Cardozo Law Review

"Justices at Work," a day long conference which took place on September 19, 1995 at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, brought together Justices and constitutional scholars from seven different countries to consider a hypothetical constitutional case dealing with fundamental rights. This issue of the Law Review includes the facts of the hypothetical case, the applicable hypothetical statute, the briefs submitted to the International Moot Courtall of which were the product of a collaborative effort among the seven scholars involved-as well as a transcript of the proceedings and of the deliberations of the seven Justices: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg …

The Dynamics Of Constitutional Adjudication, Bernhard Schlink

Cardozo Law Review

Habermas determines the role and legitimacy of constitutional adjudication through three confrontations. First, he confronts both the liberal and the welfare-state paradigms of law, seeing constitutional adjudication move from the former to the latter. Habermas wants this move to arrive at a procedural paradigm of law. Second, he confronts a norm- and a value-oriented understanding of the constitution. Habermas indicates the dangers of the former and the merits of the latter, and attempts to show that principles, understood as norms, should guide constitutional adjudication. Third, he confronts the liberal and the republican views of the political and constitutional process, developing …

Why Care? The Trouble With Social Rights, Günter Frankenberg

Cardozo Law Review

While not everybody will agree that social rights are good in general, the ranks of the "not-everybody" will fill when one wants to decide who needs which particular social rights. Even those who claim to be philosophically and practically supportive of the idea and the benefits of social rights find it difficult to come up with a strong argument for them and usually invoke vague or weak obligations to support the victims of capitalism or, if you will, the market society or the mere necessity to preserve social peace by a minimally redistributive social policy. Social scientists have plausibly claimed …

The Journey Into Activism, Bernhard Schlink

Cardozo Law Review

In Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy teaches us that all happy families are alike and only unhappy families are different. It is the same with courts that engage in constitutional review. All happy constitutional courts, that is, all happily activist constitutional courts are alike and only those that do not play an activist role are different.

“A One Way Ticket To Palookaville”: Supreme Court Takings Jurisprudence After Dolan And Its Implication For New York City’S Waterfront Zoning Resolution, Jill Illan Berger Inbar

Cardozo Law Review

This Note will use the Waterfront Ordinance as a vehicle for examining the new heightened scrutiny standard introduced in Dolan. Part I provides an overview of takings jurisprudence and the traditional pre-Nollan and pre-Dolan standards, which were applied to determine whether an exercise of police power oversteps its bounds and interferes with private property rights guaranteed under the Fifth Amendment. Part II reviews the new standards espoused by the Supreme Court in Nollan and Dolan. Part III describes the purpose of New York City's 1993. Waterfront Zoning Ordinance and discusses its history, objectives, and provisions. Part …

"Fetch Some Soupmeat", William N. Eskridge Jr.

Cardozo Law Review

Although first published over 150 years ago, Francis Lieber's Legal and Political Hermeneutics remains broadly influential, and the soupmeat hypothetical in particular has been reproduced in the most widely read twentieth-century legal texts for teaching statutory interpretation. The directive, "fetch some soupmeat," seems straightforward in most situations, because the housekeeper and the servant are operating under the same assumptions, and because their shared assumptions are borne out as the servant goes about his task. Lieber's project-and the project of any sophisticated theoretical treatment of statutory interpretation-was to explore the many ways in which "fetch some soupmeat" proves susceptible to surprising …

The Alleged Unaccountability Of The Academic: A Biographical Sketch Of Carl Schmitt, Manfred H. Wiegandt

Cardozo Law Review

In recent years, especially after the breakdown of the Soviet bloc, we have witnessed numerous attempts to establish viable democratic structures in states formerly in the tight grip of dictatorially ruling elites, be it in the countries of the former Communist bloc, at the African Cape, or in Latin America. The questions that concern people in these regions above all are how their systems can be made strong enough to survive the economic crises that go along with establishing democratic frameworks and how the states can ensure the necessary coherence to survive on the background of a lingering challenge by …

“Now The Machine Runs Itself”: Carl Schmitt On Hobbes And Kelsen, David Dyzenhaus

Cardozo Law Review

Carl Schmitt claimed that the fundamental distinction of politics is the distinction between friend and enemy. That distinction, he said, has to be put on a substantive basis, which, in the era of the nation state, he supposed must amount to an idea of the homogeneity of the people. Since liberal democracy is opposed to this kind of substance, Schmitt argued that liberalism cannot make the distinction between friend and enemy. It thus cannot defend itself against its enemies. It is no wonder that he remains the leading theorist of fascism.

Federalist Society Roundtable Discussion, Timothy Dyk, Robert Bork, Nadine Strossen, John O. Mcginnis, Theodore B. Olson

Articles

This discussion took place at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on October 12, 1993.

Imposing Unified Executive Branch Statutory Interpretation, Michael Herz

Cardozo Law Review

Since the birth of the administrative state, the dominant legal debate about the fourth branch has concerned the powers of the other three to control it. In recent years, the particular focus has been on presidential oversight, in part as a result of the increasingly systematic efforts of every President since Richard Nixon to gain control of the federal bureaucracy. This enormous, and in general, illuminating literature has tended, I think, to overlook two aspects of the problem.

Choosing Between Normative And Descriptive Versions Of The Judicial Role, Michael E. Herz

Articles

No abstract provided.

Federalism And Supremacy: Control Of State Judicial Decision-Making, Margaret G. Stewart

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Tradition, Precedent, And Justice Scalia, David A. Strauss

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Constitutional Case Against Intracircuit Nonacquiescence, Dan T. Coenen

Scholarly Works

A cornerstone of the United States Constitution is its separation of powers among the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the national government. The Framers of the Constitution reasoned that separated powers would guard against tyranny by blocking the undue concentration of authority in any single governmental department. In crafting the Constitution, however, the Framers could not anticipate every dispute their scheme of separated powers might engender. One modern separation-of-powers conflict not specifically anticipated by the constitutional text involves so-called "intracircuit nonacquiescence.”

Intracircuit nonacquiescence occurs when executive-branch decision makers refuse to follow a circuit court's precedents even when acting subject …

Who’S Afraid Of The Sanction Wolf: Imposing Sanctions On Pro Se Litigants, Donalda Gillies

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Justice Brennan: The Heart Has Its Reasons, Richard D. Cudahy

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Is Disparity A Problem?, Michael Wells

Scholarly Works

Part I describes aspects of the historical and doctrinal background of judicial federalism. Part II examines the Court's treatment of the parity issue and shows how the Court's ambiguity permits both sides of the debate to avoid revealing their true objectives. Part III demonstrates that some, but not all, of the allocation doctrine can be explained in terms of a conflict between the plaintiff's litigating interest and the state's interest in maintaining the integrity of the state judicial process. A significant body of cases, however, does not fall within this framework. In these cases the Court seems to prefer state …

The Compelling Case Against Robert H. Bork, Stephen Gillers

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Why The United States Senate Should Not Consent To The Nomination Of Judge Robert H. Bork To Be A Justice Of The Supreme Court, Philip B. Heymann, Fred Wertheimer

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Robert H. Bork's Civil Rights Record, Gary B. Born

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.