Jurisprudence Commons^™

Backdoor Non-Competes In Texas: Trade Secrets., Ted Lee, Leila Ben Debba

St. Mary's Law Journal

The unpredictability of court decisions on covenants not to compete is an attorney’s nightmare in Texas. The Texas Supreme Court's decision in Light v. Centel Cellular (Light II), holding that trade secrets may serve as independent consideration for a valid covenant not to compete, has only exacerbated the situation. Currently, attorneys and clients alike are at the mercy of judicial unpredictability. Texas courts have managed to muddle their own underlying public policy on covenants not to compete with trade secrets. During the years preceding Light II, Texas courts consistently struck a balance between the legitimate rights of employers to protect …

Unlicensed To Drill: Proposed Renovations To The Texas Residential Construction Commission Act., Justin M. Jackson

St. Mary's Law Journal

Construction is the largest industry in the United States, and some regard the industry as the engine of the nation’s economy. Only the unavailability of unskilled labor can slow the growth of the construction industry in Texas. As such, Texas has welcomed the construction boom and has enacted statutes to accommodate further industry growth. Texas’ first legislative response came in the form of the Residential Construction Liability Act (RCLA). The RCLA alleviated liability for builders incurred under the Deceptive Trade Practices Act (DTPA). In 2003, the Texas Legislature continued to legislate in favor of builders by passing the Texas Residential …

Electronic Discovery: Not Your Father's Discovery., Howard L. Speight, Lisa C. Kelly

St. Mary's Law Journal

This Article examines recent developments in several areas of electronic discovery. It discusses spoliation, cost shifting, form of production, and recent developments in the case law. Additionally, this Article discusses the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure, revisions to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and local rules, as well as recommendations of the American Bar Association (ABA) regarding electronic discovery. In Zubulake v. UBS Warburg LLC, I-VI, Judge Scheindlin of the Southern District of New York, set out her vision for the management of electronic discovery. It is a sobering vision, with clarified responsibilities for counsel. Increasing the role of …

Rabbinic Legal Magic: A New Look At Honi's Circle As The Construction Of Law's Space, Suzanne Last Stone

Articles

The article reinterprets Honi the Circle Drawer's actions as a legal performative, arguing that his act of drawing a circle constitutes the creation of a legal space rather than a magical ritual. By establishing a jurisdictional boundary, Honi compels a divine response, illustrating a sophisticated legal framework within rabbinic culture. This analysis challenges the view of early rabbinic practices as primarily magical, instead emphasizing their legal underpinnings and the use of rituals to establish jurisdiction.

Improving The Appellate Process Worldwide Through Maximizing Judicial Resources, Honorable J. Clifford Wallace

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

As the number of cases filed each year has surged, U.S. federal appellate courts have evolved in order to fulfill their core functions of deciding appeals and setting guiding precedent. Many of the challenges created by overwhelming caseloads are also being tackled in foreign judicial systems. In this Article, Judge Wallace offers the approach of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit as a possible model of reform, although he also points out that each judiciary will need to tailor reform efforts to its particular circumstances. In Part II, Judge Wallace details several of the case management …

Hamdi Meets Youngstown: Justice Jackson's Wartime Security Jurisprudence And The Detention Of Enemy Combatants, Sarah H. Cleveland

Faculty Scholarship

More than any Justice who has sat on the United States Supreme Court, Associate Justice Robert H. Jackson explained how our Eighteenth Century Constitution – that "Eighteenth-Century sketch of a government hoped for" – struggles both to preserve fundamental liberties and to protect the nation against fundamental threats. Drawing upon his collective experience as a solo practitioner with only one year of formal legal education at Albany Law School; government tax and antitrust lawyer, Solicitor General, and Attorney General in the Roosevelt Administration; Associate Justice to the Supreme Court; and Representative and Chief of Counsel for the United States at …

Rescuing Federalism After Raich: The Case For Clear Statement Rules, Thomas W. Merrill

Faculty Scholarship

The Rehnquist Court's federalism jurisprudence began with a focus on clear statement rules, but then turned to prohibitory limits on the scope of federal power. This Article specifies the differences between clear statement rules and prohibitory limitations, and outlines some of the factors courts should consider in determining which strategy to pursue in any given context. The Article argues that the scope of the Commerce Clause is an issue that should be resolved using clear statement rules. The Court's decision in United States v. Lopez to follow a prohibitory approach was both strategically mistaken and poorly executed. Although the principles …

Inter-American System, Claudia Martin

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Sacred Visions Of Law, Robert Tsai

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Around the time of the Bicentennial Celebration of the U.S. Constitution's framing, Professor Sanford Levinson called upon Americans to renew our constitutional faith. This article answers the call by examining how two legal symbols - Marbury v. Madison and Brown v. Board of Education - have been used by jurists over the years to tend the American community of faith. Blending constitutional theory and the study of religious form, the article argues that the decisions have become increasingly linked in the legal imagination even as they have come to signify very different sacred visions of law. One might think that …

Reconstructing The World Trade Center: An Argument For The Applicability Of Personhood Theory To Commercial Property Ownership And Use, Mary Clark

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

The Perverse Paradox Of Privacy, Gary L. Mcdowell

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

The most recent effort of the Supreme Court of the United States to define the judicially created constitutional right to privacy has demonstrated once again why that contrived right poses such a pronounced threat to constitutional self-government. In writing for the majority in Lawrence v. Texas (2003) to overrule a case of only seventeen years' standing that allowed the states to prohibit homosexual sodomy, Justice Anthony Kennedy insisted that the idea of liberty in the Constitution's due process clauses is not limited to protecting individuals form "unwarranted governmental intrusions into a dwelling or other private places" but has "transcendent dimensions" …

On Legal Pragmatism: Where Does "The Path Of The Law" Lead Us?, Susan Haack

Articles

No abstract provided.

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 …

Neutralizing Grutter, Girardeau A. Spann

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Part I of this article argues that the Supreme Court lacks the institutional competence to formulate racial policy for the nation, and highlights the tension that exists between the Court's abstract preference for race neutrality and the concrete reality of contemporary race relations, in which dedicated efforts to promote racial balance offer the only meaningful hope of eliminating systemic discrimination. Part II discusses moderate strategies that can be used to deflect the impact of Grutter’s prohibition on racial balance, suggesting that racial balancing can be restructured in ways that the Supreme Court may view as constitutional. Part III discusses …

"Meet The New Boss": The New Judicial Center, Mark V. Tushnet

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

A document entitled ‘Guidelines on Constitutional Litigation’ published in 1988 by the Reagan era Department of Justice is the springboard for Professor Tushnet's discussion of the Supreme Court's "new center. " The Guidelines urged Department of Justice litigators to foster a nearly exclusive reliance on original understanding in constitutional interpretation and to resort to legislative history only as a last resort. The Guidelines also advised Department of Justice litigators to seek substantive legal changes including more restrictive standing requirements, an end to the creation of unenumerated individual rights, greater constitutional protection of property rights, and greater limits on congressional power. …

The Lawless Adjudicator, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

First, on the "lawless adjudicator." The question I want to pose is this: Why is it so hard for the legal academy - and the legal profession - to come to grips with the bare logic of the charge, much less the case, that Vere acted lawlessly, and therefore criminally, and indeed murderously, when he willfully distorted the governing law, so as to execute Billy? Why has this quite specific legal claim not received more of a hearing? Is it because Weisberg was not sufficiently considerate in his communication of this idea? On first blush that seems implausible: It is …

In Cases Involving Sites Of Religious Significance, Plaintiffs Will Fall In The Gap Of Judicial Deference That Exists Between The Religion Clauses Of The First Amendment, Jeff Pinter

American Indian Law Review

No abstract provided.

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 …

On Commonplace Punishment Theory, Kyron J. Huigens

Articles

No abstract provided.

Habeas Corpus: Expired Conviction, Expired Relief: Can The Writ Of Habeas Corpus Be Used To Test The Constitutionality Of A Deportation Based On An Expired Conviction?, Joshua D. Smith

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

Taking Miranda's Pulse, William T. Pizzi, Morris B. Hoffman

Publications

No abstract provided.

Sacrifice, The Common Good, And The Catholic Lawyer, John J. Coughlin

Journal Articles

For some two decades since I entered law school, the connection between the philosophy of the human person and law has been of comparative interest to me. My interest was stimulated in no small part by the late Pope John Paul II, who urged that canon law reflect the essential elements of what it means to be human. Comparative legal study of the canon law of the Catholic Church with the law of the liberal state has convinced me of the importance of the understanding of the human person that underpins the law. Canon law and the Catholic intellectual tradition …

Constitutional Law As Political Spoils, William P. Marshall

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Supermajority Rules And The Judicial Confirmation Process, John O. Mcginnis, Michael B. Rappaport

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.