Legal History Commons^™

Disclosure's Effects: Wikileaks And Transparency, Mark Fenster

Mark Fenster

Rousseau, A Constituição De Cádis E A Renacença Portuguesa, Paulo Ferreira Da Cunha

Paulo Ferreira da Cunha

Todos os anos há muita coisa a comemorar. Comemoramos o que nos diz respeito, o que acarinhamos. Tal como os países consideram feriados os dias que mais dizem às forças políticas que em cada momento mandam. Comemorar Rousseau, a Constituição de Cádis e a Renascença Portuguesa parecem-nos a nós 3 celebrações importantes, no plano universal e europeu, ibero-americano e português. Não é serviço fúnebre, mas olhar de Janus, em que, contemplando o passado, se encara com nova face o futuro. Refletindo. Este ano são os centenários que vou pessoalmente comemorar, e ajudar a comemorar em conjunto. A menos que tenha …

Why Progressives Should Oppose A Constitutional Amendment To End Corporate "Personhood", Kent Greenfield

Kent Greenfield

No abstract provided.

How To Make The 'Citizens United' Decision Worse, Kent Greenfield

Kent Greenfield

No abstract provided.

Programa Mínimo Para A Democracia, Paulo Ferreira Da Cunha

Paulo Ferreira da Cunha

Muitos consideram já que a situação que se vive não é mais de Democracia. É um veredicto perigoso e grave. Mas deve ser considerado. Independentemente dele, porém, é preciso pensar e repensar a Democracia. Pessoalmente, pensamos que ela tem, em Portugal, uma excelente base consensual: a Constituição. E não é por acaso que verdadeiros inimigos de uma Democracia plena (política, cultural, social, ecológica...) são inimigos da Constituição. É sempre salutar discutir a Democracia. É sinónimo dela... Ou que, na sua falta, há quem com ela se preocupe. Contudo, mais que isso nos parece urgente defendê-la. E o programa mínimo de …

Plus Or Minus One: The Thirteenth And Fourteenth Amendments, Mark A. Graber

Mark Graber

The consensus that the Fourteenth Amendment incorporates the Thirteenth Amendment has come under sharp criticism in recent years. Several new works suggest that the Thirteenth Amendment, properly interpreted, protects some substantive rights not protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. Some of this scholarship is undoubtedly motivated by an effort to avoid hostile Supreme Court precedents. Nevertheless, more seems to be going on than mere litigation strategy. Scholars detected different rights and regime principles in the Thirteenth Amendment than they find in the Fourteenth Amendment. The 2011 Maryland Constitutional Law Schoomze, to which this is an introduction, provided an opportunity for law …

Free Will Paradigms, Kent Greenfield

Kent Greenfield

One of the iconic issues in American law and politics is the question of free will—sometimes known as agency, choice, or autonomy, or the absence of duress, coercion, and compulsion. In politics, whether one is liberal or conservative, we balk at government limitations on choice and fight those limitations with legal arguments about rights and political rhetoric about freedom. Liberals demand access to abortions, want the ability to purchase medical marijuana, and bristle at pat-down searches before boarding a plane. Conservatives dislike requirements to buy health insurance or pay taxes, rail against limits on gun ownership and school prayer, and …

A Flecha De Nemrod, Paulo Ferreira Da Cunha

Paulo Ferreira da Cunha

Reflexões sobre o impulso criativo e comunicacional e sobre a dificuldade técnica ou de expressão, assim como a propósito da in-compreensão da crítica, e do público, quando os haja.

Clima Anticonstitucional, Paulo Ferreira Da Cunha

Paulo Ferreira da Cunha

É complicado defender-se intransigentemente a ética republicana e apontar o dedo a quem a evidentemente despreze, e, ao mesmo tempo, conseguir deixar intocado o prestígio das instituições, sempre mais ou menos atingidas pela repercussão de atos de titulares de cargos eventualmente menos retos. É contudo o que deve fazer-se, mas pedagogicamente explicitando a diferença entre o ser e o dever-ser. Entre a pessoa e a instituição, etc., etc. Uma das grandes virtualidades de um regime democrático é que podem vir mais facilmente à luz do dia os erros e os crimes de políticos. E podem ser criticados e punidos. Por …

Proibição Do Retrocesso E Reserva Do Possível: Princípios Constitucionais Para Tempos De Crise, Paulo Ferreira Da Cunha

Paulo Ferreira da Cunha

Os princípios constitucionais mais susceptíveis de ser invocados em tempos de crise (quando se presta atenção à Constituição), o da proibição do retrocesso e o da reserva do possível, precisam de ser repensados. Não atirados um contra o outro, e defendidos, ora um ora outro, ao sabor de paixões, mas compreendidos ambos como concorrendo para a defesa da Constituição em situações limite. Certamente há algo maior por detrás desses dois princípios aparentemente contraditórios.

Unconscionability And Consent In Corporate Law (A Comment On Cunningham), Kent Greenfield

Kent Greenfield

Lawrence Cunningham has written an insightful and persuasive article calling on courts to apply the contract-law doctrine of unconscionability in evaluating executive compensation. According to Cunningham, this additional doctrinal tool will allow courts to engage in genuine and meaningful oversight of excessive compensation. He argues that such oversight is valuable because existing corporate-law doctrine too often prompts courts to defer too much and too often to management’s decisions. Cunningham’s argument is modest yet impactful. It is modest in that it simply proposes that courts take account of a well-established area of contract law to analyze and evaluate the compensation contracts …

Inconstitucionalidade Do Orçamento Do Estado. A Caminho De Uma "Constituição" Flexível Infralegal?, Paulo Ferreira Da Cunha

Paulo Ferreira da Cunha

Não é salutar a banalização da afirmação mediática de inconstitucionalidades e de anti-constitucionalidades. Assim como não é sintoma de regular funcionamento das instituições democráticas o silêncio e o desprezo pela Constituição. A questão da constitucionalidade do OGE pode ser um teste muito significativo à nossa saúde e cultura constitucionais.

Presentations On The Myth Of Choice, Kent Greenfield

Kent Greenfield

Kent Greenfield has delivered over 30 public lectures and presentations to a wide variety of audiences in support of his book, The Myth of Choice, including presentations at the Center for the Study of Law & Society at UC Berkeley, the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, TN.

Invisible Federalism And The Electoral College, Derek Muller

Derek T. Muller

What role do States have when the Electoral College disappears? With the enactment of the National Popular Vote on the horizon and an imminent presidential election in which a nationwide popular vote determines the winner, States would continue to do what they have done for hundreds of years — administer elections. The Constitution empowers States to decide who votes for president, and States choose who qualifies to vote based on factors like age or felon status. This power of States, a kind of “invisible federalism,” is all but ignored in Electoral College reform efforts. In fact, the power of the …

The Long And Winding Road From Monroe To Connick, Sheldon Nahmod

Sheldon Nahmod

In this article, I address the historical and doctrinal development of § 1983 local government liability, beginning with Monroe v. Pape in 1961 and culminating in the Supreme Court’s controversial 2011 failure to train decision in Connick v. Thompson. Connick has made it exceptionally difficult for § 1983 plaintiffs to prevail against local governments in failure to train cases. In the course of my analysis, I also consider the oral argument and opinions in Connick as well as various aspects of § 1983 doctrine. I ultimately situate Connick in the Court’s federalism jurisprudence which doubles back to Justice Frankfurter’s view …

Book Review: The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration In The Age Of Colorblindness, Nick J. Sciullo

Nick J. Sciullo

Many in the legal academy have heard of Michelle Alexander’s new book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in an Age of Colorblindness. It has been making waves. One need only attend any number of legal conferences in the past year or so, or read through the footnotes in recent law review articles. Furthermore, this book has been reviewed in journals from a number of academic fields, suggesting Alexander has provided a text with profound insights across the university and public spheres. While I will briefly talk about the book as a book, I will spend the majority of this …

Social Justice In Turbulent Times: Critical Race Theory And Occupy Wall Street, Nick J. Sciullo

Nick J. Sciullo

In this brief article, I tackle several issues that are critically important to progressive move(ment)s in the law and in society as a whole. I am convinced that the progressive community can make great strides in enriching the law and people’s experience with it through continued articulation and combined sense of theory and practice. We need to move beyond litigation and engage our critical consciousness to embrace activism on all fronts. This is why I locate a positive politics of struggle in the Occupy Movements that I believe progressives ought to embrace . We must simultaneously come to grips with …

Repensar A Teoria Do Estado Entre Pluralismo Ético E Globalização, Paulo Ferreira Da Cunha

Paulo Ferreira da Cunha

Não pode deixar de haver uma relação entre Estado e valores. Sem alguns valores partilhados, o Estado tem dificuldades. Há sempre, de um modo ou de outro, uma Ética no Estado. Ou várias. Como lidar com as éticas e as morais em sociedades pluralista como as nossas? Esta dificuldade obriga-nos também a repensar o próprio Estado, também desafiado por tempos de globalização. Foram estas algumas das interrogações que desejamos colocar neste estudo, elaborado para corresponder ao honroso convite para colaborar no portentoso volume que homenageia o grande constitucionalista brasileiro, e Vice-Presidente da República Federativa do Brasil, Prof. Michel Temer.

Washington Was Right: The Supreme Court Could Have Intervened To Interpret French Treaties, Kevin P. Chapman

Kevin P. Chapman

In the early days of his presidency, George Washington faced his first international crisis when French Ambassador Genet demanded that the United States honor its treaty obligations and provide support to the new French Republic in its ongoing war with Great Britain. Concerned about the legal effect that the French Revolution had on the viability of these obligations, Washington asked the Supreme Court to render an opinion. Chief Justice John Jay replied that the Constitution did not authorize the Supreme Court to render advisory opinions.

If Jay was correct, why did Washington, who presided over the very convention that produced …

Bad News For John Marshall, David B. Kopel, Gary Lawson

David B Kopel

In Bad News for Professor Koppelman: The Incidental Unconstitutionality of the Individual Mandate, we demonstrated that the individual mandate’s forced participation in commercial transactions cannot be justified under the Necessary and Proper Clause as the Clause was interpreted in McCulloch v. Maryland. Professor Andrew Koppelman’s response, Bad News for Everybody, wrongly conflates that argument with a wide range of interpretative and substantive positions that are not logically entailed by taking seriously the requirement that laws enacted under the Necessary and Proper Clause must be incidental to an enumerated power. His response is thus largely unresponsive to our actual arguments.