Legal History Commons^™

Developing A Positive Theory Of Decisionmaking On U.S. Courts Of Appeals, Tracey E. George

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

As the decisions of the United States Courts of Appeals become an increasingly important part of American legal discourse, the debate concerning adjudication theories of the circuit courts gain particular relevance. Whereas, to date, the issue has received mostly normative treatment, this Article proceeds systematically and confronts the positive inquiry: how do courts of appeals judges actually decide cases? The Article proposes theoretically, tests empirically, and considers the implications of, a combined attitudinal and strategic model of en banc court of appeals decision making. The results challenge the classicist judges, legal scholars, and practitioners' normative frameworks, and suggest positive theory's …

Property As Propriety, Gregory S. Alexander

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

"Lit. Theory" Put To The Test: A Comparative Literary Analysis Of American Judicial Tests And French Judicial Discourse, Mitchel De S.-O.-L'E. Lasser

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The formalism/policy dichotomy has structured American jurisprudential analyses of judicial decisionmaking for most of the twentieth century. In this Article, Professor Lasser analyzes and compares American multi-part judicial tests and French civil judicial discourse to demonstrate that the dichotomy reflects and informs the ways in which judicial decisions are written. Drawing on the works of Roman Jakobson, Roland Barthes, and Paul de Man, he constructs a literary methodology to analyze American and French judicial discourse. Professor Lasser contends that the formalism/policy dichotomy is part of a larger process by which the American and French judicial systems justify how they produce …

Sex And The Social Order: The Selective Enforcement Of Colonial American Adultery Laws In The English Context, Carolyn B. Ramsey

Publications

No abstract provided.

Indian Tribal Rights And The National Forests: The Case Of The Aboriginal Lands Of The Nez Perce Tribe, Charles F. Wilkinson

Publications

No abstract provided.

Liberalism Stumbles In Tennessee, Donald J. Herzog

Reviews

The Scopes trial will never be the same. I mean the trial immortalized in Inherit the Wind,' with its Southerners clutching in vain to their cozy scientific illiteracy and mechanically literal faith in the Bible, its idiotic intolerant Southerners destined to fall to the gale winds of modernity, liberalism, secularism, and skepticism embodied by a heroic ACLU and the inimitable Clarence Darrow. So what if Scopes got convicted? Surely the trial made a laughingstock of everything Tennessee stood for in banning the teaching of evolution from the public schools. And in a touch worthy of a gruesome morality play, William …

The Courts And The Congress: Should Judges Disdain Political History?, Peter L. Strauss

Faculty Scholarship

In an earlier article in these pages, Professor John Manning argued that the use of legislative materials by courts in effect permits Congress to engage in delegation of its authority to subunits of the legislature, in violation of the separation of powers. Professor Strauss, acknowledging that the previous generation of courts may have excessively credited the minutiae of legislative history, responds that judicial attention to the political history of legislation is required, not forbidden, by considerations of constitutional structure. Only awareness of that history will promote interpretation reflective of the context and political moment of Congress's action. Our history of …

Journal Of The House Of Representatives Of The Commonwealth Of Kentucky, 1998, Volume 5, Kentucky. General Assembly. House Of Representatives.

Journals of the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Kentucky

No abstract provided.

Voting Rights, Eric Lane

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Physician Assisted Suicide, Leon Friedman

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Natural Law And The Ethics Of Discourse, John M. Finnis

Journal Articles

This essay argues that Plato's critical analysis of the ethics of discourse is superior to Habermas', and more generally that Habermas has no sufficient reason to propose or suppose the philosophical superiority of "modernity." The failure of Hume and Kant and much modern philosophy to understand the concept and content of reasons for action underlies Habermas' attempted distinction between ethics and morality, and Rawls' concept of public reason. A proper study of discourse also yields a metaphysics of the person, and thus reinforces the ethics.

How To Tell Law Stories, Michael Grossberg

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Some Effectual Power: The Quantity And Quality Of Decisionmaking Required Of Article Iii Courts, James S. Liebman, William F. Ryan

Faculty Scholarship

Did the Framers attempt to establish an effectual power in the national judiciary to void state law that is contrary tofederal law, yet permit Congress to decide whether or not to confer federal jurisdiction over cases arising under federal law? Does the Constitution, then, authorize its own destruction? This Article answers "yes" to the first question, and "no" to the second. Based on a new study of the meticulously negotiated compromises that produced the texts of Article HI and the Supremacy Clause, and a new synthesis of several classic Federal Courts cases, the Article shows that, by self-conscious constitutional design, …

The Great Transformation Of Regulated Industries Law, Joseph D. Kearney, Thomas W. Merrill

Faculty Scholarship

The nation's approach to regulating its transportation, telecommunications, and energy industries has undergone a great transformation in the last quarter-century. The original paradigm of regulation, which was established with the Interstate Commerce Act's regulation of railroads beginning in 1887, was characterized by legislative creation of an administrative agency charged with general regulatory oversight of particular industries. This approach did not depend on whether the regulated industry was naturally competitive or was a natural monopoly, and it was designed to advance accepted goals of reliability and, in particular, non-discrimination. By contrast, under the new paradigm, which is manifested most clearly in …

Between Truth And Provocation: Reclaiming Reason In American Legal Scholarship, Francis J. Mootz Iii

Scholarly Works

Truth has regained a strong voice in American legal scholarship. Like a groggy patient slowly emerging from a traumatic operation, legal theory is being coaxed back to consciousness by Dan Farber and Suzanna Sherry. They are fighting the debilitating illness of radical multiculturalism and its attendant relativism; they proclaim that the cure can be found in the power of truth, the force or reason, and the integrity of the word. Unfortunately, the patient is unlikely to recover while in the care of Farber and Sherry, even though their operation must be judged a success on its own terms. By equating …

Rhetoric, Pragmatism And The Interdisciplinary Turn In Legal Criticism -- A Study Of Altruistic Judicial Argument, Gene R. Shreve

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

The Strawhorsemen Of The Apocalypse: Relativism And The Historian As Expert Witness, Reuel E. Schiller

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.