Legislation Commons^™

Conclusion: A Way Forward, Peter B. Edelman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Where do we go next? I have three suggestions. One is to enlarge the frame of our work on poverty and race, including a focus on the ever-widening chasm of inequality, and all of it pressing toward the center stage of national attention. A second is to consolidate our work about income, jobs, and cash assistance into a unified frame, which I call a three-legged stool. And the third is to think from a perspective of place, and what that tells us about our antipoverty work.

We need a banner, a message, a theme, a politics for ending poverty. The …

Lies Without Liars? Janus Capital And Conservative Securities Jurisprudence, Donald C. Langevoort

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Supreme Court’s recent Janus Capital case offers a reading of the word “make” in Rule 10b-5 that speaks to ultimate legal authority over the communication in question. This creates the real possibility that we can have lies without liars, an entirely perplexing result in terms of any purposive meaning of the rule. In so holding, Justice Thomas joined a seemingly short list of judges who suggest that legal formalism is a particularly good weapon with which to fight securities fraud. This paper exploresJanus through the lens of conservative textualism, which takes us through a much longer intellectual history …

How To Un-Supplement A Tsunami Of Fiscal Proportions: An Examination Of The Supplemental Appropriations Process, Jonathan Black

Georgetown Law Fiscal Law and Policy Reform Briefing Papers

Article I § 9 clause 7 of the United States Constitution makes it clear that “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.” This single sentence provides Congress with the sole legislative authority to allocate money out of the federal treasury. Throughout the years, Congress has fleshed out this power through legislation governing how the appropriations and budgeting process should occur. Although Congress has been granted the constitutional authority to make appropriations, the President and the executive agencies that receive the funds appropriated by Congress have made themselves influential partners in this …

Foreign Policy On The Fly: Legislating Foreign Affairs In Appropriations Acts, Ariel S. Wolf

Georgetown Law Fiscal Law and Policy Reform Briefing Papers

No abstract provided.

Jam For Justice Holmes: Reassessing The Significance Of Mahon, William Michael Treanor

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

When courts and commentators discuss Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon, they use the same word with remarkable regularity: famous. Mahon has achieved this fame in part because it was the occasion for conflict between judicial giants, and because the result seems ironic. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.--the great Lochner dissenter and a jurist generally considered a champion of judicial deference to legislatures in the sphere of economic decision-making--wrote the opinion striking down a Pennsylvania statute barring coal mining that could cause the surface to cave-in. Sharply dissenting from Holmes's opinion was his consistent ally on the Court, Justice Louis …

Understanding Mahon In Historical Context, William Michael Treanor

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Despite its enormous influence on constitutional law, Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon is just such an opinion; the primary purpose of the author’s article Jam for Justice Holmes: Reassessing the Significance of Mahon is to clarify Holmes's intent by placing the opinion in historical context and in the context of Holmes's other opinions. While other scholars have also sought to place Mahon in context, his account differs in large part because of its recognition, as part of the background of Mahon, of a separate line of cases involving businesses affected with a public interest.

The author argues that at …

Sex, Reason, And A Taste For The Absurd, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Like much of Richard Posner's best work, Sex and Reason does many things, and for that reason will no doubt attract a large and diverse readership. This heavily footnoted, exhaustively researched, and imminently accessible book is a welcome introduction to the interdisciplinary study of sex. For the lay reader it presents an arresting set of speculations about human sexuality, drawn from the author's evident familiarity with a sizeable library of studies representing at least half a dozen scientific and social scientific disciplines, assembled in a readable and lively way. Of more interest, perhaps, to academicians and social scientists familiar with …