Legislation Commons^™

The Aspirational Constitution, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Firmly embedded in every theory of judicial decisionmaking lies an important set of assumptions about the way government is supposed to work. Sometimes these theories about government are made explicit. More often they are not. Moreover, deeply embedded in every theory of government is a theory of human nature. Although these assumptions about human nature generally remain latent within the larger theory, because they provide the underpinnings for our ideas about the way government is supposed to work, they drive our notions about judicial decisionmaking. For example, the theory of government reflected in the United States Constitution reveals what one …

The Future Of District Of Columbia Home Rule, Philip G. Schrag

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article begins by briefly reviewing the recent historical development of home rule. Next, it explores the ways in which the people of the District might obtain a greater voice in the national legislature and more genuine home rule. Finally, it suggests that the District's citizens may have to make a political choice, which they have until now avoided, between seeking gradual improvements in their political rights and pressing strongly for statehood.

Taking The Framers Seriously, William Michael Treanor

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article reviews Taking the Constitution Seriously by Walter Berns (1987).

This review focuses on three of the key historical points that Walter Berns makes: his arguments that the Declaration of Independence is a Lockean document; that the Constitution encapsulates the political philosophy of the Declaration; and that the framers viewed the commercialization of society as a salutary development and were unambivalent champions of the right to property. Examination of these issues suggests that the ideological universe of the framers was far more complex than Berns indicates. While the revolutionary era witnessed a new concern with individual rights and a …

Orphaned Rules In The Administrative State: The Fairness Doctrine And Other Orphaned Progeny Of Interactive Deregulation, Susan Low Bloch

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The recent trend toward deregulation has revealed a fundamental weakness in our administrative state. Agencies that have decided to eliminate agency-created rules that no longer serve their statutory mandate are effectively prevented from doing so by pressure from members of Congress who want to preserve the rule but are unable or unwilling to enact it as law.

The Origins And Original Significance Of The Just Compensation Clause Of The Fifth Amendment, William Michael Treanor

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The principle that the state necessarily owes compensation when it takes private property was not generally accepted in either colonial or revolutionary America. Uncompensated takings were frequent and found justification first in appeals to the crown and later in republicanism, the ideology of the Revolution. The post-independence movement for just compensation requirements at the state and national level was part of a broader ideological shift away from republicanism, which stressed the primacy of the common good, and toward liberalism. At the time the Bill of Rights was adopted, that shift had not been completed, but the trends of the revolutionary …

Special Report - Federal Criminal Code Revision: Some Problems With Culpability Provisions, Paul F. Rothstein

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The age of federal codification is upon us. The Federal Rules of Evidence and the new bankruptcy and copyright revisions are but examples. By far the most ambitious undertaking in this regard is the effort to recodify federal criminal law.

The federal criminal code project, spanning more than a decade was most recently embodied in the last Congress in S. 1437, which passed the Senate, and H.R. 13959, which competed in the House with S. 1437. Neither bill passed the House. Thus, the Congress closed without a new Code. But both the bills will be back with us, introduced with …