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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
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Articles 1 - 11 of 11
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
The Lost Promise Of Progressive Formalism, Andrea Scoseria Katz
The Lost Promise Of Progressive Formalism, Andrea Scoseria Katz
Scholarship@WashULaw
Today, any number of troubling government pathologies—a lawless presidency, a bloated and unaccountable administrative state, the growth of an activist bench—are associated with the emergence of a judicial philosophy that disregards the “plain meaning” of the Constitution for a loose, unprincipled “living constitutionalism.” Many trace its origins to the Progressive Era
(1890–1920), a time when Americans turned en masse to government as the solution to emerging problems of economic modernity—financial panics, industrial concentration, worsening workplace conditions, and skyrocketing unemployment and inequality—and, the argument goes, concocted a flexible, new constitutional philosophy to allow the federal government to take on vast, new …
Reconstructing Racially Polarized Voting, Travis Crum
Reconstructing Racially Polarized Voting, Travis Crum
Scholarship@WashULaw
Racially polarized voting makes minorities more vulnerable to discriminatory changes in election laws and therefore implicates nearly every voting rights doctrine. In Thornburg v. Gingles, the Supreme Court held that racially polarized voting is a necessary—but not a sufficient—condition for a vote dilution claim under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The Court, however, has recently questioned the propriety of recognizing the existence of racially polarized voting. This colorblind approach threatens not only the Gingles factors but also Section 2’s constitutionality.
The Court treats racially polarized voting as a modern phenomenon. But the relevant starting point is the 1860s, …
Slaves To Contradictions: 13 Myths That Sustained Slavery, Wilson Huhn
Slaves To Contradictions: 13 Myths That Sustained Slavery, Wilson Huhn
Akron Law Faculty Publications
People have a fundamental need to think of themselves as “good people.” To achieve this we tell each other stories – we create myths – about ourselves and our society. These myths may be true or they may be false. The more discordant a myth is with reality, the more difficult it is to convince people to embrace it. In such cases to sustain the illusion of truth it may be necessary to develop an entire mythology – an integrated web of mutually supporting stories. This paper explores the system of myths that sustained the institution of slavery in the …
Theorizing American Freedom (Reviewing Aziz Rana, The Two Faces Of American Freedom (2010)), Anthony O'Rourke
Theorizing American Freedom (Reviewing Aziz Rana, The Two Faces Of American Freedom (2010)), Anthony O'Rourke
Book Reviews
This is a review essay of The Two Faces of American Freedom, by Aziz Rana. The book presents a new and provocative account of the relationship between ideas of freedom and the constitutional structure of American power. Through the nineteenth century, Rana argues, America’s constitutional structure was shaped by a racially exclusionary, yet economically robust, concept that he calls “settler freedom.” Drawing on the burgeoning interdisciplinary field of settler colonial studies, as well as on the vast historical literature on civic republicanism, Rana contends that the concept of settler freedom necessitated a constitutional framework that enabled rapid territorial expansion and …
Elizabeth Cady Stanton And The Notion Of A Legal Class Of Gender, Tracy A. Thomas
Elizabeth Cady Stanton And The Notion Of A Legal Class Of Gender, Tracy A. Thomas
Akron Law Faculty Publications
In the mid-nineteenth century, Elizabeth Cady Stanton used narratives of women and their involvement with the law of domestic relations to collectivize women. This recognition of a gender class was the first step towards women’s transformation of the law. Stanton’s stories of working-class women, immigrants, Mormon polygamist wives, and privileged white women revealed common realities among women in an effort to form a collective conscious. The parable-like stories were designed to inspire a collective consciousness among women, one capable of arousing them to social and political action. For to Stanton’s consternation, women showed a lack of appreciation of their own …
Race, Sex, And Rulemaking: Administrative Constitutionalism And The Workplace, 1960 To The Present, Sophia Z. Lee
Race, Sex, And Rulemaking: Administrative Constitutionalism And The Workplace, 1960 To The Present, Sophia Z. Lee
All Faculty Scholarship
This Article uses the history of equal employment rulemaking at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Federal Power Commission (FPC) to document and analyze, for the first time, how administrative agencies interpret the Constitution. Although it is widely recognized that administrators must implement policy with an eye on the Constitution, neither constitutional nor administrative law scholarship has examined how administrators approach constitutional interpretation. Indeed, there is limited understanding of agencies’ core task of interpreting statutes, let alone of their constitutional practice. During the 1960s and 1970s, officials at the FCC relied on a strikingly broad and affirmative interpretation of …
A Culturally Correct Proposal To Privatize The British Columbia Salmon Fishery, D. Bruce Johnsen
A Culturally Correct Proposal To Privatize The British Columbia Salmon Fishery, D. Bruce Johnsen
George Mason University School of Law Working Papers Series
Canada now faces two looming policy crises that have come to a head in British Columbia. The first is long-term depletion of the Pacific salmon fishery by mobile commercial ocean fishermen racing to intercept salmon under the rule of capture. The second results from Canadian Supreme Court case law recognizing and affirming “the existing aboriginal and treaty rights of the aboriginal peoples of Canada” under Section 35(1) of the Constitution Act, 1982. This essay shows that the economics of property rights provides a joint solution to these crises that would promote the Canadian commonwealth by way of a privatization auction …
What's So Special About American Law?, William Ewald
What's So Special About American Law?, William Ewald
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
The Legalization Of The Presidencey: A Twenty-Five Year Watergate Retrospective, Michael A. Fitts
The Legalization Of The Presidencey: A Twenty-Five Year Watergate Retrospective, Michael A. Fitts
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
The Unitary Executive During The First Half-Century, Steven G. Calabresi, Christopher S. Yoo
The Unitary Executive During The First Half-Century, Steven G. Calabresi, Christopher S. Yoo
All Faculty Scholarship
Recent Supreme Court decisions and the impeachment of President Clinton has reinvigorated the debate over Congress’s authority to employ devices such as special counsels and independent agencies to restrict the President’s control over the administration of the law. The initial debate focused on whether the Constitution rejected the “executive by committee” employed by the Articles of the Confederation in favor of a “unitary executive,” in which all administrative authority is centralized in the President. More recently, the debate has begun to turn towards historical practices. Some scholars have suggested that independent agencies and special counsels have become such established features …
The Doctrine Of Accommodation In The Jurisprudence Of The Religion Clauses, Sarah Barringer Gordon, Arlin M. Adams
The Doctrine Of Accommodation In The Jurisprudence Of The Religion Clauses, Sarah Barringer Gordon, Arlin M. Adams
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.