The Misuse Of Textualism: A Further Reply To Prof. Kahn,
2010
Georgetown University Law Center
The Misuse Of Textualism: A Further Reply To Prof. Kahn, Stephen B. Cohen
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Because readers have already endured four articles, two by me and two by Prof. Douglas A. Kahn, debating the meaning of section 67(e)(1), I am reluctant to respond to Prof. Kahn’s rejoinder, which appeared in the January 18 issue of Tax Notes. Nevertheless, our disagreement implicates the judicial craft of two U.S. Supreme Court members, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Sonia Sotomayor. I therefore feel it important to answer Prof. Kahn’s latest contentions, recognizing my duty to be as brief as possible.
The Subjects Of The Constitution,
2010
Georgetown University Law Center
The Subjects Of The Constitution, Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Two centuries after Marbury v. Madison, there remains a deep confusion about quite what a court is reviewing when it engages in judicial review. Conventional wisdom has it that judicial review is the review of certain legal objects: statutes, regulations. But strictly speaking, this is not quite right. The Constitution prohibits not objects but actions. Judicial review is the review of such actions. And actions require actors: verbs require subjects. So before judicial review focuses on verbs, let alone objects, it should begin at the beginning, with subjects. Every constitutional inquiry should begin with a basic question that has been …
Do U.S. Courts Discriminate Against Treaties?: Equivalence, Duality, And Treaty Non-Self-Execution,
2010
BYU Law
Do U.S. Courts Discriminate Against Treaties?: Equivalence, Duality, And Treaty Non-Self-Execution, David H. Moore
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Close Enough For Government Work: The Committee Rulemaking Game,
2010
BYU Law
Close Enough For Government Work: The Committee Rulemaking Game, Paul Stancil
Faculty Scholarship
Procedural rules in U.S. courts often have predictable and systemic substantive consequences. Yet the vast majority of procedural rules are drafted, debated, and ultimately enacted by a committee rulemaking process substantially removed from significant legislative or executive supervision. This Article explores the dynamics of the committee rulemaking process through a game-theoretical lens. The model reveals that inferior players in the committee rulemaking game - advisory committees, the Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure, the Judicial Conference and the Supreme Court - are sometimes able to arbitrage Congressional transaction costs to obtain results at odds with the results Congress …
A Review Of Richard A. Posner, How Judges Think (2008),
2010
United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
A Review Of Richard A. Posner, How Judges Think (2008), Jeffrey S. Sutton
Michigan Law Review
I was eager to enter the judiciary. I liked the title: federal judge. I liked the job security: life tenure. And I could tolerate the pay: the same as Richard Posner's. That, indeed, may have been the most flattering part of the opportunity-that I could hold the same title and have the same pay grade as one of America's most stunning legal minds. Don't think I didn't mention it when I had the chance. There is so much to admire about Judge Posner-his lively pen, his curiosity, his energy, his apparent understanding of: everything. He has written 53 books, more …
Structure And Precedent,
2010
Willamette University College of Law
Structure And Precedent, Jeffrey C. Dobbins
Michigan Law Review
The standard model of vertical precedent is part of the deep structure of our legal system. Under this model, we rarely struggle with whether a given decision of a court within a particular hierarchy is potentially binding at all. When Congress or the courts alter the standard structure and process offederal appellate review, however, that standard model of precedent breaks down. This Article examines several of these unusual appellate structures and highlights the difficulties associated with evaluating the precedential effect of decisions issued within them. For instance, when Congress consolidates challenges to agency decision making in a single federal circuit, …
The Politics Of Nature: Climate Change, Environmental Law, And Democracy,
2010
Columbia Law School
The Politics Of Nature: Climate Change, Environmental Law, And Democracy, Jedediah S. Purdy
Faculty Scholarship
Legal scholars’ discussions of climate change assume that the issue is one mainly of engineering incentives, and that “environmental values” are too weak, vague, or both to spur political action to address the emerging crisis. This Article gives reason to believe otherwise. The major natural resource and environmental statutes, from the acts creating national forests and parks to the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, have emerged from precisely the activity that discussions of climate change neglect: democratic argument over the value of the natural world and its role in competing ideas of citizenship, national purpose, and the role and …
The Tao Of Pleading: Do Twombly And Iqbal Matter Empirically,
2010
St. Mary’s University School of Law
The Tao Of Pleading: Do Twombly And Iqbal Matter Empirically, Patricia W. Moore
Faculty Articles
In 2007, the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, sending “shockwaves” through the federal litigation bar. Seemingly without prior warning, the Court abrogated “the accepted rule that a complaint should not be dismissed for failure to state a claim unless it appears beyond doubt that the plaintiff can prove no set of facts in support of his claim which would entitle him to relief”—the standard for deciding 12(b)(6) motions first stated fifty years earlier in Conley v. Gibson. To replace the old rule, the Court announced a new “plausibility” standard: that a complaint …
A Non-Fatal Collision: Interpreting Rluipa Where Religious Land Uses And Community Interests Meet,
2010
St. Mary’s University School of Law,
A Non-Fatal Collision: Interpreting Rluipa Where Religious Land Uses And Community Interests Meet, Adam J. Macleod
Faculty Articles
Imagine a large church located in a multi-family residential zoning district, where commercial uses are not permitted and religious uses are permitted by special use permit. The church applies for a special use permit to open a coffee shop, which would operate throughout the week during normal business hours and would supplement and support the church's other ministries. At the hearing on the permit application, many neighbors object. They fear increased traffic, visual blight, and safety hazards for their children. The city denies the permit. The church files an action against the city, alleging that the city has substantially burdened …
Law, Facts, And Power,
2010
Southern Methodist University, Dedman School of Law
Law, Facts, And Power, Elizabeth G. Thornburg
Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters
The Supreme Court’s opinion in Ashcroft v. Iqbal is wrong in many ways. This essay is about only one of them: the Court’s single-handed return to a pleading system that requires lawyers and judges to distinguish between pleading facts and pleading law. This move not only resuscitates a distinction purposely abandoned by the generation that drafted the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, but also serves as an example of the very difficulties created by the distinction. The chinks in the law-fact divide are evident in Iqbal itself - both in the already notorious pleading section of the opinion, and in …
Saving Civil Justice: Judging Civil Justice,
2010
Southern Methodist University, Dedman School of Law
Saving Civil Justice: Judging Civil Justice, Elizabeth G. Thornburg
Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters
No abstract provided.
A Prolonged Slump For ‘Plaintiff-Pitchers’: The Narrow ‘Strike Zone’ For Securities Plaintiffs In The Fourth Circuit,
2010
Southern Methodist University, Dedman School of Law
A Prolonged Slump For ‘Plaintiff-Pitchers’: The Narrow ‘Strike Zone’ For Securities Plaintiffs In The Fourth Circuit, Marc I. Steinberg, Dustin Appel
Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters
This article focuses on the narrow “strike zone” that plaintiffs must overcome in private securities actions instituted in the Fourth Circuit. Based on empirical data generated over a fourteen-year span, there emerges a clear finding that during that time period defendants were victorious in almost all cases, either on the merits of the case or due to procedural obstacles. The authors posit that this pattern of difficulty for plaintiffs arises, at least in part, from the Fourth Circuit’s restrictive interpretation of various requisite elements of these causes of action, such as materiality and scienter, as well as the Fourth Circuit’s …
