Jurisprudence Commons^™

"Undead" Wartime Cases: Stare Decisis And The Lessons Of History, Harlan G. Cohen

Faculty Scholarship

References to the “lessons of history” are ubiquitous in law. Nowhere has this been more apparent than in recent debates over U.S. counterterrorism policy. In response to the Bush Administration’s reliance on World War II-era decisions - Johnson v. Eisentrager, Ex Parte Quirin, Hirota v. MacArthur, and In re Yamashita - opponents have argued that these decisions have been rejected by the “lessons of history.” They argue that the history of wartime cases is one marked by executive aggrandizement, panic-driven attacks on civil liberties, and overly quiescent courts - none of which should be repeated.

But what does it really …

Against Certification, Justin R. Long

Law Faculty Research Publications

Certification is the process whereby federal courts, confronted by an open question of state law in federal litigation, ask the relevant state high court to decide the state law question. If the state high court chooses to answer, its statement of state law stands as the definitive declaration of the law on the disputed point. The case then returns to the certifying federal court, which resolves any remaining issues, including federal questions, and then issues a mandate. Although a wide range of academic commentators and jurists support certification as an example of respect for state autonomy, this Article shows that …

Originalism, John Marshall, And The Necessary And Proper Clause: Resurrecting The Jurisprudence Of Alexander Addison, Patrick J. Charles

Cleveland State Law Review

However, to give Marshall full credit for the “choice of means” doctrine is unfair, he was not the first to lay claim to the doctrine when interpreting the Necessary and Proper Clause. Indeed, the philosophical and legal influences of John Marshall have been the speculation of scholarly discourse for some time. For instance, many legal commentators and historians have attributed the influence of Marshall's opinions to being a strong Federalist because many of his opinions echo the Federalist interpretation of the Constitution. However, Marshall's opinions were also influenced by factors that sometimes conflicted with Federalist thought. This Article does not …

Shift Happens: The U.S. Supreme Court's Shifting Antidiscrimination Rhetoric, Theresa M. Beiner

Law Faculty Scholarship

The United States Supreme Court’s discourse on discrimination affects how fundamental civil rights - such as the right to be free from gender and race discrimination - are adjudicated and conceptualized in this country. Shortly after Congress passed Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Court established precedent that assumed discrimination, absent some other compelling explanation for employer conduct. While the Court was more reluctant to presume such discrimination by governmental actors, it was deferent to Congress’s ability to set standards that would presume discrimination. Over time, however, that presumption and the Court’s deference to Congress has …

Proportionality, Rationality And Review, Paul Craig

Articles by Maurer Faculty

There is a debate in certain common law jurisdictions as to whether proportionality should be accepted as a general criterion for judicial review in administrative law. This article responds to Mike Taggart’s bifurcation thesis and his argument that proportionality should be reserved for rights-based cases, with low intensity rationality review being used for other types of case. I argue to the contrary that proportionality should be a general principle of judicial review that can be used both in cases concerned with rights and in non-rights based cases, albeit with varying intensity of review. The article begins by addressing the advantages …

Behavioral Decision Theory And Implications For The Supreme Court's Campaign Finance Jurisprudence, Molly J. Walker Wilson

Cardozo Law Review

America stands at a moment in history when advances in the understanding of human decision-making are increasing the strategic efficacy of political strategy. As campaign spending for the presidential race reaches hundreds of millions of dollars, the potential for harnessing the power of psychological tactics becomes considerable. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has characterized campaign money as "speech" and has required evidence of corruption or the appearance of corruption in order to uphold restrictions on campaign expenditures. Ultimately, the Court has rejected virtually all restrictions on campaign spending on the ground that expenditures, unlike contributions, do not contribute to corruption or …

The Bankruptcy Hegemon: Section 524(A) And Its Effect On State And Federal Comity, Benjamin Margulis

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Geography Of Criminal Law, Adam Benforado

Cardozo Law Review

When Westerners explain the causes of actions or outcomes in the criminal law context, they demonstrate a strong tendency to overestimate the importance of dispositional factors, like thinking, preferring, and willing, and underestimate the impact of interior and exterior situational factors, including environmental, historical, and social forces, as well as affective states, knowledge structures, motives, and other unseen aspects of our cognitive frameworks and processes. One of the situational factors that we are particularly likely to overlook is physical space - that is, landscapes, places, natures, boundaries, and spatialities. Our shortsightedness comes at a great cost. Spatial concerns shape legal …

Finding Fault With Defaults: New York Courts' Inconsistent Application Of Issue Preclusion To Default Judgments, David Noland

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Eighth Circuit Trademark Opinions, Kenneth L. Port

Faculty Scholarship

The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals’ trademark jurisprudence has been truly fair and balanced since the 1946 passage of the Lanham Act. The court has created this fair and balanced jurisprudence by creating firm standards and sticking to them. Although not the most popular circuit in which to find a trademark case, the Eighth Circuit has kept a constant vigil to assure that trademark plaintiffs do not dominate over trademark defendants. This balanced approach to trademark law is consistent with the Minnesota Supreme Court, which recently held that “advertising injury” included trademark infringement, and therefore the defendant’s insurance carrier had …

Did A Switch In Time Save Nine?, Daniel E. Ho, Kevin M. Quinn

Faculty Articles

Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s court-packing plan of 1937 and the “switch in time that saved nine” animate central questions of law, politics, and history. Did Supreme Court Justice Roberts abruptly switch votes in 1937 to avert a showdown with Roosevelt? Scholars disagree vigorously about whether Roberts’s transformation was gradual and anticipated or abrupt and unexpected. Using newly collected data of votes from the 1931–1940 terms, we contribute to the historical understanding of this episode by providing the first quantitative evidence of Roberts’s transformation. Applying modern measurement methods, we show that Roberts shifted sharply to the left in the 1936 term. The …

The Wild West Of Supreme Court Employment Discrimination Jurisprudence, Henry L. Chambers, Jr.

Law Faculty Publications

This Essay considers three cases decided in the Supreme Court's 2008-2009 term and notes some of the major issues that are left open for discussion after these cases; its purpose is not to catalog every issue that these cases raise. Taken together, these cases challenge employment discrimination doctrine in a fundamental way. This provides the Fourth Circuit in particular the opportunity to continue doing what it has often done-think creatively about employment discrimination doctrine. This is an observation, not a criticism of the Fourth Circuit. It suggests that the Fourth Circuit can make a difference. Of course, the Fourth Circuit's …

The Potential Of Rulemaking By The Nlrb, Jeffrey Lubbers

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

The Golden Age That Never Was: Catholic Law Schools From 1930-1960 And The Question Of Identity, John M. Breen

Faculty Publications & Other Works

No abstract provided.

"There Must Be A Means" - The Backward Jurisprudence Of Baze V. Rees, Nadia N. Sawicki

Faculty Publications & Other Works

No abstract provided.

Ugly American Hermeneutics, Francis J. Mootz Iii

Scholarly Works

This article will appear in a Symposium on comparative legal hermeneutics that includes four articles by American scholars and four articles by Brazilian scholars. I argue that the "ugly American" hermeneutics exemplified in Justice Scalia's opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller is unfortunate, even if we supplement Justice Scalia's hermeneutical fantasy with the much more careful and balanced philosophical work by Larry Solum, Keith Whittington and other scholars. Nevertheless, the pragmatic work of interpretation by lawyers and judges in the day-to-day world of legal practice shows a plain-faced integrity of which we Americans can be proud.

Disparate Impact, Girardeau A. Spann

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

There has been a lot of talk about post-racialism since the 2008 election of Barack Obama as the first black President of the United States. Some have argued that the Obama election illustrates the evolution of the United States from its unfortunate racist past to a more admirable post-racial present in which the problem of invidious racial discrimination has largely been overcome. Others have argued that the Obama election illustrates only that an extraordinarily gifted, mixed-race, multiple Ivy League graduate, Harvard Law Review President was able to overcome the persistent discriminatory racial practices that continue to disadvantage the bulk of …

Hermeneutics- The Path Of The Hermeneutic-Ontological Shift And The Decolonial Shift, Celso Luiz Ludwig

Nevada Law Journal

The purpose of the reflections that follow is to highlight the meaning and importance of the hermeneutic shift produced by the work of Gadamer, to consider some of his themes and categories, and to extend the meaning of this hermeneutic rationality to the legal field in terms of a new conception of interpretation. A second objective is to catch sight of new theoretical perspectives, having as a starting point the unfolding of practical philosophy into hermeneutic philosophy carried out by Gadamer. This article aims at recuperating, among other things, the fundamental hermeneutic problem, so as to obtain a glimpse into …

Square Peg In A Round Hole: Government Contractor Battlefield Tort Liability And The Political Question Doctrine, Chris Jenks

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Recent assertions of the political question doctrine by battlefield contractor defendants in tort litigation have brought new life to the doctrine while raising new questions. The lawsuits stem from incidents in both Iraq and Afghanistan and include plaintiffs ranging from local nationals suing contract interrogators and interpreters, to contract employees suing another contractor following insurgent attacks, to U.S. service members suing contractors after vehicle and airplane crashes. The lawsuits involve tort claims, which on their face do not conjure up images of a constitutional power struggle, but in at least fifteen cases thus far contractor defendants have asserted the political …

Perelman's Theory Of Argumentation And Natural Law, Francis J. Mootz Iii

Scholarly Works

Chaim Perelman resuscitated the rhetorical tradition by developing an elegant and detailed theory of argumentation. Rejecting the single-minded Cartesian focus on rational truth, Perelman recovered the ancient wisdom that we can argue reasonably about matters that admit only of probability. From this one would conclude that Perelman’s argumentation theory is inalterably opposed to natural law, and therefore that I would have done better to have written an article titled “Perelman’s Th eory of Argumentation as a Rejection of Natural Law.”

However, my thesis is precisely that Perelman’s theory of argumentation connects to the natural law tradition in interesting and productive …