Rule of Law Commons^™

Supreme Court As Superweapon: A Response To Epps & Sitaraman, Stephen E. Sachs

Faculty Scholarship

Is the Supreme Court's legitimacy in crisis? Daniel Epps and Ganesh Sitaraman argue that it is. In their Feature, How to Save the Supreme Court, they suggest legally radical reforms to restore a politically moderate Court. Unfortunately, their proposals might destroy the Court's legitimacy in order to save it. And their case that there is any crisis may fail to persuade a reader with different legal or political priors. If the Supreme Court needs saving, it will be saving from itself, and from too broad a conception of its own legal omnipotence. A Court that seems unbound by legal principle …

Wto Dispute Settlement: Can We Go Back Again?, Rachel Brewster

Faculty Scholarship

The world's twenty-year experiment with a rule-based international trading order is most likely ending. Trade wars are raging again for the first time in two decades as World Trade Organization (WTO) members unilaterally impose and counterimpose sanctions. In Geneva, the WTO Appellate Body, whose existence is essential to the functioning of the WTO Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU), is on a trajectory to shut down in December 2020. For all the fireworks, however, many commentators retain an optimism that the recent events will be a passing phase and that the world will return to a more law-oriented trading system after the …

Defending Against Notions Of Terra Nullius With The Re.Past.Malaga Performance, Danielle M. Conway

Faculty Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Il Était Une Fois… Analyse Juridique Des Contes De Fées, Marine Ranouil And Nicolas Dissaux, Eds. Paris: Dalloz, 2018. [Book Review], Dana Neacsu

Law Faculty Publications

Il était une fois… Once Upon a Time, edited by Marine Ranouil and Nicholas Dissaux, inhabits the most tempting theory of Gramscian hegemony: Law codifies the people’s desires, especially those imparted to them through books; through the written word. Reading it brought to mind Bertrand Barère and his explanation of the French Revolution of 1789. Books did it all because they brought enlightenment into all classes of society. This seems pretentious and partially inaccurate. The Revolution was also ignited by filth and hunger, which made the masses part with their innate fear of death and bravely fight for such …

Jury Sentencing In The United States: The Antithesis Of The Rule Of Law, Maryann Grover

Law Student Publications

"In his dissent in Glossip v. Gross, Justice Breyer declared that “[t]he arbitrary imposition of punishment is the antithesis of the rule of law.” He went on to assert that, for a defendant, to be sentenced to death was akin to being struck by lightning. Such randomness and arbitrariness in capital sentencing results from the wide discretion granted to sentencing actors, and runs counter to the firmly held belief that every defendant in the criminal justice system deserves fair and just treatment." [..]

Rule Of Law With Asian Characteristics: Cultural Insights From The Occupy Central Movement In Hong Kong, Jeffrey E. Thomas

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Age Of Unreason: Rationality And The Regulatory State, Louise Weinberg

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

A curious phenomenon, not previously remarked, appears in current international and interstate cases in a common configuration. These are cases in which a nonresident sues a company at the company’s home; the plaintiff would almost certainly win there on stipulated facts; and judgment is for the defendant as a matter of law. In cases in this familiar configuration it appears that courts will struggle to find rationales. Judges attempt to rely on arguments which ordinarily would be serviceable, but which, in cases so configured, seem to become irrational. Because the relevant configuration of cases is common, the problem is widespread. …

The Cognitive Dissonance Between The Rule Of Law And Rural Realities: Reading Gillian Hadfield’S Rules For A Flat World In The Context Of Rural Identity And Politics, Danielle M. Conway

Faculty Publications

Rural communities – as well as other marginalized communities – see their access to legal infrastructure declining, so much so that they feel disconnected from the rule of law. Current complex law and legal infrastructure focus on big “I” innovation, which is hyper-transactional and benefits the few. Rural communities, and others, would find law and legal infrastructure more relevant if they focused more on small “i” innovation, which centers on negotiating real, societal relationships.

Promises Unfulfilled: How Investment Arbitration Tribunals Mishandle Corruption Claims And Undermine International Development, Andrew T. Bulovsky

Michigan Law Review

In recent years, the investment-arbitration and anti-corruption regimes have been in tension. Investment tribunals have jurisdiction to arbitrate disputes between investors and host states under international treaties that provide substantive protections for private investments. But these tribunals will typically decline to exercise jurisdiction over a dispute if the host state asserts that corruption tainted the investment. When tribunals close their doors to ag-grieved investors, tribunals increase the risks for investors and thus raise the cost of international investment. At the same time, the decision to decline jurisdiction creates a perverse incentive for host states to turn a blind eye to …

Small Crimes, Big Injustices, Stephanos Bibas

Michigan Law Review

Review of Alexandra Natapoff's Punishment Without Crime: How Our Massive Misdemeanor System Traps the Innocent and Makes America More Unequal.

Democratic Policing Before The Due Process Revolution, Sarah Seo

Faculty Scholarship

According to prevailing interpretations of the Warren Court’s Due Process Revolution, the Supreme Court constitutionalized criminal procedure to constrain the discretion of individual officers. These narratives, however, fail to account for the Court’s decisions during that revolutionary period that enabled discretionary policing. Instead of beginning with the Warren Court, this Essay looks to the legal culture before the Due Process Revolution to provide a more coherent synthesis of the Court’s criminal procedure decisions. It reconstructs that culture by analyzing the prominent criminal law scholar Jerome Hall’s public lectures, Police and Law in a Democratic Society, which he delivered in 1952 …

Immunity Incorporated: All The Injustice That Jeffrey Epstein Can Buy, Janice G. Raymond

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Considerations Of History And Purpose In Constitutional Borrowing, Robert L. Tsai

Faculty Scholarship

This essay is part of a symposium issue dedicated to "Constitutional Rights: Intersections, Synergies, and Conflicts" at William and Mary School of Law. I make four points. First, perfect harmony among rights might not always be normatively desirable. In fact, in some instances, such as when First Amendment and Second Amendment rights clash, we might wish to have expressive rights consistently trump gun rights. Second, we can't resolve clashes between rights in the abstract but instead must consult history in a broadly relevant rather than a narrowly "originalist" fashion. When we do so, we learn that armed expression and white …

Charney Lecture: The Rule Of Law In International Security Affairs: A U.S. Defense Department Perspective, Paul C. Ney, Jr.

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Thank you very much for inviting me here today. I am especially grateful to Dean Chris Guthrie, Professor Mike Newton, and Mrs. Sharon Charney, who generously endowed this lecture series in memory of her late husband, Professor Jonathan Charney. Thank you, as well, to all the members of the Charney family for sharing him with the Vanderbilt community. Professor Charney taught at Vanderbilt for forty years and was one of the nation's preeminent scholars and practitioners of international law. He was a member of the U.S. delegation to the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea, which …

The Vital Role Of The Wto Appellate Body In The Promotion Of Rule Of Law And International Cooperation: A Case Study, Padideh Ala'i

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Manufactured Emergencies, Robert Tsai

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Emergencies are presumed to be unusual affairs, but the United States has been in one state of emergency or another for the last forty years. That is a problem. The erosion of democratic norms has led to not simply the collapse of the traditional conceptual boundary between ordinary rule and emergency governance, but also the emergence of an even graver problem: the manufactured crisis. In an age characterized by extreme partisanship, institutional gridlock, and technological manipulation of information, it has become exceedingly easy and far more tempting for a President to invoke extraordinary power by ginning up exigencies. To reduce …

Political Trust In Kosovo: Exploring Cultural And Institutional Dynamics, Ermira Babamusta

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

In this dissertation I examine political trust perceptions across different political-legal institutions and actors in Kosovo. I evaluate the levels of political trust using cultural and institutional performance explanations to investigate the key factors that have an impact on political trust. The study explores national political trust and international political trust, considering many domains of political trust: government, political leaders, political parties, Kosovo Courts, Kosovo Police, NATO, United Nations, European Union, and the Kosovo Specialist Court. There is growing concern about lower levels of political trust across Europe, especially in post-communist countries. In this study, I make the case that …

The Trump Administration And The Rule Of Law, Peter L. Strauss

Faculty Scholarship

Written for a French audience in 2017, this article sought to frame the explosive issues about the Trump presidency in relation to the American trend to strong views of the unitary executive, that in the author's view ignore the striking contrast between to propositions in Article II Section 2 of the Constitution, its only words defining presidential power. Made "Commander in chief" of the military, he is next given the power only to require the opinion in writing from the heads of the executive bodies Congress was expected to create how they intended to carry out the duties Congress had …

Fair And Impartial Adjudication, Thomas W. Merrill

Faculty Scholarship

Any legal system that purports to respect the rule of law must ensure the fair and impartial adjudication of disputes under the law. Classic accounts of the rule of law assume that courts should resolve such disputes. However, this is too narrow. All forms of adjudication, not just by courts, need to be fair and impartial. In any event, no one could claim that courts or entities by that name are always fair and impartial. All legal systems need a guarantee of fair and impartial adjudication that applies to all forms of dispute resolution under law.

A dispute arising under …

Indonesia And Its Reluctance To Ratify The United Nations Convention On Contracts For The International Sale Of Goods (Cisg), Surya Oktaviandra

Indonesia Law Review

There is still a huge debate on business policy in Indonesia pertaining the fact that the Government of Indonesia is still reluctance to ratify one of the important conventions for the business world namely CISG (Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods). This paper attempts to discuss the issues which will deliver inter-disciplinary areas such as law, economics, and public policy. By analyzing this matter with a comprehensive measure, it will ensure an appropriate understanding and thus create more precise analysis to serve a contribution in suggesting solve-problem. Despite having its particular point of view, the author based …