Source: http://lsolum.typepad.com/legaltheory/
Timestamp: 2015-03-01 00:31:10
Document Index: 715319237

Matched Legal Cases: ['§1519', '§1519', '§1519', '§1519', '§1519', '§ 36', '§1519']

Download of the Week: "The Right to Vote: Is the Amendment Game Worth the Candle?" by Gerken
Roznai on Constitutional Unamendability
Robinette on Party Autonomy & Tort Theory
Behrens on Ordoliberalism & EU Competition Law
Ngov on Race Neutral Alternatives after Fisher v. University of Texas
The Legal Theory Bookworm recommends Untrodden Ground: How Presidents Interpret the Constitution by Harold H. Bruff. Here is a description:
When Thomas Jefferson struck a deal for the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, he knew he was adding a new national power to those specified in the Constitution, but he also believed his actions were in the nation’s best interest. His successors would follow his example, setting their own constitutional precedents. Tracing the evolution and expansion of the president’s formal power, Untrodden Ground reveals the president to be the nation’s most important law interpreter and examines how our commanders-in-chief have shaped the law through their responses to important issues of their time. Reviewing the processes taken by all forty-four presidents to form new legal precedents and the constitutional conventions that have developed as a result, Harold H. Bruff shows that the president is both more and less powerful than many suppose. He explores how presidents have been guided by both their predecessors’ and their own interpretations of constitutional text, as well as how they implement policies in ways that statutes do not clearly authorize or forbid. But while executive power has expanded far beyond its original conception, Bruff argues that the modern presidency is appropriately limited by the national political process—their actions are legitimized by the assent of Congress and the American people or rejected through debilitating public outcry, judicial invalidation, reactive legislation, or impeachment. Synthesizing over two hundred years of presidential activity and conflict, this timely book casts new light on executive behavior and the American constitutional system.
“Everyone knows that the Supreme Court interprets the Constitution. But in this magisterial book, Bruff shows that presidents have played the most important role in interpreting the Constitution over the course of the nation’s history—and have done so in a way that teaches us not just about the presidency but about the nature of the American Constitution itself. Bruff gives us an engaging account of how presidents from George Washington to Barack Obama have used the powers of their office, and anyone who is interested in the Constitution will learn from, and be challenged by, his original and subtle analysis of what our Presidents have done.” (David A. Strauss, University of Chicago Law School) "There is no better book for understanding how presidents interpret the Constitution than Untrodden Ground. No one knows the subject better than Bruff. His book is an instant classic, drawing on a lifetime of learning, invaluable experience, extraordinary research, and unique and profound insights. Everyone, including presidents and the people who work for them, can learn a great deal from this terrific book. Indeed, I would suggest, no one should work in the White House or executive branch—or seek to critique what they do—unless they have first read this book and taken its lessons to heart." (Michael Gerhardt, University of North Carolina School of Law) “A considerable achievement. Bruff has brought together in an admirably coherent fashion more than two hundred years of complex presidential activity to consider how presidents have shaped the Constitution’s concrete meaning. Constitutional law scholars will appreciate the book’s thoughtful and nuanced analysis. An even wider readership simply interested in presidential power will value Bruff’s lively writing, clear organization, and provocative insights.” (Martin Flaherty, former law clerk to Justice Byron R. White)
Posted by Lawrence Solum on February 28, 2015 at 09:23 AM in Legal Theory Bookworm | Permalink
The Download of the Week is The Right to Vote: Is the Amendment Game Worth the Candle? by Heather Gerken. Here is the abstract:
Is it possible to be in favor of a constitutional vote and against amending the Constitution to add it? Yes. This paper argues that the amendment game is not worth the candle. There are two stages for ensuring a robust right to vote: amending the Constitution, and enforcing that amendment. As to the first stage, if an amendment enshrining the right to vote looks anything like its cognates in the Constitution, it will be thinly described, maddeningly vague, and pushed forward by self-interested politicians. If the amendment takes this form, the benefits reformers and academics assert we’ll reap are anything but automatic. Once a vague guarantee is embedded in the Constitution (Stage 1), reformers will still have to turn to legislators and courts to get something done (Stage 2). Making the text more concrete may make Stage 2 easier, but it will complicate efforts to pass the amendment in the first place. After all, if it were easy to enfranchise former felons or block voter ID rules or guarantee a well-administered election system or end partisan gerrymandering, we would presumably have done it already. It’s possible, of course, that reformers could aim for something more than vague language, either by writing their aims explicitly into the text or creating an amendment history so robust that everyone understands what the right embodies. On this view, reformers would build a big tent of supporters by linking the amendment to lots of different reforms. The problem with this strategy is that it will also generate a big tent on the other side. Push for felon enfranchisement, and you’ll run up against the tough-on-crime lobby. Tempt progressives with a ban on voter ID and lose the support of many Republicans. Promise to end gerrymandering and lose the support of most incumbents. That’s why a vague textual guarantee is so tempting an option in Stage 1, even if it creates more work for Stage 2. For these reasons, it makes more sense to pour political resources into more discrete reform projects going forward.
One of the nice things about Gerken's paper is that it provides a sophisticated treatment of what I call "constitution possibilities" and enters world of constrained choices and second bests. For a systematic treatment of the theoretical issues that such a strategy involves, see Constitutional Possibilities.
Posted by Lawrence Solum on February 28, 2015 at 09:16 AM in Download of the Week | Permalink
Amos N. Guiora (University of Utah - S.J. Quinney College of Law) has posted Boston to Where: The Challenges Posed by Local-Global Terrorism (In The Ashgate Research Companion to Military Ethics, (James Turner Johnson, Rutgers University, USA and Eric D. Patterson, Regent University, USA, eds), Forthcoming) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
As the Boston bombers dramatically illustrated, twenty-first century terrorism is a powerful combination of international and domestic causes. The response to terrorism at home has been mixed, with the U.S. seeing its response to terrorism as part of a global war whereas its European partners always handled domestic terrorism as criminal cases. Boston illustrates a third form of terrorism, what I call global-local terrorism, reflects a hybrid posing significant challenges to both approaches. This chapter discusses competing views of the appropriate legal framework for dealing with terrorism when it happens on their doorsteps. The challenges are highlighted when, as in the U.S. and UK, second and third generation immigrants commit terror attacks. I discuss the domestic law enforcement-criminal courts approach of European countries and then analyze the contrasting “self-defense” (law of armed conflict) approach taken by the U.S. The chapter concludes with reflections on “motivator-inciters” who radicalize those who actually perpetrate terrorism, inquiring whether local-global terrorism warrants imposing limits on otherwise protected free speech.
Posted by Lawrence Solum on February 27, 2015 at 10:00 PM | Permalink
Marci A. Hamilton (Cardozo Law School) has posted The Case for Evidence-Based Free Exercise Accommodation: Why the Religious Freedom Restoration Act Is Bad Public Policy (Harvard Law & Policy Review, Vol. 9, 2015) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
After over twenty years, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act formula has proven itself to have three faults as a matter of public policy. First, the title is misleading, as the Supreme Court has repeatedly confirmed. Second, it was misleadingly presented as a benevolent law for religious actors who needed protection and whose actions were always benign. Third, its operative provisions contain legalistic, opaque text, which few can discern. The result is that the federal and state RFRAs, along with the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, have yielded and continue to yield unintended, indeed unimaginable, consequences.
Posted by Lawrence Solum on February 27, 2015 at 07:00 PM | Permalink
Yaniv Roznai (The Hauser Global Law School, NYU) has posted Unamendability and the Genetic Code of the Constitution on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
An increasing number of constitutions contain “unamendable provisions” in order, inter alia, to protect essential characteristics of the constitutional order or principles perceived as being at risk of repeal via the democratic process. The paper examines unamendable provisions. In order to do so, it studies the text of unamendable provisions which were and are stipulated in 735 former and current written national constitutions. It reviews the origins, structure and content of unamendable provisions, seeking any content-based or material links among them. It also analyzes the characteristics of unamendable provisions and identifies various features of unamendability such as preservation, transformation, aspiration, conflict-management and bricolage. Unamendable provisions fulfill certain functions and reflect the important symbolic value of certain constitutional principles or institutions. It is argued that these limitations, which tie the past, present and future of a polity, are utilized, in a way, to preserve a core of a nation’s constitutional identity thus comprising its “genetic code”.
Posted by Lawrence Solum on February 27, 2015 at 03:54 PM | Permalink
Christopher J. Robinette (Widener University - School of Law) has posted Party Autonomy in Tort Theory and Reform (6 J. Tort Law (2015), Forthcoming) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
Tort theory has been dominated by a debate between scholars who view tort law as rooted in individualized justice and scholars who argue tort law is an instrument of social policy. This dialogue has distracted scholars from the more important issue of how to properly separate cases worthy of individualized justice treatment from those better suited to routinized resolution. Tort law already contains both types. One potentially fruitful method of separation is to empower the parties themselves to make the decision. They could do so by voluntarily trading liability for the elimination or substantial reduction in non-economic damages. Such an approach honors individualized justice by leaving the parties in control of the case and, if used, would increase both compensation and administrative efficiency, arguably without a reduction in the deterrent effect. Although the purpose of this article is not to design the ideal proposal(s) to embody such an approach, Jeffrey O’Connell has given us several models to begin our deliberations. It is only the latest contribution in his impressive legacy.
Posted by Lawrence Solum on February 27, 2015 at 11:57 AM | Permalink
Steven G. Calabresi (Northwestern University - School of Law) & Justin R. Braga (Brown University) have posted The Jurisprudence of Justice Antonin Scalia: A Response to Professor Bruce Allen Murphy and Professor Justin Driver on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
This is a book review of Professor Bruce Allen Murphy’s recent biography of Justice Antonin Scalia entitled: Scalia: A Court of One. We show that Professor Murphy’s account of events to which Professor Calabresi was in part a witness is wrong and at times almost blinded by anti-Catholicsm. In addition, we are baffled by Professor Murphy’s utter disregard for Justice Scalia’s contributions to the field of legal interpretation and his misunderstanding of Supreme Court history. All in all, we believe Justice Scalia should be praised for his many accomplishments, his contributions to the law, and his impact on the theories of textual interpretation.
Posted by Lawrence Solum on February 27, 2015 at 03:59 AM | Permalink
Peter Behrens (Europa-Kolleg Hamburg) has posted The 'Consumer Choice' Paradigm in German Ordoliberalism and its Impact Upon EU Competition Law on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
This paper explores the origin and development of the "consumer choice" paradigm as the core concept of German ordoliberal thought which has had a strong impact on EU competition policy and law. Outside Germany, ordoliberal thought is often identified with the learning of the original "Freiburg School" which represents the formative period of German ordoliberalism after the Second World War. Major developments since then have remained largely unrecognized. This paper sets out the important insights the have markedly changed some of the basic concepts of the "Freiburg School" so as to bring ordoliberalism into line the modern economic learning. The core tenets, however, remain: the crucial role attributed to consumers' choice as the driving force behind producers' rivalry, the dependence of consumers' freedom of choice upon an open market structure, efficiency (consumer welfare) as the result of competition rather than of an individual entrepreneurial market strategy. The core elements of this approach are traced back to classical liberalism and it is shown how they have been enriched and developed beyond the "Freiburg School" toward the contemporary version of ordoliberalism. This approach is still reflected and should continue to be reflected by the jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice, because it avoids the kind of consumer welfare (or consumer harm) fallacy by which the "more economic approach" of the EU-Commission risks to be caught.
Posted by Lawrence Solum on February 26, 2015 at 11:58 PM | Permalink
From Leiter comes the news that Monroe Freedman, the extraordinary scholar of legal ethics, has passed.
Posted by Lawrence Solum on February 26, 2015 at 08:41 PM | Permalink
Eang L. Ngov (Barry University School of Law) has posted Following Fisher: Narrowly Tailoring Affirmative Action (64 Catholic University Law Review 1 (2015)) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
Affirmative action has been at the forefront of educational policies and to this day continues to enliven debates. For decades, schools have litigated over whether affirmative action can be used to create a diverse student body. Now, the litigation has shifted to whether affirmative action policies are narrowly tailored. The Supreme Court’s most recent affirmative action case, Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, requires that schools prove that there are no workable race neutral alternatives in order to demonstrate that their affirmative action programs are narrowly tailored. This article examines the available race neutral alternatives: percentage plans; socioeconomic based admissions policies; elimination of legacy and development admission preferences; recruitment, retention, and financial aid programs; and community outreach. After evaluating their effectiveness, this article concludes that these programs are workable race neutral alternatives that higher education institutions must consider before they resort to using race as a factor in admissions.
Posted by Lawrence Solum on February 26, 2015 at 07:02 PM | Permalink
Garnett on Religious Accommodations
Richard W. Garnett (Notre Dame Law School) has posted Religious Accommodations And — And Among — Civil Rights: Separation, Toleration, and Accommodation (88 S. Cal. L. Rev. ___ (2015 Forthcoming)) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
This paper expands on a presentation at a recent conference, held at Harvard Law School, on the topic of “Religious Accommodations in the Age of Civil Rights.” In it, I emphasize that the right to religious freedom is a basic civil right, the increased appreciation of which is said to characterize our “age.” Accordingly, I push back against scholars’ and commentators’ increasing tendency to regard and present religious accommodations and exemptions as obstacles to the civil-rights enterprise and ask instead if our religious-accommodation practices are all that they should be. Are accommodations and exemptions being extended prudently but generously, in as many cases and to as many persons and entities as possible, in a sincere effort to welcome religious minorities, objectors, and dissenters as fully as we can into what Justice Harlan called “the dignity and glory of American citizenship”? What barriers exist to the promotion and achievement of civil-rights goals through religious accommodations and how might these barriers be overcome? Are civil-rights laws being designed and enforced in ways that guard against unintended or unjustified disregard for or sacrifices of the civil (and human) right to religious liberty?
Posted by Lawrence Solum on February 26, 2015 at 03:18 PM | Permalink
Feldman on Public Meaning Originalism
Stephen Matthew Feldman (University of Wyoming - College of Law) has posted Constitutional Interpretation and History: New Originalism or Eclecticism? (28 BYU Journal of Public Law 283, 2014) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
The goal of originalism has always been purity. Originalists claim that heir methods cleanse constitutional interpretation of politics, discretion, and indeterminacy. The key to attaining purity is history. Originalist methods supposedly discern in history a fixed constitutional meaning. Many originalists now claim that the most advanced method -- the approach that reveals the purest constitutional meaning -- is reasonable-person originalism. These new originalists ask the following question: When the Constitution was adopted, how would a hypothetical reasonable person have understood the text? This Article examines historical evidence from the early decades of nationhood to achieve two goals. First, it demonstrates that reasonable-person originalism is incoherent at its historical core. As an interpretive method, originalism cannot achieve its stated goal: to identify fixed and objective constitutional meanings. Contrary to originalist claims, historical research uncovers contingencies and contexts. More specifically, the evidence shows that reasonable-person originalim is historically unjustified. Early in the nation's history, neither lawyers nor laypersons would have suggested that constitutional interpretation should be based on the views of a hypothetical reasonable person. Second, the Article demonstrates that the historical evidence instead supports an alternative conception of constitutional interpretation. In the early decades, numerous Americans -- including framers, Supreme Court justices, and constitutional scholars -- used an eclectic or pluralist approach to constitutional interpretation. Depending on the case, an eclectic interpreter considered a shifting variety of factors, including original meaning, framers' intentions, practical consequences, and judicial precedents.
As Feldman recognizes, I do not invoke the reasonable person in my defense of public meaning originalism. The best understanding of "public meaning" does not require the invocation of a hypothetical "reasonable person." For example, in order to determine the public meaning of a word or phrase in 1787, we need to examine the relevant linguistic facts--patterns of usage at the time. The best tool for such an investigation is corpus linguistics, which allows the examination of many instances of usage. To the extent that the "reasonable person" could any role in such an investigation it would be purely as a heuristic (a way of thinking about the problem), and not as a normative standard.
For my most recent statement on originalism, see The Fixation Thesis. Posted by Lawrence Solum on February 26, 2015 at 11:15 AM | Permalink
Marmor on Randomized Judicial Review
Andrei Marmor (University of Southern California - Gould School of Law) has posted Randomized Judicial Review on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
One of the main arguments in support of constitutional judicial review points to the need to curtail the legal and political power of majority rule instantiated by democratic legislative institutions. This article aims to challenge the counter majoritarian argument for judicial review by showing that there is very little difference, at least morally speaking, between the current structure of constitutional judicial review in the US, and a system that would impose limits on majoritarian decisions procedures by an entirely randomized mechanism. The argument is based on a hypothetical model of a randomized system of judicial review, and proceeds to show that between the actual practices of judicial review in the US, and the hypothetical randomized model, there is not much to recommend the former. The current system of constitutional judicial review is fraught with many arbitrary elements, to an extent that makes the system only marginally better, if at all, compared with an overtly and blatantly randomized system.
Posted by Lawrence Solum on February 26, 2015 at 07:02 AM | Permalink
Binder on Homicide
Guyora Binder (State University of New York (SUNY), Buffalo) has posted Homicide (Chapter 31 in The Oxford Handbook of Criminal Law, Marcus Dubber and Tatjana Hörnle Eds.) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
This review of the development of homicide law in England and the United States shows that contemporary law reflects the sustained influence of a utilitarian reform movement. That movement organized legal thought around a conception of human action as risking or causing results, and a conception of the function of law as minimizing cost. Within this framework, homicide was conceptualized as the expected causation of death. Traditional conceptions of homicide emphasizing manifestly violent acts or antisocial motives came to be seen as archaic and confused. During this development, requirements of violence were first reinterpreted as evidentiary presumptions of culpability, and then criticized as formalistic legal fictions. In this way homicide evolved from a crime of killing to a crime of causing.
Posted by Lawrence Solum on February 26, 2015 at 03:45 AM | Permalink
Spece & Yokum on Strict Scrutiny
Roy G. Spece Jr. and David V. Yokum (University of Arizona - James E. Rogers College of Law and University of Arizona - James E. Rogers College of Law) have posted Scrutinizing Strict Scrutiny on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
Standards of review dominate personal liberties practice, and we must take them seriously if we heed calls to take (constitutional) lawyering seriously. Standards are poorly articulated and undertheorized. They must be properly fashioned by exploring and reconciling the logic and purpose of each of their components. We do this with strict scrutiny both to energize an important standard of review and model a proper approach. Our analysis is primarily within the context of higher education affirmative action cases because they typify the ambiguity of strict scrutiny; one such case – Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin -- could return to the Court next term. We derive a preferred articulation of strict scrutiny with six achievable but rights-protective requirements. Strict scrutiny is especially energized by separating its “ends question” about compellingness from its “means question” about interest advancement. Then state interests are compelling only if of a special nature, analogous to requiring fundamental rights to have special attributes irrespective of any intrusion. The preferred version of strict scrutiny is applied to Fisher, which involves a university program that considers race as one diversity factor combined with a top ten percent law. Our contrarian conclusion is that the law is unconstitutional, but that the Court should save the university program by severing it from the law. It is contrarian because most authorities - whether invoking an anti-subjugation, anti-classification, or antibalkanization perspective - accept supposedly racially neutral top ten percent laws. We invoke a nuanced conception of antibalkanization applicable in Fisher’s unique circumstances. Our conclusion is also based on a rich conception of academic freedom with two complementary aspects that place it at the foundation of freedom of speech. These aspects combine to protect universities from external impositions such as the Texas law, allowing them to accommodate diversity and demonstrated academic capacity.
Posted by Lawrence Solum on February 25, 2015 at 06:10 PM | Permalink
Justice Kagan's dissent in Yates v. United States is a more-or-less straightforward application of plain-meaning textualism to the federal evidence-tampering statutes, 18 U. S. C. §1519, which prohibits tampering with “any record, document, or tangible object” in an attempt to obstruct a federal investigation. The core of Justice Kagan's argument is that fish are "tangible objects."
As a matter of literal meaning (or, to get precise, conventional semantic meaning) this conclusion is very straightforward, fish are objects (because every physical thing is an object) and fish are tangible, because you can touch them (unlike information in electronic form). Here is the way that Justice Kagan made the argument:
While the plurality starts its analysis with §1519’s heading, see ante, at 10 (“We note first §1519’s caption”), I would begin with §1519’s text. When Congress has not supplied a definition, we generally give a statutory term its ordinary meaning. See, e.g., Schindler Elevator Corp. v. United States ex rel. Kirk, 563 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 5). As the plurality must acknowledge, the ordinary meaning of “tangible object” is “a discrete thing that possesses physical form.” Ante, at 7 (punctuation and citation omitted). A fish is, of course, a discrete thing that possesses physical form. See generally Dr. Seuss, One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish (1960). So the ordinary meaning of the term “tangible object” in §1519, as no one here disputes, covers fish (including too-small red grouper).
Another plain meaning textualist argument is before the court this term. In King v. Burwell, the Supreme Court will address the question whether the language of 26 U.S.C. § 36B—which limits federal subsidies to health-insurance exchanges “established by the State under section 1311”--authorizes subsidies to exchanges established by the Department of Health and Human Services.
And superficially, Justice Kagan's reasoning in Yates suggests that the answer to the question is "no." The Department of Health and Human Services is not a State. Alabama is a state, Kentucky is a state, and California is a state. But neither the federal government nor the departments thereof constitute a state. Viola!
So why would Justice Kagan, clearly among the most canny and intelligent jurists ever to serve as a Justice of the Supreme Court, take a position that would seem to undermine the Obama administration's litigation position in King v. Burwell. If asked to bet now on how Kagan will vote, I think there would be very few takers for a bet that she will author or join an opinion that holds that the subsidies for federal exchanges are not authorized by the statute.
So what is Kagan up to? Here is one clue. A group of law professors, including William Eskridge, considered by many to be the leading academic expert on statutory interpretation, are the amici on a brief that argues that the plain meaning of the statute supports the administration position. Here is the way the brief summarizes the argument:
But this is not, as Petitioners suggest, a case about textualism vs. purposivism. It is a case about good textual analysis vs. bad textual analysis. Textualism does not require courts to read statutory provisions in a vacuum. To the contrary, it is a “fundamental canon of statutory construction that the words of a statute must be read in their context and with a view to their place in the overall statutory scheme.” FDA v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., 529 U.S. 120, 133 (2000) (internal quotation marks omitted). By focusing exclusively on Section 36B’s seven words in isolation, Petitioners violate textualism’s core tenets and adopt an interpretation that would nullify the Act as a whole.
And does Kagan have anything to say about the role of context in Yates. Well, it turns out that she does:
That is not necessarily the end of the matter; I agree with the plurality (really, who does not?) that context matters in interpreting statutes. We do not “construe the meaning of statutory terms in a vacuum.” Tyler v. Cain, 533 U. S. 656, 662 (2001). Rather, we interpret particular words “in their context and with a view to their place in the overall statutory scheme.”
And here is the key sentence:
And sometimes that means, as the plurality says, that the dictionary definition of a disputed term cannot control. And now back to the Eskridge brief:
But textualism is not hyperliteralism, and textualists do not read the words of a statute in a vacuum. To the contrary, “reasonable statutory interpretation must account for both ‘the specific context in which . . . language is used’ and ‘the broader context of the statute as a whole.’”
And here is another passage from the brief:
[T]extualists freely acknowledge that, “[i]n textual interpretation, context is everything.” Scalia, A MATTER OF INTERPRETATION 37 (emphasis added). “Textualism is not literalism. Not even the most committed textualist would claim that statutory texts are inherently ‘plain on their face.’” John F. Manning, Textualism as a Nondelegation Doctrine, 97 COL. L. REV. 673, 696 (1997). Rather, “modern textualists understand that the meaning of statutory language (like all language) depends wholly on context.” Manning, What Divides Textualists from Purposivists?, 106 COL. L. REV. at 75.
Just as the Eskridge brief cites Scalia, Kagan's Yates dissent, joined by Scalia, cites Scalia three times, with an emphasis on the idea that the plain meaning of a text depends on context.
One more passage from Kagan in Yates:
But whatever the wisdom or folly of §1519, this Court does not get to rewrite the law. “Resolution of the pros and cons of whether a statute should sweep broadly or narrowly is for Congress.” Rodgers, 466 U. S., at 484. If judges disagree with Congress’s choice, we are perfectly entitled to say so—in lectures, in law review articles, and even in dicta. But we are not entitled to replace the statute Congress enacted with an alternative of our own design.
A ringing endorsement of textualism in general and Scalia approach to statutory interpretation in particular!
Is Justice Kagan setting out the premises for an self-avowedly textualist opinion in King v. Burwell that sides with the administration on the ground that the plain meaning of the statute actually supports the administration, because this is one of those cases where the context of the statute as a whole leads to the conclusion that the "the dictionary definition of a disputed term cannot control"? Does Justice Kagan hold out the hope that a plain meaning opinion might peel off one the "conservative" justices? If so, it would be one of the three who joined her opinion in Yates--Kennedy, Scalia, or Thomas.
What is Justice Kagan up to? Time will tell.
Posted by Lawrence Solum on February 25, 2015 at 03:27 PM | Permalink
Young on State Identity, Political Culture, and Federalism
Ernest A. Young (Duke University School of Law) has posted The Volk of New Jersey? State Identity, Distinctiveness, and Political Culture in the American Federal System on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
The legal literature on federalism has long taken for granted that Americans no longer meaningfully identify with, or feel strong loyalties to, their states. This assumption has led some scholars to reject federalism altogether; others argue that federalism must be reoriented to serve national values. But the issue of identity and loyalty sweeps far more broadly, implicating debates about the political safeguards of federalism, the ability of states to check national power, and the likelihood that states will produce policy innovations or good opportunities for citizen participation in government. The ultimate question is whether American federalism lacks the cultural and psychological support to sustain itself. This article is the first comprehensive effort to assess whether contemporary American states are meaningfully distinctive from one another and whether contemporary Americans identify with their states. The death of state identity is an empirical claim, but no proponent of that claim has ever marshalled empirical evidence to support it. It is also a claim unique to legal scholarship: Scholars in political science, history, economics, cultural psychology, and other disciplines have developed extensive literatures on state political cultures. This article surveys those literatures and collects evidence on the states’ geographic, demographic, and policy diversity, states’ impact on political preferences, relative trust in state and federal institutions, state’s distinct historical narratives, and the impact of individual mobility among the states. I conclude that reports of the death of state identity are greatly exaggerated—and that has important implications for American federalism.
An important and deep paper by one of our most influential constitutional scholars. Highly recommended. Download it while its hot!
Posted by Lawrence Solum on February 25, 2015 at 12:10 PM | Permalink
Citron on Stalking Apps
Danielle Keats Citron (University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law) has posted Spying Inc. (Washington and Lee Law Review, Vol. 72, No. 3, 2015) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
The latest spying craze is the “stalking app.” Once installed on someone’s cell phone, the stalking app provides continuous access to the person’s calls, texts, snap chats, photos, calendar updates, and movements. Domestic abusers and stalkers frequently turn to stalking apps because they are undetectable even to sophisticated phone owners. Business is booming for stalking app providers, even though their entire enterprise is arguably illegal. Federal and state wiretapping laws ban the manufacture, sale, or advertisement of devices knowing their design makes them primarily useful for the surreptitious interception of electronic communications. But those laws are rarely, if ever, enforced. Existing law may be too restrictive to make a real difference. Reform is needed to combat the growth of stalking apps and their ilk. Criminal penalties should be extended to those involved in the sale of devices designed to secretly intercept communications and location data. The primarily useful standard covers too small a swath of spying devices for the law to serve as a meaningful deterrent. Additional digital forensic expertise and training are essential at the state and local level to ensure law’s enforcement. State Attorneys Generals should also follow the FTC’s lead in bringing civil enforcement actions against spyware providers. The private sector could reinforce these efforts by offering devices that can prevent the installation of spyware.
Posted by Lawrence Solum on February 25, 2015 at 08:12 AM | Permalink
Binder on Kamm on Inviolable Status
Guyora Binder (State University of New York (SUNY), Buffalo, SUNY Buffalo Law School) has posted The Coptown Case: Inviolable Status and Desert (Inherent and Instrumental Values, Excursions in Value Inquiry, G. John M. Abbarno, ed. University Press of America, 2015) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
Francis Kamm has proposed a concept of inviolable status as a reason to value goods like life or deserved punishment that precludes maximizing trade-offs, but without resorting to agent relative constraints. According to this idea, one has an inviolable status in so far as one holds an entitlement that cannot be violated in order minimize violations of that entitlement. By sacrificing one person’s entitlement to protect the entitlements of others, one extinguishes the inviolable status of all. This concept is offered to explain deontological ethics as a practice of respecting the equal dignity of others. By presenting a series of hypothetical problems about the imposition of deserved punishment in the face of uncertainty, this paper denies that the deontologist can avoid trade-offs. In addition, the paper denies that inviolability offers any dignitary advantage over having one’s welfare counted in the utilitarian calculus.
Posted by Lawrence Solum on February 25, 2015 at 07:40 AM | Permalink
Jackson & Gau on Trust & Legitimacy in Public Attitudes Towards Legal Authority
Jonathan Jackson and Jacinta Gau (London School of Economics & Political Science - Department of Methodology and University of Central Florida - College of Health and Public Affairs) have posted Carving Up Concepts? Differentiating between Trust and Legitimacy in Public Attitudes Towards Legal Authority on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
In recent years, scholars of criminal justice and criminology have brought legitimacy to the forefront of academic and policy discussion. The focus has been primarily – though not exclusively – on legitimacy within policing, with the most common approach framing legitimacy as a self-regulatory scheme that can enhance widespread voluntary compliance with the law and cooperation with legal authorities. In the most influential definition, institutional trust is assumed to be an integral element of legitimacy (Tyler, 2006a, 2006b). For an individual to find the police to be legitimate, for instance, she must feel that it is her positive duty to obey the instructions of police officers (she grants the police the rightful authority to dictate appropriate behavior), but she must also believe that police officers exercise their power appropriately. In this chapter we argue that the nature, measurement and motivating force of trust and legitimacy is in need of further explication. Considering these two concepts in a context of a type of authority that is both coercive and consent-based in nature, we make the case that legitimacy is (a) the belief that an institution exhibits properties that justify its power and (b) a duty to obey that emerges out of this sense of appropriateness; that trust is about positive expectations about valued behavior from institutional officials; and that legitimacy and institutional trust overlap if one assumes that people judge the appropriateness of the police as an institution on the basis of the appropriateness of officers' use of power. Our discussion will, we hope, be of broad theoretical and policy interest.
Posted by Lawrence Solum on February 25, 2015 at 03:55 AM | Permalink
Staihar on Proportionality & Punishment
Jim Staihar (University of Maryland - Robert H. Smith School of Business) has posted Proportionality and Punishment (Iowa Law Review, Vol. 100, No. 3, 2015) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
In the literature on the justification of punishment, unfair advantage theories of punitive desert are prevalent. Several variants have been defended. Although they differ in details, each assumes that a criminal would obtain some unfair advantage or, in other words, an illicit benefit unless he were punished. Criminals deserve to be punished because punishing them is necessary to remove this illicit benefit. In spite of the efforts to defend this sort of theory, none proposed so far in the literature provides a plausible account of the proportionality of punitive desert. This Essay defends a novel unfair advantage theory of punitive desert that is the first to account plausibly for the proportionality of punitive desert. Because this theory explains why and how much criminals deserve to be punished, it should play an important deontological role in limiting the severity of punishments that the state is morally permitted to impose on offenders.
Posted by Lawrence Solum on February 24, 2015 at 11:34 PM | Permalink
Feldman on Beard & the Roberts Court
Stephen Matthew Feldman (University of Wyoming - College of Law) has posted The Interpretation of Constitutional History, or Charles Beard Becomes a Fortuneteller (with an Emphasis on Free Expression) (29 Const. Commentary 323, 2014) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
In "An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States", Charles A. Beard argued that the framers advocated for and defended the Constitution because of their personal economic interest, that the pursuit of common good was not so much a motive as a veneer. The current historical consensus is that Beard's thrust is incorrect. In this essay, I largely agree with this assessment, but his economic approach can add an important element to the discussion of constitutional history. And though his economic depiction does not closely fit the framing of the Constitution, it uncannily fits the Roberts Court's current interpretation of our constitutional order.
Posted by Lawrence Solum on February 24, 2015 at 07:55 PM | Permalink
Green on the Incorporation Theory of the Privileges & Immunities Clause
Christopher R. Green (University of Mississippi - School of Law) has posted Incorporation, Total Incorporation, and Nothing But Incorporation? on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
This Essay criticizes the view that the Fourteenth Amendment’s “privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States” cover only rights enumerated elsewhere in the Constitution, such as in the Bill of Rights, Article I section 9, or in the Comity Clause of Article IV. The sole function of the Privileges or Immunities Clause on this view is to “incorporate” other constitutional rights by reference. Kurt Lash’s The Fourteenth Amendment and the Privileges and Immunities of American Citizenship (2014) defends a version of such a view. This Essay raises six problems for the enumerated-rights-only view and Lash’s version of it: (1) Rights included elsewhere in the federal constitution were tailored to problems very different from Reconstruction. Article I section 9 and especially the Bill of Rights only supplemented the Framers’ chief means of protecting liberty: limited federal power. The spirit of 1868 was unlike that of 1791. Lash’s distinctive approach to this relationship — fusing 1868 and 1791 via Bill of Rights republication — is particularly problematic. (2) “Abridge” in the Fourteenth Amendment fits only objects susceptible of shortening through state action, which federally-enumerated rights are not. (3) Lash’s sharp textual distinction between the “privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states” and the “privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States” leaves unaddressed or inadequately explained (a) the possibility that “in the several states” in Article IV is adverbial rather than adjectival, and so not part of the description of the covered privileges at all, but rather the manner of their enjoyment, i.e., in the other-states context of interstate comity, (b) John Bingham’s use of Fourteenth Amendment language in restating Article IV in January 1867, and (c) Jacob Howard’s 1869 proof of a Fourteenth Amendment suffrage exclusion from Article IV’s corresponding exclusion. (4) The enumerated-rights-only view must cast aside a great quantity of evidence that the rights of citizens of the United States, both in the Fourteenth Amendment and in precursors like the Louisiana Cession of 1803, were understood in terms of equality among similarly-situated citizens of the United States. This interpretation is defended at much greater length in my own forthcoming book, Equal Citizenship, Civil Rights and the Constitution: The Original Sense of the Privileges or Immunities Clause (2015), but Lash’s own investigation acknowledges much such evidence. The paradigm of such equal citizenship was the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which required equality of many constitutionally-unenumerated rights even when such citizens remained in their home states. (5) The campaign of 1866 clearly identified rights like the freedom of speech as privileges of citizens of the United States. However, this data point can fall under several different covering explanations, including the equality-based explanation that the South should respect rights generally accorded to citizens of the United States elsewhere. The enumerated-rights-only explanation is, moreover, inconsistent with two other extremely prominent features of the 1866 debate: Democrats’ claims that the Privileges or Immunities Clause (a) covered voting rights, and (b) was too open-ended and indefinite. Republicans never deployed the enumerated-rights-only interpretation in response. They referred not to the lack of a constitutionally-enumerated right to vote, but to the counterexamples of women and children, who were citizens yet non-voters. (6) The enumerated-rights-only interpretation swaps heroes and villains among subsequent interpreters. Opponents of civil rights and school integration like Senator Allen Thurman and the Ohio Supreme Court in State ex rel. Garnes v. McCann pressed the enumerated-rights-only interpretation of the Privileges or Immunities Clause in 1872. The Republicans who enacted the Fourteenth Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1875, however — from the radical Charles Sumner to the relatively conservative John Sherman, with dozens of very articulate Republicans in between — consistently opposed this view of the Privileges or Immunities Clause.
Posted by Lawrence Solum on February 24, 2015 at 03:01 PM | Permalink
Bernstein & Somin on Libertarian Constitutionalism
David Bernstein and Ilya Somin (George Mason University School of Law and George Mason University School of Law) have posted The Mainstreaming of Libertarian Constitutionalism (Law and Contemporary Problems, Vol. 77, No. 4, pp. 43-70, 2014 (Part of the Symposium on “Law and Neoliberalism”)) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
Libertarian constitutional thought is a distinctly minority position among scholars and jurists, one that at first glance has little connection with either modern Supreme Court jurisprudence or the liberalism that remains dominant in the legal academy. However, libertarian ideas have more in common with mainstream constitutional thought than at first meets the eye. They have also had greater influence on it. This article explores the connections between mainstream and libertarian constitutional thought in recent decades. On a number of important issues, modern Supreme Court doctrine and liberal constitutional thought has been significantly influenced by pre-New Deal libertarian ideas, even if the influence is often unconscious or unacknowledged. This is particularly true on issues of equal protection doctrine and modern “substantive” due process as it pertains to “noneconomic” rights. Here, both the Supreme Court and much of the mainstream academic left have repudiated early twentieth century Progressivism, which advocated across-the-board judicial deference to legislatures. They have also rejected efforts to eliminate common law and free market “baselines” for constitutional rights. The gap between libertarian and mainstream constitutional thought is much greater on issues of federalism and property rights. Here too, however, recent decades have seen significant convergence. Over the last thirty years, the Supreme Court has begun to take federalism and property rights more seriously, and the idea that they should get strong judicial protection has attained greater intellectual respectability. Moreover, much of libertarian constitutional thought merely seeks to apply to federalism, property rights, and economic liberties, the same principles that mainstream jurists and legal scholars have applied in other areas, most notably “noneconomic” constitutional rights and separation of powers.
Posted by Lawrence Solum on February 24, 2015 at 11:15 AM | Permalink
Ruhl & Katz on Legal Complexity
J. B. Ruhl and Daniel Martin Katz (Vanderbilt University - Law School and Michigan State University - College of Law) have posted Measuring, Monitoring, and Managing Legal Complexity (Iowa Law Review, Vol. 100, Forthcoming) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
The American legal system is often accused of being “too complex.” For example, most Americans believe the Tax Code is too complex. But what does that mean, and how would one prove the Tax Code is too complex? The descriptive claim that an element of law is complex, and the normative claim that it is too complex, should be empirically testable hypotheses, yet in fact very little is known about how to measure legal complexity, much less to monitor and manage it. Legal scholars have begun to employ the science of complex adaptive systems, also known as complexity science, to probe these kinds of descriptive and normative questions about the legal system. This body of work has focused primarily on developing theories of legal complexity and positing reasons for, and ways of, managing it. Legal scholars thus have skipped the hard part — developing quantitative metrics and methods for measuring and monitoring law’s complexity. But the theory of legal complexity will remain stuck in theory until it moves to the empirical phase of study, and thinking about ways of managing legal complexity is pointless if there is no yardstick for deciding how complex the law should be. In short, the theory of legal complexity cannot be put to work without more robust empirical tools for identifying and keeping track of complexity in legal systems. This Article explores legal complexity at a depth not previously undertaken in legal scholarship. Part I orients the discussion by briefly reviewing the scholarship using complexity science to develop descriptive, prescriptive, and ethical theories of legal complexity. Parts II through IV then shift to the empirical front, identifying potentially useful metrics and methods for studying legal complexity. Part II draws from complexity science to develop methods that have or might be applied to measure different features of legal complexity, including metrics for agents, trees, networks, computation, feedback, and emergence. Part III proposes methods for monitoring legal complexity over time, in particular by conceptualizing what we call Legal Maps — a multi-layered, active representation of the legal system network at work. Part IV concludes with a preliminary examination of how the measurement and monitoring techniques could inform interventions designed to manage legal complexity through use of currently available machine learning and user interface design technologies.
Posted by Lawrence Solum on February 24, 2015 at 07:55 AM | Permalink
Perez & Barak-Erez on the Global Administrative State
Oren Perez and Daphne Barak-Erez (Professor, Bar-Ilan University - Faculty of Law and Tel Aviv University - Buchmann Faculty of Law) have posted The Administrative State Goes Global (Forthcoming in Michael A. Helfand ed. ‘Negotiating State and Non-state Law: The Challenges of Global and Local Legal Pluralism’ (Cambridge University Press, 2015)) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
The emergence of global norms of administrative law reshapes the administrative state. The integration with the global arena requires the state to forgo some of its regulatory powers. The article maps the various mechanisms through which transnational regulatory processes intervene in the local realm, reshaping the contours of domestic administrative law (part I). To analyze these processes we develop an analytical schema that captures the distinct impacts of global administrative law on the domestic level. This schema distinguishes between three forms of influence: the substitution of domestic administrative discretion by global standards, the emergence of universal standards of administrative due process, and the globally inspired transference of enforcement responsibilities. We focus in particular on the emergence of universal standards of the administrative process. Here, we address the fact that beyond the particular norms generated by global bodies, transnational norm-production processes also establish basic standards of procedural and institutional integrity, which together form an emerging body of universal administrative law. By standards of procedural and institutional integrity we refer to those rules that regulate the procedure and structure through which decisions are being made. These include both due-process rules, which focus on the fairness of the administrative process, and perfecting rules, which seek to improve the decision outcome in terms of some overarching principle. We adopt a pluralistic approach by highlighting the diverse sources and paths through which global law influences the domestic realm. In part II of the article we proceed to examine the normative challenges posed by these processes of transnational rule making. We criticize the hidden ideological agenda of this transnational legal body, highlighting especially its propensity to neo-liberal, capitalist ideas. This bias undermines any attempt to ground the legitimacy of global administrative law on some universal rationality. Next we discuss the problematic posed by the fragmented accountability regimes that characterize today’s global legal system. This fragmentation calls into question the legitimacy of global administrative law by exposing the lack of efficient control mechanisms on both the domestic level and the global level. Finally, we examine the democratic challenge posed by the expanding influence of universal administrative law norms. These reflections question the legitimacy of the new body of globalized administrative law and point to the need to adapt our democratic practices to this new reality. In this context our analysis departs from the global constitutionalism literature by focusing on the potential of administrative law for democratic innovativeness.
Posted by Lawrence Solum on February 24, 2015 at 03:10 AM | Permalink
Oldfather on Adjudication in Aesthetic Sports & Law
Chad M. Oldfather (Marquette University - Law School) has posted Of Umpires, Judges, and Metaphors: Adjudication in Aesthetic Sports and Its Implications for Law on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
In his confirmation hearings, Chief Justice Roberts famously described his vision of the judicial role as analogous to that of an umpire. “Judges are like umpires,” he said. “Umpires don’t make the rules; they apply them.” The Chief Justice was, of course, hardly the first to draw this analogy, and he will certainly not be the last. The comparison is natural, for both roles require their occupant to “make the call,” or, more formally, to serve as the presumptively final adjudicator of the rights of competing parties. Yet while the “judge as umpire” seems to have naturally captured the imagination of judges, commentators, and laypersons alike, it has also come in for its share of critique, with critics pointing out the various ways in which the comparison is inapt. Perhaps the most frequently mentioned distinction is that judges, unlike umpires, and contrary to the Chief Justice’s suggestion, actually do have to role to play in the creation and refinement of the rules they must apply. Thus, commentators have proposed substitute analogies, including the “justice as commissioner” and “justice as color commentator.” This essay’s goal is not to add to these critiques, but rather to suggest that there is a better analogy — the somewhat less euphonious notion of the “judge as judge.” The best sporting analogy to judges in law may be to their namesakes in sport — the judges who provide the authoritative scoring in what philosophers of sport call “aesthetic sports,” such as gymnastics and figure skating. Judges in aesthetic sports, like their counterparts in law, derive a substantial portion of their authority and legitimacy from the expertise they bring to the position. Both play a significant role in shaping the content of the governing standards and draw, to a considerable degree, on their “tacit knowledge” in shaping and applying the rules. At the same time, however, their reliance on this sort of expertise — which necessarily entails the application of criteria unavailable or at least opaque to the lay observer or even the less expert participant — creates an opening for skepticism. Observers will often be unable to determine for themselves whether judges of either sort have accurately assessed the merits, and their efforts to do so will often lead them to assessments that differ from the judges, likely because the lay observer will not have accounted for all the factors that an expert judge considers. Because these observers cannot access all the factors driving the experts’ decisions and, thus, cannot fully understand them, they can easily conclude that those decisions are being driven by improper factors. Of course, judges in aesthetic sports have been accused, and occasionally found to be guilty, of corruption, as well as less pernicious forms of bias. The same is true of judges in law. Indeed, given the enormous cognitive demands associated with judging aesthetic sports, it is unsurprising that some extraneous factors influence officials’ determinations. That, too, can be said about judging in law.
Posted by Lawrence Solum on February 23, 2015 at 11:52 PM | Permalink
Ellis on Stateless Law
Jaye Ellis (McGill University - Faculty of Law) has posted Stateless Law: From Legitimacy to Validity on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
Posted by Lawrence Solum on February 23, 2015 at 06:49 PM | Permalink
Gerken on the Case Against a Constitutional Amendment for a Right to Vote
Heather Gerken (Yale University - Law School) has posted The Right to Vote: Is the Amendment Game Worth the Candle? (William & Mary Bill of Rights, Vol. 23, No. 1, 2015) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
Posted by Lawrence Solum on February 23, 2015 at 02:43 PM | Permalink
Rebecca E. Zietlow (University of Toledo College of Law) has posted The Other Citizenship Clause (“THE GREATEST AND THE GRANDEST ACT:” THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1866 FROM RECONSTRUCTION TO TODAY, Christian Samito, Ed. (Southern Illinois University Press), Forthcoming) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
The first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment declares that “all persons born or naturalized within the United States . . . are citizens of the United States.” This clause defined the criteria for United States citizenship and established birthright citizenship as a principle of constitutional law. Yet two years before the Fourteenth Amendment became law, the Reconstruction Congress had already declared “All persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed . . . to be citizens of the United States.” This other Citizenship Clause is the preamble to the 1866 Civil Rights Act. This statutory clause directly contravenes the United States Supreme Court’s ruling in Dred Scott v. Sanford that freed slaves could not be citizens. Yet the 1866 Act was based on Congress’ power to enforce the Thirteenth Amendment, and before the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause was ratified. How could the members of the Reconstruction Congress have believed that they had the power to enact the other Citizenship Clause? The answer to this question has implications for the original meaning of the Thirteenth Amendment and its enforcement clause. Scholars have generally linked citizenship rights to the Fourteenth Amendment, and not the Thirteenth. However, the other Citizenship Clause is evidence that either the Thirteenth Amendment established freed slaves as United States citizens, or the Amendment’s enforcement clause empowered Congress to overturn the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Constitution in Dred Scott on its own. The 1866 Civil Rights Act was based in Congress’ new power to enforce the Thirteenth Amendment pursuant to its enforcement clause, Section Two. Thus, the 1866 Civil Rights Act provides a glimpse of those fundamental rights which the members of the Reconstruction Congress believed to be inherent in freedom, and furthers our understanding of the original meaning of the Thirteenth Amendment and its enforcement clause. The Act’s citizenship clause is evidence that many members of the Reconstruction Congress believed that free Blacks were United States citizens with fundamental rights. In their view, the Thirteenth Amendment not only ended slavery, but recognized the citizenship rights of freed slaves. For those members of Congress who did not equate freedom with citizenship, the other Citizenship Clause reflects the scope of their power to enforce the Thirteenth Amendment with “appropriate” legislation. Did they believe that the Amendment empowered them to overturn Dred Scott with a statute? If so, they thought that their enforcement power was broad indeed.
Posted by Lawrence Solum on February 23, 2015 at 11:45 AM | Permalink
Backer on Corporate Social Responsibility in Weak Governance Zones
Larry Catá Backer (Pennsylvania State University - Dickinson School of Law) has posted Corporate Social Responsibility in Weak Governance Zones on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
This paper considers the evolution of governance standards for determining the extent of an enterprises’ responsibilities to protect human rights in weak governance zones. The paper briefly describes the development of the standard and then evaluates the standard as it has been developed and framed within the U.N. Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights and in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises (OECD Guidelines). Particular attention will be paid to the Risk Awareness Tool for Multinational Enterprises which was developed to complement the OECD Guidelines following the call made by 2005 G8 Summit for the development of OECD guidance. The paper suggests the ways that CSR has been transformed, in some respects, to a mandate for assuming governance responsibilities in those states unable ort unwilling to institute systems of law that conform to international consensus standards on human rights. It also explores the challenges of the approaches of both efforts. Both acknowledge the autonomy of enterprises as directly responsible for the operationalization of international norms wherever they operate. Yet both also open the door to extraterritorial application of law. The same framework that advances the governance autonomy of enterprises also envisions them as the vehicles through which home states may project national power within host states with weak governance regimes. And this tension built into both frameworks, a tension that goes to the dual character of enterprises as both autonomous governance actors and as creatures of the states in which they are domiciled, that mark the potential and the challenge to the internationalization of regimes of CSR.
Posted by Lawrence Solum on February 23, 2015 at 07:58 AM | Permalink
Sisk & Heise on an Empirical Study on Advocacy in Federal Appeals
Gregory C. Sisk and Michael Heise (University of St. Thomas School of Law (Minnesota) and Cornell Law School) have posted How Long Should Your Fishing Pole Be? An Empirical Study of Advocacy in Federal Appeals on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
The warp and woof of American law is shaped by the appellate courts, which lay down precedents regarding constitutional provisions, statutory texts, and common-law doctrines. While the product of the appellate courts is regularly the subject of empirical study, less attention has been given to the sources and methods of appellate advocacy. Given the central role of written briefs in the process, we should examine seriously the frequent complaint by appellate judges that briefs are too long and that prolixity weakens persuasive power. In a study of civil appeals in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, we discover that, for appellants, briefs of greater length are strongly correlated with success on appeal. For the party challenging an adverse decision below, persuasive completeness may be more important than condensed succinctness. The underlying cause of both greater appellant success and accompanying longer briefs may lie in the typically complex nature of the reversible civil appeal. In light of our findings, current proposals to reduce the limits on number of words in federal appellate briefs may cut more sharply against appellants. Experienced appellate advocates submit that familiarity with appellate courts, the honed ability to craft the right arguments with the appropriate style in briefing, and expertise in navigating the appellate system provide superior legal representation to clients. Our study lends support to this claim. We found a positive correlation between success and experience for lawyers representing appellees, thus warranting further study of lawyer specialization.
Posted by Lawrence Solum on February 23, 2015 at 03:22 AM | Permalink
(Last revised on February 22, 2015.)
Posted by Lawrence Solum on February 22, 2015 at 02:15 PM | Permalink
Legal Theory Bookworm: "The Assault on International Law" by Ohlin
The Legal Theory Bookworm recommends The Assault on International Law by Jens David Ohlin. Here is a description:
International law presents a conceptual riddle. Why comply with it when there is no world government to enforce it? The United States has a long history of skepticism towards international law, but 9/11 ushered in a particularly virulent phase of American exceptionalism, as the US drifted away from international institutions and conventions. Although American politicians and their legal advisors are often the public face of this attack, the root of this movement is a coordinated and deliberate attack by law professors hostile to its philosophical foundations, including Eric Posner, Jack Goldsmith, Adrian Vermeule, and John Yoo. In a series of influential writings, they have claimed that since states are motivated primarily by self-interest, compliance with international law is nothing more than high-minded talk. These abstract arguments provide a foundation for dangerous legal conclusions: that international law is largely irrelevant to determining how and when terrorists can be captured or killed; that the US President alone should be directing the War on Terror without significant input from Congress or the judiciary; that US courts should not hear lawsuits alleging violations of international law; and that the US should block any international criminal court with jurisdiction over Americans. These polemical accounts have ultimately triggered America's pernicious withdrawal from international cooperation. In The Assault on International Law, Jens David Ohlin exposes the mistaken assumptions of these "New Realists," in particular their impoverished utilization of rational choice theory. In contrast, he provides an alternate vision of international law based on an innovative theory of human rationality. According to Ohlin, rationality requires that agents follow through on their plans and commitments even when faced with opportunities for defection, as long as the original plan was beneficial for the agent. Seen in the light of this planning theory of rational agency, international law is the product of nation-states cooperating to escape a brutish State of Nature-a result that is not only legally binding but also in each state's self-interest.
Posted by Lawrence Solum on February 21, 2015 at 11:45 AM | Permalink
Download of the Week: "Contract as Empowerment" by Kar
Robin Bradley Kar (University of Illinois College of Law) has posted Contract as Empowerment on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
This Article offers a novel interpretation of contract law, which I call “Contract as Empowerment”. On this view, contract law is neither a mere mechanism to promote efficiency nor a mere reflection of any familiar moral norm—such as norms of promise keeping, property, or corrective justice. Contract law is instead a mechanism of empowerment: it empowers people to use legally enforceable promises as tools to influence other people’s actions and thereby meet a broad range of human needs and interests. It also empowers people in a special way, which reflects a moral ideal of equal respect for persons. This fact explains why contract law can produce genuine legal obligations and is not just a system of coercion. The purpose of this Article is to introduce contract as empowerment and argue that it reflects the best general interpretation of contract. Contract as empowerment is an “interpretive” theory in the sense that it is simultaneously descriptive, explaining what contract law is, and normative, explaining what contract law should be. To support contract as empowerment’s interpretive credentials, I identify a core set of doctrines and puzzles that are particularly well suited to testing competing interpretations of contract. I argue that contract as empowerment is uniquely capable of harmonizing this entire constellation of doctrines while explaining the legally obligating force of contracts. Along the way, contract as empowerment offers (1) a more penetrating account of contractual remedies than exists in the current literature; (2) a more compelling account of the consideration requirement and its standard exceptions; and (3) a concrete framework to determine the appropriate role of certain doctrines—like unconscionability—that appear to limit freedom of contract. Contract as empowerment also explains the main differences between claims for breach of contract, promissory estoppel, restitution and quasi-contract. It explains key doctrines and answers key puzzles at each basic stage of contract analysis: formation, interpretation and construction, performance and breach, the standard defenses and the standard remedies. The whole of this explanation is, moreover, greater than the sum of its parts. Because of its harmonizing power, contract as empowerment demonstrates how a broad range of seemingly incompatible surface values in modern contract law can work together—each serving its own distinctive but partial role—to serve a more fundamental principle distinctive to contract. These surface values include the values of fidelity, autonomy, liberty, efficiency, fairness, trust, reliance and assurance. Although many people think that contract law must involve trade offs between these values, contract as empowerment suggests that tensions between them are not always real. So long as the complex system of rules that governs contracts is fashioned in the right way, these doctrines can work together to serve a deeper and normatively satisfying principle distinctive to contract. This framework can therefore be used to guide legal reform and identify places where market regulation is warranted by the principles of contract in many different contexts of exchange—from those involving consumer goods to labor, finance, credit, landlord-tenant, home mortgages and many others. There is a further implication of contract as empowerment. Contract as empowerment absorbs many economic insights but gives them a fundamentally different interpretation. It suggests that contracting and modern market activities are not simply spheres where self-interest runs wild. They are instead spheres of moral interaction, which can engage people’s natural sense of obligation and generate genuine legal obligations—at least so long as contract law is simultaneously personally empowering and reflective of a moral ideal of equal respect for persons. An important moral fabric has, in other words, been running through contract law and many forms of modern economic activity for some time now. This fabric has been obscured by classical economic interpretations but cannot be ignored in any true social science of the phenomena. Understanding this moral fabric can help people lead better and more integrated lives, as both moral and economic agents. We must, however, learn to strengthen this fabric and protect it from growing tear.
Posted by Lawrence Solum on February 21, 2015 at 11:15 AM | Permalink
Holm on Hayek's Critique of Legislation
Cyril Holm (Uppsala University, Faculty of Law, Students) has posted F. A. Hayek's Critique of Legislation on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
The dissertation concerns F. A. Hayek’s (1899–1992) critique of legislation. The purpose of the investigation is to clarify and assess that critique. I argue that there is in Hayek’s work a critique of legislation that is distinct from his well-known critique of social planning. Further that the main claim of this critique is what I refer to as Hayek’s legislation tenet, namely that legislation that aims to achieve specific aggregate results in complex orders of society will decrease the welfare level. The legislation tenet gains support; (i) from the welfare claim – according to which there is a positive correlation between the utilization of knowledge and the welfare level in society; (ii) from the dispersal of knowledge thesis – according to which the total knowledge of society is dispersed and not available to any one agency; and (iii) from the cultural evolution thesis – according to which evolutionary rules are more favorable to the utilization of knowledge in social cooperation than are legislative rules. More specifically, I argue that these form two lines of argument in support of the legislation tenet. One line of argument is based on the conjunction of the welfare claim and the dispersal of knowledge thesis. I argue that this line of argument is true. The other line of argument is based on the conjunction of the welfare claim and the cultural evolution thesis. I argue that this line of argument is false, mainly because the empirical work of political scientist Elinor Ostrom refutes it. Because the two lines of argument support the legislation tenet independently of each other, I argue that Hayek’s critique of legislation is true. In this dissertation, I further develop a legislative policy tool as based on the welfare claim and Hayek’s conception of coercion. I also consider Hayek’s idea that rules and law are instrumental in forging rational individual action and rational social orders, and turn to review this idea in light of the work of experimental economist Vernon Smith and economic historian Avner Greif. I find that Smith and Greif support this idea of Hayek’s, and I conjecture that it contributes to our understanding of Adam Smith’s notion of the invisible hand: It is rules – not an invisible hand – that prompt subjects to align individual and aggregate rationality in social interaction. Finally, I argue that Hayek’s critique is essentially utilitarian, as it is concerned with the negative welfare consequences of certain forms of legislation. And although it may appear that the dispersal of knowledge thesis will undermine the possibility of carrying out the utilitarian calculus, due to the lack of knowledge of the consequences of one’s actions – and therefore undermine the legislation tenet itself – I argue that the distinction between utilitarianism conceived as a method of deliberation and utilitarianism conceived as a criterion of correctness may be used to save Hayek’s critique from this objection.
Posted by Lawrence Solum on February 20, 2015 at 11:39 PM | Permalink
Zambrano on Transnational Discovery & Comity
Diego Alberto Zambrano (Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP) has posted A Comity of Errors: The Rise, Fall and Return of International Comity in Transnational Discovery (Berkeley Journal of International Law (BJIL), Vol. 34, (2015)) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
No feature of U.S. law has rankled foreign nations more than the “legal imperialism” of discovery requests for information located abroad to be used in U.S. litigation or investigations. China, France, Germany and Switzerland have threatened the stability of bilateral relations with the United States due to overbroad transnational discovery requests. For three decades, when faced with concerns of international comity in the discovery context, U.S. courts ruled overwhelmingly in favor of discovery through the Federal Rules, rendering “international comity” a dead concept. Recent case law, however, shows that this paradigm is coming to an end. In a trilogy of cases decided, respectively, by the United States Supreme Court (Daimler), the Second Circuit (Gucci), and the New York State Court of Appeals (Motorola), each court rejected attempts by plaintiffs to subject foreign entities to jurisdiction in the United States or otherwise impose on them overbroad duties in conflict with foreign laws. Prominently relying on “international comity,” each decision limited the reach of U.S. courts. These three cases are groundbreaking and should lead to changes in U.S. transnational discovery. This article analyzes this recent revival of international comity. First, it explores the history of international comity and its interaction with broad U.S. discovery rules. Second, it briefly reviews the Supreme Court case Aerospatiale which dealt a blow to international comity. Third, this article explains how Daimler, Gucci, and Motorola relied on comity to reach their holdings and argues that international comity has been revived in the context of discovery. Finally, this article takes a normative approach and argues that U.S. courts should engage in a qualitative limitation of the kinds of U.S. interests that are significant in the transnational discovery context.
Posted by Lawrence Solum on February 20, 2015 at 07:49 PM | Permalink
Originalism Works-in-Progress Conference at the University of San Diego
I am at the "Originalism Works-in-Progress Conference" at the University of San Diego. As always, the lineup is spectacular. Michael Rappaport (pictured above) has just introduced the conference, and the first speaker is Richard Ekins, who is applying the powerful framework he developed in The Nature of Legislative Intent to constitutional interpretation. I may post again from time to time, but for now I am will be listening closely to the discussion.
Posted by Lawrence Solum on February 20, 2015 at 05:55 PM | Permalink
From the Leiter Reports, I have just learned that Keith Donnellan, the important philosopher of language has passed away. Donnellan was one of an amazing group of philosophers at UCLA in the late 70s and early 80s, when I was there. Along with figures like Alonzo Church, David Kaplan, Tyler Burge, Philippa Foot, Warren Quinn and (for me, especially) Rogers Albritton, he was part of the core of a formidable department that also included Jean Hampton, Greg Kavka, and Tom Hill during the time I was there. He will be missed.
Posted by Lawrence Solum on February 20, 2015 at 03:16 PM | Permalink
Paulsen on the Commander in Chief Power & Targeted Killings
Michael Stokes Paulsen (University of St. Thomas School of Law) has posted Drone on: The Commander in Chief Power to Target and Kill Americans (38 Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy 43 (2015)) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
The President of the United States, in his capacity as Commander in Chief in time of legally authorized war, possesses the constitutional power to target and kill specific individuals that he determines to be active enemy combatants engaged in lawful or unlawful hostilities against the United States. In targeting and killings such combatants, the President may use any and all appropriate weapons technologies available to him -- including drone technology. Such enemy combatants might sometimes be, unfortunately, United States citizens. The constitutional power of the President to target and kill such citizen enemy combatants is no different from the power to target and kill enemy combatants generally. This article examines this core proposition in the context of the paradigmatic case of the targeted killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen and al Qaeda operational commander, by drone attack in Yemen in 2011.
Posted by Lawrence Solum on February 20, 2015 at 03:06 PM | Permalink
Kar on Contract as Empowerment
Posted by Lawrence Solum on February 20, 2015 at 11:45 AM | Permalink