Constitutional Commentary articles from March 2007

Constitutional Commentary archives from March 2007

Good riddance, Jim Chen, you no-good lousy so-and-so.(Louisville Brandeis School of Law's newly appointed dean)(Testimonial)
March 22, 2007... And here we thought you were a serious legal scholar. Then, what do you do? After all these years of writing scandalous, provocative, outrageous original legal scholarship--with constitutional commentary being only one of many and diverse...

Warren court precedents in the Rehnquist court. (Symposium: The Rehnquist Court in Empirical and Statistical Retrospective)
March 22, 2007... This research empirically examines the use of particular Warren Court decisions as precedents in the Rehnquist Court. Analysis of precedent citation is not widely used but offers insight into judicial decisionmaking and the materiality of the...

When the court has a party, how many "friends" show up? A note on the statistical distribution of amicus brief filings.(Symposium: The Rehnquist Court in Empirical and Statistical Retrospective)
March 22, 2007... I. INTRODUCTION Amicus briefs have been a significant subject of empirical research. (1) Researchers have also used the number of amicus briefs filed in a case as a measure of the case's importance. (2) Lawyers also have reason to be...

Judicial activism: an empirical examination of voting behavior on the Rehnquist natural court.(Symposium: The Rehnquist Court in Empirical and Statistical Retrospective)
March 22, 2007... This paper attempts to quantify one of the most deeply contested terms in constitutional law: "judicial activism". (1) Most discussions of "judicial activism" define activism either in reference to a particular political ideology (such as...

The rhetoric of restraint and the ideology of activism.(Symposium: The Rehnquist Court in Empirical and Statistical Retrospective)
March 22, 2007... Criticism of judicial activism has become commonplace in political debate. In recent years it has been political conservatives who have most often sounded the alarm that unelected, activist judges are intruding on the prerogatives of the...

An empirical analysis of the confirmation hearings of the justices of the Rehnquist natural Court.(Symposium: The Rehnquist Court in Empirical and Statistical Retrospective)
March 22, 2007... INTRODUCTION The interpretive or judicial philosophies of Supreme Court Justices can be thought of as "packages of beliefs" about how to interpret the law, packages that go by names like formalism, originalism, and textualism. (1) Given...

The most dangerous justice rides into the sunset.(Symposium: The Rehnquist Court in Empirical and Statistical Retrospective)
March 22, 2007... I. INTRODUCTION Spatial models of voting behavior suggest that the preferences of the median voter, under majority rule and with a single issue dimension, will determine policy outcomes. (1) This theoretical insight has been applied to...

The aggregate harmony metric and a statistical and visual contextualization of the Rehnquist court: 50 years of data.(Symposium: The Rehnquist Court in Empirical and Statistical Retrospective)
March 22, 2007... I. INTRODUCTION An important anniversary went uncelebrated in the Harvard Law Review's most recent review of the previous United States Supreme Court term. (1) The November 2006 issue marked the fiftieth year that the Harvard Law Review...

Same Sex, Different States: When Same-Sex Marriages Cross State Lines.(Book review)
March 22, 2007... SAME SEX DIFFERENT STATES: WHEN SAME-SEX MARRIAGES CROSS STATE LINES. By Andrew Koppelman. (1) Yale University Press. 2006. Pp. xviii + 204. Hardback $35.00. Andrew Koppelman, Professor of Law and Political Science at Northwestern...

Legal Borderlands: Law and the Construction of American Borders.(Book review)
March 22, 2007... LEGAL BORDERLANDS: LAW AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF AMERICAN BORDERS. Mary L. Dudziak (1) and Leti Volpp, (2) eds. Johns Hopkins University Press. 2006. Pp. viii + 421. $19.95 (paper). "Every theory addresses some questions as its central...