Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy articles

Recent articles from Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy

Judicial review, local values, and pluralism. (Twenty-Seventh Annual National Federalist Society Student Symposium)
January 1, 2009... I. "It is," the Twenty-Seventh Annual National Federalist Society Student Symposium program reports, "a basic assumption of federalism that individual communities can be different; they may have different values, and they will certainly have different laws." (1) This is true....

Counting states.(Twenty-Seventh Annual National Federalist Society Student Symposium)
January 1, 2009... The United States Supreme Court frequently bases federal constitutional doctrine on state law, (1) often doing so by counting states' laws in a variety of doctrinal contexts to determine the legislative consensus among the States. For instance, state counting is used to determine the...

Voting with your feet is no substitute for constitutional rights.(Twenty-Seventh Annual National Federalist Society Student Symposium)
January 1, 2009... I. THE DOWNSIDE OF VOTING WITH YOUR FEET The organizers of this Symposium (1) gave each panel a brief summary of the panel's intended topic. I want to take a part of that summary as the subject of my commentary: "It is a benefit of Federalism that people can vote with their feet and...

Norm change or judicial decree? The courts, the public, and welfare reform.(Twenty-Seventh Annual National Federalist Society Student Symposium)
January 1, 2009... The topic for this panel--the relationship between community values and judicial decision making--calls to mind Supreme Court cases on high-profile issues that have provoked strong criticism from the public. Decisions regarding church-state relations, (1) abortion, (2) free speech, (3)...

The merits of merit selection.(Twenty-Seventh Annual National Federalist Society Student Symposium)
January 1, 2009... I. TRANSITIONS IN JUDICIAL SELECTION METHODS A. From Appointment to Election B. From Partisan to Non-Partisan Elections C. From Non-Partisan Elections to Merit Selection D. Alternatives to Merit Section II. THE CHALLENGE TO JUDICIAL INDEPENDENCE ...