Despite the alleged triumph of legal realism and the empirical turn of closely related fields such as judicial behavior, a startling number of constitutional theorists continue to approach their work as a purely conceptual enterprise. This is particularly true of originalists, but it is true of many others as well. Indeed, much of normative constitutional [...]
The appeal of popular lawmaking, one of the few ways in which citizens of our country may make their wishes directly known without elected officials acting as intermediaries, is obvious. Whether via citizen-initiated petition or propositions from the legislature, more than half the states currently provide their citizens with the opportunity to enact laws through [...]
Dog Number 118 had no front lips. Her nose was torn and lopsided. Her crooked, broken teeth stood out without protection, constantly exposed to the air. Scar tissue layered her snout. When approached, her handlers warn that she’s “a licker.”
Known to her caretakers as Fay, Number 118 was one of the more graphic surviving illustrations [...]
The enactment of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act both transcends and transforms financial regulation. The immediate setting of the law is by now a familiar one. By 2008, there was an urgent need for a fundamental restructuring of federal financial regulation, primarily based on three overlapping causes. First, an ongoing economic [...]
This Article examines the relationship between individual consumption and consumption-based harms by focusing on the rise in consumption offsetting. Carbon offsets are but the leading edge of a rise in consumer options for offsetting externalities associated with consumption. Moving from examples of quasi offsetting to environmental offsetting and the possibility of poverty offset institutions, I [...]
John Hart Ely famously observed, “We were all brought up on sophisticated talk about the fluidity of the line between substance and procedure,” but for most of Erie’s history, the Supreme Court has answered the question “Does this state law govern in federal court?” with a “yes” or a “no.” Beginning, however, with Gasperini v. [...]
