Thomas Christiano's comments on the judicial review paper (1989) (original) (raw)
Related papers
Against the Death Penalty: The Relentless Dissents of Justices Brennan and Marshallby Michael Mello
Political Science Quarterly, 1998
book reviews j 163 of the Employment Act of 1946 for the conclusion of his story suggests a slightly expanded time-frame. As an economist, Barber is at his best in describing the rival heterodox schools of economic thought. Structuralists like Rexford Tugwell and Adolph Berle argued that the rise of the large modern corporation had transformed oligopolistic markets and allowed rms in such markets to set prices administratively rather than through competitive relations. Rational public policy entailed public planning, the replacement of market controls by regulatory governmental controls, and a sectorally-speci c approach that took account of differing rm structures in differing industries. According to Barber, the National Recovery Administration (NRA) and the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) basically re ected the imperatives of these structuralists. The structuralists' analysis of America's economic plight was challenged by monetarists like Charles Warren and Irving Fisher, and later by their foremost political representative, Henry Morgenthau, Jr. Monetarists argued that the collapse of prices was the crucial variable in our Depression woes and that re ation was the remedy. The in uence of the monetarists can be seen in the collapse of the London Economic Conference and in the abortive gold buying program during the early New Deal. Finally, Barber describes the rise of an Americanized version of Keynesianism championed by Marriner Eccles, Lauchin Currie, and Alvin Hansen. The Keynesians only became in uential later in the New Deal, after analysis revealed that the 1937-1938 recession coincided with a decline in de cit spending by the federal government, thereby eroding Roosevelt's commitment to eventually balancing the budget. Barber's history of economic schools and their relationship to public policy is a re nement of received wisdom rather than a fundamentally new approach. The clarity of his descriptions of the rival economic camps and the archival research that establishes a link between economists and New Deal decision makers are important contributions. To fully substantiate Barber's claim that ideas in uence policy we would have to examine the interplay of ideas and interests, and the latter have only a eeting appearance in Barber's account. But what is most regrettable about Barber's treatment is his aversion to evaluative judgments of the economic doctrines whose in uence he traces. Is Irving Fisher's monetarism pseudo-economics? If Barber had elaborated on the relationship of Fisher's monetarism to the monetarism of Milton Friedman, we would be better prepared to answer this important question. Barber does cryptically suggest in his conclusion that domesticated Keynesianism has aws, but his analysis of economic policy in the New Deal era seems to con rm the traditional wisdom that policies derivative from Keynesianism were the proper response to the Depression. Barber's work would be more path-breaking if he could show that post-Keynesian economics provides a new vantage point from which to examine New Deal economic policies.
Law and History Review, 2010
There is an interesting section on the transition to the job-the heavy learning curve, the problems of getting an office running, and the remarkable variety of cases federal judges confront. The chapter on the nature of the job holds few surprises. Most judges like the job with its broad range of subjects and conflicts, although there are complaints about the isolation. It is, though, disturbing to see such distinguished judges and ex-judges as Abner Mikva, Robert Bork, and James Buckley agreeing, at least on their notable Court of Appeals (D.C. Cir.), that after the conference on a case, the judge will go back and likely never speak again in person with his colleagues about it. When coupled with the "revelation" in another chapter that the law clerks are chiefly responsible for opinions (183), one cannot help wondering what creative, thoughtful, and analytical work federal judges are actually doing. A chapter partially named "Getting Along with Others" encompasses Alfred Goodwin's (9th Cir.) discussion of political trials. There is an interesting, though troubling, discussion of past tensions on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals and two pages allotted to Andrew Hauk's (C.D. Cal.) oral history demonstrating his "outrageous rudeness." Finally, Joyce Hens Green sums up what makes a good judge: "A judge has to have courage and express the way it is in her opinions, whether oral or written, not just to ride with the waves of the time, economically, politically, emotionally" (212). Both specialists and nonspecialists will learn from Domnarski's book. Nonspecialists will receive a painless introduction to the lives of federal judges and the conditions under which they work. The scholar will pick up a variety of interesting tidbits with a reminder of what a valuable resource for research on the courts oral histories can be.
Supreme Court Review (1960–2009): A Bibliometrical Study
Legal Reference Services Quarterly, 2018
Supreme Court Review is a faculty-edited legal periodical published by the University of Chicago Law School. This periodical is a highly read and cited law review in law, history, and political science. This article applies bibliometrics to a study of the 438 articles that are published in the periodical over a 50-year period. It is analysis of the number of articles by volume, pages, footnotes, authorship by sex, by individual, by institution, and most-cited articles.
The controversial intellectual giant of our time: a note on the late Justice Antonin Scalia
Note: This article has passed peer review and will be published in an upcoming volume of the Common Law World Review Abstract: While the late Justice Antonin Scalia is best known for his colourful, intemperate dissents, not everyone is aware of his broader significance as a jurist and legal scholar. As well as being successful at the bar and bench, Scalia adopted an approach to statutory and constitutional interpretation called textualism which proved highly influential, and which inspired an enormous quantity of scholarly writing. He claimed that his approach to adjudication was value neutral, however his well-known connections to the Republican party made him a target for accusations of political bias. His concurring opinions in several landmark Supreme Court judgments added fuel to the controversy by providing outcomes which advanced policies generally regarded as favourable to those on the right of the political spectrum. The controversy tends to overshadow the enormous impact that Scalia's jurisprudence has had on the legal community. He inspired the development of legal thought on both sides of the political divide, and he drew scholars from a variety of academic disciplines into the dialogue. In light of the enormous body of literature he inspired, and his political, legal and social impact, Scalia deserves to be regarded as one of the great common law jurists of the Anglo-American tradition, along side historical figures such as Denning and Pound. By the time of his passing, Justice Scalia had a well-deserved reputation for scathing dissents. Unlike other judges at the Supreme Court of the United States, he was bombastic rather than diplomatic when he disagreed with his fellow judges, to the shock and fascination of onlookers in America and beyond. His intemperate comments achieved such notoriety that they spawned a sub-genre of literature based on the reproduction of his more memorable statements in books and magazine articles. 1 It would be easy to characterise him as a sore loser who lashed out in fits of rage after failing to convince a majority on the bench to side with him in countless cases over his thirty-year tenure at the Supreme Court, yet it would be a significant misunderstanding to regard Justice Scalia in this way. He penned several significant majority opinions, and joined in many others. When Justice Thomas was appointed to the bench in 1991, there were four peers with whom he often agreed, and together they made a significant impact on the Court. Meanwhile, his principle-based approach to judging and the interpretation of legal texts inspired a massive quantity of scholarly analysis. While his sharp words and exuberant personality helped to keep him in the spotlight, there was substance to back it up. As a result, he leaves an intellectual legacy in his wake that rivals all but the most important legal scholars of the Anglo-American tradition like Denning
Foreword: The Books of Justices
Michigan Law Review
For this Michigan Law Review issue devoted to recently published books about law, I thought it would be interesting to see what books made an appearance in the past year’s work of the Supreme Court. I catalogued every citation to every book in those forty opinions in order to see what patterns emerged: what books the justices cited, which justices cited which books, and what use they made of the citations. To begin with, I should define what I mean by “books". For the purposes of this Foreword, I excluded some types of reading matter that may have a book-like appearance or that others might view as a book: government reports and statistical compilations, including the Federal Sentencing Guidelines; the Model Penal Code; the Congressional Record; the Federal Register; and other current compilations of statutes or regulatory codes. (I include some older compilations as primary source material, e.g., a volume of the Vermont State Papers 1779– 1786, published in 1823 and cited by C...