The Federal Common Law of Crime

1986 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 267-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert C. Palmer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
Common Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Government ◽  
United States Constitution ◽  
Federal System ◽  
Bill Of Rights ◽  
Original Intent ◽  
The People

The United States Constitution established a federal system, not a national government. States continued necessarily and by design as active and important centers of governmental activity. States were institutions of inherent authority, while the federal government by original intent and then explicitly by amendment, was a government of only delegated powers. Since the federal government derived its power directly from the people and acted directly on individuals, it was decisively more powerful than the pre-Constitution Confederation. But the Bill of Rights itself is evidence of the continued worry, pervasive until modified by the Reconstruction Amendments, that the federal government might, but should not, overwhelm the states.

The Need to Restrain the Treaty–Making Power of the United States within Constitutional Limits

1954 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
George A. Finch
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Law ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
The United States ◽  
Bill Of Rights ◽  
The People ◽  
Treaty Law ◽  
International Body ◽  
Domestic Law

“The treaty-making power is an extraordinary power liable to abuse. Treaties make international law and also they make domestic law. Under our Constitution treaties become the supreme law of the land. They are indeed more supreme than ordinary laws, for congressional laws are invalid if they do not conform to the Constitution, whereas treaty law can override the Constitution. Treaties, for example, can take powers away from the Congress and give them to the President; they can take powers from the States and give them to the Federal Government or to some international body, and they can cut across the rights given the people by their constitutional Bill of Rights.”

A View from Inside: Understanding Puerto Rico Cockfighting

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-37
Author(s):  
Úrsula A. Aragunde-Kohl ◽  
Yahaira Segarra-González ◽  
Liza M. Meléndez-Samó ◽  
Ivemarie Hernández-Rivera ◽  
Carolina Quiles-Peña
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Local Government ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
Qualitative Data ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second Phase ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
The Third ◽  
The People

Abstract The purpose of this research was to better understand the beliefs and practices that the residents of Puerto Rico have regarding cockfighting, including their perception of the recently passed prohibition against nonhuman animal fighting on the island. It had an exploratory descriptive design consisting of three phases, where the qualitative data obtained from phase one would guide the process of identifying variables that could be measured. In the second phase, an instrument was developed, and in the third, it was administered. Most of the participants agreed with the prohibition of cockfighting in Puerto Rico and that it was necessary. The data showed that there is a disconnect between what the federal government of the United States legislated, what the local government and agencies that were supposed to enforce the prohibition did with the legislation, and what the people directly affected by the legislation received for education and guidance.

Education for Sovereign People

2019 ◽  
pp. 164-185
Author(s):  
Peggy Cooper Davis
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Constitution ◽  
Right To Education ◽  
The People ◽  
Personal Rights ◽  
History Of

In chapter 6, Peggy Cooper Davis notes that in a democratic republic, the people are sovereign and must be free and educated to exercise that sovereignty. She contends that the history of chattel slavery’s denial of human sovereignty in the United States, slavery’s overthrow in the Civil War, and the Constitution’s reconstruction to restore human sovereignty provide a basis for recognizing that the personal rights protected by the United States Constitution, as amended on the demise of slavery, include a fundamental right to education that is adequate to enable every person to participate meaningfully as one among equal and sovereign people.

The Diffuse and Second Look Models of Judicial Review

2021 ◽  
pp. 23-34
Author(s):  
Steven Gow Calabresi
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Judicial Review ◽  
Common Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
Constitutional Court ◽  
Bill Of Rights ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Second Look ◽  
The Common

This chapter examines the two models of judicial review that exist in the common law countries: the Diffuse Model and the Second Look Model. The Diffuse Model of judicial review originated in the United States and has spread to India, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, most of the countries of Latin America, the Scandinavian countries (except for the Netherlands), and Japan. It is premised on the idea that a country’s written constitution is its supreme law and that courts, when deciding cases or controversies that are properly before them, are thus duty-bound to follow the constitution, which is supreme law, and not a contrary statute whenever those two items conflict. Meanwhile, the essence of the Second Look Model of judicial review is that a Supreme or Constitutional Court ought to have the power of judicial review, subject to some kind of legislative power of override. This, it is said, best harmonizes the advantages of a written constitution and a bill of rights enforced by courts with the imperatives of democratic self-government. The underlying goal is to obtain the advantages of both constitutional government and also of democratic government.

Part VI Federalism, Ch.36 Federal Jurisdiction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stellios James
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
The United States ◽  
Judicial System ◽  
State Courts ◽  
Federal System ◽  
High Court ◽  
System P ◽  
Judicial Federalism ◽  
Federal Jurisdiction

This chapter identifies the origins, content, and operation of federal jurisdiction in Australia. In the United States the creation of federal jurisdiction was the necessary concomitant of the establishment of the judicial arm of federal government. The same could not be said of the conditions for Australian federalism. Federalism Australian-style did not require a federal system of courts. Further complicating the issue was the ‘autochthonous expedient’: the facility provided to Parliament for the use of State courts to exercise federal jurisdiction. Hence the chapter also seeks to suggest that the discordance between the concept and purpose of federal jurisdiction left the High Court with the challenging task of conceptualizing ‘judicial federalism’. In executing that task, High Court jurisprudence has presented differing conceptions of the place of State courts within the federal judicial system.

American Democracy Reconsidered: Part I

1973 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. J. Sharpe
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Government ◽  
The State ◽  
City Government ◽  
State Governments ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
The People ◽  
The Government ◽  
The One

In his celebrated study of American democracy written in 1888, Lord Bryce reserved his most condemnatory reflections for city government and in a muchquoted passage asserted: ‘There is no denying that the government of cities is the one conspicuous failure of the United States. The deficiencies of the National government tell but little for evil on the welfare of the people. The faults of the State governments are insignificant compared with the extravagance, corruption and mismanagement which mark the administration of most of the great cities'sangeetha.

scholarly journals The Commerce Clause From Expansion To Extortion

2011 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick J. Reville ◽  
William A. Bottiglieri
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
United States Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Constitution ◽  
Interstate Highway ◽  
Commerce Clause ◽  
Government Power ◽  
Indian Tribes ◽  
Tenth Amendment

The Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution gave the federal government power over foreign trade, trade with the Indian tribes and trade “among several states.”  By lack of further enumeration and the passage of the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution, it would be reasonable to conclude that commerce that is truly intrastate would, therefore, be within the regulatory province of the states.  In fact, that was the interpretation initially reached and subsequently followed by the United States Supreme Court.  But in 1942, that changed and, over the course of the following 60+ years, to date the Court has concluded, by an expansive interpretation of that federal power granted, that Congress and the federal government have virtually unbridled power to regulate not only those areas that would traditionally be considered “commerce” or “interstate commerce”, but, moreover, in areas that seemingly have nothing to do with commerce, interstate, or otherwise.  This paper will trace the journey that the justices have taken down this judicial interstate highway and the methods that the federal government has employed to achieve its objectives.  Hence, the subtitle of this paper:  From Expansion to Extortion.

The Legal Context

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rickie Solinger
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Government ◽  
United States Constitution ◽  
Court Decisions ◽  
State Laws ◽  
Governing System ◽  
Legal Context ◽  
Federal Laws

Why are reproductive issues governed variously by state laws, federal laws, and court decisions? The United States Constitution created a governing system known as federalism, under which the states and the national government share powers. The Constitution is specific about which powers the...

States versus Nation, and the Supreme Court

1934 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oliver P. Field
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Government ◽  
Federal System ◽  
National State ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Supreme Court

The Supreme Court of the United States has been as impartial an umpire in national-state disputes as one of the members of two contending teams could be expected to be. This is not to impugn the wisdom or the fairness of the Supreme Court, but it is to say that the Supreme Court has been partial to the national government during the past one hundred and forty-four years of our experience with a federal system in the United States. The states, as members of the federal system, have had to play against the umpire as well as against the national government itself. The combination has long been too much for them.

Religious Liberty and the Founding Fathers

1990 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-102
Author(s):  
Daniel W. Hollis ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Religious Liberty ◽  
United States Constitution ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
The People

This essay traces the development of the idea of religious liberty from its origins among the "Commonwealthmen" in seventeenth-century England to its embodiment in the United States Constitution. The Commonwealthmen believed that the theory of natural law-natural rights guaranteed civil liberties, including religious liberty, and that these natural rights should be protected by the state. The Commonwealthmen also believed in a fundamental constitution derived from the people rather than the state, and the concept of individual sovereignty.

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