Calvin Massey, Gentleman Farmer

[Excerpt] “So much of Calvin’s work was intelligible as work about freedom and independence, preventing aggregations of government power that threatened individual freedom. Calvin didn’t love federalism because he had a romanticized view of statehood, he believed in it because he thought centralized power in the federal government was a bigger threat to individual freedom than states were. In most states, a tin-pot governor and amateur hour legislators just aren’t going to be as effective at coercing beliefs as an Executive Branch that contains the U.S. Treasury, the Justice Department, the FBI, and the CIA, not to mention the Pentagon and the Department of Education to tell us all how to teach our classes. Some colleagues thought that Calvin was a libertarian, and I honestly can’t remember whether he embraced that label or not, but he sure as hell didn’t want the government telling people what to think or how to behave in their private lives.

Why Deporting Immigrants for “Crimes Involving Moral Turpitude” is Now Unconstitutional

In the best of times, immigrants should only be deported according to the rule of law and not by the whim of executive branch officials. Now, it is imperative. Yet the statute authorizing removal of immigrants for “crimes involving moral turpitude” invites officials to base their prosecutorial choices on political or personal views. As a result, defense attorneys advising their clients on the immigration consequences of pleas have no basis for prediction. Although the Supreme Court long ago rejected the argument that the “moral turpitude” clause was void for vagueness, one of the Court’s most recent decisions now makes that conclusion unsupportable. The notion that due process permits officials to banish legal permanent residents based on “moral turpitude,” which never comported with common sense, is now legally incorrect

Why Deporting Immigrants for “Crimes Involving Moral Turpitude” is Now Unconstitutional

In the best of times, immigrants should only be deported according to the rule of law and not by the whim of executive branch officials. Now, it is imperative. Yet the statute authorizing removal of immigrants for “crimes involving moral turpitude” invites officials to base their prosecutorial choices on political or personal views. As a result, defense attorneys advising their clients on the immigration consequences of pleas have no basis for prediction. Although the Supreme Court long ago rejected the argument that the “moral turpitude” clause was void for vagueness, one of the Court’s most recent decisions now makes that conclusion unsupportable. The notion that due process permits officials to banish legal permanent residents based on “moral turpitude,” which never comported with common sense, is now legally incorrect

Book Review: Rights and Responsibilities. by Leon Trakman and Sean Gatien

Book review: Rights and Responsibilities. By Leon Trakman and Sean Gatien. University of Toronto Press. 1999. Pp. 286. Reviewed by: Evan Tsen Le

Section 2254(d) of the Federal Habeas Statute: Is It beyond Reason?

In Williams v. Taylor, the United States Supreme Court held that federal habeas courts may not grant relief on a claim adjudicated on the merits in state court unless the state court decision was contrary to, or involved an objectively unreasonable application of, federal law. Neither the opinion in Williams nor the habeas statute specify whether objectively unreasonable means that the state court\u27s reasoning was unreasonable, or whether it means that the state court\u27s result was unreasonable. The circuits are presently split on the question. The distinction matters because many state court affirmances of convictions are unaccompanied by opinion. In such cases, it is often impossible to know what the state court\u27s reasoning was. This Article argues that objective unreasonableness should be interpreted to mean unreasonableness of the state court\u27s reasoning, and therefore that applications of law to fact in silent state court judgments should be reviewed de novo. This argument relies on an analysis of the statutory text, on a logical extrapolation from Williams, and on an analysis of the intellectual history of the reform movements that eventually led to the present statute. In particular, this Article argues that those who supported the reform movements while waving the banner of process are now intellectually estopped to claim that only the results, and not the reasoning, of state court decisions really matter

Epstein\u27s Premises

This Article criticizes Richard Epstein\u27s argument that Congress should repeal Title VII expressed in his book Forbidden Grounds: The Case Against Employment Discrimination. The author\u27s criticisms of Epstein\u27s argument are the product of disagreement with some of Epstein\u27s premises, and disagreement with some of Epstein\u27s choices about where to stop his analyses. The author disputes Epstein\u27s premise that governmental intervention into otherwise accessible markets is justifiable only in cases of force or fraud. The author also notes some of Epstein\u27s empirical suppositions that are inconsistent with one another