Comparative Reasoning and Judicial Review

Many states have enacted constitutions that are influenced by the U.S. Constitution, and foreign courts often look to the jurisprudence of the U.S. Supreme Court or other foreign courts for guidance. The US. Supreme Court, however, remains insulated from constitutional developments in other countries, despite calls by some Justices for greater openness to foreign law as a comparative tool. This Article examines the ramifications of a comparative approach to judicial reasoning and examines how attitudes toward the use of foreign and comparative analysis can be understood as parts of more general theories of judicial review and authority. The Article compares recent case law of the US. Supreme Court and the Supreme Court of Canada to construct enforcement and dialogic models of judicial reasoning. The analysis juxtaposes judicial attitudes about foreign law to concerns about local authority and the interrelationship of legal institutions in a domestic system. The purpose is not to detail how the use of foreign law impacts the development of a particular legal doctrine, but rather to discuss how the acceptance or rejection of foreign law fits within or transforms other aspects of judicial reasoning. The Article ultimately suggests that comparative analysis neither necessarily undermines local authority nor disconnects legal analysis from its local origins when encompassed in the dialogic model

Perpetual Property

This paper explores the emergence of perpetual property in a number of discrete areas of property law: the longevity of servitudes in historic and environmental preservation, the ever growing time span of intellectual property rights, the disappearance of the rules against perpetual interests, and the temporally unlimited reach of cultural property claims. While the demise of temporal limitations is itself worthy of recognition and will be the focus of a significant part of this paper, my primary interest is whether these changes tell us something about shifting cultural attitudes to the institution of private property. If it is the case, as a number of prominent sociologists have argued, that an exploration of social attitudes toward time is indispensable to an understanding of our current cultural conditions then exploring temporal limitations in property law will presumably help us better understand what Professor Radin has called the “cultural commitments of property.” This topic is particularly compelling when one considers that the emergence of perpetual property, with its assumption of stability and permanence, has occurred at a time when speed, flexibility and impermanence are dominant features of our current social conditions. The prevailing conditions in society, even a single generation into the future, are likely to be so different from today that long-term control of property seems anachronistic and paradoxical. So why is it that in an era of rapid technological change we are more willing to tolerate perpetual property interests

Perpetual Property

This paper explores the emergence of perpetual property in a number of discrete areas of property law: the longevity of servitudes in historic and environmental preservation, the ever growing time span of intellectual property rights, the disappearance of the rules against perpetual interests, and the temporally unlimited reach of cultural property claims. While the demise of temporal limitations is itself worthy of recognition and will be the focus of a significant part of this paper, my primary interest is whether these changes tell us something about shifting cultural attitudes to the institution of private property. If it is the case, as a number of prominent sociologists have argued, that an exploration of social attitudes toward time is indispensable to an understanding of our current cultural conditions then exploring temporal limitations in property law will presumably help us better understand what Professor Radin has called the “cultural commitments of property.” This topic is particularly compelling when one considers that the emergence of perpetual property, with its assumption of stability and permanence, has occurred at a time when speed, flexibility and impermanence are dominant features of our current social conditions. The prevailing conditions in society, even a single generation into the future, are likely to be so different from today that long-term control of property seems anachronistic and paradoxical. So why is it that in an era of rapid technological change we are more willing to tolerate perpetual property interests