Suchergebnisse

Equity, that ancient and amiable dowager of Anglo-American law, often appears to have ambled through the twentieth century free of the stress and strains that have belabored the common law. A closer analysis of the practice and logic of equity in the modern statutory context, however, undercuts that appearance of immutability. The resulting recasting of equitable doctrines has important implications, not only for equity theory, but also for contemporary legal analysis of administrative law, the relationship between courts and legislatures, and modern pluralistic democracy.

To decide many cases, courts need to characterize some of the legal rules involved, placing each one in a specific doctrinal category to identify the rule's effect on the litigation. The consequences of characterization decisions can be profound, but the grounds for making and justifying them are often left unstated. This Article offers the first systematic comparison of two important types of legal characterization: the distinction between substantive and procedural rules or statutes, a distinction federal courts make in several contexts; and the distinction between jurisdictional and nonjurisdictional rules, especially those relating to litigation filing requirements. The Article explains the reasons for the differences between the doctrines governing each type of characterization by contextualizing each as an example of the same activity: the identification of the "genre," or kind, to which particular legal texts belong. Showing that decisions in both areas do in fact involve genre classification, the Article explains how it follows that legal characterization is an aspect of legal interpretation, although courts have seldom recognized as much. This analysis further suggests new lines of development for both Erie doctrine and jurisdictional characterization. Judges making Erie decisions should characterize both the state and federal laws at issue according to their sources, as well as under the substantive-procedural rubric, and should recognize that the question of conflict, if reached, is akin to other questions of federal preemption. Judges making jurisdictional-characterization decisions should extend the existing doctrinal framework to take into account other consequences of characterization and to allow the analogous handling of federal rules. The U.S. Supreme Court already has most of the resources it needs to move down these paths. Still, courts and commentators have something to learn from contemporary theories of discourse genres, which teach that every classificatory decision changes, even if only slightly, the landscape of existing categories. For this reason, purely formalist approaches to characterization doctrine—insistence on bright-line rules for distinguishing substantive from procedural and jurisdictional from nonjurisdictional rules—are ill-advised. A functional and incremental approach to legal characterization is not just theoretically sound, but also practically necessary for stable, workable law in this area.

Equitable defenses were given up for dead after eBay v. MercExchange. But they have been resurrected. The Supreme Court is raising the dead in recent decisions. It is integrating these judge-made doctrines into federal law despite their omission from the language of the legislation. The fusion of equitable defenses into federal statutes is important because it allows judges discretion to vary statutory outcomes on a case-by-case basis. As a result, an assortment of indeterminate defenses may stand in the way of remedying statutory violations.The Supreme Court's approach to equity exerts a decisive influence on legislative developments. There is considerable controversy surrounding the judicial use of equitable principles to deny statutory relief. Of equal concern is that courts engage in interest balancing or policy-making that may appear inconsistent with the federal judicial role. Also questionable is whether these elusive concepts can be adequately contained and comprehensible. Scholars have trained a precise lens on the issues of judicial authority and institutional competence involving statutory remedies. A corollary concern—one so intuitive we lose sight of it—is equitable defenses. The Court has yet to account for the recognition of equitable defenses that forfeit congressionally-created causes of action.This Article begins to outline an approach to the interaction between written statutes and unwritten equitable defenses. Concentrating on Supreme Court cases, it examines the decisional law of eight defenses across almost as many statutory subjects over the last two centuries. The Article exposes an equity-protective principle of interpretation that favors these ancient doctrines in modern Supreme Court practice. It also identifies possible bases for this assumption. It additionally responds to potential objections to this default rule that approves equitable defenses in legislation that does not directly provide for them. Taken as a whole, the Article explains and defends the recognition of equitable defenses in statutory law.

In Weinberger v. Romero-Barcelo, the United States Supreme Court allowed for an equitable resolution to a lawsuit seeking immediate enforcement, by injunction, of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act ("FWPCA"). In this case, the United States Navy violated the FWPCA by discharging munitions—a pollutant as defined by the statute—during training exercises into the waters surrounding the Island of Vieques. The Navy also failed to obtain a National Pollution Discharge Elimination System permit, which would have made the discharge lawful under the statute. The people of Puerto Rico sought to enjoin the training exercises through the FWPCA. The Navy's actions, however, had no adverse effects on the area's waters or the environment. Thus, the Court viewed the violation as only technical and allowed for an equitable resolution to an otherwise valid violation of a statute. This Comment argues that the Supreme Court's holding was correct in allowing an equitable resolution to a technical violation of a statute.

Some states have recently moved away from the traditional winner‐loser model of child custody to one focused on coparenting. Under the old approach, divorce decrees typically "awarded" custody to one parent while relegating the other to a "visitor" with poorly defined status. The new system is premised on the child's need for a continuing relationship with both parents and promotes this goal by upgrading the noncustodial parent's status and time‐share, assigning substantive rights and responsibilities to both parents. To give effect to the shared parenting idea, Texas adopted joint custody and statutory visitation guidelines legislatively. The policy covers all major aspects of parental rights and duties with great specificity (not just child support, for which all states must have guidelines). It applies equally to divorce and paternity cases. Judges are authorized to deviate from standard visitation guidelines but must state a rationale for doing so on request. Parties may also negotiate and agree to arrangements at variance with the guidelines, subject to approval by the court. This article describes the statutory regime in Texas and its implementation in the family court system. Based on a sample of divorce and paternity cases in the state's largest jurisdiction, it documents innovative court interventions and a wide array of coparenting and support arrangements.