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Wolff on Ginsburg & Federal Jurisdiction

By Lawrence Solum

Tobias Barrington Wolff (University of Pennsylvania Law School) has posted Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sensible Pragmatism in Federal Jurisdictional Policy (Ohio State Law Journal, Vol. 70, No. 4, pp. 839-864, 2010) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

This article, written as part of a symposium celebrating the work of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the occasion of her fifteenth year on the Supreme Court, examines the strain of sensible legal pragmatism that informs Justice Ginsburg's writing in the fields of Civil Procedure and Federal Jurisdiction. Taking as its point of departure the Supreme Court's decision in City of Chicago v. International College of Surgeons, in which Ginsburg dissented, the article develops an argument against strict textualism in federal jurisdictional analysis. In its place, the article urges a purposive mode of interpretation that approaches jurisdictional text with a presumption in favor of respecting and preserving stable institutional arrangements unless Congress's purpose in altering those arrangements is clear - an analytical mode that Justice Ginsburg's work exemplifies.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on April 15, 2010 (boomark / email).