Constitutional Law Foreword

System Effects and the Constitution

Vol. 123 No. 1 A system effect arises when the properties of an aggregate differ from the properties of its members, taken one by one. Familiar examples include Condorcet’s paradox, and the Prisoner’s Dilemma. Public law is rife with system effects that are more important and less familiar. Although such effects are sometimes recognized in local contexts, they have a common analytic structure and can profitably be analyzed in global terms. The failure to recognize system effects leads to fallacies of division and composition, in which the analyst mistakenly assumes that what is true of the aggregate must also be true of the members, or that what is true of the members must also be true of the aggregate. Examples are (1) the fallacious assumption that if the overall constitutional order is to be democratic, each of its component institutions must be democratic, taken one by one; and (2) the fallacious assumption that if judges are politically biased, courts must issue politically biased rulings. In these cases and many others I will discuss, system effects are an indispensable analytic tool for legal theory.
Administrative Law Article

Our Schmittian Administrative Law

Vol. 122 No. 4 Our administrative law contains, built right into its structure, a series of legal “black holes” and “grey holes” – domains in which statutes, judicial decisions and institutional practice either explicitly or implicitly exempt the executive from legal constraints. Legal black holes and grey holes are best understood by drawing upon the thought of Carl Schmitt, in particular his account of the relationship between legality and emergencies. In this sense, American administrative law is Schmittian. Moreover, it is inevitably so. Extending legality to eliminate these black and grey holes is impracticable; any aspiration to eliminate the Schmittian elements of our administrative law is utopian.