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Vermeule on Second Opinions & Public Law

By Lawrence Solum

Adrian Vermeule (Harvard University - Harvard Law School) has posted Second Opinions on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

There is a burgeoning literature on second opinions in professional contexts, as when patients or clients seek advice from a second doctor or lawyer. My aim, by contrast, is to analyze second opinions as a central feature of public law. I will try to show that many institutional structures, rules and practices have been justified as mechanisms for requiring or permitting decisionmakers to obtain second opinions; examples include judicial review of statutes or of agency action, bicameralism, the separation of powers, and the law of legislative procedure. I attempt to identify the main costs and benefits of these second-opinion mechanisms, to identify conditions under which they prove more or less successful, and to consider how the lawmaking system might employ such mechanisms to greater effect. I claim, among other things, that Alexander Bickel?s justification of judicial review as a ?sober second thought? is untenable, and that the Supreme Court should adopt a norm that two successive decisions, not merely one, are necessary to create binding law.

Highly recommended.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on July 22, 2010 (boomark / email).