| Prepare at least two drafts of a written response to a question related to the material. You will be evaluated using the following critical thinking standards • Clarity: What do you mean? • Relevance: How is this related to that? • Accuracy: Is that true?How do you know?According to whom? • Precision: For example? What specifically do you mean? • Logic: Does this follow from that?Does this make sense? • Breadth: Is there another way to look at this? How would this look from a ___ perspective? • Depth: What makes this difficult? What makes this complicated? • Significance: Is that the most important point? • Fairness: What’s your angle? Where is your interest in this? Are you being fair to X? * These Questions will require you to explore additional material beyond what you find in the textbook. Each response must be typed and annotated according to the standards outlined either by the Modern Language Association or the Chicago Manual of Style. Directions: Please respond to one of the following essay prompts. Your response must be about 1000 words in length, and must adhere to a standard manuscript form. Be sure to support your argument with specific references to primary or secondary sources. 1. Which historical interpretation of Federalism—Dual, Picket-Fence, Marble-Cake, New, or Competitive—do you think is most consistent with the overall political culture of Texas? Why? A few potential sources: * Herasimchuk, Cathleen C. “New Federalism: Judicial Legislation by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.” Texas Law Review 68 (1989):1481. * Gardner, James A. “State Courts as Agents of Federalism: Power and Interpretation in State Constitutional Law.” William & Mary Law Review 44 (2002): 1725. * Gluck, Abbe R. “Intrastatutory Federalism and Statutory Interpretation: State Implementation of Federal Law in Health Reform and Beyond.” 2011. * McCabe, Neil Colman. “Our Federalism, Not Theirs: Judicial Comparative Federalism in the United States.” South Texas Law Review 40 (1999): 541. * Weiser, Philip J. “Federal Common Law, Cooperative Federalism, and the Enforcement of the Telecom Act.” NYU Law Review 76 (2001):1692. 2. To what extent is the fundamental principle of Local Control still operative in the State of Texas? What events or issues have presented challenges to this principle in the last decade? A few potential sources: * Aoki, Keith, John Shufird, Kristy Young and Thomas Hwei. “(In)visible Cities: Three Local Government Models and Immigration Regulation.” Oregon Review of International Law 10 (2008):453. * Chen, Ming H. “Trust in Immigration Enforcement: State Noncooperation and Sanctuary Cities after Secure Communities.” Chi.-Kent. Law Review 91 (2016): 13 * Davis, Charles. “The politics of ‘fracking’: Regulating natural gas drilling practices in Colorado and Texas.” Review of Policy Research 29 no.2 (2012): 171-191 * Hunter, James Davidson. Culture Wars: The struggle to control the family, art, education, law, and politics in America. Basic Books, 1992. * Rodriguez, Cristina M. “The Significance of the Local in Immigration Regulation.” Michigan Law Review 106 (2007): 567. 3. Given the overall political culture of the state of Texas, what is the probability of another future conflict between Texas and neighboring states like the Country Club Dispute of 1927 or the Red River Bridge War of 1931? On which issue is a future dispute most likely to erupt? Why? A few potential sources: * Alexander, Klint W and Bryan J. Soukup. “Obama’s first trade war: The US-Mexico cross-border trucking dispute and the implications of strategic cross-border retaliation on US compliance under NAFTA.” Berkeley Journal of International Law 28 (2010): 313. * Bowden, J.J. The Texas-New Mexico Boundary Dispute along the Rio Grande. Southwest Historical Quarterly 63 no. 2 (Oct 1959):221-237 * Heineman, Kenneth J. “Asserting States’ Rights, Demanding Federal Assistance: Texas Democrats in the Era of the New Deal.” Journal of Policy History 28, no. 2(2016):342-374. 4. Based on the claims made by the petitioners in Tarrant Regional Water District v. Hermann (2013), how does the state of Texas understand the horizontal relationship in the American Federal system? Is this interpretation consistent with the Federal interpretation of the horizontal relationship among states? Why or why not? A few potential sources: * The US Constitution of 1787, especially Articles IV-VI. * Madison, James. The Federalist #39. * Tarrant Regional Water District v. Herrmann (2013) Link to TRWD v. Hermann on Bloomberg Law * Podolak, Chuck. “Summary of Tarrant Regional Water District v. Herrmann.” (2013). Summary of TRWD v. Hermann at Duke University 5. Is the relationship between the state of Texas and Texas cities analogous to the relationship between the Federal Government and the State of Texas? Why or why not? A few potential sources: * Ashcroft, Robert R., and Barbara Kyle Balfour. “Home Rule Cities and Municipal Annexation in Texas: Recent Trends and Future Prospects.” . Mary’s LJ 15 (1983): 519. * The Constitution of 1787, especially Article IV. * Ruud, Millard H. “Legislative Jurisdiction of Texas Home Rule Cities.” Tex. L. Rev. 37 (1958): 682. * Texas Constitution, Article XI. * Zimmerman, Joseph F. State-Local Relations: A Partnership Approach, 2nd ed. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1995. 6. In 2010, candidate Debra Medina campaigned for the office of governor on a Nullification platform, claiming that the state of Texas had the power to nullify federal acts it deemed unconstitutional. What was the basis for her claim, and does a nullification argument have any merit? A few potential sources: * Camoni, Sean August. “Cancer on the Internet: A Proposal for Statutory Regulation of Insurrectionist Speech on the Web, A.” Seton Hall L. Rev. 41 (2011): 1005. * Flanders, Laura, ed. At the Tea Party. OR Books, 2010. * Stockwell, Serena. “Should Texas Get Out Of–Or Into–Health Care?.” Oncology Times (2010). * The US Constitution of 1787, especially Article IV and VI. |
