Daniel Ortiz

Daniel Ortiz

dro@virginia.edu

Website: http://www.law.virginia.edu/lawweb/faculty.nsf/FHPbI/1196477

Dan Ortiz is the John Allan Love Professor of Law and the Edward F. Howrey Professor of Law at the University of Virginia, where he has taught, except for three visiting gigs in California, since 1985. His teaching and research focus on election law, administrative law, constitutional law, and legal theory. He is co-director of the University of Virginia’s Supreme Court Litigation Clinic and was chief legal advisor to the National Commission on Federal Election Reform chaired by Presidents Ford and Carter in 2001. He has also toiled in the legal vineyards, challenging state bans on the interstate shipping of wine, and enjoys a good glass occasionally. In his spare time, he reads Italian detective fiction and English-language detective fiction set in Italy, struggles to keep his Italian from slipping even further, and generally tries to keep himself out of trouble.

Daniel Ortiz

Dan Ortiz is the John Allan Love Professor of Law and the Edward F. Howrey Professor of Law at the University of Virginia, where he has taught, except for three visiting gigs in California, since 1985. His teaching and research focus on election law, administrative law, constitutional law, and legal theory. He is co-director of the University of Virginia’s Supreme Court Litigation Clinic and was chief legal advisor to the National Commission on Federal Election Reform chaired by Presidents Ford and Carter in 2001. He has also toiled in the legal vineyards, challenging state bans on the interstate shipping of wine, and enjoys a good glass occasionally. In his spare time, he reads Italian detective fiction and English-language detective fiction set in Italy, struggles to keep his Italian from slipping even further, and generally tries to keep himself out of trouble.

Recent Posts:

Keeping The House In Constitutional Order?

At the initiative of House Republicans, the House recently changed its rules to allow the reading of the whole Constitution on the floor on the House’s opening day and to require each bill introduced in the House to be accompanied by a statement in the Congressional Record “citing as specifically as practicable the power or [...]

Snow Law

The recent blizzard in the Northeast and a funny article in the New York Times reminded me of a practice I had long forgotten.  When I lived in Boston many years ago, I always found snowfalls amazing.  The snow itself was wonderful, at least at first, but what really amused me was seeing people claiming [...]

Divorce Italian Style

Courts often don’t get sex.  We know that.  But I had thought that this was a peculiarly American matter.  Not so, apparently.  British newspapers are reporting that Italy’s Supreme Court of Cassation, its highest court for nonconstitutional issues, has civilly blessed an ecclesiastical court’s annulment of a marriage.  That, by itself, will strike an American [...]

Administrative Law’s Empire I

Many have weighed in on Justice Breyer’s recent book, Making Our Democracy Work: A Judge’s View.  They understandably focus on the sexy topics—constitutional interpretation, Brown v. Board of Education, and judicial review generally; the topics most relevant to today’s political battles—statutory interpretation and the culture wars; and Breyer’s own big, nagging question—why does the public [...]

Recent Comments:

Daniel Ortiz
Many thanks, WPB! It looks like there's no good way to adjudicate between the economic and cultural explanations at this point. Perhaps that's all to the good. It's much fun to keep the question in play.

Daniel Ortiz
How funny! I guess I was thinking more of the romantic heartland than of the stockyard to the nation. Nothing that happens in Chicago, I'm afraid, changes my views of the "Midwest" but that's just because I'm parochial, I guess. But seriously, do you have any idea how often people do this in places like Minneapolis, Omaha, Des Moines, and Fargo? If it is a pretty universal practice in snowy places, that downplays cultural explanations. Can you think of any analogous practices in the sunbelt? Widely allowed or respected temporary privatizations of commons property might tell us much about people's deep intuitions about property itself.