Adeno Addis (Tulane University – Law School) has posted Community and Jurisdictional Authority on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
We live in a world full of boundaries. Some boundaries are defined by geography. Others are marked by religion, ethnicity, language, and the like. These boundaries make communal life and individual identity possible, but they also limit or exclude other possibilities that might otherwise have flourished. Boundaries, therefore, both affirm and curtail freedom. Boundaries of whatever nature are defined by jurisdictional norms, whether those norms are explicitly adopted or implicit in the practice itself. This essay explores how jurisdictional norms in whatever way they have been adopted constitute the very communities whose values and coherence they seek to vindicate. The essay argues that jurisdictional norms are properly seen as constitutive of communities, for to prescribe or adopt jurisdictional rules is to assert or assume that, for this or that purpose, a particular entity is deemed to be a community of interest or a “community of principle.”
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