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The New Maternity, Courtney Megan Cahill

Scholarly Publications

Constitutional law has long assumed that mothers andfathers are fundamentally different. Maternity, that law posits, is certain, obvious, and monolithic - consolidated in an easily identifiable person who is at once a biological, social, and legal parent. Paternity, in contrast, is construed as uncertain, nonobvious, relative, and often unclear. Over time, constitutional law has grown more insistent about the obviousness of motherhood. It also has cemented its idea of maternity into a fundamental principle of sex equality law that applies in settings - like transgender rights - that have nothing to do with certain mothers and uncertain fathers.

Constitutional law's …

Prophylactic Redistricting? Congress's Section 5 Power And The New Equal Protection Right To Vote, Michael T. Morley

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

After Sex, Courtney Megan Cahill

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

Innocent Until Born: Why Prisons Should Stop Shackling Pregnant Women To Protect The Child, Melanie Kalmanson

Florida State University Law Review

The practice of American prisons to shackle and otherwise restrain incarcerated, preg-nant women is problematic for several reasons. Such practices include shackling, chaining, and handcuffing pregnant inmates during their third trimester, transportation to and from medical facilities, labor and delivery, and postpartum recovery. Current discourse on this topic focuses primarily on how these practices invade the woman’s civil liberties, particularly the Eighth Amendment right against cruel and unusual punishment, and international human rights. Recent case law vindicates policy rationales for such practices—safety of others, safety of the woman herself, and securing flight risks.

These discussions overlook and this Note confronts …

The Second Amendment Burden: Arming Courts With A Workable Standard For Reviewing Gun Safety Legislation, Melanie Kalmanson

Florida State University Law Review

Two controversial topics; one framework. Jurisprudence surrounding the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution lacks a workable standard under which courts are to review gun control legislation. This Note presents an intersectional argument whereby the abortion “undue burden” framework is applied to Second Amendment legislation. Through this approach of applying the abortion framework to gun control legislation, like those recently proposed or discussed, this Note argues that these provisions would likely be constitutional. Though abortion is at the center of this discussion, this Note does not aim to contribute to discourse concerning reproductive rights and accepts prima facie the current-standing …

The Nineteenth Amendment Enforcement Power (But First, Which One Is The Nineteenth Amendment, Again?), Steve Kolbert

Florida State University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Choice At Work: Young V. United Parcel Service, Pregnancy Discrimination, And Reproductive Liberty, Mary Ziegler

Scholarly Publications

In deciding Young v. United Parcel Service, the Supreme Court has intervened in ongoing struggles about when and whether the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 (PDA) requires the accommodation of pregnant workers. Drawing on original archival research, this Article historicizes Young, arguing that the PDA embodied a limited principle of what the Article calls meaningful reproductive choice. Feminist litigators first forged such an idea in the early 1970s, arguing that heightened judicial scrutiny should apply whenever state actors placed special burdens on women who chose childbirth or abortion.

A line of Supreme Court decisions completely rejected this understanding …

Perceiving Orientation: Defining Sexuality After Obergefell, Mary Ziegler

Scholarly Publications

In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, constitutional jurisprudence will have to more clearly define sexual orientation itself. The Obergefell majority describes sexuality as binary and suggests that any sexual orientation is immutable, normal, and constitutive of individual identity. Other scholars have shown how the kind of binary created by Obergefell excludes those with more fluid sexual identities and experiences from legal protection.

This Article illuminates new problems with Obergefell’s approach to sexuality by putting that definition in historical context. While describing sexuality as a matter of orientation may now seem inevitable, …

Obergefell And The "New" Reproduction, Courtney Megan Cahill

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

The Law Of Democracy At A Crossroads: Reflecting On Fifty Years Of Voting Rights And The Judicial Regulation Of The Political Thicket, Franita Tolson

Florida State University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Race, Shelby County, And The Voter Information Verification Act In North Carolina, Michael D. Herron, Daniel A. Smith

Florida State University Law Review

Shortly after the Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder struck down section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), the State of North Carolina enacted an omnibus piece of election- reform legislation known as the Voter Information Verification Act (VIVA). Prior to Shelby, portions of North Carolina were covered jurisdictions per the VRA’s sections 4 and 5—meaning that they had to seek federal preclearance for changes to their election procedures— and this motivates our assessment of whether VIVA’s many alterations to North Carolina’s election procedures are race-neutral. We show that in presidential elections in North Carolina black early voters …

The Oedipus Hex: Regulating Family After Marriage Equality, Courtney Megan Cahill

Scholarly Publications

Now that national marriage equality for same-sex couples has become the law of the land, commentators are turning their attention from the relationships into which some gays and lesbians enter to the mechanisms on which they — and many others — rely in order to reproduce. Even as one culture war makes way for another, however, there is something that binds them: a desire to establish the family. This Article focuses on a problematic manifestation of that desire: the incest prevention justification. The incest prevention justification posits that the law ought to regulate alternative reproduction in order to minimize the …

Negotiating Federalism And The Structural Constitutionn: Navigating The Separation Of Powers Both Vertically And Horizontally, Erin Ryan

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

Speaker Discrimination: The Next Frontier Of Free Speech, Michael Kagan

Florida State University Law Review

Citizens United v. FEC articulated a pillar of free speech doctrine that is independent from the well-known controversies about corporate personhood and the role of money in elections. For the first time, the Supreme Court clearly said that discrimination on the basis of the identity of the speaker offends the First Amendment. Previously, the focus of free speech doctrine had been on the content and forum of speech, not on the identity of the speaker. It is possible that protection from speaker identity discrimination had long been implicit in free speech case law, but has now been given more full-throated …

The (Non-)Right To Sex, Mary Ziegler

Scholarly Publications

What is the relationship between the battle for marriage equality and the expansion of sexual liberty? Some see access to marriage as a quintessentially progressive project—the recognition of the equality and dignity of gay and lesbian couples. For others, promoting marriage or marital-like relationships reinforces bias against individuals making alternative intimate decisions. With powerful policy arguments on either side, there appears to be no clear way to advance the discussion.

By telling the lost story of efforts to expand sexual liberty in the 1960s and 1970s, this Article offers a new way into the debate. The marriage equality struggle figures …

Identity Contests: Litigation And The Meaning Of Social-Movement Causes, Mary Ziegler

Scholarly Publications

What do we mean by a right to life? Should—or does—such a right cover only antiabortion claims? Or should the term apply more broadly—to debates about class and welfare, about the death penalty, or even about human rights? In the abortion wars, litigation strategy has helped to dictate the answers to these questions. Historians and legal scholars have studied the tensions between lawyers and the lay actors they represent, chronicling how lawyers modify and even limit the social changes activists demand. By putting the attorney-client relationship center stage, scholars have sometimes obscured an equally important story about how litigation strategy—as …

Does The Public Care How The Supreme Court Reasons? Empirical Evidence From A National Experiment And Normative Concerns In The Case Of Same-Sex Marriage, Courtney Megan Cahill, Geoffrey Christopher Rapp

Scholarly Publications

Can the Supreme Court influence the public’s reception of decisions vindicating rights in high-salience contexts, like samesex marriage, by reasoning in one way over another? Will the people’s disagreement with those decisions—and, by extension, societal backlash against them—be dampened if the Court deploys universalizing liberty rationales rather than essentializing equality rationales? Finally, even if Supreme Court reasoning does resonate with the people as a descriptive matter, should the Court minimize anxiety-producing characteristics in decisions vindicating civil rights—such as homosexuality in the marriage-equality context—simply in order to assuage the people?

This Article combines constitutional theory and empirical legal analysis to ask …

Remedial Equilibration And The Right To Vote Under Section 2 Of The Fourteenth Amendment, Michael T. Morley

Scholarly Publications

The modern "voting wars" involve repeated legal challenges alleging that procedures aimed at protecting the electoral process, such as proof-of-citizenship requirements for registration and voter identification laws, violate the fundamental constitutional right to vote. In adjudicating such cases, courts make effectively subjective judgments about whether the challenged statutes or regulations make voting too burdensome.

Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment offers critical, and previously overlooked, insight into the scope of the right to vote. It imposes a uniquely severe penalty-reduction in representation in the House of Representatives and Electoral College-when that right is violated or abridged. 'remedial deterrence," a crucial …

Balancing National Security Policy: Why Congress Must Assert Its Constitutional Check On Executive Power, Rebecca Lightle

Florida State University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Raising The Floor Of Company Conduct: Deriving Public Policy From The Constitution In An Employment-At-Will Arena, Steven J. Mulroy, Amy H. Moorman

Florida State University Law Review

No abstract provided.

The New Racial Justice: Moving Beyond The Equal Protection Clause To Achieve Equal Protection, Emily Chiang

Florida State University Law Review

Since handing down Washington v. Davis and Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Development, the United States Supreme Court has significantly curtailed the ability of plaintiffs to bring disparate impact claims under the Equal Protection Clause. Many academics continue to talk about the standards governing intent and disparate impact. Some recent scholarship recognizes that reformers on the ground have shifted away from equality-based claims altogether. This Article contends that civil rights advocates replaced the old equal protection framework some time ago and that they did so deliberately and with great success. It expands upon and refines the strategy shift some …

The Price Of Privacy, 1973 To The Present, Mary Ziegler

Scholarly Publications

The legal academy has not been kind to the privacy rationale set forth in Roe v. Wade. Roe is seen to have promoted a single-issue agenda based on the importance of privacy and choice. Because Roe so quickly came under attack, its defense became a priority, and activists speaking out in favor of the opinion felt encouraged to defend it on its own terms. If the abortion issue were a matter of ordinary politics rather than constitutional law, the argument goes, activists would be free to develop more compelling claims for reproductive rights and to pursue a broader reproductive-health …

Abortion And The Constitutional Right (Not) To Procreate, Mary Ziegler

Scholarly Publications

With the growing use of assisted reproductive technology (“ART”), courts have to reconcile competing rights to seek and avoid procreation. Often, in imagining the boundaries of these rights, judges turn to abortion jurisprudence for guidance.

This move sparks controversy. On the one hand, abortion case law may provide the strongest constitutional foundation for scholars and advocates seeking rights to access ART or avoid un-wanted parenthood. On the other hand, abortion jurisprudence carries normative and political baggage: a privacy framework that disadvantages poor women and a history of intense polarization.

This article uses the legal history of struggle over spousal consent …

Beyond Backlash: Legal History, Polarization, And Roe V. Wade, Mary Ziegler

Scholarly Publications

On its fortieth anniversary, Roe v. Wade serves as the most prominent example of the damage judicial review can do to the larger society. Scholars from across the ideological spectrum have related how Roe helped to entrench the ideological positions held by those on either side of the abortion issue, precluding any form of productive compromise. This criticism, which the Article calls the “beyond backlash” argument, has profound legal consequences, serving as both a justification for overruling Roe and as a case study of the benefits of varying interpretive methods.

This Article reevaluates the beyond backlash claim through a careful …

Rethinking The Right To Vote Under State Constitutions, Michael T. Morley

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

After The Cheering Stopped: Decriminalization And Legalism's Limits, Wayne A. Logan

Scholarly Publications

To the great relief of many, American criminal law, long known for its harshness and expansive prohibitory reach, is now showing signs of softening. A prime example of this shift is seen in the proliferation of laws decriminalizing the personal possession of small amounts of marijuana: today, almost twenty states and dozens of localities have embraced decriminalization in some shape or form, with more laws very likely coming to fruition soon. Despite enjoying broad political support, the decriminalization movement has however failed to curb a core feature of criminalization: police authority to arrest individuals suspected of possessing marijuana. Arrests for …

Orginalism Talk: A Legal History, Mary Ziegler

Scholarly Publications

Progressives have long recognized the tremendous political appeal of originalism. For many scholars, originalism appears to have succeeded because it achieves results consistent with conservative values but promises judicial neutrality to the public. By drawing on new historical research on anti-abortion constitutionalism, this Article argues for a radically different understanding of the originalist ascendancy. Contrary to what we often think, conservative social movements at times made significant sacrifices in joining an originalist coalition. These costs were built in to what this Article calls originalism talk—the use of arguments, terms, and objectives associated with conservative originalism.

Scholars have documented the costs …

Women's Rights On The Right: The History And Stakes Of Modern Pro-Life Feminism, 1968 To The Present, Mary Ziegler

Scholarly Publications

Recently, pro-life advocates have popularized claims that abortion harms rather than helps women. The best known of these arguments are the woman-protective arguments—contentions, such as those endorsed in Gonzales v. Carhart, justifying abortion restrictions on the basis of the physical or psychological harms supposedly produced by the procedure. Woman-protective claims, however, represent only one part of a much larger strategy that this Article calls pro-life feminism. The Article follows pro-life activists’ use of the term “feminist” or “feminism.” As the Article makes clear, activists on competing sides of the abortion issue have contested the meaning of “true” feminism. Taking …

Abortion And Disgust, Courtney Megan Cahill

Scholarly Publications

This Article uses disgust theory — defined as the insights on disgust by psychologists and social scientists — to critique disgust’s role in abortion lawmaking. Its starting point is a series of developments that independently highlight and call into question the relationship between abortion and disgust. First, the Supreme Court introduced disgust as a valid basis for abortion regulation in its 2007 case Gonzales v. Carhart. Second, psychologists have recently discovered a sufficiently strong association between individual disgust sensitivity and abortion opposition to suggest that disgust might drive that opposition. They have also discovered that “abortion disgust” appears to be …

Florence V. Board Of Chosen Freeholders: Police Power Takes A More Intrusive Turn, Wayne A. Logan

Scholarly Publications

This essay discusses the Supreme Court’s 2012 decision in Florence v. Board of Chosen Freeholders allowing strip searches of minor offense arrestees without any suspicion that they possess a weapon or contraband. After summarizing the Court’s holding, the essay explores how Florence builds upon prior caselaw affording police virtually unlimited discretionary authority to execute warrantless arrests, and the unlikelihood that institutional limits will be placed on the strip search authority of corrections officials.