Digital Commons Network^™

Hollow Hopes And Exaggerated Fears: The Canon/Anticanon In Context, Mark A. Graber

Faculty Scholarship

Students of American constitutionalism should add constitutional decisions made by elected officials to the constitutional canon and the constitutional anticanon. Neither the canonical nor the anticanonical constitutional decisions by the Supreme Court have produced the wonderful results or horrible evils sometimes attributed to them. In many cases, elected officials made contemporaneous constitutional decisions that had as much influence as the celebrated or condemned judicial rulings. More often than not, judicial rulings matter more as a result of changing the political dynamics than by directly changing public policy. Law students and others interested in constitutional change, for these reasons, need to …

Rebel Without A Clause: The Irrelevance Of Article Vi To Constitutional Supremacy, Gary Lawson

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

With Stare Decisis and Constitutional Text, Jonathan Mitchell has produced what I think is the most interesting and creative textual defense (or at least partial defense) to date of the use of horizontal precedent in federal constitutional cases. Mitchell's careful analysis of the Supremacy Clause is fascinating and instructive, and he does an impeccable job of drawing out the implications of his premise that the Supremacy Clause prescribes only a very limited choice-of-law rule-a rule that does not, by its own terms, specifically elevate the Constitution above federal statutes and treaties. His innovative and intriguing framework yields four distinct conclusions …

Government By Contract And The Structural Constitution, Kimberly L. Wehle

All Faculty Scholarship

Although private parties have performed government functions throughout most of Western history, mainstream administrative law scholarship is dotted with concerns over the extent to which modern federal government activities are outsourced to private contractors. Federal contractors routinely exercise authority that is classically “executive” in nature. They write regulations, interpret laws, administer foreign aid, manage nuclear weapons sites and intelligence operations, interrogate detainees, control borders, design surveillance systems, and provide military support in combat zones. Administrative law places few constraints on private contractors, and prevailing constitutional principles — the state action and private delegation doctrines, in particular — are either inept …

A Vanishing Virginia Constitution?, Hon. Stephen R. Mccullough

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Brave New World Of Stop And Frisk, Ronald J. Bacigal

Law Faculty Publications

In this article, the author Ron Bacigal discusses the editorials, The Shame of New York by Bob Herbert and Fighting Crime Where the Criminals Are by Heather MacDonald. These editorials were prompted by the New York City Police Department's release of figures regarding "stop and frisk" incidents within New York City.' MacDonald and Herbert reacted to the same statistical report by putting two very different spins on the raw data. While it's always helpful to compile empirical evidence, Bacigal suggests that we also need to look beyond the mere numbers. If you put aside anecdotal versions of encounters between minorities …

Stare Decisis And Constitutional Text, Jonathan F. Mitchell

Michigan Law Review

Almost everyone acknowledges that stare decisis should play a significant role when the Supreme Court of the United States resolves constitutional cases. Yet the academic and judicial rationales for this practice tend to rely on naked consequentialist considerations, and make only passing efforts to square the Court's stare decisis doctrines with the language of the Constitution. This Article offers a qualified defense of constitutional stare decisis that rests exclusively on constitutional text. It aims to broaden the overlapping consensus of interpretive theories that can support a role for constitutional stare decisis, but to do this it must narrow the circumstances …

The Constitution And Economic Policy, Alan E. Garfield

Alan E Garfield

No abstract provided.

Litigating Against An Epidemic: Hiv/Aids And The Promise Of Socioeconomic Rights In South Africa, Nathaniel Bruhn

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

With one of the highest incidence rates in the world, the HIV/AIDS epidemic has taken a large toll on South Africa. Despite medical advances that have made the disease more manageable, many South Africans still do not have access to the medicines needed to control the disease. At the same time, the Constitution of South Africa grants individuals far-reaching socioeconomic rights, including the right to access health care. This Comment explores the intersection of the socioeconomic rights and the HIV/AIDS crisis. Although the Constitutional Court has developed a deferential approach to enforcing socioeconomic rights, substantial room remains to litigate on …

Does New York's Death Penalty Statute Violate The New York Constitution? (Symposium: New York State Constitutional Law: Trends And Developments), Richard Klein, Hon. Stewart F. Hancock, Jr., Christopher Quinn

Richard Daniel Klein

No abstract provided.

The Supreme Court And Judicial Review: Two Views, Thomas A. Schweitzer

Thomas A. Schweitzer

No abstract provided.

Supreme Court Section 1983 Decisions: (October 2001 Term), Martin A. Schwartz

Martin A. Schwartz

No abstract provided.

Due Process And Fundamental Rights, Martin A. Schwartz

Martin A. Schwartz

No abstract provided.

Lawrence V. Texas: The Decision And Its Implications For The Future, Martin A. Schwartz

Martin A. Schwartz

No abstract provided.

Reflections On The Constitutional Scholarship Of Charles Black: A Look Back And A Look Forward, Samuel J. Levine

Samuel J. Levine

Charles L. Black Jr. has been one of the most important constitutional scholars in the United States for more than four decades. Professor Black's writings have helped shape the debate in a wide variety of constitutional areas, from racial equality and welfare rights to constitutional amendment, impeachment, and the death penalty. In this essay, Levine briefly surveys a number of Professor Black's articles, focusing on two areas of his scholarship: unnamed human rights and racial justice. By analyzing these two topics, which represent, respectively, Black's most recent scholarship and his most significant early work, Levine attempts to show certain principles …

Unenumerated Constitutional Rights And Unenumerated Biblical Obligations: A Preliminary Study In Comparative Hermeneutics, Samuel J. Levine

Samuel J. Levine

In his 1986 Yale Law Journal article, Robert Cover wrote of an explosion of legal scholarship placing interpretation at the crux of the enterprise of law. As part of the continuing emphasis on hermeneutics in constitutional interpretation, a body of literature has emerged comparing constitutional textual analysis to Biblical hermeneutics. This scholarship has been based on the recognition that, like the Constitution, the Bible functions as an authoritative legal text that must be interpreted in order to serve as the foundation for a living community. Levine looks at a basic hermeneutic device common to both Biblical and constitutional interpretation, the …

Of Inkblots And Omnisignificance: Conceptualizing Secondary And Symbolic Functions Of The Ninth Amendment, In A Comparative Hermeneutic Framework, Samuel J. Levine

Samuel J. Levine

In this Essay, Levine focuses on a particular hermeneutic approach common to the interpretation of the Torah and the United States Constitution: a presumption against superfluity. This presumption accords to the text a considerable degree of omnisignificance, requiring that interpreters pay careful attention to every textual phrase and nuance in an effort to find its legal meaning and implications. In light of this presumption, it might be expected that normative interpretation of both the Torah and the Constitution would preclude a methodology that allows sections of the text to remain bereft of concrete legal application. In fact, however, both the …

A Machine Made Of Words: Our Incompletely Theorized Constitution, Gregory Brazeal

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt]”Many scholars have observed that the Constitution of the United States can be understood as an example of what Cass Sunstein calls an “incompletely theorized agreement.” The Constitution contains a number of extremely general terms, such as “liberty,” “necessary and proper,” and “due process.” The Framers of the Constitution, it is suggested, did not attempt to specify precisely how each of these principles would operate in every case. On this view, the Constitution is incompletely theorized in the sense of representing “a comfortable and even emphatic agreement on a general principle, accompanied by sharp disagreement about particular cases.” For example, …

The Unconstitutionality Of The Filibuster, Josh Chafetz

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This Article, written for the Connecticut Law Review's 2010 "Is Our Constitutional Order Broken?" symposium, argues that the filibuster, as currently practiced, is unconstitutional.

After a brief introduction in Part I, Part II describes the current operation of the filibuster. Although the filibuster is often discussed in terms of "unlimited debate," this Part argues that its current operation is best understood in terms of a sixty-vote requirement to pass most bills and other measures through the Senate.

Part III presents a structural argument that this supermajority requirement for most Senate business is unconstitutional. This Part argues that the words "passed" …

Court's Ruling Fiercely Un-Madisonian, Alan E. Garfield

Alan E Garfield

No abstract provided.

Bruce Ledewitz, American Religious Democracy: Coming To Terms With The End Of Secular Politics, Thomas A. Schweitzer

Thomas A. Schweitzer

No abstract provided.

Awakening The Press Clause, Sonja R. West

Scholarly Works

The Free Press Clause enjoys less practical significance than almost any other constitutional provision. While recognizing the structural and expressive importance of a free press, the Supreme Court has never recognized explicitly any right or protection as emanating solely from the Press Clause. Recently in the Court’s Citizens United decision, Justices Stevens and Scalia reignited the 30-year-old debate over whether the Press Clause has any function separate from the Speech Clause.

The primary roadblock to recognizing independent meaning in the Press Clause is the definitional problem - who or what is the “press”? Others have attempted to define the press, …

But How Will The People Know? Public Opinion As A Meager Influence In Shaping Contemporary Supreme Court Decision Making, Tom Goldstein, Amy Howe

Michigan Law Review

Chief Justice John Roberts famously described the ideal Supreme Court Justice as analogous to a baseball umpire, who simply "applies" the rules, rather than making them. Roberts promised to "remember that it's my job to call balls and strikes and not to pitch or bat." At her own recent confirmation hearings, Elena Kagan demurred, opining that Roberts's metaphor might erroneously suggest that "everything is clear-cut, and that there's no judgment in the process." Based on his 2009 book, The Will of the People: How Public Opinion Has Influenced the Supreme Court and Shaped the Meaning of the Constitution, Barry Friedman …

Same Sex Marriage: Does The Constitution Or State Constitution Support Same-Sex Marriages?, Sonja Seehusen

University of the District of Columbia Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Tea Party And The Constitution, Christopher W. Schmidt

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article considers the Tea Party as a constitutional movement. I explore the Tea Party’s ambitious effort to transform the role of the Constitution in American life, examining both the substance of the Tea Party’s constitutional claims and the tactics movement leaders have embraced for advancing these claims. No major social movement in modern American history has so explicitly tied its reform agenda to the Constitution. From the time when the Tea Party burst onto the American political scene in early 2009, its supporters claimed in no uncertain terms that much recent federal government action overstepped constitutionally defined limitations. A …

Law, History, And Feminism, Tracy A. Thomas

Akron Law Faculty Publications

This is the introduction to the book, Feminist Legal History. This edited collection offers new visions of American legal history that reveal women’s engagement with the law over the past two centuries. It integrates the stories of women into the dominant history of the law in what has been called “engendering legal history,” (Batlan 2005) and then seeks to reconstruct the assumed contours of history. The introduction provides the context necessary to appreciate the diverse essays in the book. It starts with an overview of the existing state of women’s legal history, tracing the core events over the past two …

Law, History, And Feminism, Tracy A. Thomas

Tracy A. Thomas

This is the introduction to the book, Feminist Legal History. This edited collection offers new visions of American legal history that reveal women’s engagement with the law over the past two centuries. It integrates the stories of women into the dominant history of the law in what has been called “engendering legal history,” (Batlan 2005) and then seeks to reconstruct the assumed contours of history. The introduction provides the context necessary to appreciate the diverse essays in the book. It starts with an overview of the existing state of women’s legal history, tracing the core events over the past two …

Recognition: A Case Study On The Original Understanding Of Executive Power, Robert J. Reinstein

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Separation Of Powers Defense Of Federal Rulemaking Power, Michael Blasie

Faculty Scholarly Works

Judicial rulemaking—the methods by which federal courts create federal procedural rules—represents a paradigmatic clash between the functionalist and formalist theories of the separation of powers. There exist compelling practical reasons to invest such power in the judiciary, yet the Constitution’s text does not explicitly confer such power on any branch. This Article comprehensively examines the separation of powers issues raised by the current federal rulemaking process under the formalist theory of the separation of powers in light of modern precedent. Part I details the current procedure for creating the federal rules, summarizes the relevant scholarship, and examines the few Supreme …

Congressional Authority To Interpret The Thirteenth Amendment: A Response To Professor Tsesis, Jennifer Mason Mcaward

Schmooze 'tickets'

No abstract provided.

Involuntary Servitude, Public Accommodations Laws, And The Legacy Of Heart Of Atlanta Motel V. United States , Linda C. Mcclain

Schmooze 'tickets'

No abstract provided.