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Will The New Roberts Court Revive A Formalist Approach To Fourth Amendment Jurisprudence?, Roger Antonio Tejada

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

While all Chief Justices leave behind distinctive periods of judicial thought and practice, the quantitative and qualitative data presented in this article show that the Roberts Court in particular stands out in the development of Fourth Amendment precedent. The key cases that shaped the search and seizure doctrine before and during his rise show that, contrary to what many may expect, Chief Justice Roberts will likely oversee limited, pro-defendant decisions that could grant additional legitimacy to the Court’s crime-control jurisprudence. On the other hand, the new Justices’ voting records and writings suggest that there are several potential coalitions that could …

The Purpose And Practice Of Precedent: What The Decade Long Debate Over Stare Decisis Teaches Us About The New Roberts Court, Russell A. Miller

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

The Supreme Court’s tectonic decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health upended the Doctrine of Substantive Due Process by radically reinterpreting the doctrine of stare decisis. The Court’s established practice regarding stare decisis should have operated to preserve the fifty-year-old abortion jurisprudence. But we should have seen this change coming. Although there has been an intense and involved debate over the purpose and practice of precedent for generations, that debate shifted at the beginning of 2018. Four approaches to stare decisis emerged along a continuum, from complete abandonment of the doctrine and incremental erosion to modernized adherence to precedent. This …

Editor-In-Chief’S Forward, Zoë Grimaldi

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

No abstract provided.

Politicians The Founders Warned You About, Neil Fulton

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

Many articles have explored the Founders’ intentions regarding the constitutional text. Much less attention has focused on the Founders’ ideas regarding the traits needed of the leaders in a constitutional republic. The Constitution focuses on governing structures, many of which relate to the electoral process. The Constitution does not spell out the ideal traits of the leaders elected pursuant to those processes. Nonetheless, the Founders possessed clear views about the virtues and qualifications that ideal political leaders required. Indeed, the Founders issued warnings about certain archetypal political figures who, because of their flagrant disregard of the ideal virtues and qualifications, …

Getting Off Off-Duty: The Impact Of Dobbs On Police Officers’ Private Sexual Lives, Joshua Arrayales

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

Upon its leak and subsequent official release, the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization shocked and worried the nation. Overnight, the Court overturned forty-nine years of precedent. Those forty-nine years of overturned precedent not only implicate the ability to obtain abortion, but also the ability to engage in relationships, marry, make decisions about our own body, and keep our personal lives private. As a result, many advocates worry about the status of fundamental rights since many of those rights relied on the now overturned cases Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey as well as …

The Inadmissibility Of Victim Impact Evidence, Fernanda Gonzalez

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

Currently, 41% of inmates on death row in the United States are Black, even though Black people make up only 13.6% of the total population in the country. Additionally, the data has repeatedly shown that states that do not have the death penalty have lower murder rates than states that do. Despite these disparities, more than half of states in the United States continue to allow capital punishment in some form as an alternative to a life sentence. These disparities were further exacerbated by the Supreme Court’s decision in Payne v. Tennessee, which allowed prosecutors to introduce victim impact evidence …

The Constitution’S Waning Enforceability: Constitutional Torts After Egbert & Vega, Bailey D. Barnes

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

The 2021 term of the Supreme Court of the United States produced two opinions significantly dampening the future of constitutional tort actions, which are cases brought to remedy a government agent’s deprivation of an individual’s constitutional rights. First, in Egbert v. Boule, the Court refused to extend Bivens liability to an excessive force claim made against a United States Border Patrol Agent. Second, in Vega v. Tekoh, the Court contravened the traditional understanding of the Fifth Amendment’s Self-Incrimination Clause by preventing a § 1983 civil rights action against a sheriff’s deputy who procured an un-Mirandized statement from a criminal suspect. …

Behind The Screen: The Constitutionality Of Remote Testimony For Survivors Of Domestic Violence, Rachel Harris

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

“Before my hearing for my order of protection, I knew that he would try to contact me through other people, send me flowers, send presents to the kids, and all of those things will make me feel powerless when I have to go into court and see him face-to-face. I knew after all of that I would tell the judge that I changed my mind and that I am going to give him another chance. But being on the screen, I tell you, gave me a sense of empowerment. When the judge asked me if I wanted an order of …

Presidential Removal: Impeachment As A Tool To Promote Democracy In Haïti, Brynna Bolt

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

No abstract provided.

Against Equality: A Critical Essay For The Naacp And Others, Richard Delgado, Jean Stefancic

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

We address a recurring problem in movement scholarship and activism: why do some civil rights organizations persist in promoting themselves as advocates of equal protection when street activists rarely mention it, and lawyers know that litigation brought under that clause almost always loses? Try to recall the last time you heard of a street protest by a group—say Mexican-American school children in Tucson, Arizona, Black victims of police violence, or military women subjected to sexual harassment— proceeding under the banner of equal protection. Or think when you last read of a lawyer who brought and won a case for a …

Driver’S License Suspensions For Nonpayments: A Discriminatory And Counterproductive Policy, Melissa Toback Levin

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

Driver’s license suspensions for nonpayments of traffic debt disproportionately harm people of color and are legally untenable. Across the country, at least seven million people have had their driver’s license suspended for traffic debt—nonpayments of traffic tickets and nonappearances in traffic court. As this article demonstrates, traffic debt suspensions force people to make an impossible choice: stop driving—and lose access to work, childcare, healthcare, food, and other basic necessities— or keep driving, and risk criminal charges, more unaffordable fines and fees, and even incarceration. License-for-payment laws ultimately create conditions that parallel modern-day debtor’s prisons and are vulnerable to several legal …

Black Lives Matter: Banning Police Lynchings, Mitchell F. Crusto

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

In the United States, police officers are granted a license to use lethal force and are subsequently exonerated from personal criminal liability for fatal killings, particularly when the victim is an African American. This Article advances the normative claim that the Court’s death penalty jurisprudence, including the “Cruel and Unusual Punishment” Clause of the Eighth Amendment, protects the victims of police homicides. Further, it contends that the police use of lethal force against African Americans constitutes “lynching”—a State-sponsored act of terror that supports systemic racism. Finally, it posits that the Constitution mandates that the police use of lethal force be …

Worse Than Punishment: How The Involuntary Commitment Of Persons With Mental Illness Violates The United States Constitution, Samantha M. Caspar, Artem M. Joukov

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

This Article highlights that individuals who suffer from mental health problems can be particularly defenseless against an attack on their liberty through criminal and civil law. Specifically, it delineates how the current laws allow for a potential indefinite commitment of a person who may not have even committed a single crime. The Article explains that constitutionally mandated standards should be required to protect individuals who face losing their liberty due to the perceived threat of future harm. The authors posit that, while preventing individuals from harming themselves or others is an honorable goal, the state should only be able to …

Comparative Cruelty: A Comparative Analysis Of The Eighth Amendment To The United States Constitution And Section Nine Of The New Zealand Bill Of Rights Act, Carrie Leonetti

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

Given that the United States Constitution and the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act both contain prohibitions against governmental acts of cruelty and torture, this Article offers a comparative analysis of the judicial interpretations of the meaning of “cruel” in the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment in the two country’s founding documents. The Article beings by considering the shared historical underpinnings of the prohibitions, which require a proportionality analysis when assessing whether a punishment is excessive. Next, it examines the meaning of “cruelty” and the scope of the prohibitions in New Zealand and the United States. The Article documents …

Neurodiversity In Public Schools: A Critique Of Special Education In America, Pallavi M. Vishwanath

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

This Note provides a comparative critique to the special education practices in the U.S. and Canada. The Note reasons that a country or democracy is most benefitted when there is a recognized governmental duty to maximize the potential of every student via public education. The Note further exposes how a difference in governmental duty to provide equal education drastically affects students’ dignity and potential. This Note describes the history of the American public education system; explains the development of special education in the United States and the ambiguous governmental duty to educate American students; and discusses Canadian case law regarding …

Weeding Out Injustice: Amnesty For Pot Offenders, Mitchell F. Crusto

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

There are a growing number of States that have legalized marijuana, challenging the view that marijuana is a dangerous drug. These States are taking positions relative to both the retroactivity of the new laws and to amelioration of past offenses, which arguably contradict United States Supreme Court decisions on the retroactivity of changes in substantive criminal standards. And, many States recognize that past marijuana laws have greatly contributed to the problems related to a broken criminal justice system, including mass incarceration and racial disparities, particularly to the devastation of communities of color.

In response to these legal developments, this Article …

The Twenty-First Century Poll Tax, Ryan A. Partelow

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

Although disenfranchising voters over outstanding legal financial obligations (“LFOs”) is widely criticized, no court has yet been persuaded to strike down these laws. The practice continues to disenfranchise people based on wealth, and disproportionately affects the voting rights of people of color due to inherent racial disparities in socioeconomic status and the American criminal justice system. Although the concept of felon disenfranchisement itself has been affirmatively upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, this Article argues that disenfranchisement for outstanding LFOs is more akin to the poll tax jurisprudence than to the felon-voting cases.

This Article aims to add to a …

Releasing The 1040, Not So Ez Constitutional Ambiguities Raised By State Laws Mandating Tax Return Release For Presidential Candidates, Matthew M. Ryan

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

No abstract provided.

The Unconstitutional Prosecution Of Asylum-Seeking Parents Under Trump’S Family Separation, Sergio Garcia

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

President Donald Trump’s policy of separating families at the border, known as Trump’s “Zero Tolerance Policy,” was piloted in El Paso, Texas in 2017. Under Trump’s policy, the government separates asylum-seeking parents from their children in order to create “unaccompanied minors” and then prosecute parents. Trump’s policy is standard practice along the nation’s southern border. However, Trump’s prosecution and conviction of asylum–seeking parents violate the constitutional criminal law principles and constitute outrageous government conduct. For example, consider the cases of asylum-seeking parents Elba Luz Dominguez–Portillo, Natividad Zavala–Zavala, Jose Francis Yanes–Mancia, Blanca Nieve Vasquez– Hernandez, and Maynor Alonso Claudino–Lopez (collectively referred …

The Immigration Crisis In American Courts: Children Representing Themselves, Wendy Melissa Hernandez

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

No abstract provided.

Protecting Native Women From Violence: Fostering State-Tribal Relations And The Shortcomings Of The Violence Against Women Act Of 2013, Dayna Olson

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

Native American women face violence at astronomically high rates compared to any other ethnic group in the United States. These staggering statistics are laregly the result of conflicting criminal jurisdiction between tribal, state, and federal prosecutors. As a result, crimes of intimate partner violence that take place on tribal reservations often go unpunished, leaving these women with little to no recourse. In 2013, President Obama signed the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. This landmark legislation created the Special Domestic Violence Criminal Jurisdiction, which gave Native American tribes the authority to prosecute a narrow set of non-tribal members for …

The Extraterritorial Reach Of Tribal Court Criminal Jurisdiction, Grant Christensen

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

Conflicts over the jurisdiction between tribal, state, and federal courts arise regularly due to the nature of overlapping sovereignty. The Supreme Court accepts an average of almost three Indian law cases a year and has decided more than twenty Indian law cases with a jurisdictional focus since 1978. As tribes become wealthier, they are increasingly acquiring new lands outside of their existing reservations. This expansion of territory generates new border zones where state and tribal interests converge. The Sixth Circuit recently decided the first federal appellate case dealing with the inherent criminal powers of tribal court jurisdiction over the conduct …

Judges Of Color: Examining The Impact Of Judicial Diversity In The Equal Protection Jurisprudence Of The United States Court Of Appeals For The Ninth Circuit, Kristine L. Avena

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

From slavery to civil rights to affirmative action, America’s history has been plagued with the issue of race. The federal bench is no exception. For almost two centuries, the highest court of the nation did not represent the public that it served. This Note aims to determine how the presence of minority judges on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit impacts Equal Protection doctrine. This Note shows that a Ninth Circuit judge’s race is important in providing procedural and substantive contributions to the federal bench. Diverse judges use their life experiences to ensure that every person …

Proceed With Caution: Hate Speech Regulation In Japan, Junko Kotani

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

The Diet of Japan enacted the Hate Speech Elimination Act in 2016 amid heated debates over the appropriate role that the government should play in confronting the vulgar racist hate speech that had been permeating the country. The Act, however, does not criminalize or make illegal hate speech and is thus criticized by Professor Craig Martin. This Article argues that while the principles of freedom of speech under the Constitution of Japan may tolerate criminalization of narrowly defined hate speech, one should be cautious in advocating for immediate criminalization of racist hate speech in the country. This Article provides an …

Sex Offender Regulations And The Rule Of Law: When Civil Regulatory Schemes Circumvent The Constitution, Ryan W. Porte

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

The U.S. Supreme Court last decided the issue of whether post-incarceration sex offender regulations constituted punishment or nonpunitive regulations over twenty years ago. In coming to its conclusion, the Supreme Court assessed the regulations as they were written in the 1990s and the early 2000s and maintained the assumption that offenders constituted a greater danger to the public than other classes of criminals. In 2018, post-incarceration sex offender regulations are far more restrictive than they were two decades ago and scientific studies tend to refute the public belief that sex offenders are more recidivistic than other criminals. Recognizing this, some …

Agent Narc Is Not Your Client: Reflections On The Proper Understanding Of The Relationship Between Prosecutors And Investigating Agencies, Carrie Leonetti

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

Assistant United States Attorneys increasingly conceive federal lawenforcement agents as their "clients" in criminal prosecutions. As both a descriptive and normative matter, this cannot be right. As a descriptive matter, official interpretations by the Department of Justice, the bench, the bar, and academic commentators almost always reject this "client" conception. It is inconsistent with the conception of prosecutorial obligations espoused by Brady v. Maryland, the American Bar Association model rules of ethics, federal statutes, and evidentiary law. As a normative matter, it could have serious implications for the law of attorney malpractice, prosecutorial immunity, the disclosure of favorable evidence to …

Trumping Asylum: Criminal Prosecutors For Illegal Entry And Reentry Violate The Rights Of Asylum Seekers, Natasha Arnpriester

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

Criminal prosecution for the immigration-related infractions of illegal entry and illegal reentry have escalated dramatically under the Trump Administration, which has made targeting immigrants a top priority. This escalation is happening at a time when the population coming to the U.S. southern border is largely seeking safety from persecution and danger. The United States does not recognize asylum as a defense to illegal entry or illegal reentry, and asylum seekers are not excluded from being charged and criminally prosecuted for these infractions, despite U.S. treaty obligations prohibiting this practice. As a result, people coming to the United States to seek …

Dignity And The Death Penalty In The United States Supreme Court, Bharat Malkani

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

The concept of dignity is central to moral and legal issues about the death penalty. The United States Supreme Court has justified the use of dignity to retain the use of the death penalty. However, this article argues that dignity should not be used as a means to uphold the use of capital punishment. Instead, the concept of dignity involves the relationship between the "human dignity" of the people involved in the crime, the dignity of the wider community in whose name the death penalty is being imposed, and the dignity of the legal institution that administers capital punishment. As …

Allowing Lawless Police Conduct In Order To Forbid Lawless Civilian Conduct: The Court Further Erodes The Exclusionary Rule In Utah V. Strieff, George M. Dery Iii

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

This Article analyzes Utah v. Strieff, in which the Supreme Court applied its attenuation of taint doctrine to drugs and paraphernalia recovered as a result of an illegal stop of a person. The Strieff Court ruled that the evidence, seized during a search incident to arrest after an unlawful seizure, was admissible because the officer learned of an unknown outstanding arrest warrant during the stop. Strieff reasoned that the discovery of this arrest warrant attenuated the connection between the initial illegal seizure and the evidence ultimately seized incident to arrest. This Article examines the concerns created by Strieffs ruling. This …

Protecting Our Defenders: The Need To Ensure Due Process For Women In The Military Before Amending The Selective Service Act, Kelsey L. Campbell

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

On January 1, 2016, all previously closed frontline military occupations were opened to women for the first time in U.S. history. Shortly thereafter, several military leaders and politicians stated that due to the change in policy, women were then "equal to men" in the military and, therefore, should be required to register for Selective Service-the system that maintains a list of Americans fit for service in the event a military draft is requested by the president. While the recent change extended employment opportunity to women within the military, a number of polices and laws prevent women from achieving equality in …