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A New Federalist Approach To Reducing Gun Violence: Model State Policy For Medicaid-Funded, Hospital-Based Violence Intervention Programs, Racquel Bozzelli

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Dividing The Body Politic, James A. Gardner

Journal Articles

It has long been assumed in large, modern, democratic states that the successful practice of democratic politics requires some kind of internal division of the polity into subunits. In the United States, the appropriate methods and justifications for doing so have long been deeply and inconclusively contested. One reason for the intractability of these disputes is that American practices of political self-division are rooted in, and have been largely carried forward from, premodern practices that rested originally on overtly illiberal assumptions and justifications that are difficult or impossible to square with contemporary commitments to philosophical liberalism.

The possibility of sorting …

Life Without Parole: An Eighth Amendment Analysis, Alexis Dicarlo

Buffalo Human Rights Law Review

This Article will analyze the constitutionality of life without parole under the U.S. Supreme Court’s test for categorical bans on sentencing practices. This article first addresses the cruelty of prison and how that affects individuals with life sentences specifically. Next, it will analyze life without parole under the Supreme Court’s Eighth Amendment analysis, starting with examining evolving standards of decency. In doing so, this article will address how the U.S. operates with respect to sentencing compared to the rest of the world. Importantly, it will engage in a culpability analysis, following the Supreme Court’s logic, that ultimately favors abolition of …

Progressive State Constitutionalism, Jorge M. Farinacci-Fernós

Buffalo Law Review

Unlike the U.S. Constitution, many state constitutions are truly modern documents that address important social, economic, and political issues from a progressive perspective. This is due to the combination of several key features, including: socially oriented historical circumstances; democratic creation processes; significant substantive content guided by ideas of social justice; and adequate judicial enforcement that takes into account these crucial normative elements. As a result, these progressive state constitutions can become powerful allies in the search for a transformative constitutionalism in the United States that facilitates the goals of social justice and collective prosperity.

The constitutional processes in California (1880), …

Guide To Bill Of Attainder Clauses In Article I, Sections 9 And 10, Matthew J. Steilen

Contributions to Books

These are commentaries on the Bill of Attainder Clauses in Article I, sections 9 and 10. Each is 2000 words long. They are forthcoming in the 3d edition of Heritage Guide to the Constitution. Topics covered include the history of English bills of attainder, the meaning of "bill," "notorious," "attainder," and other key terms, bills of attainder passed against loyalists during the American revolution, the Josiah Philips case, the legislative history of the clauses in the Philadelphia Convention, early Supreme Court decisions involving bills of attainder, and the modern doctrine. Inline citations and a short bibliography are included. The author …

Life And Afterlife In The Steel Seizure Case, Matthew Steilen

Buffalo Law Review

This Essay examines the proper role of the Supreme Court in deciding disputes between Congress and the President. Progressive commentators are now urging the Court to dismiss these cases as political questions, at least where doing so would give effect to congressional regulations of the President. The Court’s interference is criticized as antidemocratic. This Essay advances a different conception of the Supreme Court’s role by examining the famous Steel Seizure Case. In that case, the Court upheld an injunction barring President Truman from seizing the nation’s steel mills, on grounds that doing so was inconsistent with congressional will and without …

Standing For Democracy: Is Democracy A Procedural Right In Vacuo? A Democratic Perspective On Procedural Violations As A Basis For Article Iii Standing, Helen Hershkoff, Stephen Loffredo

Buffalo Law Review

Many commentators express concern that democracy in the United States is under threat, whether from the pressure of concentrated wealth and structural racism, government secrecy and authoritarian tendencies, an outdated constitutional structure and old-fashioned corruption, or perhaps a combination of them all. Against this background, this Article argues that the Supreme Court’s treatment of procedural rights for determining standing—the key that opens the door to federal court—is an overlooked factor in contributing to democratic erosion. According to the Court, violation of a congressionally conferred procedural right that does not safeguard some separate, non-procedural, concrete interest of plaintiff—a “procedural right in …

The Presidential Coup, Anthony J. Ghiotto

Buffalo Law Review

What prevents the President from abusing the military power at his disposal to stage a coup and actively impose presidential rule upon the United States? What if generations of presidential assertions of authority, congressional acquiescence, and judicial abdication have not only laid the groundwork for the President to use military power to impose his will, but in fact have legally sanctioned such a presidential coup? And what if the informal checks and balances that historically protected against such abuse—specifically a benevolent President, a constitutionally faithful military, intra-executive branch checks, and public opinion—have also eroded to no longer function as checks? …

Developing Police, Madalyn K. Wasilczuk

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Irrepressible Myth Of Jacobson V. Massachusetts, Josh Blackman

Buffalo Law Review

During the COVID-19 outbreak, Jacobson v. Massachusetts became the fountainhead for pandemic jurisprudence. Courts relied on this 1905 precedent to resolve disputes about religious freedom, abortion, gun rights, voting rights, the right to travel, and many other contexts. But Justice John Marshall Harlan’s decision was very narrow. It upheld the state’s power to impose a nominal fine on an unvaccinated person. No more, no less. Yet, judges now follow a variant of Jacobson that is far removed from the Lochner-era decision. And the Supreme Court is largely to blame for these errors. Over the course of a century, four prominent …

The Complexities Of Conscience: Reconciling Death Penalty L Aw With Capital Jurors’ Concerns, Meredith Martin Rountree, Mary R. Rose

Buffalo Law Review

Jurors exercise unique legal power when they are asked to decide whether to sentence someone to death. The Supreme Court emphasizes the central role of the jury’s moral judgment in making this sentencing decision, noting that it is the jurors who are best able to “express the conscience of the community on the ultimate question of life or death.” Manylower courts nevertheless narrow the range of admissible evidence at the mitigation phase of a capital trial, insisting on a standard of legal relevance that interferes with the jury’s ability to exercise the very moral judgment the Supreme Court has deemed …

Solidarity As A Constitutional Value, Tamar Hostovsky Brandes

Buffalo Human Rights Law Review

No abstract provided.

Subnational Constitutionalism In The United States: Powerful States In A Powerful Federation, James A. Gardner

Contributions to Books

Published as Chapter 19 in Routledge Handbook of Subnational Constitutions and Constitutionalism, Patricia Popelier, Nicholas Aroney & Giacomo Delledonne, eds.

The United States has an extremely robust network of subnational constitutions. It is one of the few federations in the world in which subnational entities are understood to be fully competent polities with virtually complete constituent powers of self-organization and self-authorization. The authority to adopt a subnational constitution is consequently understood to be an incident of subnational sovereignty, a concept in turn derived from a conception of the basic federal order itself as highly decentralized.

One Man’S Trash: Constitutional Principles Of Federalism And Privacy Implicated In San Francisco’S Mandatory Recycling Ordinance And Future Similar Legislation, J. Tyler Smith

Buffalo Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Whither The Neutral Agency? Rethinking Bias In Regulatory Administration, Daniel B. Rodriguez

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Illiberalism And Authoritarianism In The American States, James A. Gardner

Journal Articles

Federalism contemplates subnational variation, but in the United States the nature and significance of that variation has long been contested. In light of the recent turn, globally and nationally, toward authoritarianism, and the concurrent sharp decline in public support not merely for democracy but for the philosophical liberalism on which democracy rests, it is necessary to discard or to substantially revise prior accounts of the nature of state-to-state variation in the U.S. All such accounts implicitly presuppose a common commitment, across the political spectrum, to the core tenets of democratic liberalism, and consequently that subnational variations in policy preferences and …

Virtual Trials: Necessity, Invention, And The Evolution Of The Courtroom, Susan A. Bandes, Neal Feigenson

Buffalo Law Review

Faith in the legitimating power of the live hearing or trial performed at the place of justice is at least as old as the Iliad. In public courtrooms, litigants appear together, evidence is presented, and decisions are openly and formally pronounced. The bedrock belief in the importance of the courtroom is rooted in common law, constitutional guarantees, and venerated tradition, as well as in folk knowledge. Courtrooms are widely believed to imbue adjudication with “a mystique of authenticity and legitimacy.” The COVID-19 pandemic, however, by compelling legal systems throughout the world to turn from physical courtrooms to virtual ones, disrupts …

Police Body Cameras: Go Big Or Go Home?, Ronald J. Coleman

Buffalo Law Review

Police body-worn cameras have proliferated since the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, and the recent George Floyd-related protests seem set to continue or even accelerate that trend. Indeed, in her recent Nieves v. Bartlett dissent, Justice Sotomayor took time to note that many departments equip their police officers with body cameras. Body camera advocates have touted the cameras’ benefits, such as decreasing misconduct, reducing complaints, and improving accountability. At the same time, serious concerns have been raised regarding the impact of these cameras on privacy, public resources, and fairness. Despite the increased interest in body cameras, important empirical …

A Poll Tax By Another Name: Considering The Constitutionality Of Conditioning Naturalization And The “Right To Have Rights” On An Ability To Pay, John Harland Giammatteo

Journal Articles

Permanent residents must naturalize to enjoy full access to constitutional rights, particularly the right to vote. However, new regulations from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), finalized in early August and originally slated to go into effect one month before the 2020 election, would drastically increase the cost of naturalization, moving it out of reach for many otherwise-qualified permanent residents, while at the same time abolishing any meaningful fee waiver for low-income applicants. In doing so, USCIS has sought to condition naturalization and its attendant rights on an individual’s financial status. In this Essay, I juxtapose the new fee regulations …

Before Loving: The Lost Origins Of The Right To Marry, Michael Boucai

Journal Articles

For almost two centuries of this nation’s history, the basic contours of the fundamental right to marry were fairly clear as a matter of natural, not constitutional, law. The right encompassed marriage’s essential characteristics: onjugality and contract, portability and permanence. This Article defines those four dimensions of the natural right to marry and describes their reflections and contradictions in positive law prior to Loving v. Virginia (1967). In that landmark case, the Supreme Court enforced a constitutional “freedom to marry” just when marriage’s definitive attributes were on the brink of legal collapse. Not only did wedlock proceed in Loving’s wake …

Asylum Under Attack: Is It Time For A Constitutional Right?, Stephen Meili

Buffalo Human Rights Law Review

No abstract provided.

Reimagining The Death Penalty: Targeting Christians, Conservatives, Spearit

Buffalo Law Review

This Article is an interdisciplinary response to an entrenched legal and cultural problem. It incorporates legal analysis, religious study and the anthropological notion of “culture work” to consider death penalty abolitionism and prospects for abolishing the death penalty in the United States. The Article argues that abolitionists must reimagine their audiences and repackage their message for broader social consumption, particularly for Christian and conservative audiences. Even though abolitionists are characterized by some as “bleeding heart” liberals, this is not an accurate portrayal of how the death penalty maps across the political spectrum. Abolitionists must learn that conservatives are potential allies …

The Constitutional Convention And Constitutional Change: A Revisionist History, Matthew J. Steilen

Journal Articles

How do we change the Federal Constitution? Article V tells us that we can amend the Constitution by calling a national convention to propose changes and then ratifying those proposals in state conventions. Conventions play this role because they represent the people in their sovereign capacity, as we learn when we read McCulloch v. Maryland.

What is not often discussed is that Article V itself contains another mechanism for constitutional change. In fact, Article V permits both conventions and leg-islatures to be used for amendment, and, as it happens, all but one of the 27 amendments to the Constitution have …

Lawful Searches Incident To Unlawful Arrests: A Reform Proposal, Mark A. Summers

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Nondelegation And The Major Questions Doctrine: Displacing Interpretive Power, Marla D. Tortorice

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Drying Up The Slippery Slope: A New Approach To The Second Amendment, Stephanie Cooper Blum

Buffalo Law Review

Few issues are as divisive as guns in American society. In 2017, gun deaths in the United States reached their highest level in nearly forty years. The status quo is untenable as many gun rights groups feel that gun regulations are just a first step in a slippery slope of undermining the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms for self-defense. Conversely, many gun violence prevention activists insist that reasonable regulations concerning public safety can co-exist with the right to bear arms. This quagmire will never abate because on many levels both sides are right. For over 200 years, the courts …

Transformative Constitutions And The Role Of Integrity Institutions In Tempering Power: The Case Of Resistance To State Capture In Post-Apartheid South Africa, Heinz Klug

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Legislature At War: Bandits, Runaways And The Emergence Of A Virginia Doctrine Of Separation Of Powers, Matthew J. Steilen

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Interpenetration Of Powers: Channels And Obstacles For Populist Impulses, Anya Bernstein

Journal Articles

Discussions of populism often focus on the most visible points of executive power: individual leaders. Yet individual leaders only accomplish things through administrative apparatuses that enable and support their power. Rejecting a political theology that imagines sovereignty as inhering in a single decision-maker, this article turns to political pragmatics focused on the people who populate the government. I draw on interviews with administrators in the government of two successful but quite different democracies. The first is the United States, an old, flagship democratic state. The second is Taiwan, which transitioned from a four-decade military dictatorship to a vibrant democracy in …

Anti-Sanctuary And Immigration Localism, Pratheepan Gulasekaram, Rick Su, Rose Cuison Villazor

Journal Articles

A new front in the war against sanctuary cities has emerged. Until recently, the fight against sanctuary cities has largely focused on the federal government's efforts to defund states like California and cities like Chicago and New York for resisting federal immigration enforcement. Thus far, localities have mainly prevailed against this federal anti-sanctuary campaign, relying on federalism protections afforded by the Tenth Amendment's anticommandeering and anticoercion doctrines. Recently, however, the battle lines have shifted with the proliferation of state-level laws that similarly seek to punish sanctuary cities. States across the country are directly mandating local participation, and courts thus far …