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Contingent Constitutionality, Legislative Facts, And Campaign Finance Law, Michael T. Morley

Florida State University Law Review

Many of the Supreme Court’s important holdings concerning campaign finance law are not pure matters of constitutional interpretation. Rather, they are “contingent” constitutional determinations: the Court’s conclusions rest in substantial part on legislative facts about the world that the Court finds, intuits, or assumes to be true. While earlier commentators have recognized the need to improve legislative factfinding by the Supreme Court, other aspects of its treatment of legislative facts—particularly in the realm of campaign finance—require reform as well.

Stare decisis purportedly insulates the Court’s purely legal holdings and interpretations from future challenge. Factually contingent constitutional rulings should, in contrast, …

Detention Without Trial In The Second World War: Comparing The British And American Experiences, A.W. Brian Simpson

Florida State University Law Review

National security has long been advanced as a justification for the abrogation of civil liberties. In this lecture, Professor Simpson examines through the analysis of particular cases how two nations dealt with these competing values in the interment without trial of their respective citizens during World War II. Condemning the secrecy and lack of accountability of the authorities responsible for protecting the nation, Simpson issues a call for vigilance and a warning that patterns and habits of respect for liberty will serve better than mere forms of procedure to effectively insure that liberties are not again abandoned to ill-founded claims …