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Unenumerated Rights Under The U.S. Constitution, Thomas B. Mcaffee

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The symbol of modern constitutional law, for good or ill, is Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court’s abortion decision. From the beginning, the big question has been, where in the text of the Constitution do were find this “right of privacy” that secures the right to choose abortion? Some scholars have argued that such a right could not be found in the text or structure of the Constitution. One powerful counter stems from a textual approach to giving effect to the Constitution. In this article, the author argues that, if we look carefully enough at the text and history, …

Does The Federal Constitution Incorporate The Declaration Of Independence?, Thomas B. Mcaffee

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A standard view at the time of the adoption of the Constitution was that “a constitution does not in itself imply any more than a declaration of the relation which the different parts of the government have to each other, but does not imply security for the rights of individuals.” The drafters of the state constitutions had “assumed that government had all power except for specific prohibitions contained in a bill of rights.” When the federal Constitution was transmitted to the states by Congress, Nathaniel Gorham of Massachusetts defended the omission of a bill of rights based on the federal …

The Constitution As Based On The Consent Of The Governed—Or, Should We Have An Unwritten Constitution?, Thomas B. Mcaffee

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It is useful to embrace continuity in describing basic differences we have in giving effect to the Constitution, especially if particular ways of communicating help us convey and understand what is at stake. The individual who originated the term “non-interpretivist” to describe judicial review implementing the unwritten constitution, for example, continues to believe that the best approach to constitutional interpretation is not “textualist,” but is properly characterized as “supplemental.” In his view, “much American constitutional adjudication, including but not limited to decisions under due process liberty and the right of privacy, involves the interpretation of an unwritten and essentially common …

Due Process And Fundamental Rights, Martin A. Schwartz

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No abstract provided.

The Tenth Amendment Among The Shadows: On Reading The Constitution In Plato's Cave, Jay S. Bybee

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In Plato's Allegory of the Cave, he describes a cavernous chamber in which men are imprisoned. Although a large fire lights the cave, the prisoners cannot see the light source. Instead, they can only make out figures that dance and parade in front of them illuminated by the fire. The prisoners cannot even see the figures directly, only their shadows. Everything that the prisoners know about reality they have learned from the distorted shapes of the shadows dancing about the cave's walls. Socrates wonders, if a prisoner were suddenly freed and could see the objects themselves and not merely their …

Common Ground: Robert Jackson, Antonin Scalia, And A Power Theory Of The First Amendment, Jay S. Bybee

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There are few cases that contrast more starkly than Justice Robert Jackson's opinion for the Court in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette and Justice Antonin Scalia's majority opinion in Employment Division v. Smith. Although we praise Barnette for its soaring defense of the Free Speech Clause and excoriate Smith for its crabbed reading of the Free Exercise Clause, in fact, Justice Jackson and Justice Scalia are not so far apart. When we read Barnette and Smith in context, we will find that Justice Jackson and Justice Scalia treaded common ground with respect to the First Amendment. …

Toward The Restorative Constitution: A Restorative Justice Critique Of Anti-Gang Public Nuisance Injunctions, Joan W. Howarth

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Gang members from elsewhere congregated on lawns, on sidewalks, and in front of apartment complexes at all hours. They displayed a casual contempt for notions of law, order, and decency -- openly drinking, smoking dope, sniffing toluene, and even snorting cocaine laid out in neat lines on the hoods of residents' cars. San Jose prosecutors responded by obtaining and enforcing a broad injunction against the gangs and their members, based on the finding that the gangs' activities constituted a public nuisance. California prosecutors have sought such anti-gang public nuisance injunctions since 1987. Their constitutionality was in doubt for ten years …

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

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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 …

Protecting Basic Rights Of Citizens, Ellen Catsman Freidin, Ann C. Mcginley

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Revision 9 suggests three important changes to the basic rights provision of the Florida Constitution. First, it would add “female and male alike” to define “natural persons who are equal before the law.” This change expressly recognizes equality of the sexes. Second, it would prohibit the government from depriving a person of any right because of the person’s national origin. Finally, the revision prohibits the government from depriving a person of any right because of “physical disability,” replacing the currently existing protection for “physical handicap.”

The Federal System As Bill Of Rights: Original Understandings, Modern Misreadings, Thomas B. Mcaffee

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In the modern era, we have almost completely lost track of the relationship that the Framers of the United States Constitution perceived between the structure of our federal system and the protection of popular rights. At least two obvious components of this confusion persist. First, as we have come to think of rights almost exclusively in terms of the claims of individuals against the government, we have lost the ability to hear the Framers' voices referring to rights held by the people in their collective capacity, including the rights of the people within each of the sovereign states to be …

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

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No abstract provided.

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

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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 …

Rethinking The Constitutionality Of The Supreme Court's Preference For Binding Arbitration: A Fresh Assessment Of Jury Trial, Separation Of Powers, And Due Process Concerns, Jean R. Sternlight

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Courts and commentators have typically assumed that binding arbitration is both private and consensual, and that it therefore raises no constitutional concerns. This Article challenges both assumptions and goes on to consider arguments that arbitration agreements may unconstitutionally deprive persons of their right to a jury trial, to a judge, and to due process of law. The author argues first that courts' interpretation of seemingly private arbitration agreements may often give rise to "state action," particularly where courts have used a "preference favoring arbitration over litigation" to construe a contract in a non-neutral fashion. The author next draws on the …

Bringing Forward The Right To Keep And Bear Arms: Do Text, History, Or Precedent Stand In The Way?, Thomas B. Mcaffee, Michael J. Quinlan

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The Second Amendment is the black sheep of the constitutional family. Paralleling the Amendment's neglect and abuse by commentators is the curious onslaught of misinformation and fear in the public arena. In this Article, Professors McAffee and Quinlan begin the process of restoring the Second Amendment to its rightful place as an individual right enjoyed by the citizenry. Reviewing singular facets of the Second Amendment debate, including the relation between the Militia and Right to Arms Clauses, the meaning of “keep and bear,” the relevance of militia provisions today and the abandonment by the Supreme Court as an active participant …

A Critical Guide To The Ninth Amendment, Thomas B. Mcaffee

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Since the Supreme Court's decision in Griswold v. Connecticut, thousands of law students each year have confronted a confusing debate over the meaning of the Ninth Amendment. Writing for the majority in Griswold, Justice Douglas included the Ninth Amendment among the sources for deriving the “penumbral” right of privacy. More central to this article, in a separate concurrence Justice Goldberg contended that the Amendment provided a basis for the discovery of fundamental human rights beyond those included in the text of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. In response, the dissenting Justices, Stewart and Black, argued that …

Originalism And Indeterminacy, Thomas B. Mcaffee

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Perhaps the most universal objection to originalism is that it is impossible; that is, the materials relied upon by originalists simply do not yield determinant answers to any worthwhile questions. This indeterminacy objection lacks significant force for at least three reasons. First, the claim that the interpretive materials are always indeterminate vastly overstates the extent and importance of the uncertainties involved; consequently, originalism's critics understate the importance of the originalist canon as a tool for reducing the degree of indeterminacy in constitutional interpretation. Once it becomes clear that originalist methodology can provide some definitive answers, even if significant indeterminacy remains, …

Federalism And The Protection Of Rights: The Modern Ninth Amendment’S Spreading Confusion, Thomas B. Mcaffee

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Blindness to a basic understanding of the framers' design of our federal structure is largely responsible for the confusion that surrounds our understanding of the Ninth Amendment. The Ninth Amendment reads: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” In Griswold v. Connecticut, Justices Black and Stewart explained in separate dissenting opinions that the Ninth Amendment's reference to the other rights “retained by the people” alluded to the collective and individual rights the people “retained” by virtue of granting limited, enumerated powers to the national government. …

The Constitution Of Belarus: A Good First Step Towards The Rule Of Law, Gary M. Shaw

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No abstract provided.

The Brown Symposium – An Introduction, Thomas B. Mcaffee

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This article is an introduction to a symposium sponsored by Southern Illinois University regarding Brown v. Board of Education.

Substance Above All: The Utopian Vision Of Modern Natural Law Constitutionalists, Thomas B. Mcaffee

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Modern natural law constitutionalists assert that the Constitution, properly understood, includes a kind of general trump card in the form of a moral reality which provides (or is, at any rate, thought to provide) a measure of all positive legal acts--whether framed in terms of the values of natural equality, natural rights, or “simple justice.”

This article explores why “trump card” natural law constitutionalism cannot by its nature adequately confront crucial issues of institutional design and democratic theory. In thus putting questions of moral substance ahead of crucial issues of authority, natural law constitutionalism appears to rest on a naive, …

Brown And The Doctrine Of Precedent: A Concurring Opinion, Thomas B. Mcaffee

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This article is part of a symposium sponsored by Southern Illinois University regarding Brown v. Board of Education. In this article, the author addresses the question of what opinion he would have written had he been a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court when the case was decided.

The author indicates he would have concurred in those opinions finding a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment in Brown v. Board of Education. The author finds persuasive the argument that any other decision would permit states to evade the core purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment. Nevertheless, …

Constitutional Implications Of Acquisition-Value Real Property Taxation: Assessing The Burdens On Travel And Commerce, Mary Lafrance

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This article is the second in a two-part series addressing the constitutional implications of acquisition-value real property taxation. This Article addresses constitutional issues raised by systems of real property taxation that base a property owner's tax assessment not on the current value of the property but on its value on the date the taxpayer acquired it. The first Article in this series described the operation of acquisition-value systems of real property taxation such as those adopted by California in 1978 and Florida in 1992, and evaluated the equal protection challenges to the California system (“Proposition 13”) which culminated in the …

Constitutional Implications Of Acquisition-Value Real Property Taxation: The Elusive Rational Basis, Mary Lafrance

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This article is the first in a two-part series addressing the constitutional implications of acquisition-value real property taxation. Acquisition-value real property taxation systems represent a departure from the traditional practice of taxing real property on its current fair market value. In contrast to traditional systems, which are still employed by the vast majority of states, under acquisition- value taxation a real estate owner's property tax liability is determined by the value of the property when the taxpayer acquired it. In periods of rising real estate prices, such a scheme compels later buyers to shoulder a higher annual tax liability than …

Reed Dickerson’S Originalism — What It Contributes To Contemporary Constitutional Debate, Thomas B. Mcaffee

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In this article the author offers his personal gratitude for the work of Reed Dickerson, along with some thoughts on his important contributions to our understanding of the interpretive process. As a young scholar in need of help in grappling with the continuing debate over constitutional interpretation, the author turned, at the suggestion of colleagues, to Reed Dickerson’s impressive book on statutory interpretation. The hours spent attempting to ingest Reed’s thoughtful work were amply rewarded, and the author took the occasion of publishing an article on the original intent debate to refer in an initial footnote to his intellectual debt …

Prolegomena To A Meaningful Debate Of The “Unwritten Constitution” Thesis, Thomas B. Mcaffee

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Seventeen years ago Professor Grey launched the modern debate over the idea of an unwritten Constitution by suggesting that the key to defending modern fundamental rights decision-making might be to rediscover the founding generation's commitment to natural law and unwritten sources of basic rights. Some modern Supreme Court decisions, Grey suggested, might be better justified by reliance upon the methodology suggested by Justice Chase's famous opinion in Calder v. Bull than by looking to the justification for judicial review offered by Chief Justice Marshall in Marbury v. Madison. Grey's arguments for the unwritten Constitution idea has struck a chord …

The Bill Of Rights, Social Contract Theory, And The Rights “Retained” By The People, Thomas B. Mcaffee

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The Ninth Amendment provides that “[t]he enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” There is no question that this Amendment was designed as a savings clause, to ensure that the specification of particular rights would not raise an inference that the Bill of Rights exhausted the rights which the people held as against the newly-created national government. But there is an ongoing debate as to nature of these additional rights retained by the people and as to the sort of claim they might support against the exercise …

A Comparison Of A Mentally Ill Individual's Right To Refuse Medication Under The United States And The New York State Constitutions, William M. Brooks

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No abstract provided.

Pitfalls Of Public Policy: The Case Of Arbitration Agreements, Jeffrey W. Stempel

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As the juxtaposition of these quotations suggests, judges have long held disparate views on the legitimacy and value of “public policy” considerations as a basis for legal decision making. The popular notion posits that Justice Holmes and legal realists carried the day, making public policy analysis an ordinary part of the adjudication process. The story, of course, is more complex than this legal version of Don Quixote. Many judges and lawyers, including Justice Holmes in other writings, continued to speak of adjudication in more formalist and positivist terms, with most laypersons in apparent agreement. Judge Burroughs' view of public policy …

The Original Meaning Of The Ninth Amendment, Thomas B. Mcaffee

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This Article presents the case for the residual rights reading of the ninth amendment as against the affirmative rights interpretation. The author evaluates the merits of these opposing views to determine whether the proponents of the new orthodoxy have really made the case for discarding the received reading. This analysis of the recent literature also raises questions about the way in which constitutional scholarship is conducted. The author concludes that the original meaning of the ninth amendment lends critical support to the project of originalist jurisprudence in the individual rights area and undercuts modem claims linking the ninth amendment to …

Drugs And Small Arms: Can Law Stop The Traffic?, Christopher L. Blakesley

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Professor Blakesley presides over this panel discussion on laws combating the illegal importation of drugs and small arms, and their implications for international and domestic law.