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Suspicionless Drug Testing And Chandler V. Miller: Is The Supreme Court Making The Right Decisions, Ross H. Parr

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

During the last decade, the United States Supreme Court has rendered four major decisions regarding the validity of suspicionless drug testing policies. Such drug testing policies have become a common way for employers and other interested parties-including the government-both to deter the use of drugs and to determine who is acting under the influence of illegal narcotics. Because government officials often randomly select individuals for drug testing, some of these individuals have charged that a governmental drug testing policy violates the Fourth Amendment. The Supreme Court found this argument unconvincing in three cases decided between 1989 and 1997, but in …

Lincoln, Vallandingham, And Anti-War Speech In The Civil War, Michael Kent Curtis

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

In the early morning hours of May 5, 1863, Union soldiers forcibly arrested Clement L. Vallandigham, a prominent Democratic politician and former congressman, for an anti-war speech which he had given a few days earlier in Mount Vernon, Ohio. Vallandigham's arrest ignited debate about freedom of speech in a democracy during a time of war and the First Amendment rights of critics of an administration. This Article is one in a series by Professor Curtis which examines episodes in the history of free speech before and during the Civil War.

In this Article, Professor Curtis explores the First Amendment's guarantee …

Law And Human Dignity: The Judicial Soul Of Justice Brennan, Stephen J. Wermiel

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

The concept of human dignity has emerged in the United States in recent decades as an important theoretical and sometimes practical source of individual rights and liberties. Human dignity is cited in jurisprudential writings and discussed in some court opinions as a means of enhancing the broad phrases of the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment. This Essay examines the pivotal role that the late Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., played on the United States Supreme Court in making concepts of human dignity a valued and essential part of rights formulation. This essay explores Justice Brennan 's vision of …

Physician-Assisted Suicide: State Legislation Teetering At The Pinnacle Of A Slippery Slope, Eunice Park

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

Physician-assisted suicide has become the subject of a hotly contested legal and political debate, both in the United States and abroad. In 1997, the United States Supreme Court rendered two decisions concerning physician-assisted suicide, and two states recently enacted legislation on this issue: Oregon in 1997 and Virginia in 1998. Nevertheless, the legality of physician-assisted suicide remains unclear as doctors, pharmacists, legal commentators, and a growing segment of the general population continue to argue over the line between "letting die" and "killing." This Note analyzes both the constitutional and political aspects of the right-to-die debate, focusing primarily on the political …

The Moral Failure Of The Clear And Present Danger Test, David R. Dow

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

The clear and present danger test has been used for almost a century to determine the speech the government may restrain. This test assumes that at some point speech transforms into an act and at that moment the speech becomes punishable. Under the clear and present danger test, the First Amendment does not protect speech that is an incitement to imminent lawless action. Professor Dow suggests that the clear and present danger test protects too little speech. He posits that speech should be protected unless the following three conditions are met: (1) the speaker's specific intent in uttering the words …

Justice Or Injustice For The Poor?: A Look At The Constitutionality Of Congressional Restrictions On Legal Services, J. Dwight Yoder

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

Upon enacting the Legal Services Corporation Act in 1974, Congress created the Legal Services Corporation (LSC), which provides federal funding to grantees that perform legal services for low-income individuals. In recent years, Congress has enacted restrictions upon grantees' receipt of such federal funding, limiting the legal services these legal aid attorneys can provide to their clients. This move has sparked great debate. Proponents of the restrictions argue that they are needed to correct abuse and misuse of the legal services program, while opponents argue that the restrictions only harm low-income individuals.

In this Note, the author addresses this controversial issue …

Murder In The Abstract: The First Amendment And The Misappropriation Of Brandenburg, Amy K. Dilworth

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

When Paladin Enterprises published Hit Man, a manual about murder for hire, it knew and intended that the book would be used for such a purpose. When James Perry used the information contained in Hit Man to murder three innocent persons, he started a legal debate about the scope of First Amendment protections for books that instruct how to commit criminal acts. Many scholars and commentators indicated that Brandenburg v. Ohio contains the applicable constitutional standard; however, in litigation against Paladin, the survivors of the decedents challenged the conventional wisdom.

This Note examines the Brandenburg test for its applicability to …

Aggravating And Mitigating Factors: The Paradox Of Today's Arbitrary And Mandatory Capital Punishment Scheme, Jeffrey L. Kirchmeier

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

Over twenty years ago, the United States Supreme Court held that both mandatory capital sentencing schemes and total discretionary capital sentencing schemes violate the Eighth Amendment. According to Jeffrey Kirchmeier, the "guided discretion" capital sentencing scheme of sentencing factors that has developed, however, has the constitutional problems of both mandatory death penalties and unlimited discretion death penalties.

Justices Scalia, Blackmun, and Thomas have noted that the mandate of unlimited mitigating circumstances has resulted in an arbitrary system. Kirchmeier argues that today's sentencing scheme is arbitrary also because of undefined aggravating factors, unlimited nonstatutory aggravating factors, and victim impact evidence. According …

Board Of County Commissioners V. Umbehr: The Inadequacies Of Extending Pickering Analysis To Government Contractors, Luther D. Tupponce

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

This Note challenges the restrictive First Amendment free speech protection that the Supreme Court gave to government contractors in Board of County Commissioners v. Umbehr when it applied the Pickering balancing test, developed nearly thirty years ago in Pickering v. Board of Education in the context of government employees. It does so by first questioning whether the First Amendment free speech protections given to government employees should be similar for government contractors. It then explores whether the Pickering balancing test should be applied to cases involving government contractors as it was in Umbehr.

The author concludes that the Court improperly …