Digital Commons Network^™

The Glucksberg Renaissance: Substantive Due Process Since Lawrence V. Texas, Brian Hawkins

Michigan Law Review

On their faces, Washington v. Glucksberg and Lawrence v. Texas seem to have little in common. In Glucksberg, the Supreme Court upheld a law prohibiting assisted suicide and rejected a claim that the Constitution protects a "right to die"; in Lawrence, the Court struck down a law prohibiting homosexual sodomy and embraced a claim that the Constitution protects homosexual persons' choices to engage in intimate relationships. Thus, in both subject matter and result, Lawrence and Glucksberg appear far apart. The Lawrence Court, however, faced a peculiar challenge in reaching its decision, and its response to that challenge brings …

Burkean Minimalism, Cass R. Sunstein

Michigan Law Review

Burkean minimalism has long played an important role in constitutional law. Like other judicial minimalists, Burkeans believe in rulings that are at once narrow and theoretically unambitious; what Burkeans add is an insistence on respect for traditional practices and an intense distrust of those who would renovate social practices by reference to moral or political reasoning of their own. An understanding of the uses and limits of Burkean minimalism helps to illuminate a number of current debates, including those involving substantive due process, the Establishment Clause, and the power of the president to protect national security. Burkean minimalists oppose, and …

Originalism And Parking Tickets, Lawrence Rosenthal

ExpressO

Originalism – the view that constitutional provisions should be interpreted as they were “understood at the time of the law’s enactment” – is the ascendant method of constitutional interpretation. In particular, originalists argue that the Constitution's open-ended provisions should be interpreted in light of their generally understood legal meaning at the time of their framing. An originalist view of due process -- entitling civil and criminal defendants to those procedures considered "due" at the time of framing -- would accordingly condemn any number of innovations in criminal and civil procedures' that alter framing-era procedural rights, such as the novel systems …

The New Constitutional Right To Maintenance In The United States, John H. Ryskamp

ExpressO

The 2003, United States Supreme Court case of Lawrence v. Texas is not a maintenance case. It abolished laws against sodomy. In doing so, however, it overruled the case which prevented a right to maintenance in the United States. In the 1937 case of West Coast Hotel v. Parrish, the Supreme Court, although sustaining a minimum wage law, nevertheless did so on the sole basis of demoting liberty (supposed by the Court to forbid minimum wage laws) to an unenforceable interest. The notion of an unenforceable interest was part of the scrutiny regime established in West Coast Hotel. The regime …

Did You Happen To Notice That Lawrence V. Texas Overruled West Coast Hotel V. Parrish?, John H. Ryskamp

ExpressO

The article points out, for the first time, the way in which Lawrence v. Texas overruled West Coast Hotel v. Parrish. Lawrence's overruling of West Coast is the first step in the demise of the "minimum scrutiny" regime, which the Court established in West Coast in 1937.

Buried Online: State Laws That Limit E-Commerce In Caskets, Jerry Ellig, Asheesh Agarwal

ExpressO

Consumers seeking to purchase caskets online could benefit from the Supreme Court’s 2005 decision that states cannot discriminate against interstate direct wine shipment. Federal courts have reached conflicting conclusions when asked whether state laws requiring casket sellers to be licensed funeral directors violate the U.S. Constitution’s Due Process Clause. In Powers v. Harris, the 10th Circuit even offered an unprecedented ruling that economic protectionism is a legitimate state interest that can justify otherwise unconstitutional policies. In Granholm v. Heald, however, the Supreme Court declared that discriminatory barriers to interstate wine shipment must be justified by a legitimate state interest, and …

The Bureaucratic Due Process Of Government Watch Lists, Peter M. Shane

ExpressO

Watch lists have become increasingly important tools for law enforcement and the protection of homeland security since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001,. These lists, however, pose dangers that innocent persons may be burdened either because they are included on such lists without justification or because they share a name with another individual who is appropriately listed. Our public law traditionally addresses this sort of risk through some redress-oriented scheme of due process that allows individuals alleging improper treatment to seek administrative and judicial relief from the error they assert in their particular case. Such an approach is inadequate …

The Constitutional Right To Make Medical Treatment Decisions: A Tale Of Two Doctrines, B. Jessie Hill

Faculty Publications

The Supreme Court has taken very different approaches to the question whether individuals have a right to make autonomous medical treatment choices, depending on the context. For example, in cases concerning the right to choose ¿partial-birth¿ abortion and the right to use medical marijuana, the Supreme Court reached radically different results, based on radically different reasoning.

More recent developments, including last Term's decision in Gonzales v. Carhart, have only highlighted the doctrinal confusion and the need for a resolution. In light of this pressing need, the goal of this Article is to view all of the constitutional cases touching on …

The Little Word "Due", Andrew T. Hyman

ExpressO

The meaning of the Due Process Clause is investigated, with special emphasis on the little word "due." The author concludes that the text and structure of the Constitution --- as well as the intentions of the framers --- strongly support the view of the late Justice Hugo Black regarding the meaning of this Clause in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. In the Constitution, due process means process due according to the law of the land, and a statute is part of the law of the land if it does not violate or undermine any other provision of the Constitution. Thus, …

Manson V. Brathwaite Revisited: Towards A New Rule Of Decision For Due Process Challenges To Eyewitness Identification Procedures, Timothy P. O'Toole, Giovanna Shay

Faculty Scholarship

Almost 30 years ago, in Manson v. Brathwaite--the Supreme Court set out a test for determining when due process requires suppression of an out-of-court identification produced by suggestive police procedures. The Manson Court rejected a per se exclusion rule in favor of a test focusing on whether an identification infected by suggestive procedures is nonetheless reliable when judged in the totality of the circumstances. The purpose of this Article is two-fold: to demonstrate that the Manson rule of decision fails to safeguard due process values, in part because it does not account for the intervening social science research, and to …

An Other Christian Perspective On Lawrence V. Texas, Victor C. Romero

Journal Articles

The so-called Religious Right's reaction to Lawrence v. Texas has been both powerful and negative, characterizing the case as an assault on the traditional conception of marriage and family life. This essay is an attempt to present a different Christian view. Modeled on the life and teachings of Jesus, this perspective celebrates the Lawrence case as consistent with God's call to social justice for the oppressed. It also outlines a Christian sexual ethic that lifts up genuine, monogamous, committed love between two individuals, whether of the same or opposite sex.

Sovereignty, Not Due Process: Personal Jurisdiction Over Nonresident, Alien Defendants, Austen L. Parrish

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The Due Process Clause with its focus on a defendant's liberty interest has become the key, if not only, limitation on a court's exercise of personal jurisdiction. This due process jurisdictional limitation is universally assumed to apply with equal force to alien defendants as to domestic defendants. With few exceptions, scholars do not distinguish between the two. Neither do the courts. Countless cases assume that foreigners have all the rights of United States citizens to object to extraterritorial assertions of personal jurisdiction.

But is this assumption sound? This Article explores the uncritical assumption that the same due process considerations apply …

Takings Cases In The October 2004 Term (Symposium: The Seventeenth Annual Supreme Court Review), Leon D. Lazer

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Section 1983 Cases In The October 2004 Term, Martin A. Schwartz

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Right To No Meaningful Review Under The Due Process Clause: The Aftermath Of Judicial Deference To The Federal Administrative Agencies, Ruqaiijah Yearby

Faculty Publications

The Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment has been perverted in the federal administrative system. For example, federal agencies, such as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), regularly deprive individuals of liberty and property with little to no review. In its regulation of the health care industry through the Medicare program, HHS often turns a blind eye to procedural Due Process protections, such as providing individuals an opportunity to challenge the deprivation of property at a hearing, even though the Constitution, the Administrative Procedure Act, and the Medicare Act grant these protections. The Medicare compliance hearing …