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Originalism And Second-Order Ipse Dixit Reasoning In Chisholm V. Georgia, D.A. Jeremy Telman

Cleveland State Law Review

This Article presents a new perspective on the Supreme Court’s constitutional jurisprudence during the Early Republic. It focuses on what I am calling second-order ipse dixit reasoning, which occurs when Justices have to decide between two incommensurable interpretive modalities. If first-order ipse dixit is unreasoned decision-making, second-order ipse dixit involves an unreasoned choice between or among two or more equally valid interpretive options. The early Court often had recourse to second-order ipse dixit because methodological eclecticism characterized its constitutional jurisprudence, and the early Court established no fixed hierarchy among interpretive modalities.

Chisholm, the pre-Marshall Court’s most important constitutional decision, illustrates …

The Twenty-Fifth Amendment: Incapacity And Ability To Discharge The Powers And Duties Of Office?, Lawrence J. Trautman

Cleveland State Law Review

History provides many instances of U.S. presidential or vice presidential incapacity. It was the death of President John F. Kennedy that prompted the 25th Amendment to the Constitution to gain ratification in 1967, in part to establish a method to fill the vice presidency if it became vacant. On Saturday morning September 22, 2018, readers of The New York Times awoke to read a page-one story about how the Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein had previously advocated the secret White House recording of President Trump “to expose the chaos consuming the administration, and he discussed recruiting cabinet members to …

Clear As Mud: Constitutional Concerns With Clear Affirmative Consent, C. Ashley Saferight

Cleveland State Law Review

Rape and sexual assault laws and policies have shifted significantly in recent years, including the introduction of affirmative consent. Unfortunately, both proponents and critics tend to confuse the issues and falsely equate affirmative consent as a substantive social standard versus a procedural standard for adjudication and punishment. Although affirmative consent generally does not represent a significant change in consent law in the United States, statutes and policies requiring a further requirement that affirmative consent be clear and unambiguous (“clear affirmative consent”) are problematic and raise constitutional concerns. When clear affirmative consent policies are used as an adjudicative standard, they increase …

The Faces Of The Second Amendment Outside The Home, Take Three: Critiquing The Circuit Courts Use Of History-In-Law, Patrick J. Charles

Cleveland State Law Review

This article seeks to critique the circuit courts’ varying history-in-law approaches, as well as to provide advice on the proper role that history-in-law plays when examining the scope of the Second Amendment outside the home. This article sets forth to accomplish this task in three parts. Part I argues why history-in-law is appropriate when adjudicating Second Amendment decisions outside the home. Part II examines the benefits and burdens of utilizing history-in-law as a method of constitutional interpretation, while breaking down the alternative approaches employed by circuit courts when adjudicating Second Amendment decisions outside the home. Lastly, Part III offers practical …

Legislative Reform Or Legalized Theft?: Why Civil Asset Forfeiture Must Be Outlawed In Ohio, Alex Haller

Cleveland State Law Review

Civil asset forfeiture is a legal method for law enforcement to deprive United States citizens of their personal property with little hope for its return. With varying degrees of legal protection at the state level, Ohio legislators must encourage national policy reform by outlawing civil asset forfeiture in Ohio. Ohio Revised Code Section 2981.05 should be amended to outlaw civil asset forfeiture by requiring a criminal conviction prior to allowing the seizure of an individual’s property. This Note proposes two plans of action that will restore Ohio resident’s property rights back to those originally afforded in the United States Constitution.

The Privileges And Immunities Of Non-Citizens, R. George Wright

Cleveland State Law Review

However paradoxically, in some practically important contexts, non-citizens of all sorts can rightly claim what amount to privileges and immunities of citizens. This follows from a careful and entirely plausible understanding of the inherently relational, inescapably social, and essentially reciprocal nature of at least some typical privileges and immunities.

This Article contends that the relationship between constitutional privileges and immunities and citizenship is more nuanced, and much more interesting, than usually recognized. Crucially, allowing some non-citizens to invoke the privileges and immunities of citizens often makes sense. The intuitive sense that non-citizens cannot logically claim the privileges or immunities of …

Tipped Scales: A Look At The Ever-Growing Imbalance Of Power Protecting Religiously Motivated Conduct, Why That's Bad, And How To Stop It, Jeff Nelson

Cleveland State Law Review

This Note examines the current state of the law that seemingly allows individuals to harm and discriminate against others on the basis of their protected religious beliefs. This Note also explores how such a result has been made possible and how it may be stymied by judicial and legislative action. Section II discusses a short history of the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause leading up to Religious Freedom Restoration Acts, and also includes an examination of both the real and possible harmful effects of RFRAs, current reactions to the application of these laws domestically, and interesting parallels internationally. Section III …

Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., James Wilson, And The Pursuit Of Equality And Liberty, Deborah A. Roy

Cleveland State Law Review

This Article analyzes the jurisprudence of one of the most transformative Supreme Court Justices, William J. Brennan, Jr., from the perspective of his vision that the United States Constitution is founded on Human Dignity. Justice Brennan expressed this principle in his opinions that advanced the realization of individual rights for each and every American. The principle of human dignity invokes the values of equality and liberty. The article shows that Justice Brennan traced the principle of human dignity back to the Founding Fathers and the constitutional government that they established. Rather than being unhinged from the Constitution as his critics …

I Am Textualism , Stephen Durden

Cleveland State Law Review

Until every person seeking to interpret the Constitution recognizes that constitutional interpretation is a quintessentially human endeavor, based on human assumptions and human reasoning, I will remain to protect those who seek to hide their predilections, their personal choices. I will continue to change as time passes. My form will continue to change to meet the needs of those who seek my cloak of objectivity and seek to redefine and improve me. I am a human invention created to pretend that constitutional interpretation is not a human endeavor. I am what each disciple wants. I am what each disciple needs. …

I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means: How Kripke And Wittgenstein's Analysis On Rule Following Undermines Justice Scalia's Textualism And Originalism, Daniel S. Goldberg

Cleveland State Law Review

This Article deals with constitutional hermeneutics. Hermeneutics is the art or theory of interpretation. Deciding what the constitutionally appropriate rule is in any given case hinges on what methods any particular judge utilizes to interpret the Constitution. Constitutional hermeneutics, then, is the theory of constitutional interpretation. In this paper, I address a specific constitutional hermeneutic: textualism-originalism. This Article is a critique of the constitutional hermeneutic of textualism-originalism. As such, my thesis is that the model of interpretation embodied by textualism-originalism cannot possibly serve to do what its proponents assert it does: constrain judicial interpretation. This is because textualism-originalism depends on …

Limited Powers In The Looking-Glass: Otiose Textualism, And An Empirical Analysis Of Other Approaches, When Activists In Private Shopping Centers Claim State Constitutional Liberties, Richard J. Peltz

Cleveland State Law Review

This Article examines closely a narrow range of highly factually analogous cases, in which state constitutional rights are asserted despite a clear lack of entitlement to assert any federal constitutional claim. Specifically, the cases selected are those in which private persons assert a right to conduct expressive activity, including electoral activity, in private shopping centers during hours when the properties are held open to the general public. These cases may be referred to colloquially as “the mall cases.” Selected here are only those cases that were decided after the federal question became clear. The Article first inquires into the role …

Turn Down The Volume: The Constitutionality Of Ohio's Municipal Ordinances Regulating Sound From Car Stereo Systems, Stuart A. Laven

Cleveland State Law Review

This article will examine municipal ordinances criminalizing the emission of sound from car stereo systems in excess of proscribed limits, including the methods adopted to measure offending sound and the penalties imposed for violations, the Ohio (and certain non-Ohio) cases which have challenged the constitutionality of such ordinances, and certain constitutional aspects of such ordinances and their enforcement which have yet to be addressed.

Alden V. Maine And State Sovereign Immunity Original Intent Or An Intent Congenial To The Court's Desires, Jeffrey H. Canja

Cleveland State Law Review

In Alden v. Maine the Supreme Court considered whether Congress, pursuant to its Article I powers, can subject a nonconsenting state to a private suit for damages in the state's own courts. Alternatively viewed, the question was whether a state has sovereign immunity which precludes such suits. The Supreme Court affirmed, holding that Article I of the Constitution does not grant Congress the power to subject a nonconsenting state to a private suit for damages in the state's own courts. The decision represents a direct extension of the federalism developed by the Court in Seminole Tribe of Florida v. Florida, …

The Treaty-Making Power Is Not A Peril, Moses H. Moses

Cleveland State Law Review

In the United States the treaty-making power is vested in our President and the Senate. Many persons fear this power; they feel that it is so great that it could be used as an instrument to destroy our American democracy. They fear that by treaty the Constitution of the United States may be repealed and replaced by political concepts that are multifarious to our basic freedoms. Because of the structure of our government I feel that these fears are not well substantiated.