Digital Commons Network^™

Universities As Constitutional Law Makers (And Other Hidden Actors In Our Constitutional Orders), Adam J. Macleod

Faculty Articles

In the stories told by opinion makers and many law professors, American constitutional law is concerned with two things-individual rights and the powers of government-and it is settled by the Court, which was established by Article III of our national Constitution. In those now-familiar tales, the United States Supreme Court creates constitutional law when heroic individuals assert their fundamental rights against an overreaching state and when Congress, state legislatures, and executive agencies are called upon to justify their expert enactments to an overreaching judiciary. To settle these constitutional disputes the Court looks either to the text of the written Constitution …

Racial Inclusion, Exclusion And Segregation In Constitutional Law, Michelle Adams

Faculty Articles

In Part I of the Article, I examine early cases in which the Court described segregation as a form of resource "lock-up." In several cases leading up to Brown, the Court detailed how racial segregation allows a more dominant group to hoard substantial societal resources. In these early cases, the Court's focus was on segregation as a mechanism for excluding individuals from valuable benefits on the basis of race; it did not speak explicitly to the harms associated with racial classification schemes. In this Part of the Article, I also return to Brown v. Board of Education and explore the …

Grutter V. Bollinger: This Generation's Brown V. Board Of Education, Michelle Adams

Faculty Articles

At first blush, Grutter appears to be a deviation from the body of the Court's recent affirmative action jurisprudence: it says "yes" where the other cases said "no." But it is not so clear that Grutter is a deviation from current law. Instead, it might be seen as consistent with it, in that the justification for the racial preference recognized in Grutter transcended the justifications offered in the previous cases, and the method used to achieve that end, "race as a factor," diffused rather than highlighted race. From this perspective, Grutter addressed several concerns that had troubled the Court for …

Beyond Brown V. Board Of Education: The Need To Remedy The Achievement Gap, Dora W. Klein

Faculty Articles

Addresses the need to remedy the disparity in academic achievement of black and white students and examines why this disparity continues to exist in spite of the desegregation decrees issued under "Brown." Reviews how a court decides whether a school district has complied with a desegregation decree. Explains why schools are being released from desegregation decrees despite achievement gap.

A Thrice-Told Tale, Or Felix The Cat, Michael S. Ariens

Faculty Articles

Few legal scholars would dispute the constitutional, historical, and political importance of the events of 1937, when the Supreme Court, faced with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's plan to reorganize the federal judiciary, ultimately approved a sweeping interpretation of governmental authority to implement socioeconomic legislation. The course of events, although frequently canvassed, has yielded conflicting interpretations of the actions and motivations of the Justices who took part in the fabled "switch in time that saved nine."

Felix Frankfurter arguably played a pivotal role in disseminating a particular history of the events of 1937. Reversing his own privately expressed position of dismay …

Constitutional Law And The Myth Of The Great Judge, Michael S. Ariens

Faculty Articles

One of the enduring myths of American history, including constitutional history, is that of the “Great Man” or “Great Woman.” The idea is that, to understand the history of America, one needs to understand the impact made by Great Men and Women whose actions affected the course of history. In political history, one assays the development of the United States through the lives of great Americans, from the “Founders” to Abraham Lincoln to John F. Kennedy. Similarly, in constitutional history, the story is told through key figures, the “Great Judges,” from John Marshall to Oliver Wendell Holmes to Earl Warren. …

Teaching Transformative Jurisprudence (Film Review), Vincent R. Johnson

Faculty Articles

The Road to Brown is a film that deals with the transformative judicial ruling of Brown v. Board of Education. Many regard this case as the most important holding ever made by a United States court. The Road to Brown offers law professors a superb vehicle for bringing to the classroom the attention to persons, sense of history, and focus on litigation strategy that a great decision demands.

The Road to Brown provides a rich socio-legal-historical perspective on the events that culminated in the 1945 Supreme Court ruling barring racial segregation in public elementary schools. The program blends together photographs, …

A Theory Of Equal Protection, David A. Dittfurth

Faculty Articles

Equal protection must prohibit arbitrary governmental classifications or differentiation. The Supreme Court is a unique authority because of its power to create constitutional law and because of its symbolic position in this society as a bearer of the Constitution as aegis. The Fourteenth Amendment, which is derived from the Equal Protection Clause, is one of the most important areas of constitutional law.

Governmental decisionmakers must consider equal protection doctrine since they are frequently required to discriminate among those arguably qualified in order to determine who should bear the burden of governmental action or receive the benefits of governmental largess. A …

Judicial Reasoning And Social Change, David A. Dittfurth

Faculty Articles

Some have begun to doubt whether courts adequately respond to recent social problems. Formulated rules, principles, and statutes govern a case in court, and these commanding communications addressed to judges theoretically guide and control the decision-making process. Rules, although often imprecise, are subjected to the scrutiny of the legal profession, which is trained to interpret their meaning and possible application in different fact situations. This, in turn, promotes a high degree of social and political stability since there is less ambiguity as to what constitutes permissible or required behavior.

Attitudes, social institutions, language, and critical decision making are all factors …