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Decisions In The Dark: Why "Pregnancy Exclusion" Statutes Are Unconstitutional And Unethical, Shea Flanagan

Northwestern University Law Review

Advance health care directives are tools that allow people to state their health care treatment wishes or designate a health care proxy in anticipation of being unable to make those decisions in the future, including preferences to remove life-sustaining medical treatment. However, thirty-six states currently have “pregnancy exclusion” laws that require physicians to void the advance directives of pregnant women receiving life-sustaining treatment. This Note assesses the constitutionality and ethics of state pregnancy exclusion statutes by employing a new five-category typology of current pregnancy exclusion laws. This Note argues that all categories of these statutes violate an individual’s constitutional rights …

Forgotten Limits On The Power To Amend State Constitutions, Jonathan L. Marshfield

Northwestern University Law Review

There seem to be no limits on what can pass through state constitutional amendment procedures. State amendments have targeted vulnerable minorities, deeply entrenched specific fiscal strategies, and profoundly restructured institutions. The malleability of state constitutions is significant because in many states there are legitimate fears that special interests dominate amendment politics, and that fundamental change is occurring with minimal opportunities for constructive deliberation or inclusive participation. The state doctrine of “referendum sovereignty” is a key condition fueling this dynamic. The doctrine holds that there are no substantive limits on any state amendment processes so long as amendments comply with federal …

Originalism And A Forgotten Conflict Over Martial Law, Bernadette Meyler

Northwestern University Law Review

This Symposium Essay asks what a largely forgotten conflict over habeas corpus and martial law in mid-eighteenth-century New York can tell us about originalist methods of constitutional interpretation. The episode, which involved Abraham Yates, Jr.—later a prominent Antifederalist—as well as Lord Loudoun, the commander of the British forces in America, and New York Acting Governor James De Lancey, furnishes insights into debates about martial law prior to the Founding and indicates that they may have bearing on originalist interpretations of the Suspension Clause. It also demonstrates how the British imperial context in which the American colonies were situated shaped discussions …

Originalism And Structural Argument, Thomas B. Colby

Northwestern University Law Review

The “new originalism” is all about the text of the Constitution. Originalists insist that the whole point of originalism is to respect and follow the original meaning of the text, and that originalism derives its legitimacy from its unwavering focus on the text alone as the sole basis of higher law. And yet, many leading Supreme Court decisions in matters of great importance to conservatives—in opinions authored and joined by originalist judges, and often praised by originalist scholars—are seemingly not grounded in the constitutional text at all. They rest instead on abstract structural argument: on freestanding principles of federalism and …

Fourth Amendment Gloss, Aziz Z. Huq

Northwestern University Law Review

Conventional wisdom suggests that a constitutional right should be defined so as to effectively constrain government actors. A right defined in terms of what state actors routinely do would seem to impose in practice an ineffectual brake on much intrusive state action—and so seems pointless. Nevertheless, in defining Fourth Amendment rights, the Supreme Court frequently draws on the practice of contemporaneous government actors to define the constitutional floor for police action. The actions of the regulated thus define the content of regulation. This Article isolates and analyzes this seemingly paradoxical judicial practice, which it labels “Fourth Amendment gloss,” by analogy …

Explicit Bias, Jessica A. Clarke

Northwestern University Law Review

In recent decades, legal scholars have advanced sophisticated models for understanding prejudice and discrimination, drawing on disciplines such as psychology, sociology, and economics. These models explain how inequality is implicit in cognition and seamlessly woven into social structures. And yet, obvious, explicit, and overt forms of bias have not gone away. The law does not need empirical methods to identify bias when it is marching down the street in Nazi regalia, hurling misogynist invective, or trading in anti-Muslim stereotypes. Official acceptance of such prejudices may be uniquely harmful in normalizing discrimination. But surprisingly, many discrimination cases ignore explicit bias. Courts …

Section 5'S Forgotten Years: Congressional Power To Enforce The Fourteenth Amendment Before Katzenbach V. Morgan, Christopher W. Schmidt

Northwestern University Law Review

Few decisions in American constitutional law have frustrated, inspired, and puzzled more than Katzenbach v. Morgan. Justice Brennan’s 1966 opinion put forth the seemingly radical claim that Congress—through its power, based in Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, to “enforce, by appropriate legislation,” the rights enumerated in that Amendment—shared responsibility with the Court to define the meaning of Fourteenth Amendment rights. Although it spawned a cottage industry of scholarship, this claim has never been fully embraced by a subsequent Supreme Court majority, and in City of Boerne v. Flores, the Supreme Court rejected the heart of the Morgan …

Equal Protection Under The Carceral State, Aya Gruber

Northwestern University Law Review

McCleskey v. Kemp, the case that upheld the death penalty despite undeniable evidence of its racially disparate impact, is indelibly marked by Justice William Brennan’s phrase, “a fear of too much justice.” The popular interpretation of this phrase is that the Supreme Court harbored what I call a “disparity-claim fear,” dreading a future docket of racial discrimination claims and erecting an impossibly high bar for proving an equal protection violation. A related interpretation is that the majority had a “color-consciousness fear” of remedying discrimination through race-remedial policies. In contrast to these conventional views, I argue that the primary anxiety …

Diversity Entitlement: Does Diversity-Benefits Ideology Undermine Inclusion?, Kyneshawau Hurd, Victoria C. Plaut

Northwestern University Law Review

Ideologies are most successful (or most dangerous) when they become common-sense—when they become widely accepted, taken-for-granted truths—because these truths subsequently provide implicit guidelines and expectations about what is moral, legitimate, and necessary in our society. In Regents of University of California v. Bakke, the Court, without a majority opinion, considered and dismissed all but one of several “common-sense” rationales for affirmative action in admissions. While eschewing rationales that focused on addressing discrimination and underrepresentation, the Court found that allowing all students to obtain the educational benefits that flow from diversity was a compelling rationale—essential, even, for a quality education. …

Precedent And Constitutional Structure, Randy J. Kozel

Northwestern University Law Review

The Constitution does not talk about precedent, at least not explicitly, but several of its features suggest a place for deference to prior decisions. It isolates the judicial function and insulates federal courts from official and electoral control, promoting a vision of impersonality and continuity. It charges courts with applying a charter that is vague and ambiguous in important respects. And it was enacted at a time when prominent thinkers were already discussing the use of precedent to channel judicial discretion.

Taken in combination, these features make deference to precedent a sound inference from the Constitution’s structure, text, and historical …

Excessive Lethal Force, Melissa Hamilton

Northwestern University Law Review

This Essay considers the use by Dallas police officers of a robot armed with plastic explosives to kill a suspected gunman on a shooting rampage in 2016. In the wake of Dallas, many legal experts in the news maintained that the police action was constitutional. The commentators' consensus was that as long as the police had the right to use lethal force, then the means of that force is irrelevant. This Essay argues the contrary. Under the current state of the constitutional law on the police use of force on a suspected felon, excessive lethal force is a valid consideration. …

Promising The Constitution, Richard M. Re

Northwestern University Law Review

The Constitution requires that all legislators, judges, and executive officers swear or affirm their fidelity to it. The resulting practice, often called “the oath,” has had a pervasive role in constitutional law, giving rise to an underappreciated tradition of promissory constitutionalism. For example, the Supreme Court has cited the oath as a reason to invalidate statutes, or sustain them; to respect state courts, or override them; and to follow precedents, or overrule them. Meanwhile, commentators contend that the oath demands particular interpretive methods, such as originalism, or particular distributions of interpretive authority, such as departmentalism.

This Article provides a new …

The Intratextual Independent “Legislature” And The Elections Clause, Michael T. Morley

Northwestern University Law Review

Many states have delegated substantial authority to regulate federal elections to entities other than their institutional legislatures, such as independent redistricting commissions empowered to determine the boundaries of congressional districts. Article I’s Elections Clause and Article II’s Presidential Electors Clause, however, confer authority to regulate federal elections specifically upon State “legislatures,” rather than granting it to States as a whole. An intratextual analysis of the Constitution reveals that the term “legislature” is best understood as referring solely to the entity within each state comprised of representatives that has the general authority to pass laws. Thus, state constitutional provisions or laws …

Does Federal Spending "Coerce" States? Evidence From State Budgets, Brian Galle

Northwestern University Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Definite Article: The D.C. Circuit's Redefinition Of Recess Appointments, Jeff Vandam

Northwestern University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Doe V. Elmbrook School District And The Importance Of Refocusing Establishment Clause Jurisprudence, Julie M. Karaba

Northwestern University Law Review

No abstract provided.