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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Power Of Dignity, Elizabeth B. Cooper
The Power Of Dignity, Elizabeth B. Cooper
Fordham Law Review
This Essay juxtaposes the historical and judicial equating of homosexuality and stigma with the Court’s development of a jurisprudence of dignity for gay men and lesbians, culminating in its decision in Obergefell v. Hodges. The language of Obergefell reflects an acceptance of and respect for gay men and lesbians that—regardless of one’s actual desire to marry or attitudes toward the institution of marriage—will profoundly change not only how the law treats LGB individuals, but also how we are treated by others, as well as how we perceive ourselves. I do not mean to assert that Obergefell is without its …
Roberts, Kennedy, And The Subtle Differences That Matter In Obergefell, Joseph Landau
Roberts, Kennedy, And The Subtle Differences That Matter In Obergefell, Joseph Landau
Fordham Law Review
By upholding a nationwide right to marry for same-sex couples in Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court’s enormously significant decision resolves a major civil rights question that has percolated through our legal system and coursed through our culture for some time. The ruling was not an unforeseen outcome, but it brings welcome clarity by ensuring marriage rights for same-sex couples throughout all fifty states. Building on United States v. Windsor—a 2013 decision striking down section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which prevented gay and lesbian married couples from receiving federal benefits—Obergefell is an important and …
Hail Marriage And Farewell, Ethan J. Leib
Hail Marriage And Farewell, Ethan J. Leib
Fordham Law Review
My conclusion in what follows is that, notwithstanding much rhetoric in the opinion, states have some room to rethink marriage in light of marriage equality. And with some intellectual jujitsu, this opening to rethink the state’s place in relational ordering gives marriage-skeptics another bite at the apple to get something they wanted all along: to decenter the largely religious, gendered, and bourgeois institution of marriage. Justice Kennedy’s opinion has the unfortunate result of reaffirming marriage at the top of a relational hierarchy, yet there are surely other ways we can have civil rights and equality for gay people without marriage …
Up From Marriage: Freedom, Solitude, And Individual Autonomy In The Shadow Of Marriage Equality, Catherine Powell
Up From Marriage: Freedom, Solitude, And Individual Autonomy In The Shadow Of Marriage Equality, Catherine Powell
Fordham Law Review
Obergefell v. Hodges represents a tremendous victory for those of us who believe that each individual has the right to love, form bonds, and create families with whomever one so desires. Through Obergefell and the line of cases from Griswold v. Connecticut and Loving v. Virginia onward, the Court has now repeatedly affirmed the freedoms to plan, to choose, and to create one’s own family as fundamental.
Perspectives On Marriage Equality And The Supreme Court, The Editors
Perspectives On Marriage Equality And The Supreme Court, The Editors
Fordham Law Review
On June 26, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Obergefell v. Hodges, one of the most significant civil rights decisions in recent years. For many of our generation, the Court’s conclusion that same-sex couples enjoy the constitutional right to marry simply confirmed deeply held beliefs about the importance of marriage equality and inclusion for all. We recognize, however, that for American society more broadly, the decision has evoked strong feelings on both sides of the marriage equality debate. For some, Obergefell delivered a unique gift that was unimaginable even a few decades ago: the ability of same-sex couples to …
Obergefell'S Conservatism: Reifying Familial Fronts, Clare Huntington
Obergefell'S Conservatism: Reifying Familial Fronts, Clare Huntington
Fordham Law Review
I am delighted with the result in Obergefell v. Hodges, but I am unhappy with the Court’s reasoning. In lieu of a straightforward, and far more defensible, decision based purely on the Equal Protection Clause, Justice Kennedy’s reliance on the Due Process Clause is deeply problematic.
Race, Dignity, And The Right To Marry, Robin A. Lenhardt
Race, Dignity, And The Right To Marry, Robin A. Lenhardt
Fordham Law Review
Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges asserts legal marriage’s capacity to afford same-sex couples a measure of “equal dignity” and belonging too long denied. In this Essay, I ask whether there is any reason to believe that marriage could do the same for African Americans. Could broader entrance into marriage, as some conservatives suggest, provide Blacks—gay and straight—a measure of belonging that has been frustratingly elusive, even as the nation prepares to celebrate the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Thirteenth Amendment’s ratification?
The Right To Plea Bargain With Competent Counsel After Cooper And Frye: Is The Supreme Court Making The Ordinary Criminal Process Too Long, Too Expensive, And Unpredictable In Pursuit Of Perfect Justice, Bruce A. Green
Faculty Scholarship
In Lafler v. Cooper and Missouri v. Frye, the Supreme Court recently ruled in favor of criminal defendants who were deprived of a favorable plea offer because of their lawyers’ professional lapses. In dissent, Justice Scalia complained that “[t]he ordinary criminal process has become too long, too expensive, and unpredictable,” because of the Court’s criminal procedure jurisprudence; that plea bargaining is “the alternative in which...defendants have sought relief,” and that the two new decisions on the Sixth Amendment right to effective representation in plea bargaining would add to the burden on the criminal process. This essay examines several aspects of …
The Problem With Pretext, Lynn E. Blais
The Problem With Pretext, Lynn E. Blais
Fordham Urban Law Journal
This Article examines the problems with the Supreme Court's holding in Kelo v. City of New London that the concept of public use is expansive unless the government is asserting the public use as a "mere pretext" and the true purpose is private benefit. The author examines the level of scrutiny applied in such cases, the link between pretext and motive, and the tests applied to evaluate pretext challenges: the burden-shifting motives test, the sufficiency of the plan taste, and the benefits to the public test. The author concludes that pretext is an "unworkable mechanism" for evaluating public use cases.
Constitution And The Laws Of War During The Civil War, The Federal Courts, Practice & Procedure, Andrew Kent
Constitution And The Laws Of War During The Civil War, The Federal Courts, Practice & Procedure, Andrew Kent
Faculty Scholarship
This Article uncovers the forgotten complex of relationships between the U.S. Constitution, citizenship and the laws of war. The Supreme Court today believes that both noncitizens and citizens who are military enemies in a congressionally-authorized war are entitled to judicially-enforceable rights under the Constitution. The older view was that the U.S. government’s military actions against noncitizen enemies were not limited by the Constitution, but only by the international laws of war. On the other hand, in the antebellum period, the prevailing view was U.S. citizenship should carry with it protection from ever being treated as a military enemy under the …
Imagining Gun Control In America: Understanding The Remainder Problem Article And Essay, Nicholas J. Johnson
Imagining Gun Control In America: Understanding The Remainder Problem Article And Essay, Nicholas J. Johnson
Faculty Scholarship
Gun control in the United States generally has meant some type of supply regulation. Supply restrictions ranging from one-gun-a-month schemes to flat gun bans cannot work without a willingness and ability to reduce total inventory to levels approaching zero ("the supply-side ideal"). This is an impossible feat in a country that already has 300 million guns tightly held by people who think they are uniquely important tools. The average defiance ratio in places that have attempted gun confiscation and registration is 2.6 illegal guns for every legal one. In many countries defiance is far higher. None of those countries has …
Revenge Of Mullaney V. Wilbur: United States V. Booker And The Reassertion Of Judicial Limits On Legislative Power To Define Crimes, The, Ian Weinstein
Faculty Scholarship
This article offers a historically grounded account of the twists and turns in the Supreme Court's sentencing jurisprudence from the end of World War II to the Court's stunning rejection of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. The doctrinal shifts that have roiled this area of the law can best be understood as the Court's effort to respond to the changing political and social landscape of crime in America. In the mid 1970's, legislative activity in the criminal law was largely focused on Model Penal Code influenced recodification. In that era, the Supreme Court took power from an ascendant judiciary and gave …
Congress's Power To Enforce Fourteenth Amendment Rights: Lessons From Federal Remedies The Framers Enacted , Robert J. Kaczorowski
Congress's Power To Enforce Fourteenth Amendment Rights: Lessons From Federal Remedies The Framers Enacted , Robert J. Kaczorowski
Faculty Scholarship
Professor Robert Kaczorowski argues for an expansive originalist interpretation of Congressional power under the Fourteenth Amendment. Before the Civil War Congress actually exercised, and the Supreme Court repeatedly upheld plenary Congressional power to enforce the constitutional rights of slaveholders. After the Civil War, the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment copied the antebellum statutes and exercised plenary power to enforce the constitutional rights of all American citizens when they enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and then incorporated the Act into the Fourteenth Amendment. The framers of the Fourteenth Amendment thereby exercised the plenary power the Rehnquist Court claims the …
What Lawrence V. Texas Says About The History And Future Of Reproductive Rights, Cynthia Dailard
What Lawrence V. Texas Says About The History And Future Of Reproductive Rights, Cynthia Dailard
Fordham Urban Law Journal
This article explores the ways in which the court's recognition of a broad zone of personal liberty in Lawrence v. Texas may serve to strengthen a woman's constitutionally protected reproductive rights in future Supreme Court decisions. Part of the author's analysis focuses on using particular Justices' opinions (and dissents) to predict the direction of future challenges to abortion rights in front of the Supreme Court.
Agency, Equality, And Antidiscrimination Law , Tracy E. Higgins, Laura A. Rosenbury
Agency, Equality, And Antidiscrimination Law , Tracy E. Higgins, Laura A. Rosenbury
Faculty Scholarship
The Supreme Court increasingly has interpreted the Equal Protection Clause as a mandate for the state to treat citizens as if they were equal-as a limitation on the state's ability to draw distinctions on the basis of characteristics such as race and, to a lesser extent, gender. In the context of race, the Court has struck down not only race-specific policies designed to harm the historically oppressed, but race conscious policies designed to foster racial equality. Although in theory the Court has left open the possibility that benign uses of race may be constitutional under some set of facts, in …
Tragic Irony Of American Federalism: National Sovereignty Versus State Sovereignty In Slavery And In Freedom, The Federalism In The 21st Century: Historical Perspectives, Robert J. Kaczorowski
Tragic Irony Of American Federalism: National Sovereignty Versus State Sovereignty In Slavery And In Freedom, The Federalism In The 21st Century: Historical Perspectives, Robert J. Kaczorowski
Faculty Scholarship
A plurality on the Supreme Court seeks to establish a state-sovereignty based theory of federalism that imposes sharp limitations on Congress's legislative powers. Using history as authority, they admonish a return to the constitutional "first principles" of the Founders. These "first principles," in their view, attribute all governmental authority to "the consent of the people of each individual state, not the consent of the undifferentiated people of the Nation as a whole." Because the people of each state are the source of all governmental power, they maintain, "where the Constitution is silent about the exercise of a particular power-that is, …
Chase Court And Fundamental Rights: A Watershed In American Constitutionalism, The , Robert J. Kaczorowski
Chase Court And Fundamental Rights: A Watershed In American Constitutionalism, The , Robert J. Kaczorowski
Faculty Scholarship
Three weeks before he died in May 1873, the frail and ailing Salmon P. Chase joined three of his brethren in dissent in one of the most important cases ever decided by the United States Supreme Court, the Slaughter-House Cases.1 This decision was a watershed in United States constitutional history for several reasons. Doctrinally, it represented a rejection of the virtually unanimous decisions of the lower federal courts upholding the constitutionality of revolutionary federal civil rights laws enacted in the aftermath of the Civil War. Institutionally, it was an example of extraordinary judicial activism in overriding the legislative will of …
Power Not Reason: Justice Marshall's Valedictory And The Fourth Amendment In The Supreme Court's 1990 Term , Bruce A. Green
Power Not Reason: Justice Marshall's Valedictory And The Fourth Amendment In The Supreme Court's 1990 Term , Bruce A. Green
Faculty Scholarship
In its 1990 Term, the United States Supreme Court heard five cases involving the Fourth Amendment. In this article, Professor Bruce Green analyzes these five search-and-seizure decisions in light of Justice Marshall's criticism that '[Plower, not reason, is the new currency of this Court's decision-making." He examines the various considerations the Court advances in its Fourth Amendment analysis-interpretive principle, policy, and precedent--and discovers inconsistencies in the importance assigned to each of these considerations in a series of cases decided very close together by virtually the same Justices. Each approach controlled, Professor Green argues, only when it could be said to …
Nineteenth Century Interpretations Of The Federal Contract Clause: The Transformation From Vested To Substantive Rights Against The State , James L. Kainen
Nineteenth Century Interpretations Of The Federal Contract Clause: The Transformation From Vested To Substantive Rights Against The State , James L. Kainen
Faculty Scholarship
During the early nineteenth century, the contract clause served as the fundamental source of federally protected rights against the state. Yet the Supreme Court gradually eased many of the restrictions on state power enforced in the contract clause cases while developing the doctrine of substantive due process after the Civil War. By the end of the nineteenth century, the due process clause had usurped the place of the contract clause as the centerpiece in litigation about individual rights. Most analyses of the history of federally protected rights against the state have emphasized the rise of substantive due process to the …
Book Review: The Law Of Obscenity, Edward J. Berbusse, S.J.
Book Review: The Law Of Obscenity, Edward J. Berbusse, S.J.
Fordham Urban Law Journal
Edward J. Berbusse, S.J. reviews The Law of Obscenity by Frederick F. Schauer. Schauer's book provides a historical perspective on obscenity law, tracking developments through several centuries. It begins with a look at obscenity law within the Church during the 16th and moves through civil law in England and up to the present in the United States. The book then explores the Miller v. California decision and the Supreme Court's move to a local standard, rather than national, of obscenity. In addition to the Miller case, Schauer looks at other important decisions which developed the modern body of law focusing …
Searching For The Intent Of The Framers Of Fourteenth Amendment , Robert J. Kaczorowski
Searching For The Intent Of The Framers Of Fourteenth Amendment , Robert J. Kaczorowski
Faculty Scholarship
IN 1946 JUSTICE HUGO BLACK DECLARED that one of the objects of the fourteenth amendment was to apply the Bill of Rights to the States. He was confident that an analysis of the intent of the framers of the amendment would support his assertion. A few years later the Supreme Court requested such an investigation, but when the analysis was made and the results presented to it, the Supreme Court concluded that the framers' intent could not be determined. The uncertainty surrounding the intent of the framers of the fourteenth amendment has had profound implications on the application of that …