Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Keyword
-
- Constitution (6)
- United States Supreme Court (5)
- Constitutional interpretation (4)
- Constitutional amendments (3)
- LGBT (3)
-
- Originalism (3)
- Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (2)
- Congress (2)
- Constitutionality (2)
- Discrimination (2)
- Due process (2)
- Emergencies (2)
- Federal courts (2)
- Federalism (2)
- Formalism (2)
- Habeas corpus (2)
- Habeas review (2)
- History (2)
- Judicial interpretation (2)
- Judicial review (2)
- Jurisprudence (2)
- Marriage (2)
- Postconviction challenges (2)
- Property (2)
- Same-sex marriage (2)
- Standing (2)
- State courts (2)
- Statutory interpretation (2)
- Supermajorities (2)
- Abortion (1)
Articles 1 - 18 of 18
Full-Text Articles in Law
Constitutionalizing Fetal Rights: A Salutary Tale From Ireland, Fiona De Londras
Constitutionalizing Fetal Rights: A Salutary Tale From Ireland, Fiona De Londras
Michigan Journal of Gender & Law
In 1983, Ireland became the first country in the world to constitutionalize fetal rights. The 8th Amendment to the Constitution, passed by a referendum of the People, resulted in constitutional protection for “the right to life of the unborn,” which was deemed “equal” to the right to life of the “mother.” Since then, enshrining fetal rights in constitutions and in legislation has emerged as a key part of anti-abortion campaigning. This Article traces the constitutionalization of fetal rights in Ireland and its implications for law, politics, and women. In so doing, it provides a salutary tale of such an approach. …
When Congress Is Away The President Shall Not Play: Justice Scalia's Concurrence In Nlrb V. Noel Canning, Krista M. Pikus
When Congress Is Away The President Shall Not Play: Justice Scalia's Concurrence In Nlrb V. Noel Canning, Krista M. Pikus
Michigan Law Review First Impressions
On June 26, 2014, the Supreme Court unanimously decided NLRB v. Noel Canning, holding that the Recess Appointments Clause authorizes the president “to fill any existing vacancy during any recess . . . of sufficient length.” Justice Scalia filed a concurring opinion, joined by Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Thomas, and Justice Alito. While Justice Scalia “concurred,” his opinion read more like a dissent. Both the majority and the concurring opinions relied heavily on historical evidence in arriving at their respective opinions. This was expected from Justice Scalia given his method of “new originalism,” which focuses on “the original public …
Pinholster's Hostility To Victims Of Ineffective State Habeas Counsel, Jennifer Utrecht
Pinholster's Hostility To Victims Of Ineffective State Habeas Counsel, Jennifer Utrecht
Michigan Law Review
Cullen v. Pinholster foreclosed federal courts from considering new evidence when reviewing 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d) petitions for claims previously adjudicated on the merits in state court. This decision has a particularly adverse effect on petitioners whose state habeas counsel left an incomplete or undeveloped record. This Note discusses strategies for victims of ineffective state habeas counsel to avoid the hostile mandate of Pinholster. It argues that, in light of Martinez v. Ryan’s recognition of the importance of counsel in initialreview collateral proceedings, courts should be wary of dismissing claims left un- or underdeveloped by ineffective state habeas counsel. It …
Plenary Power Is Dead! Long Live Plenary Power, Michael Kagan
Plenary Power Is Dead! Long Live Plenary Power, Michael Kagan
Michigan Law Review First Impressions
For decades, scholars of immigration law have anticipated the demise of the plenary power doctrine. The Supreme Court could have accomplished this in its recent decision in Kerry v. Din, or it could have reaffirmed plenary power. Instead, the Court produced a splintered decision that did neither. This Essay examines the long process of attrition that has significantly gutted the traditional plenary power doctrine with regard to procedural due process, while leaving it largely intact with regard to substantive constitutional rights.
Testing Constitutional Pluralism In Strasbourg: Responding To Russia's "Gay Propaganda" Law, Jesse W. Stricklan
Testing Constitutional Pluralism In Strasbourg: Responding To Russia's "Gay Propaganda" Law, Jesse W. Stricklan
Michigan Journal of International Law
In 2013, the Russian Federation amended Federal Law No. 436-FZ, “On Protection of Children from Information Harmful to Their Health and Development” (2013 law), introducing language making illegal the public discussion—or, in the law’s words, “propagandization”—of what it called “non-traditional sexual relationships.” Undertaken during a period of increasing domestic and international hostility, the law was intended by the government to be a bold, two-fold rejection of supposedly “European” values: first, as resistance to the gay rights movement, which is presented as unsuitable for Russia; and second, as a means of further weakening the freedom of expression in Russia. On both …
The Sweeping Domestic War Powers Of Congress, Saikrishna Bangalore Prakash
The Sweeping Domestic War Powers Of Congress, Saikrishna Bangalore Prakash
Michigan Law Review
With the Habeas Clause standing as a curious exception, the Constitution seems mysteriously mute regarding federal authority during invasions and rebellions. In truth, the Constitution speaks volumes about these domestic wars. The inability to perceive the contours of the domestic wartime Constitution stems, in part, from unfamiliarity with the multifarious emergency legislation enacted during the Revolutionary War. During that war, state and national legislatures authorized the seizure of property, military trial of civilians, and temporary dictatorships. Ratified against the backdrop of these fairly recent wartime measures, the Constitution, via the Necessary and Proper Clause and other provisions, rather clearly augmented …
The Demise Of Habeas Corpus And The Rise Of Qualified Immunity: The Court's Ever Increasing Limitations On The Development And Enforcement Of Constitutional Rights And Some Particularly Unfortunate Consequences, Stephen R. Reinhardt
Michigan Law Review
The collapse of habeas corpus as a remedy for even the most glaring of constitutional violations ranks among the greater wrongs of our legal era. Once hailed as the Great Writ, and still feted with all the standard rhetorical flourishes, habeas corpus has been transformed over the past two decades from a vital guarantor of liberty into an instrument for ratifying the power of state courts to disregard the protections of the Constitution. Along with so many other judicial tools meant to safeguard the powerless, enforce constitutional rights, and hold the government accountable, habeas has been slowly eroded by a …
Can The Eu Be A Constitutional System Without Universal Access To Judical Review, Brian Libgober
Can The Eu Be A Constitutional System Without Universal Access To Judical Review, Brian Libgober
Michigan Journal of International Law
This Comment engages with a central dilemma about the legal order of the European Union: is the EU a constitutional system, a treaty system, or a hybrid system for which we must develop a new conceptual vocabulary? Besides intrinsic interest, resolving this categorization problem is important for deciding a number of issues in European Union law. For example, are legal strategies that are normally available to parties in international law viable in the European legal order? Should Community law be supreme over national law? If so, what limits should be placed on that supremacy, and “who should have the ultimate …
A Moment For Pragmatism, Jane S. Schacter
A Moment For Pragmatism, Jane S. Schacter
Michigan Law Review
One of the least controversial things to say about the U.S. Constitution is that it has proven very difficult to amend. The numbers are familiar. Only 27 amendments have been made since the Constitution was ratified, and 10 of those were adopted at the same time, only a few years after the original ratification. These numbers are all the more remarkable given that there have been over 11,500 attempts to amend the Constitution since it was first enacted. The paucity of amendments is also striking as a comparative matter. The national constitution that India approved in 1949 has been amended …
Six Overrulings, Andrew Koppelman
Six Overrulings, Andrew Koppelman
Michigan Law Review
John Paul Stevens, who retired in 2010 at the age of ninety after more than thirty-four years on the Supreme Court, has capped his astoundingly distinguished career by becoming an important public intellectual. He reviews books, gives high-profile interviews, wrote a memoir of the chief justices he has known, and has now written a second book. Six Amendments revisits half a dozen old, lost battles. Stevens appeals over the heads of his colleagues to a higher authority: the public. Now that he is off the Court, Stevens explains why six decisions in which he dissented should be overruled by constitutional …
Countersupermajoritarianism, Frederic Bloom, Nelson Tebbe
Countersupermajoritarianism, Frederic Bloom, Nelson Tebbe
Michigan Law Review
Our Constitution can change. We can amend it, update it, improve it. And so we have—twenty-seven times by one count, many more by another. Everyone recognizes this. But fewer people appreciate that the mechanics of constitutional change can change as well. A method of alteration unaddressed at the founding can grow into established practice. A procedure built into constitutional text can slip into disuse. As much as citizens can change the substance of the Constitution, they can also change the ways they change it. In Originalism and the Good Constitution, John McGinnis and Michael Rappaport make an elegant and provocative …
Judge Posner's Simple Law, Mitchell N. Berman
Judge Posner's Simple Law, Mitchell N. Berman
Michigan Law Review
The world is complex, Richard Posner observes in his most recent book, Reflections on Judging. It follows that, for judges to achieve “sensible” resolutions of real-world disputes—by which Judge Posner means “in a way that can be explained in ordinary language and justified as consistent with the expectations of normal people” (p. 354)—they must be able to navigate the world’s complexity successfully. To apply legal rules correctly and (where judicial lawmaking is called for) to formulate legal rules prudently, judges must understand the causal mechanisms and processes that undergird complex systems, and they must be able to draw sound factual …
Saving Originalism, Robert J. Delahunty, John Yoo
Saving Originalism, Robert J. Delahunty, John Yoo
Michigan Law Review
It is sometimes said that biographers cannot help but come to admire, even love, their subjects. And that adage seems to ring true of Professor Amar, the foremost “biographer” of the Constitution. He loves it not just as a governing structure, or a political system, but as a document. He loves the Constitution in the same way that a fan of English literature might treasure Milton’s Paradise Lost or Shakespeare’s Macbeth. He loves the Constitution not just for the good: the separation of powers, federalism, and the Bill of Rights. He also loves it for its nooks and crannies, idiosyncrasies, …
Certiorari And The Marriage Equality Cases, Carl Tobias
Certiorari And The Marriage Equality Cases, Carl Tobias
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform Caveat
Marriage equality has come to much of the nation. Over 2014, many district court rulings invalidated state proscriptions on same- sex marriage, while four appeals courts upheld these decisions. However, the Sixth Circuit reversed district judgments which struck down bans in Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee. Because that appellate opinion created a patchwork of differing legal regimes across the country, this Paper urges the Supreme Court to clarify marriage equality by reviewing that determination this Term.
Deboer V. Snyder: A Case Study In Litigation And Social Reform, Wyatt Fore
Deboer V. Snyder: A Case Study In Litigation And Social Reform, Wyatt Fore
Michigan Journal of Gender & Law
On April 28, 2015, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments for four cases from the Sixth Circuit addressing the constitutionality of state bans on same-sex marriage. This Note examines DeBoer v. Snyder, the Michigan marriage case, with the goal of providing litigators and scholars the proper context for our current historical moment in which (1) the legal status of LGBT people; and (2) the conventional wisdom about the role of impact litigation in social reform movements are rapidly evolving.
A Functional Theory Of Congressional Standing, Jonathan Remy Nash
A Functional Theory Of Congressional Standing, Jonathan Remy Nash
Michigan Law Review
The Supreme Court has offered scarce and inconsistent guidance on congressional standing—that is, when houses of Congress or members of Congress have Article III standing. The Court’s most recent foray into congressional standing has prompted lower courts to infuse analysis with separation-ofpowers concerns in order to erect a high standard for congressional standing. It has also invited the Department of Justice to argue that Congress lacks standing to enforce subpoenas against executive branch actors. Injury to congressional litigants should be defined by reference to Congress’s constitutional functions. Those functions include gathering relevant information, casting votes, and (even when no vote …
Due Process For Cash Civil Forfeitures In Structuring Cases, Timothy J. Ford
Due Process For Cash Civil Forfeitures In Structuring Cases, Timothy J. Ford
Michigan Law Review
On January 22, 2013, Tarik “Terry” Dehko sat down to pay the bills for his small Michigan grocery store when a federal agent entered his office. The agent told Dehko that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) had executed a seizure warrant and taken the market’s entire bank account—more than $35,000. When Dehko asked how he could run his business without its bank account, the agent replied, “I don’t care.” The government did not charge Dehko with a crime that day. In fact, Dehko had never been charged with any crime in his life. Instead, the government waited until July 19 …
Emergency Takings, Brian Angelo Lee
Emergency Takings, Brian Angelo Lee
Michigan Law Review
Takings law has long contained a puzzle. The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution requires the government to pay “just compensation” to owners of private property that the government “takes.” In ordinary circumstances, this requirement applies equally whether the property is confiscated or destroyed, and it also applies to property confiscated in emergencies. Remarkably, however, courts have repeatedly held that if the government destroys property to address an emergency, then a “necessity exception” relieves the government of any obligation to compensate the owner of the property that was sacrificed for the public good. Although the roots of this startling principle …