Law Commons^™

The Rugged Individual's Guide To The Fourth Amendment: How The Court's Idealized Citizen Shapes, Influences, And Excludes The Exercise Of Constitutional Rights, Scott E. Sundby

Articles

Few figures inspire us like individuals who stand up for their rights and beliefs despite the peril that may follow. One cannot help but feel awe looking at the famous photograph of the lone Tiananmen

Square protestor facing down a line of Red Army tanks, his willowy frame clothed in a simple white shirt and black pants as he holds a shopping bag. Or who can help but feel humbled by the courage of Rosa Parks, a seamstress, who was willing to be arrested rather than sit in the back of the bus?

But while these stories of everyday individuals …

Unbundling Constitutionality, Richard A. Primus

Articles

Constitutional theory features a persistent controversy over the source or sources of constitutional status, that is, over the criteria that qualify some rules as constitutional rules. This Article contends that no single criterion characterizes all of the rules that American law treats as constitutional, such that it is a mistake to think of constitutionality as a status with necessary conditions. It is better to think of constitutionality on a bundle-of-sticks model: different attributes associated with constitutionality might or might not be present in any constitutional rule. Analysts should often direct their attention more to the separate substantive properties that are …

Constitutional Expectations, Richard A. Primus

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The inauguration of Barack Obama was marred by one of the smallest constitutional crises in American history. As we all remember, the President did not quite recite his oath as it appears in the Constitution. The error bothered enough people that the White House redid the ceremony a day later, taking care to get the constitutional text exactly right. Or that, at least, is what everyone thinks happened. What actually happened is more interesting. The second time through, the President again departed from the Constitution's text. But the second time, nobody minded. Or even noticed. In that unremarked feature of …

Constitutional Interpretation, Terrance Sandalow

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"[We] must never forget," Chief Justice Marshall admonished us in a statement pregnant with more than one meaning, "that it is a constitution we are expounding."' Marshall meant that the Constitution should be read as a document "intended to endure for ages.to come, and, consequently, to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs."'2 But he meant also that the construction placed upon the document must have regard for its "great outlines" and "important objects."'3 Limits are implied by the very nature of the task. There is not the same freedom in construing the Constitution as in constructing a …

Real Significance Of The Proposed Michigan Beer And Wine Amendment, Edwin C. Goddard

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DISCUSSION of proposed prohibitory amendments to Constitutions, State or Federal, are usually regarded as part of the wet and dry fight in which lawyers are interested only as citizens. Before the recent Cleveland Meeting of the American Bar Association the bar of the country was circularized by a protest, signed by a number of very well known lawyers, urging the bar to take action against putting into the fundamental law, the Constitution, such matters as the regulation of what the people shall drink. These lawyers presented their case at the Cleveland meeting and vigorously attempted to induce the American Bar …

Referendum As Applied To Proposed Amendments Of The Federal Constitution, Ralph W. Aigler

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That various aspects of the fight against the National Prohibition (the i8th) Amendment would result in litigation was to be expected. The attack at present seem& to be based on the use of the provisions for referendum found in a dozen or more of the states the votes of which went to make up the necessary three-fourths. Three very recent decisions or expressions of opinion by state courts of last resort are in this respect extremely interesting.

Safeguarding The Criminal Defendant, Edson R. Sunderland

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Every now and then a new attack is made somewhere in the United States upon the rule prohibiting comment before the jury upon the fact that the defendant in a criminal case has not testified as a witness in his own behalf. At the present time an effort of this kind is being made in the Michigan legislature, and the introduction of the bill drew quite a little storm of protest from the State press as a dangerous inroad upon our ancient guarantees of personal liberty and security. In fact, however, it directly touches nothing more ancient than a statutory …

The American Bar Association's Meeting At Portland, Henry M. Bates

Articles

The meeting of the American Bar Association for 1907 was a notable one, both in respect of the attendance and in the importance of many of the matters discussed. Not only was the attendance unusually large, but the presence of many distinguished men from abroad who were delegates to the meetings of the International Law Association, held during the same week, added distinction to the gatherings. The meetings reflected significantly the discussion throughout the country upon the great legal and political questions which the changing conditions in the commercial and industrial world have brought so prominently before the nation during …