Law Commons^™

Canadian Federalism In Design And Practice: The Mechanics Of A Permanently Provisional Constitution, James A. Gardner

Journal Articles

This paper examines the interaction between constitutional design and practice through a case study of Canadian federalism. Focusing on the federal architecture of the Canadian Constitution, the paper examines how subnational units in Canada actually compete with the central government, emphasizing the concrete strategies and tactics they most commonly employ to get their way in confrontations with central authority. The evidence affirms that constitutional design and structure make an important difference in the tactics and tools available to subnational units in a federal system, but that design is not fully constraining: there is considerable evidence of extraconstitutional innovation and improvisation …

Due Process Abroad, Nathan Chapman

Scholarly Works

Defining the scope of the Constitution’s application outside U.S. territory is more important than ever. This month the Supreme Court will hear oral argument about whether the Constitution applies when a U.S. officer shoots a Mexican child across the border. Meanwhile the federal courts are scrambling to evaluate the constitutionality of an Executive Order that, among other things, deprives immigrants of their right to reenter the United States. Yet the extraterritorial reach of the Due Process Clause — the broadest constitutional limit on the government’s authority to deprive persons of “life, liberty, and property” — remains obscure. Up to now, …

Equality, Sovereignty, And The Family In Morales-Santana, Kristin Collins

Faculty Scholarship

In Sessions v. Morales-Santana, ³ the Supreme Court encountered a body of citizenship law that has long relied on family membership in the construction of the nation’s borders and the composition of the polity.⁴ The particular statute at issue in the case regulates the transmission of citizenship from American parents to their foreign-born children at birth, a form of citizenship known today as derivative citizenship.⁵ When those children are born outside marriage, the derivative citizenship statute makes it more difficult for American fathers, as compared with American mothers, to transmit citizenship to their foreign-born children.⁶ Over …

The Cost Of The Text, Richard A. Primus

Articles

Christopher Serkin and Nelson Tebbe's Is the Constitution Special?explores many facets of constitutional interpretation. I will focus here on their observation that constitutional interpretation is "less textual" than statutory interpretation. I place the expression "less textual" in quotation marks because "textual" could mean many things, such that it would often be problematic to characterize one interpretive exercise as more or less textual than another. In Serkin and Tebbe's view, as I understand it, mainstream constitutional interpretation is "less textual " than statutory decisionmaking in that it is less constrained by the words of particular enacted clauses. As a convenient …

The Constitutional Right To Collateral Post-Conviction Review, Carlos Manuel Vázquez, Stephen I. Vladeck

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

For years, the prevailing academic and judicial wisdom has held that, between them, Congress and the Supreme Court have rendered post- conviction habeas review all but a dead letter. But in its January 2016 decision in Montgomery v. Louisiana, the Supreme Court may have dramatically upended that understanding in holding—for the first time—that there are at least some cases in which the Constitution itself creates a right to collateral post-conviction review, i.e., cases in which a prisoner seeks to enforce retroactively a “new rule” of substantive constitutional law under the familiar doctrine of Teague v. Lane.

On the …

The Second Amendment & Private Law, Cody Jacobs

Faculty Scholarship

The Second Amendment, like other federal constitutional rights, is a restriction on government power. But what role does the Second Amendment have to play—if any—when a private party seeks to limit the exercise of Second Amendment rights by invoking private law causes of action? Private law—specifically, the law of torts, contracts, and property—has often been impacted by constitutional considerations, though in seemingly inconsistent ways. The First Amendment places limitations on defamation actions and other related torts, and also prevents courts from entering injunctions that could be classified as prior restraints. On the other hand, the First Amendment plays almost no …

Precedent And Speech, Randy J. Kozel

Journal Articles

The U.S. Supreme Court has shown a notable willingness to reconsider its First Amendment precedents. In recent years the Court has departed from its prior statements regarding the constitutional value of false speech. It has revamped its process for identifying categorical exceptions to First Amendment protection. It has changed its position on corporate electioneering and aggregate campaign contributions. In short, it has revised the ground rules of expressive freedom in ways both large and small.

The Court generally describes its past decisions as enjoying a presumption of validity through the doctrine of stare decisis. This Article contends that within the …

Review Of David Cole. Engines Of Liberty: The Power Of Citizen Activists To Make Constitutional Law., Pat Newcombe

Faculty Scholarship

In Engines of Liberty: The Power of Citizen Activists to Make Constitutional Law, David Cole presents a fascinating perspective on constitutional law by recounting three engaging stories of enormous constitutional change and of the organizations and individuals, whose efforts achieved such change. Cole’s accounts are well supported with citations to documents and personal interviews, all written in an accessible, engaging, and clear style. The Author highly recommends this first-rate work to law, general academic, and public libraries.

Creating Precedents Through Words And Deeds, Harold Krent

All Faculty Scholarship

Book review: Untrodden ground: how presidents interpret the Constitution. By Harold H. Bruff. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015. 557 pages. Reviewed by Harold J. Krent

Government Speech And The War On Terror, Helen Norton

Publications

The government is unique among speakers because of its coercive power, its substantial resources, its privileged access to national security and intelligence information, and its wide variety of expressive roles as commander-in-chief, policymaker, educator, employer, property owner, and more. Precisely because of this power, variety, and ubiquity, the government's speech can both provide great value and inflict great harm to the public. In wartime, more specifically, the government can affirmatively choose to use its voice to inform, inspire, heal, and unite -- or instead to deceive, divide, bully, and silence.

In this essay, I examine the U.S. government's role as …

State Action Doctrine And The Logic Of Constitutional Containment, Jud Mathews

Journal Articles

Deriding the state action doctrine is one of the great pastimes of American constitutional law. It has been described as a shamble and "incoherent." On its face, the core concept seems straightforward enough constitutional rights are rights against the government. But what counts as the "state action" that triggers the protection of rights seems to shift, maddeningly, from case to case in the Supreme Court's state action jurisprudence.

In this article, I aim to help make some sense of why the state action doctrine has developed as it has by setting it in a comparative and historical frame. It can …

From Selma To Ferguson: The Voting Rights Act As A Blueprint For Police Reform, Stephen Rushin

Faculty Publications & Other Works

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 revolutionized access to the voting booth. Rather than responding to claims of voter suppression through litigation against individual states or localities, the Voting Rights Act introduced a coverage formula that preemptively regulated a large number of localities across the country. In doing so, the Voting Rights Act replaced reactive, piecemeal litigation with a proactive structure of continual federal oversight. As the most successful civil rights law in the nation's history, the Voting Rights Act provides a blueprint for responding to one of the most pressing civil rights problems the country faces today: police misconduct. …

Why Some Religious Accommodations For Mandatory Vaccinations Violate The Establishment Clause, Hillel Y. Levin

Scholarly Works

All states require parents to inoculate their children against deadly diseases prior to enrolling them in public schools, but the vast majority of states also allow parents to opt out on religious grounds. This religious accommodation imposes potentially grave costs on the children of non-vaccinating parents and on those who cannot be immunized. The Establishment Clause prohibits religious accommodations that impose such costs on third parties in some cases, but not in all. This presents a difficult line-drawing problem. The Supreme Court has offered little guidance, and scholars are divided.

This Article addresses the problem of religious accommodations that impose …

The Disparate Impact Canon, Michael T. Morley

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

Puerto Rico And The Netherworld Of Sovereign Debt Restructuring, Mitu Gulati, Robert K. Rasmussen

Faculty Scholarship

Puerto Rico has incurred debt well beyond its ability to repay. It attempted to address its fiscal woes through legislation allowing the restructuring of some its debt. The Supreme Court put a stop to this effort, holding that Congress in the Bankruptcy Code barred the Commonwealth from enacting its own restructuring regime. Yet all agreed that the Bankruptcy Code did not provide anything in its place. While Congress quickly enacted PROMESA in an attempt to address the Puerto Rico’s fiscal ills, we explore in this paper whether Congress has the power to bar Puerto Rico from enacting a restructuring mechanism …

Brief Of Amicus Curiae Children’S Law Clinic At Duke Law School Advocates For Children’S Services Of Legal Aid Of North Carolina Public Schools First Nc, Jane R. Wettach, Peggy Nicholson, K. Ricky Watson Jr., Celia Pistolis, Aisha Forte, Jennifer Story, Kevin Zhao

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

What Can Europe Tell Us About The Future Of American Federalism?, Ernest A. Young

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Free Exercise Of Religious Identity, Lauren Sudeall

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In recent years, a particular strain of argument has arisen in response to decisions by courts or the government to extend certain rights to others. Grounded in religious freedom, these arguments suggest that individuals have a right to operate businesses or conduct their professional roles in a manner that conforms to their religious identity. For example, as courts and legislatures have extended the right to marry to same-sex couples, court clerks have refused to issue marriage certificates to such couples, claiming that to do so would violate their religious beliefs. Similarly, corporations have refused, for reasons grounded in religious identity, …

Scalia In The Casebooks, Brian T. Fitzpatrick, Paulson K. Varghese

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In the time since Justice Antonin Scalia’s untimely death, much has been written about what his influence has been and what his influence will be. In this Essay, we try to quantify Scalia’s influence in law school constitutional-law curricula by studying how often his ideas are explored in constitutional-law casebooks. In particular, relative to other justices, we look at how often Scalia’s opinions (for the Court, or his separate opinions) are excerpted in the principal cases and how often he is referred to by name in the notes preceding and following the principal cases. We find that Scalia is at …

Cumulative Constitutional Rights, Kerry Abrams, Brandon L. Garrett

Faculty Scholarship

Cumulative constitutional rights are ubiquitous. Plaintiffs litigate multiple constitutional violations, or multiple harms, and judges use multiple constitutional provisions to inform interpretation. Yet judges, litigants, and scholars have often criticized the notion of cumulative rights, including in leading Supreme Court rulings, such as Lawrence v. Texas, Employment Division v. Smith, and Miranda v. Arizona. Recently, the Court attempted to clarify some of this confusion. In its landmark opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges, the Court struck down state bans on same-sex marriage by pointing to several distinct but overlapping protections inherent in the Due Process Clause, including the right to individual …

Constitutional Economic Justice: Structural Power For "We The People", Martha T. Mccluskey

Journal Articles

Toward that goal, this essay proposes a structural principle of collective economic power for “we the people.” This principle is both consistent with longstanding Constitutional ideals and tailored to the current challenges of neoliberal ideology and policy. It develops two premises: first, it rejects the neoliberal economic ideology that defines legitimate power and freedom as individualized “choice” constrained by an existing political economy. Instead, this proposed principle recognizes that meaningful political economic freedom and power fundamentally consist of access to collective organizations with potential to create a “more perfect union” with better and less constrained options. Second, the post-Lochner principle …

The Tragedy Of Justice Scalia, Mitchell N. Berman

All Faculty Scholarship

Justice Antonin Scalia was, by the time of his death last February, the Supreme Court’s best known and most influential member. He was also its most polarizing, a jurist whom most students of American law either love or hate. This essay, styled as a twenty-year retrospective on A Matter of Interpretation, Scalia’s Tanner lectures on statutory and constitutional interpretation, aims to prod partisans on both sides of our central legal and political divisions to better appreciate at least some of what their opponents see—the other side of Scalia’s legacy. Along the way, it critically assesses Scalia’s particular brand of …

Adjudicating Religious Sincerity, Nathan Chapman

Scholarly Works

Recent disputes about the “contraception mandate” under the Affordable Care Act and about the provision of goods and services for same-sex weddings have drawn attention to the law of religious accommodations. So far, however, one of the requirements of a religious accommodation claim has escaped sustained scholarly attention: a claimant must be sincere. Historically, scholars have contested this requirement on the ground that adjudicating religious sincerity requires government officials to delve too deeply into religious questions, something the Establishment Clause forbids. Until recently, however, the doctrine was fairly clear: though the government may not evaluate the objective accuracy or plausibility …

The “Sovereigns Of Cyberspace” And State Action: The First Amendment’S Application (Or Lack Thereof) To Third-Party Platforms, Jonathan Peters

Scholarly Works

Many scholars have commented that the state action doctrine forecloses use of the First Amendment to constrain the policies and practices of online service providers. But few have comprehensively studied this issue, and the seminal article exploring “[c]yberspace and the [s]tate [a]ction [d]ebate” is fifteen years old, published before the U.S. Supreme Court reformulated the federal approach to state action. It is important to give the state action doctrine regular scholarly attention, not least because it is increasingly clear that “the private sector has a shared responsibility to help safeguard free expression.” It is critical to understand whether the First …

Class Actions, Civil Rights, And The National Injunction, Suzette M. Malveaux

Publications

This essay is a response to Professor Samuel Bray’s article proposing a blanket prohibition against injunctions that enjoin a defendant’s conduct with respect to nonparties. He argues that national injunctions are illegitimate under Article III and traditional equity and result in a number of difficulties.

This Response argues, from a normative lens, that Bray’s proposed ban on national injunctions should be rejected. Such a bright-line rule against national injunctions is too blunt an instrument to address the complexity of our tripartite system of government, our pluralistic society and our democracy. Although national injunctions may be imperfect and crude forms of …

Legal Language: Expansion, Consolidation, Resistance, Robert L. Tsai

Faculty Scholarship

Legal language in America, a species of the political discourse of popular sovereignty, underwent significant changes during the nineteenth century. Beyond dramatic changes in the technologies of language, two major sociolegal dynamics of political development drove linguistic innovation during the nineteenth century: expansion and consolidation. Religious revivals and political reform movements, including a number of utopian projects, spread the language of liberty and popular consent as groups migrated west. The sensational 1829 pamphlet known as Walker's Appeal turned America's language of political liberty against the slave trade. David Walker, a former slave, directed his words primarily to the colored people …

A Politics-Reinforcing Political Question Doctrine, Harlan G. Cohen

Scholarly Works

The modern political question doctrine has long been criticized for shielding the political branches from proper judicial scrutiny and allowing the courts to abdicate their responsibilities. Critics of the doctrine thus cheered when the Supreme Court, in Zivotofsky I, announced a narrowing of the doctrine. Their joy though may have been short-lived. Almost immediately, Zivotofsky II demonstrated the dark side of judicial review of the separation of powers between Congress and the President: deciding separations of powers cases may permanently cut one of the political branches out of certain debates. Judicial scrutiny in a particular case could eliminate political scrutiny …

The Downstream Consequences Of Misdemeanor Pretrial Detention, Paul Heaton, Sandra G. Mayson, Megan Stevenson

Scholarly Works

In misdemeanor cases, pretrial detention poses a particular problem because it may induce innocent defendants to plead guilty in order to exit jail, potentially creating widespread error in case adjudication. While practitioners have long recognized this possibility, empirical evidence on the downstream impacts of pretrial detention on misdemeanor defendants and their cases remains limited. This Article uses detailed data on hundreds of thousands of misdemeanor cases resolved in Harris County, Texas—the thirdlargest county in the United States—to measure the effects of pretrial detention on case outcomes and future crime. We find that detained defendants are 25% more likely than similarly …

Who Has Standing To Sue The President Over Allegedly Unconstitutional Emoluments?, Matthew I. Hall

Scholarly Works

Three pending lawsuits challenge President Trump's practice of accepting payments and other benefits from foreign governments through his businesses as violative of the Foreign Emoluments Clause. They also allege that the President's practice of accepting payments and benefits from state or federal governmental units violates the Domestic Emoluments Clause. These actions raise interesting questions about the meaning of two little-discussed provisions of the Constitution. But before reaching the merits the courts will first have to grapple with issues of justiciability - in particular, with the question whether plaintiffs have "standing" to bring their claims in federal court. This article explains …

Freedom Of Speech And The Criminal Law, Dan T. Coenen

Scholarly Works

Because the Free Speech Clause limits government power to enact penal statutes, it has a close relationship to American criminal law. This Article explores that relationship at a time when a fast-growing “decriminalization movement” has taken hold across the nation. At the heart of the Article is the idea that free speech law has developed in ways that have positioned the Supreme Court to use that law to impose significant new limits on the criminalization of speech. More particularly, this article claims that the Court has developed three distinct decision-making strategies for decriminalizing speech based on constitutional principles. The first …