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Full-Text Articles in Law
Originalism And Congressional Power To Enforce The Fourteenth Amendment, Christopher W. Schmidt
Originalism And Congressional Power To Enforce The Fourteenth Amendment, Christopher W. Schmidt
Washington and Lee Law Review Online
In this Essay, I argue that originalism conflicts with the Supreme Court’s current jurisprudence defining the scope of Congress’ power to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment. Under the standard established in Boerne v. Flores, the Court limits congressional power under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment to statutory remedies premised on judicially defined interpretations of Fourteenth Amendment rights. A commitment to originalism as a method of judicial constitutional interpretation challenges the premise of judicial interpretive supremacy in Section 5 jurisprudence in two ways. First, as a matter of history, an originalist reading of Section 5 provides support for broad judicial …
Rights And Retrenchment In The Trump Era, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang
Rights And Retrenchment In The Trump Era, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang
All Faculty Scholarship
Our aim in this essay is to leverage archival research, data and theoretical perspectives presented in our book, Rights and Retrenchment: The Counterrevolution against Federal Litigation, as a means to illuminate the prospects for retrenchment in the current political landscape. We follow the scheme of the book by separately considering the prospects for federal litigation retrenchment in three lawmaking sites: Congress, federal court rulemaking under the Rules Enabling Act, and the Supreme Court. Although pertinent data on current retrenchment initiatives are limited, our historical data and comparative institutional perspectives should afford a basis for informed prediction. Of course, little in …
Oops!... I Infringed Again: An Analysis Of U.S. Copyright And Its Intended Beneficiaries, Gabriele A. Forbes-Bennett
Oops!... I Infringed Again: An Analysis Of U.S. Copyright And Its Intended Beneficiaries, Gabriele A. Forbes-Bennett
Student Theses and Dissertations
This paper seeks to establish the reasons why federal copyright protection was created, discuss the shifts in reasoning behind major amendments, and explore its effects on copyright holders and the public, with a slight focus on the music industry. Federal copyright has existed in the United States since the late 1700s, with the creation of the Copyright Act in 1790. Adopted from the first copyright law ever created, the English Statute of Anne (1710), the Copyright Act was meant to protect citizens from piracy in a world where the risk of such a thing was rapidly increasing. The stated objective …
Section 2 After Section 5: Voting Rights And The Race To The Bottom, Ellen D. Katz
Section 2 After Section 5: Voting Rights And The Race To The Bottom, Ellen D. Katz
Articles
Five years ago, Shelby County v. Holder released nine states and fifty-five smaller jurisdictions from the preclearance obligation set forth in section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). This obligation mandated that places with a history of discrimination in voting obtain federal approval—known as preclearance—before changing any electoral rule or procedure. Within hours of the Shelby County decision, jurisdictions began moving to reenact measures section 5 had specifically blocked. Others pressed forward with new rules that the VRA would have barred prior to Shelby County.
Prophylactic Redistricting? Congress's Section 5 Power And The New Equal Protection Right To Vote, Michael T. Morley
Prophylactic Redistricting? Congress's Section 5 Power And The New Equal Protection Right To Vote, Michael T. Morley
Scholarly Publications
No abstract provided.
Restoring Congress's Role In The Modern Administrative State, Christopher J. Walker
Restoring Congress's Role In The Modern Administrative State, Christopher J. Walker
Michigan Law Review
A review of Josh Chafetzm Congress's Constitution: Legislative Authority and Separation of Powers.
Asymmetric Constitutional Hardball, Joseph Fishkin, David E. Pozen
Asymmetric Constitutional Hardball, Joseph Fishkin, David E. Pozen
Faculty Scholarship
Many have argued that the United States' two major political parties have experienced "asymmetric polarization" in recent decades: The Republican Party has moved significantly further to the right than the Democratic Party has moved to the left. The practice of constitutional hardball, this Essay argues, has followed a similar – and causally related – trajectory. Since at least the mid-1990s, Republican officeholders have been more likely than their Democratic counterparts to push the constitutional envelope, straining unwritten norms of governance or disrupting established constitutional understandings. Both sides have done these things. But contrary to the apparent assumption of some legal …
Obama's Conversion On Same-Sex Marriage: The Social Foundations Of Individual Rights, Robert L. Tsai
Obama's Conversion On Same-Sex Marriage: The Social Foundations Of Individual Rights, Robert L. Tsai
Faculty Scholarship
This essay explores how presidents who wish to seize a leadership role over the development of rights must tend to the social foundations of those rights. Broad cultural changes alone do not guarantee success, nor do they dictate the substance of constitutional ideas. Rather, presidential aides must actively re-characterize the social conditions in which rights are made, disseminated, and enforced. An administration must articulate a strategically plausible theory of a particular right, ensure there is cultural and institutional support for that right, and work to minimize blowback. Executive branch officials must seek to transform and popularize legal concepts while working …
"The Essential Characteristic": Enumerated Powers And The Bank Of The United States, Richard Primus
"The Essential Characteristic": Enumerated Powers And The Bank Of The United States, Richard Primus
Michigan Law Review
The idea that Congress can legislate only on the basis of its enumerated powers is an orthodox proposition of constitutional law, one that is generally supposed to have been recognized as essential ever since the Founding. Conventional understandings of several episodes in constitutional history reinforce this proposition. But the reality of many of those events is more complicated. Consider the 1791 debate over creating the Bank of the United States, in which Madison famously argued against the Bank on enumerated-powers grounds. The conventional memory of the Bank episode reinforces the sense that the orthodox view of enumerated powers has been …