Law Commons^™

Sacrifice And Sacred Honor: Why The Constitution Is A "Suicide Pact", Peter Brandon Bayer

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

Most legal scholars and elected officials embrace the popular cliché that “the Constitution is not a suicide pact.” Typically, those commentators extol the “Constitution of necessity,” the supposition that Government, essentially the Executive, may take any action—may abridge or deny any fundamental right—to alleviate a sufficiently serious national security threat. The “Constitution of necessity” is wrong. This Article explains that strict devotion to the “fundamental fairness” principles of the Constitution’s Due Process Clauses is America’s utmost legal and moral duty, surpassing all other considerations, even safety, security and survival.

The analysis begins with the most basic premises: the definition of …

Golan V. Holder: Congressional Power Under The Copyright Clause And The First Amendment, Claire Fong

Duke Journal of Constitutional Law & Public Policy Sidebar

No abstract provided.

Religious Truth, Pluralism, And Secularization: The Shaking Foundations Of American Religious Liberty, Daniel O. Conkle

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In this Essay, I recount John Locke’s 1689 Letter Concerning Toleration and explain how religious liberty continues to rest on Lockean and related justifications. These various justifications depend in part on religious-moral reasoning (both Christian and non-Christian) and in part on political-pragmatic considerations. I then discuss recent and ongoing developments in the American religious landscape, including a radical increase in religious diversity, the modernization of traditional faiths, the individualization or "spiritualization" of religion, and the increasing secularization of individual belief structures. I suggest that these developments, over time, may seriously threaten the underlying religious-moral and political-pragmatic foundations of religious liberty …

Plenary No Longer: How The Fourteenth Amendment "Amended" Congressional Jurisdiction-Stripping Power, Maggie Blackhawk

All Faculty Scholarship

This Note proposes a solution to the long-standing debate among federal courts scholars as to where to draw the limits of congressional power to strip appellate jurisdiction from the Supreme Court and to strip original jurisdiction from the lower federal courts. Although the Supreme Court has rarely addressed the possibility of limitations on congressional jurisdiction-stripping power, the few determinative cases to go before the Court reveal an acceptance of the orthodox view of plenary power. Proponents of the orthodox view maintain that state courts, bound to hear constitutional claims by their general jurisdictional grant and to enforce the Constitution by …

I Am Textualism, Stephen Durden

Stephen Durden

This essay, consisting of merely 1100 words, satirizes textualism, particularly as applied to the Constitution. Inspired by the idea of something being all things to all people in order to win converts, the essay demonstrates that because textualism has so many different definitions that it in fact has no meaning other than the meaning given by each textualist. Each textualist embraces his or her own version of textualism. Textualists battle to define true textualism. Given the different versions of textualism, each textualist faces the Textualist Conundrum. As each textualist seeks to embraceor prove a purer form of textualism the textualist …