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Articles 1 - 10 of 10
Full-Text Articles in Law
Freedom, Democracy, And The Right To Education, Derek W. Black
Freedom, Democracy, And The Right To Education, Derek W. Black
Northwestern University Law Review
While litigation continues in an effort to establish a fundamental right to education under the U.S. Constitution, the full historical justification for this right remains missing—a fatal flaw for many jurists. This Article fills that gap, demonstrating that the central, yet entirely overlooked, justification for a federal right to education resides in America’s education story during the era of slavery and Reconstruction.
At that time, education was first and foremost about freedom. The South had criminalized education to maintain a racialized hierarchy that preserved slavery. Many African-Americans, seeing education as the means to both mental and physical freedom, made extraordinary …
The Superfluous Fifteenth Amendment?, Travis Crum
The Superfluous Fifteenth Amendment?, Travis Crum
Northwestern University Law Review
This Article starts a conversation about reorienting voting rights doctrine toward the Fifteenth Amendment. In advancing this claim, I explore an unappreciated debate—the “Article V debate”—in the Fortieth Congress about whether nationwide black suffrage could and should be achieved through a statute, a constitutional amendment, or both. As the first significant post-ratification discussion of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Article V debate provides valuable insights about the original public understandings of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and the distinction between civil and political rights.
The Article V debate reveals that the Radical Republicans’ initial proposal for nationwide black suffrage included both …
Section 5'S Forgotten Years: Congressional Power To Enforce The Fourteenth Amendment Before Katzenbach V. Morgan, Christopher W. Schmidt
Section 5'S Forgotten Years: Congressional Power To Enforce The Fourteenth Amendment Before Katzenbach V. Morgan, Christopher W. Schmidt
Northwestern University Law Review
Few decisions in American constitutional law have frustrated, inspired, and puzzled more than Katzenbach v. Morgan. Justice Brennan’s 1966 opinion put forth the seemingly radical claim that Congress—through its power, based in Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, to “enforce, by appropriate legislation,” the rights enumerated in that Amendment—shared responsibility with the Court to define the meaning of Fourteenth Amendment rights. Although it spawned a cottage industry of scholarship, this claim has never been fully embraced by a subsequent Supreme Court majority, and in City of Boerne v. Flores, the Supreme Court rejected the heart of the Morgan …
The Futile Fourth Amendment: Understanding Police Excessive Force Doctrine Through An Empirical Assessment Of Graham V. Connor, Osagie K. Obasogie, Zachary Newman
The Futile Fourth Amendment: Understanding Police Excessive Force Doctrine Through An Empirical Assessment Of Graham V. Connor, Osagie K. Obasogie, Zachary Newman
Northwestern University Law Review
Graham v. Connor established the modern constitutional landscape for police excessive force claims. The Supreme Court not only refined an objective reasonableness test to describe the constitutional standard, but also held that the Fourth Amendment is the sole avenue for courts to adjudicate claims that police violated a person’s constitutional rights in using force. In this Essay, we ask: What impact did this decision have on the nature of police excessive force claims in federal courts? To address this, we engaged in a qualitative examination of 500 federal cases (250 in the twenty-six years before Graham and 250 in the …
Mccleskey V. Kemp: Field Notes From 1977-1991, John Charles Boger
Mccleskey V. Kemp: Field Notes From 1977-1991, John Charles Boger
Northwestern University Law Review
The litigation campaign that led to McCleskey v. Kemp did not begin as an anti-death-penalty effort. It grew in soil long washed in the blood of African-Americans, lynched or executed following rude semblances of trials and hasty appeals, which had prompted the NAACP from its very founding to demand “simple justice” in individual criminal cases. When the Warren Court signaled, in the early 1960s, that it might be open to reflection on broader patterns of racial discrimination in capital sentencing, the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) began to gather empirical evidence and craft appropriate constitutional responses. As …
Of Carrots And Sticks: General Jurisdiction And Genuine Consent, Craig Sanders
Of Carrots And Sticks: General Jurisdiction And Genuine Consent, Craig Sanders
Northwestern University Law Review
The United States Supreme Court’s 2014 decision in Daimler AG v. Bauman changed how the courts will determine whether companies should be subject to general personal jurisdiction. In 1945, Pennoyer v. Neff’s geographical fixation gave way to International Shoe Co. v. Washington, which provided a test for courts to determine whether corporations had sufficient contact with a forum to meet the bar for personal jurisdiction there. Specific jurisdiction requires “minimum contacts,” provided the action is satisfactorily related to the forum. However, to be subject to general jurisdiction, a corporation must possess more than just “minimum contacts,” and claimants …
After Flint: Environmental Justice As Equal Protection, David A. Dana, Deborah Tuerkheimer
After Flint: Environmental Justice As Equal Protection, David A. Dana, Deborah Tuerkheimer
Northwestern University Law Review
This Essay conceptualizes the Flint water crisis as an archetypical case of underenforcement—that is, a denial of the equal protection of laws guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. Viewed as such, the inadequacy of environmental regulation can be understood as a failure that extends beyond the confines of Flint; a failure that demands a far more expansive duty to protect vulnerable populations.
Raped Abroad: Extraterritorial Application Of Title Ix For American University Students Sexually Assaulted While Studying Abroad, Brittany K. Bull
Raped Abroad: Extraterritorial Application Of Title Ix For American University Students Sexually Assaulted While Studying Abroad, Brittany K. Bull
Northwestern University Law Review
Female college students who study abroad are five times more likely to be raped than their counterparts who remain on their domestic campuses. Students raped or sexually assaulted on or around campuses in the United States can seek a remedy under Title IX, which provides administrative and judicial remedies. Very few federal cases have ever addressed whether Title IX applies extraterritorially to allegations of sex discrimination occurring abroad, and courts have reached different results in these cases. Moreover, no federal circuit has ever addressed the issue. This Note explores whether Title IX applies extraterritorially to students raped while studying abroad. …
(Un)Equal Protection: Why Gender Equality Depends On Discrimination, Keith Cunningham-Parmeter
(Un)Equal Protection: Why Gender Equality Depends On Discrimination, Keith Cunningham-Parmeter
Northwestern University Law Review
Most accounts of the Supreme Court’s equal protection jurisprudence describe the Court’s firm opposition to sex discrimination. But while the Court famously invalidated several sex-based laws at the end of the twentieth century, it also issued many other, less-celebrated decisions that sanctioned sex-specific classifications in some circumstances. Examining these long-ignored cases that approved of sex discrimination, this Article explains how the Court’s rulings in this area have often rejected the principle of formal equality in favor of broader antisubordination concerns. Outlining a new model of equal protection that authorizes certain forms of sex discrimination, (Un)Equal Protection advocates for one particular …
Originalism And The Ratification Of The Fourteenth Amendment, Thomas B. Colby
Originalism And The Ratification Of The Fourteenth Amendment, Thomas B. Colby
Northwestern University Law Review
Originalists have traditionally based the normative case for originalism primarily on principles of popular sovereignty: the Constitution owes its legitimacy as higher law to the fact that it was ratified by the American people through a supermajoritarian process. As such, it must be interpreted according to the original meaning that it had at the time of ratification. To give it another meaning today is to allow judges to enforce a legal rule that was never actually embraced and enacted by the people. Whatever the merits of this argument in general, it faces particular hurdles when applied to the Fourteenth Amendment. …