Law Commons^™

Is The End Of Roe V. Wade Near? Leaked Scotus Brief Says Yes, Nicole Huberfeld, Linda C. Mcclain

Shorter Faculty Works

Protesters on both sides of the abortion debate descended on the US Supreme Court Monday night and into Tuesday after a leaked secret draft of a US Supreme Court opinion indicated that a majority of justices support overturning Roe v. Wade, after almost 50 years of legalized abortion rights in America. If finalized, possibly as soon as this summer, the bombshell could trigger a cultural tsunami across American life, forcing some women to travel to another state for an abortion and putting the divisive issue at the heart of the fall midterm elections.

“She’S Earned This”: Angela Onwuachi-Willig Rejoices In Historic Confirmation, Angela Onwuachi-Willig

Shorter Faculty Works

Angela Onwuachi-Willig, the dean of Boston University’s School of Law—the first Black woman to be dean of a top-20 law school—is rejoicing. The first Black woman has been confirmed to the US Supreme Court.

Onwuachi-Willig has had Ketanji Brown Jackson’s back from the moment President Biden announced he would nominate the federal judge to the nation’s highest court.

Law Dean’S Letter Urges Confirmation Of Biden’S Historic Scotus Pick, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Angela Onwuachi-Willig

Shorter Faculty Works

In a letter citing Black women’s underrepresentation on the federal bench, Angela Onwuachi-Willig, dean of the BU School of Law, and more than 200 other Black women law deans and professors urged the US Senate on Friday to confirm President Joe Biden’s nominee, Ketanji Brown Jackson, to the nation’s highest court “swiftly and with bipartisan support.”

Deep Tracks: Album Cuts That Help Define The Essential Scalia, Gary S. Lawson

Faculty Scholarship

Jeff Sutton and Ed Whelan have collected some of Justice Scalia’s “greatest hits” in a volume entitled The Essential Scalia: On the Constitution, the Courts, and the Rule of Law. The book is an excellent introduction to the jurisprudential thought and literary style of one of the most influential legal thinkers—and legal writers—in modern times. As with any “greatest hits” compilation, however, there are inevitably going to be key “album cuts” for which there will not be space. This essay seeks to supplement Sutton and Whelan’s invaluable efforts by surveying three of those “deep tracks” that shed particular light on …

The Supreme Common Law Court Of The United States, Jack M. Beermann

Faculty Scholarship

The U.S. Supreme Court's primary role in the history of the United States, especially in constitutional cases (and cases hovering in the universe of the Constitution), has been to limit Congress's ability to redefine and redistribute rights in a direction most people would characterize as liberal. In other words, the Supreme Court, for most of the history of the United States since the adoption of the Constitution, has been a conservative force against change and redistribution. The Court has used five distinct devices to advance its control over the law. First, it has construed rights-creating constitutional provisions narrowly when those …

A Six-Three Rule: Reviving Consensus And Deference On The Supreme Court, Jed Handelsman Shugerman

Faculty Scholarship

Over the past three decades, the Supreme Court has struck down federal statutes by a bare majority with unprecedented frequency. This Article shows that five-four decisions regularly overturning acts of Congress are a relatively recent phenomenon, whereas earlier Courts generally exercised judicial review by supermajority voting.

One option is to establish the following rule: The Supreme Court may not declare an act of Congress unconstitutional without a two-thirds majority. The Supreme Court itself could establish this rule internally, just as it has created its nonmajority rules for granting certiorari and holds, or one Justice who would otherwise be the fifth …

Administrative Failure And Local Democracy: The Politics Of Deshaney, Jack M. Beermann

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay is an effort to construct a normative basis for a constitutional theory to resist the Supreme Court's recent decision in DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services.¹ In DeShaney, the Court decided that a local social service worker's failure to prevent child abuse did not violate the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment even though the social worker "had reason to believe" the abuse was occurring. ² Chief Justice Rehnquist's opinion for the Court held that government inaction cannot violate due process unless the state has custody of the victim, ³ thus settling a controversial …

A Critical Approach To Section 1983 With Special Attention To Sources Of Law, Jack M. Beermann

Faculty Scholarship

The Civil Rights Act of 1871¹ ("§ 1983") establishes a tort-like remedy for persons deprived of federally protected rights "under color of law."'² While the statute's broad language provides a remedy for violations of federal constitutional and statutory rights, the statute itself provides little or no guidance regarding important subjects such as the measure of damages, the availability of punitive damages, the requirements for equitable relief, the statute of limitations, survival of claims, proper parties, and immunities from suit.³...

...The first part of this article examines the narrowly "legal" analysis of § 1983 in the cases …

Bad Judicial Activism And Liberal Federal-Courts Doctrine: A Comment On Professor Doernberg And Professor Redish, Jack M. Beermann

Faculty Scholarship

JUDUCIAL ACTIVISM IS often portrayed as a liberal vice. This perception is wrong both historically and, as Professor Redish argues, ³ currently as well. The federal judiciary has been and still is an activist institution, working with both substantive law and jurisdictional rules to achieve its own policy goals. It has done this in statutory, constitutional, and common-law matters. Specifically, the Supreme Court of the United States has actively-shaped the jurisdiction of the federal courts in a restrictive and generally conservative manner.

Professors Doernberg⁴ and Redish attack this last form of activism by the federal courts, activism in shaping …