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Law and Society

Selected Works

Selected Works

2015

Constitutional Law

Articles 1 - 4 of 4

Full-Text Articles in Law

The Constitutional Rhetoric Of White Innocence Aug 2015

The Constitutional Rhetoric Of White Innocence

Cecil J. Hunt II

This article discusses the Supreme Court’s use of the rhetoric of white innocence in deciding racially inflected claims of constitutional shelter. It argues that the Court’s use of this rhetoric reveals that it has adopted a distinctly white-centered-perspective which reveals only a one-sided view of racial reality and thus distorts its ability to accurately appreciate the true nature of racial reality in contemporary America. This article examines the Court’s habit of consistently choosing a white-centered-perspective in constitutional race cases by looking at the Court’s use of the rhetoric of white innocence first in the context of the Court’s concern with …


Ex Post Modernism: How The First Amendment Framed Nonrepresentational Art, Sonya G. Bonneau Aug 2015

Ex Post Modernism: How The First Amendment Framed Nonrepresentational Art, Sonya G. Bonneau

Sonya G Bonneau

Nonrepresentational art repeatedly surfaces in legal discourse as an example of highly valued First Amendment speech. It is also systematically described in constitutionally valueless terms: nonlinguistic, noncognitive, and apolitical. Why does law talk about nonrepresentational art at all, much less treat it as a constitutional precept? What are the implications for conceptualizing artistic expression as free speech?

This article contends that the source of nonrepresentational art’s presumptive First Amendment value is the same source of its utter lack thereof: modernism. Specifically, a symbolic alliance between abstraction and freedom of expression was forged in the mid-twentieth century, informed by social and …


The Rise Of Judicial Governance In The Supreme Court Of India, Manoj Mate Jan 2015

The Rise Of Judicial Governance In The Supreme Court Of India, Manoj Mate

Manoj S. Mate

This article analyzes how the Supreme Court of India, through its activism and assertiveness, has emerged as arguably the most powerful court among democratic polities. Over the past four and a half decades, the Court dramatically expanded its role in the realm of rights and governance, asserting the power to invalidate constitutional amendments under the basic structure doctrine, control judicial appointments, and govern in the areas of environmental policy, monitoring and investigating government corruption, and promoting electoral transparency and accountability. In this article, I argue that the Court’s shift toward greater, yet selective, assertiveness in India’s governance can most adequately …


King V. Burwell And The Rise Of The Administrative State, Ronald D. Rotunda Dec 2014

King V. Burwell And The Rise Of The Administrative State, Ronald D. Rotunda

Ronald D. Rotunda

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) is a complex law totaling nearly a thousand pages in length. The litigation now before the Supreme Court in King v. Burwell presents, on the surface, a simple issue of statutory interpretation. However, that surface has a very thin veneer. If the Court allows administrators carte blanche to change the very words of a statute, we will have come a long way towards governance by bureaucrats. Over the years, Congress has delegated many of its powers, but it has never delegated the power to raise taxes or spend tax subsidies in ways …