Law Commons^™

A More Sensible Approach To Regulating Independent Expenditures: Defending The Constitutionality Of The Fed's New Express Advocacy Standard, Michael D. Leffel

Michigan Law Review

Campaign finance reformers argue that the "unholy alliance of private money and public elections" has created "a crisis of confidence in our elected officials." The now-deceased campaign reform advocate Philip M. Stem summed up the role of money in campaigns this way: "[M]oney-power has replaced people-power as the driving force in American politics and the determinant of electoral victory." One form of "money-power" in elections that received a great deal of attention in the last election cycle was "independent expenditures." Independent expenditures are funds spent by interested individuals or groups - usually in the form of television or radio advertisements …

The First Amendment Comes Of Age: The Emergence Of Free Speech In Twentieth-Century America, G. Edward White

Michigan Law Review

As the number of issues perceived as having First Amendment implications continues to grow, and the coterie of potential beneficiaries of First Amendment protection continues to widen - including not only the traditional oppressed mavericks and despised dissenters but some rich and powerful members from the circles of political and economic orthodoxy - alarms have been sounded. Another period of stocktaking for free speech theory appears to be dawning, and some recent commentators have proposed a retrenchment from the long twentieth- century progression of increasingly speech-protective interpretations of the First Amendment. At the heart of the retrenchment literature lies the …

Determining Ripeness Of Substantive Due Process Claims Brought By Landowners Against Local Governments, David S. Mendel

Michigan Law Review

Landowners who sustain economic harm from arbitrary and capricious applications of land use regulations may sue the local government entities responsible for applying those regulations under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that the local government entities deprived them of substantive due process in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. A landowner who brings this claim - an "as-applied arbitrary and capricious substantive due process" claim - may in appropriate cases seek declaratory and injunctive relief, damages, and attorney's fees. Despite controversy among courts and commentators over both the definition of property interests protected by the Due Process Clause and the standard …

The Three-Judge District Court In Voting Rights Litigation, Michael E. Solimine

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In recent Terms the Supreme Court has heard numerous appeals from the decisions of three-judge district courts in controversial Voting Rights Act cases as well as in challenges to congressional districts designed allegedly to facilitate the election of members of minority groups. Although the cases themselves have been followed closely, the institution of the three-judge district court itself has received relatively little attention, even though Congress passed legislation in 1976 that restricted the three-judge court's jurisdiction to reapportionment and certain Voting Rights Act cases. In this Article, Professor Solimine argues that numerous problems attend the formation and operation of such …

Attainder And Amendment 2: Romer's Rightness, Akhil Reed Amar

Michigan Law Review

Call me silly. In fact, call me terminally silly. For despite Justice Scalia's remarkably confident claim, I believe, and shall try to prove below, that the Romer Court majority opinion invalidating Colorado's Amendment 2 was right both in form and in substance, both logically and sociologically. I stress "form" and "logic" at the outset because I share Justice Scalia's belief in the importance of these things in constitutional adjudication. I also share his commitment to constitutional text, history, and structure, and his suspicion of "free-form" constitutionalism. And so I shall highlight the text, history, and spirit of a constitutional clause …

Is Amendment 2 Really A Bill Of Attainder? Some Questions About Professor Amar's Analysis Of Romer, Roderick M. Hills Jr.

Michigan Law Review

As I first discovered as a law student in Professor Amar's classes on legal history and federal courts, it is generally an intellectual treat to listen to Professor Amar's legal analysis, even when he is attacking one's own arguments. So my pleasure at reading Professor Amar's analysis of the Court's decision in Romer v. Evans was only partly dampened by his disapproval of the respondents' brief that I and other plaintiffs' counsel filed with the Court. According to Amar, this respondents' brief provided the Court with "so little help" that it had to rely on an entirely different and much …

Computers, Urinals, And The Fourth Amendment: Confessions Of A Patron Saint, Wayne R. Lafave

Michigan Law Review

At least the title indicates that the article is somehow concerned with "the Fourth Amendment," though for anyone who knows me or is at all familiar with my work, that piece of information hardly would come as a revelation. The fact of the matter is that I almost always write about the Fourth Amendment; I am in an academic rut so deep as to deserve recognition in the Guinness Book World of Records. Search and seizure has been my cheval de bataille during my entire time as a law professor and even when I was a mere law student. …

A Peculiar Privilege In Historical Perspective: The Right To Remain Silent, Albert W. Alschuler

Michigan Law Review

Supreme Court decisions have vacillated between two incompatible readings of the Fifth Amendment guarantee that no person "shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself." The Court sometimes sees this language as affording defendants and suspects a right to remain silent. This interpretation - a view that countless repetitions of the Miranda warnings have impressed upon the public - asserts that government officials have no legitimate claim to testimonial evidence tending to incriminate the person who possesses it. Although officials need not encourage a suspect to remain silent, they must remain at least neutral toward …

Counter-Revolution In Constitutional Criminal Procedure? Two Audiences, Two Answers, Carol S. Steiker

Michigan Law Review

For the purposes of my argument, I adapt Professor Meir Dan-Cohen's distinction (which he in turn borrowed from Jeremy Bentham) between "conduct" rules and "decision" rules. Bentham and Dan-Cohen make this distinction in the context of substantive criminal law; for their purposes, "conduct" rules are addressed to the general public in order to guide its behavior (for example, "Let no person steal") and "decision" rules are addressed to public officials in order to guide their decisionmaking about the consequences of violating conduct rules (for example, "Let the judge cause whoever is convicted of stealing to be hanged"). But as any …

The Limits Of Legal Language: Decisionmaking In Capital Cases, Jordan M. Steiker

Michigan Law Review

To make the case for the proposed changes, I will first describe briefly in Parts I and II the structure of pre- and post-Furman capital decisiorurtaking and the weaknesses of those approaches. I then will set forth in Part III the specific rationales for each proposed reform.

The scheme I propose raises a significant constitutional question. Can the death penalty be retained as a punishment if we abandon the pretense of providing meaningful guidance through detailed sentencing instructions? Would the reestablishment of relatively unstructured penalty phase deliberations similar to, but also importantly different from, those characteristic of pre-Furman …

Escaping The World Of I Know It When I See It: A New Test For Software Patent Ability, Brooke Schumm Iii

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

The major thesis presented in this article is a focused standard of software patentability, in particular for pure computational methods or algorithms directed to the manipulation of numbers operating on a computer. The general philosophy is to compel inventors to narrow their claims to an algorithm expressed in terms of its utility and then to require that the particular utility or functionality be expressed in the claim as a limit on the claim, thus precluding the patent monopoly from being overbroad. As a corollary, any person is free to use or perhaps to patent the algorithm for a different utility …

Sofware Patents And The Information Economy, Michael Perelman

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Modern economists universally acknowledge that information is an essential component of productivity. Moreover, as they begin to focus more and more on the nature of information, their conception of information widens considerably.

Loss Of Protection As Injury In Fact: An Approach To Establishing Standing To Challenge Environmental Planning Decisions, Miles A. Yanick

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

As currently interpreted by the United States Supreme Court, Article III of the Constitution creates a significant hurdle for plaintiff citizen groups seeking standing to challenge environmental planning or management decisions. In particular, plaintiffs have had difficulty in making the required showing of an 'injury in fact" where an agency has not yet approved a site-specific action but has approved only a general plan for an area to govern future site-specific actions. The Supreme Court has not articulated a clear rule for standing to challenge the latter type of agency decision making, and the courts of appeals for the various …

Affirmative Duties, Systemic Harms, And The Due Process Clause, Barbara E. Armacost

Michigan Law Review

Part I of the article lays out the major academic criticisms of DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services. Part II describes the contours of liability for failure to protect in tort. Part III offers a positive explanation for the strong presumption against governmental liability in failure-to-protect cases: permitting broad liability for failure to protect would involve the courts in second-guessing political decisions about the use of limited community resources. This explanation has two parts. First, as a matter of institutional competence, budgetary decisions about the appropriate level and distribution of public services are better suited to political rather …

Arbitration: Back To The Future, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Other Publications

A strong new ideological current is sweeping through much of the Western World. At one extreme it manifests itself as a deep distrust of big government. In more modest form, it is a sense of skepticism or disillusionment about the capacity of big government to deal effectively with the problems confronting our society. In continental Europe today there is much talk of the principle of "subsidiarity," the notion that social and economic ills should be treated at the lowest level feasible, usually the level closest to the people directly affected. In the United States there is much talk of "privatization," …

Husband And Wife Are One - Him: Bennis V. Michigan As The Resurrection Of Coverture, Amy D. Ronner

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Although the legal fictions of coverture and guilty property have been repudiated by statutes and the Court respectively, the Supreme Court implicitly resurrected and fused the coverture and guilty property myths in Bennis v. Michigan. In that decision, the Court approved the forfeiture of Ms. Bennis' interest in a car in which her husband engaged in sexual activity with a prostitute. This Article explores that resurrected conglomerate in three parts. Part I is a concise review of the feudal doctrine of coverture and the disabilities it imposed on married women. Part II focuses almost entirely on the decision in …

Pragmatism And Parity In Appointments, Yxta Maya Murray

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This review uses Carter's two foci as a springboard for analyzing the Article II, Section II appointment process. First, Carter's discussion of indecency in modern appointments may be a valuable theoretical insight into the process instead of a mere sociological observation. "Indecency" in appointments, or what is known as "borking" in Carter parlance, may also be a symptom of race and gender bias in the administration of the Article II, Section II power. To ameliorate the effects of this bias, I suggest the incorporation of pragmatism (a thread of philosophical and legal thought) and parity concepts into the existing appointments …

Hostile Environent Sexual Harassment Claims And The Unwelcome Influence Of Rape Law, Janine Benedet

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This article considers the unwelcomeness requirement of the plaintiff’s prima facie case. In particular, it examines the discussion of unwelcomeness found in the decision of the Supreme Court in Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson, and the content given to this element by the subsequent decisions of lower courts. Such an inquiry reveals several parallels between the approach of courts to sexual harassment claims and their traditional treatment of the criminal offense of rape. The same biases and erroneous assumptions that have hampered an effective response to the physical violation of women have permeated the application of the purported remedy …

Physician Assisted Suicide: A Bad Idea, Yale Kamisar

Articles

It would be hard to deny that there is a great deal of support in this country - and ever-growing support - for legalizing physician-assisted suicide (PAS). Why is this so? I believe there are a considerable number of reasons. I shall discuss five common reasons - and explain why I do not find any of them convincing.

The Evolution Of Race In The Law: The Supreme Court Moves From Approving Internment Of Japanese Americans To Disapproving Affirmative Ation For African Americans, Reggie Oh, Frank Wu

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

As the Court suggests, the Korematsu precedent is crucial to the Adarand decision. In Adarand, the Court analyzes Korematsu in depth, acknowledging that its own judgment had been mistaken in the internment cases, instead of simply citing the decisions as it formally had done until the very recent past. The Court nevertheless fails to appreciate the differences between Korematsu and Adarand, and in particular the consequences of using "strict scrutiny" for all racial classifications. This essay explores the complex relation-ship between Korematsu and Adarand, and offers a critique of the reasoning used in both cases. The essay …

Reconsidering Strict Scrutiny Of Affirmative Action, Brent E. Simmons

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Under the artificial constraints of strict scrutiny, however, the courts are free to veto the government's choice of more effective, race-conscious means. The Supreme Court's unfortunate and ill-conceived adoption of strict scrutiny as the constitutional standard for reviewing race-conscious affirmative action should be reconsidered for several reasons. This Article examines those reasons.

The Warren Court And Criminal Justice, Yale Kamisar

Book Chapters

Many commentators have observed that when we speak of "the Warren Court," we mean the Warren Court that lasted from 1962 (when Arthur Goldberg replaced Felix Frankfurter) to 1969 (when Earl Warren retired). But when we speak of the Warren Court's "revolution" in American criminal procedure we mean the Warren Court that lasted from 1961 (when the landmark case of Mapp v. Ohio was decided) to 1966 or 1967. In its final years, the Warren Court was not the same Court that had handed down Mapp or Miranda.

Telling The Story Of The Hughes Court, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

When Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., died in 1935, he left the bulk of his estate to the United States Government. This gift, known as the Oliver Wendell Hnlmes Devise, sat in the Treasury for about twenty years, until Congress set up a Presidential Commission to determine what to do with it. The principal use of the money has been to fund a multivolume History of the United States Supreme Court. The history of the project itself has not always been a happy one, for some of the authors have been unable to complete their volumes. Among them was one …

The 'Right To Die': On Drawing (And Erasing) Lines, Yale Kamisar

Articles

Until this year, no state or federal appellate court had ever held that there was a right to assisted suicide no matter how narrow the circumstances or stringent the conditions. In 1996, however, within the span of a single month, two federal courts of appeals so held; in an 8-3 majority of the Ninth Circuit (sitting en banc) in Compassion in Dying v. Washington and a three-judge panel of the Second Circuit in Quill v. Vacco. What heartened proponents of a right to physician-assisted suicide even more, and pleased those resistant to the idea even less, was that the two …

Cabining The Constitutional History Of The New Deal In Time, G. Edward White

Michigan Law Review

A Review of William E, Leuchtenburg, The Supreme Court Reborn: The Constitutional Revolution in the Age of Roosevelt