Law Commons^™

The Price Of Fame: Brown As Celebrity, Mark Graber

Mark Graber

This essay examines the history of Brown I, Brown II, and Bolling in the Supreme Court of the United States. Enduring precedents, the analysis suggests, go through three stages. In the first stage, they fight for survival. This describes Brown during the first decade after that decision was handed down. No Supreme Court Justice asserted, “Brown should be overruled,” but many citations to Brown came in the context of political efforts to reverse or marginalize that decision. In the second stage, precedents fight for extension. This describes Brown in the later Warren and Burger years. Civil rights activists insisted that …

Unfunded Environmental Mandates And The "New (New) Federalism": Devolution, Revolution, Or Reform, Rena Steinzor

Rena I. Steinzor

No abstract provided.

Why Justice Scalia Should Be A Constitutional Comparativist ... Sometimes, David Gray

David C. Gray

The burgeoning literature on transjudicialism and constitutional comparativism generally reaffirms the familiar lines of contest between textualists and those more inclined to read the Constitution as a living document. As a consequence, it tends to be politicized, if not polemic. This article begins to shift the debate toward a more rigorous focus on first principles. In particular, it argues that full faith to the basic commitments of originalism, as advanced in Justice Scalia's writings, opinions, and speeches, requires domestic courts to consult contemporary foreign sources when interpreting universalist language found in the Constitution. While the article does not propose a …

Technological Due Process, Danielle Citron

Danielle Keats Citron

Today, computer systems terminate Medicaid benefits, remove voters from the rolls, exclude travelers from flying on commercial airlines, label (and often mislabel) individuals as dead-beat parents, and flag people as possible terrorists from their email and telephone records. But when an automated system rules against an individual, that person often has no way of knowing if a defective algorithm, erroneous facts, or some combination of the two produced the decision. Research showing strong psychological tendencies to defer to automated systems suggests that a hearing officer’s check on computer decisions will have limited value. At the same time, automation impairs participatory …

How The Diversity Rationale Lays The Groundwork For New Discrimination: Examining The Trajectory Of Equal Protection Doctrine, Michael Helfand

Michael A Helfand

This Article advocates differentiating between two distinct categories of equal protection cases. The first-what I have termed indicator cases-are instances where courts consider whether there are sufficient factual indications to demonstrate the existence of aprimafacie equal protection violation. The second-violation casesare instances where courts consider, having already determined the existence of an equal protection violation, whether there is a good enough justification for a prima facie equal protection violation. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has not differentiated between these two different types of cases. This has led to a string of decisions where the Supreme Court has erroneously looked for justifications …

Social Movements And Judging: An Essay On Institutional Reform Litigation And Desegregation In Dallas, Texas, Darren Hutchinson

Darren L Hutchinson

No abstract provided.

Racial Exhaustion, Darren Hutchinson

Darren L Hutchinson

This Article examines historical and contemporary race discourse contained in political and juridical sources in order to illustrate how opponents to racial egalitarian measures have frequently contested such policies on the grounds that they are redundant, unnecessary, or too burdensome or taxing. Racial exhaustion rhetoric has operated as a persistent discursive instrument utilized to contest claims of racial injustice and to resist the enactment of racial egalitarian legislation. Racial exhaustion rhetoric has enjoyed particular force during and immediately following periods of mass political mobilization by antiracist social movements and institutional political actors, and it retains potency in contemporary racial discourse. …

The Obama Phenomenon: Deliberative Conversationalism & The Pursuit Of Community Through Presidential Politics, Robert Justin Lipkin

Robert Justin Lipkin

Police Paternalism: Community Caretaking, Assistance Searches, And Fourth Amendment Reasonableness, Michael R. Dimino

Michael R Dimino

The Usual Suspect Classifications: Criminals, Aliens And The Future Of Same-Sex Marriage, Michael A. Helfand

Michael A Helfand

In this Article, I argue for a new understanding of the immutability factor employed by courts in determining which classifications ought to receive suspect status under the Equal Protection Clause. Drawing on the process-based foundations of the Equal Protection Clause, this new understanding defines immutable traits not as traits that cannot be changed, but as traits that are in the words of the Supreme Court in Frontiero v. Richardson, mere "accident[s] of birth." In contrast, courts and scholars typically center the immutability inquiry on an individual’s technical ability to exit a particular class, which has led to inconsistencies in …