Law Commons^™

A Call For An Overhaul Of The U.S. Federal Court System, Huhnkie Lee

Huhnkie Lee

No abstract provided.

The Doctrine Of True Threats: Protecting Our Ever-Shrinking First Amendment Rights In The New Era Of Communication, Mary M. Roark

Mary M Roark

The First Amendment provides that “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech.” Such protection has withstood the test of time and is heralded as one of our most precious rights as Americans. “The hallmark of the protection of free speech is to allow ‘free trade in ideas’—even ideas that the overwhelming majority of people might find distasteful or discomforting." However, “[t]here are certain well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which has never been thought to raise any Constitutional problem." One such proscribable form of speech is the “true …

An Outline For The Study Of Ethiopian Constitutional Law, Tsegaye Beru

Tsegaye Beru

This outline is based on the 1995 Ethiopian Constitution. However, it is important to acknowledge that the 1995 Constitution cannot be studied in isolation. Like its forerunners, the Constitution is not distinctively Ethiopia, save the customary and religious laws that have been recognized by it. Past and present constitutions were derived from various sources, mostly Western. The immediate source of the 1995 Constitution is the Charter of the Transitional Government that took power from the military government. However, the 1995 Constitution was built upon the constitutions and laws that preceded it and the customary and religious laws that predated it. …

Is The First Amendment Entrenched? Rawls’ Curious Claim, Gordon D. Ballingrud

Gordon D Ballingrud

. This paper addresses a claim made by John Rawls in Lecture VI of Political Liberalism: any American constitutional amendment, ratified through Article V, which overturned the First Amendment would be illegitimate and justly ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Addressing the apparent contradiction that a duly enacted constitutional amendment can be unconstitutional, this paper reconstructs and critiques Rawls claim along two lines. First, I address Rawls’ philosophical claim as to the de facto entrenchment of the First Amendment, and the mechanisms that Rawls implicitly and explicitly purports to entrench it. I also address the claim that a First …

Do California’S Teacher Tenure Laws Violate California’S Constitutional Right To Education, Allen W. Hubsch

Allen W Hubsch

The accompanying note addresses an important and topical issue. In May 2012, Ted Olson, the former Solicitor General of the United States, and Theodore Boutrous, co-chair of the appellate practice at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, filed a complaint in Los Angeles Superior Court, entitled Vargara v. California, naming the State of California, the California Department of Education, the Los Angeles Unified School District and others as defendants.

The complaint alleges that California’s teacher tenure statutes are unconstitutional under the California constitution because such laws have the effect of preventing school districts from providing a quality education to school age …

North Carolina’S Superintendent Of Public Instruction: Defining A Constitutional Office, Andrew P. Owens

Andrew P. Owens

In 2009 a superior court case determined the fate of the Governor’s initiative to streamline education leadership by promoting a State Board of Education member while greatly reducing the Superintendent of Public Instruction’s powers. The judge’s decision in favor of Superintendent Atkinson turned on “the inherent constitutional authority” of her office; yet no one really knows what authority is inherent to the office, where that authority derives, or how to go about analyzing the office’s constitutional role. In short: what does it mean to be the Superintendent of Public Instruction? This paper explains the origins and meaning of the Superintendent …

Parliamentary Oversight Of The Executive In India, Anirudh Burman

Anirudh Burman

The need for a strong monitoring mechanism of the executive in India has been made clearer by recent allegations of corruption against high-ranking officials of the central government. The Indian Parliament is the ideal institution to perform such a monitoring function through oversight of the central executive. The executive in India is directly accountable to the Parliament. Making oversight by Parliament stronger and more effective would therefore increase the accountability of the executive. Additionally, an increased oversight role would allow for greater policy inputs from Parliament to the executive. It would also increase the general level of expertise within Parliament …

The Second Amendment: What "Arms" Are Protected?, James M. Ramey

James M Ramey

If the Supreme Court wants to give some lasting meaning to the Heller decision and the Second Amendment, it needs to first clearly establish what criteria a firearm needs to satisfy outside the categorical rules before it will be a protected arm under the in common use test. In doing so it needs to provide factors for what makes a weapon “dangerous and unusual” (whether popularity based or otherwise) and clarify to what extent the typically possessed by law abiding citizens language gets applied to the in common use analysis in addition to what it means to be “typically possessed …

Automatic Continuing Resolutions: A Cure Worse Than The Ailment, Philip J. Candreva

Philip J. Candreva

Nearly every year Congress fails to pass all of the appropriations acts before the start of the federal fiscal year. This necessitates the passage of a temporary spending measure – a continuing resolution – or there will be at least a partial government shutdown. Both contingencies are costly and disruptive to the efficient and effective operation of government. Over the last 30 years, there have been several legislative proposals to enact an automatic continuing resolution mechanism that would mitigate the costs to public management. Such proposals, however, are costly for political and legal reasons. This article examines the arguments for …

Standing On Holy Ground: How Rethinking Justiciability Might Bring Peace To The Establishment Clause, John M. Bickers

John M. Bickers

The Establishment Clause is home to both procedural and substantive disorder. Particularly when evaluating religious speech by the government, the Supreme Court has applied a number of distinct tests, with varying degrees of strictness. There has never been an overarching principle for determining which test would appear at which time; commentators, and occasionally the Justices themselves, have suspected that desired results drove the choice of tests. At the same time, the Court has articulated a series of requirements necessary for a plaintiff to have standing to challenge government action, only to ignore them in government religious speech cases. The resulting …

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Vinicius Pintas Marinho

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Moral And Legal Dilemma: A Legal Analysis Of The Criticisms Leveled Against Arizona Sb 1070, Michael K. Marriott

Michael K Marriott

The Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act, more commonly known as Arizona SB 1070, is a recently passed bill targeting unlawful immigration. Touted to be the strongest piece of immigration legislation passed in America's recent history, the bill has come under fire on state, national, and international levels.

This paper begins by setting the stage for why SB 1070 was passed, and what legislators sought to accomplish. It then provides a basic overview of the bill, with an emphasis towards its more controversial aspects. From there it groups together certain classes of criticisms that have been publicly leveled …