Law Commons^™

Marbury In Mexico: Judicial Review's Precocious Southern Migration, M. C. Mirow

M. C. Mirow

Scholars agree that the United States Supreme Court did not "discover" the general judicial review aspects of Marbury v. Madison (1803) until nearly a century later in 1895. This article reveals that the Mexican Supreme Court, relying heavily on U.S. constitutional sources and actually quoting Marbury, discovered this aspect of the case more than a dozen years earlier than the United States Supreme Court.

In attempting to construct United States-style judicial review for the Mexican Supreme Court in the 1880s, Ignacio Vallarta, president of the court, read Marbury in a way that preceded this use of the case in the …

Clearly Canadian--Hill V. Colorado And Free Speech Balancing In The United States And Canada, Donald L. Beschle

Donald L. Beschle

Two doctrines have equally influenced and informed the debate regrading the scope of the First Amendment free speech guarantee: absolutism versus the balancing of competing interests. Despite the language of the United States Constitution that suggests the application of absolutes, the courts have often resorted to balancing in the resolution of cases. This Article examines the debate by comparing the different approaches taken by the courts in the United States and Canada. This examination reveals that perhaps the two doctrines do not need to negate each other in their application, and that a recent decision by the United States Supreme …

Justice O'Conner's Dilemma: The Baseline Question, Suzanna Sherry

Suzanna Sherry

No abstract provided.

Implied Limits On The Legislative Power: The Intellectual Property Clause As An Absolute Constraint On Congress, Paul J. Heald, Suzanna Sherry

Suzanna Sherry

Professors Heald and Sherry argue that the language of Article I, Section 8, Clause 8, the Intellectual Property Clause, absolutely constrains Congress's legislative power under certain circumstances. Their analysis begins by looking at other limits on the legislative power that the Court has found in the Bankruptcy Clause, the Eleventh Amendment, the Tenth Amendment, and Article III. Then by examining the history and structure of the Intellectual Property Clause and relevant precedent, they distill four principles of constitutional weight--the Suspect Grant Principle, the Quid Pro Quo Principle, the Authorship Principle, and the Public Domain Principle. These principles inform the Court's …

Courts Should Protect Powerless, Kavanaugh Would Do The Opposite, Alan E. Garfield

Alan E Garfield

No abstract provided.

“Collusion” And The Criminal Law, Robert M. Sanger

Robert M. Sanger

No, Jeff Sessions, There Isn't A War On Religion, Alan E. Garfield

Alan E Garfield

No abstract provided.

A New Philosophy In The Supreme Court, Robert M. Sanger

Robert M. Sanger

The Impact Of St Catherine's Milling, Karen Drake

Karen Drake

St Catherine’s Milling may seem like a peculiar choice as one of the three constitutional cases that helped to define Canada as a nation, given that most of the legal principles affirmed by Lord Watson, writing for the Privy Council, have been overruled. This paper identifies the principles from St Catherine’s Milling which are still good law, and argues that the logic that underlies and shapes those principles is the logic of the doctrine of discovery and the principle of terra nullius.

Jurists have articulated different versions of the doctrine of discovery and disagreed about its precise requirements. At …

Tinkering With Success: College Athletes, Social Media And The First Amendment, Mary Margaret Meg Penrose

Meg Penrose

Good law does not always make good policy. This article seeks to provide a legal assessment, not a policy directive. The policy choices made by individual institutions and athletic departments should be guided by law, but absolutely left to institutional discretion. Many articles written on college student-athletes’ social media usage attempt to urge policy directives clothed in constitutional analysis.

In this author’s opinion, these articles have lost perspective – constitutional perspective. This article seeks primarily to provide a legal and constitutional assessment so that schools and their athletic departments will have ample information to then make their own policy choices.

On Bargaining For Development, Timothy M. Mulvaney

Timothy M. Mulvaney

In his recent article, Bargaining for Development Post-Koontz, Professor Sean Nolon concludes that the Supreme Court’s recent ill-defined expansion of the circumstances in which land use permit conditions might give rise to takings liability in Koontz v. St. John’s River Water Management District will chill the state’s willingness to communicate with permit applicants about mitigation measures. He sets out five courses that government entities might take in this confusing and chilling post-Koontz world, each of which leaves something to be desired from the perspective of both developers and the public more generally.

This responsive essay proceeds in two parts. First, …

Progressive Property Moving Forward, Timothy M. Mulvaney

Timothy M. Mulvaney

In his thought-provoking recent article, “The Ambition and Transformative Potential of Progressive Property,” Ezra Rosser contends that, in the course of laying the foundations of a theory grounded in property’s social nature, scholars who participated in the renowned 2009 Cornell symposium on progressive property have “glossed over” property law’s continuing conquest of American Indian lands and the inheritance of privileges that stem from property-based discrimination against African Americans. I fully share Rosser’s concerns regarding past and continuing racialized acquisition and distribution, if not always his characterization of the select progressive works he critiques. Where I focus in this essay, though, …

Legislative Exactions And Progressive Property, Timothy M. Mulvaney

Timothy M. Mulvaney

Exactions — a term used to describe certain conditions that are attached to land-use permits issued at the government’s discretion — ostensibly oblige property owners to internalize the costs of the expected infrastructural, environmental, and social harms resulting from development. This Article explores how proponents of progressive conceptions of property might respond to the open question of whether legislative exactions should be subject to the same level of judicial scrutiny to which administrative exactions are subject in constitutional takings cases. It identifies several first-order reasons to support the idea of immunizing legislative exactions from heightened takings scrutiny. However, it suggests …

Non-Enforcement Takings, Timothy M. Mulvaney

Timothy M. Mulvaney

The non-enforcement of existing property laws is not logically separable from the issue of unfair and unjust state deprivations of property rights at which the Constitution's Takings Clause takes aim. This Article suggests, therefore, that takings law should police allocations resulting from non-enforcement decisions on the same "fairness and justice" grounds that it polices allocations resulting from decisions to enact and enforce new regulations. Rejecting the extant majority position that state decisions not to enforce existing property laws are categorically immune from takings liability is not to advocate that persons impacted by such decisions should be automatically or even regularly …

No More Tiers? Proportionality As An Alternative To Multiple Levels Of Scrutiny In Individual Rights Cases, Donald L. Beschle

Donald L. Beschle

This article will explore how the explicit adoption of proportionality analysis as a single analytical tool might lead, not only to a more coherent approach to individual rights cases, but will also bring together aspects of the current multiple analytical tiers in a way that allows full consideration of both the individual rights and the social values present in these cases. Part I of this article will give a brief overview of the history of the creation and application of the various tiers of analysis used by the United States Supreme Court and explore how the once-sharp difference in those …

Constitutional Challenges And Regulatory Opportunities For State Climate Policy Innovation, Felix Mormann

Felix Mormann

This Article explores constitutional limits and regulatory openings for innovative state policies to mitigate climate change by promoting climate-friendly, renewable energy. In the absence of a comprehensive federal policy approach to climate change and clean energy, more and more states are stepping in to fill the policy void. Already, nearly thirty states have adopted renewable portfolio standards that create markets for solar, wind, and other clean electricity. To help populate these markets, a few pioneering states have recently started using feed-in tariffs that offer eligible generators above-market rates for their clean, renewable power.

But renewable portfolio standards, feed-in tariffs, and …

Trump's Forced Patriotism Has No Place In A Free Society, Alan E. Garfield

Alan E Garfield

No abstract provided.

The Visibility Value Of The First Amendment, Brian C. Murchison

Brian C. Murchison

No abstract provided.

Keeping The Courthouse Door Open, David A. Wirth

David A. Wirth

No abstract provided.

“Nationwide” Injunctions Are Really “Universal” Injunctions And They Are Never Appropriate, Howard Wasserman

Howard M Wasserman

Federal district courts are routinely issuing broad injunctions prohibiting the federal government from enforcing constitutionally invalid laws, regulations, and policies on immigration and immigration-adjacent issues. Styled “nationwide injunctions,” they prohibit enforcement of the challenges laws not only against the named plaintiffs, but against all people and entities everywhere.

The first problem with these injunctions is one of nomenclature. “Nationwide” suggests something about the “where” of the injunction, the geographic scope in which it protects. The better term is “universal injunction,” which captures the real controversy over the “who” of the injunction, as courts purport to protect the universe of all …

Domestic Disorders: Suffrage And New York's Constitutional Convention Of 1867, Felice Batlan

Felice J Batlan

In this essay, Felice Batlan discusses New York State’s Constitutional Convention of 1867. She argues that it is (at least in part) the outcome of this convention and the antagonisms that it created that further propelled Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan Anthony to align with interests opposing African-American suffrage. It also shows the absolute mess of pursuing suffrage on a state by state basis and how legislators themselves equated the voting of African American men with women’s suffrage. The essay is part of a larger project in conversation with scholarship about Reconstruction in the North and a second body of …

The Property Question.Pdf, William A. Edmundson

William A. Edmundson

Theorizing American Freedom (Review Essay), Anthony O'Rourke

Anthony O'Rourke

This is a review essay of The Two Faces of American Freedom, by Aziz Rana. The book presents a new and provocative account of the relationship between ideas of freedom and the constitutional structure of American power. Through the nineteenth century, Rana argues, America’s constitutional structure was shaped by a racially exclusionary, yet economically robust, concept that he calls “settler freedom.” Drawing on the burgeoning interdisciplinary field of settler colonial studies, as well as on the vast historical literature on civic republicanism, Rana contends that the concept of settler freedom necessitated a constitutional framework that enabled rapid territorial expansion and …

Randomized Judicial Review, Andrei Marmor

Andrei Marmor

One of the main arguments in support of constitutional judicial review points to the need to curtail the legal and political power of majority rule instantiated by democratic legislative institutions. This article aims to challenge the counter majoritarian argument for judicial review by showing that there is very little difference, at least morally speaking, between the current structure of constitutional judicial review in the US, and a system that would impose limits on majoritarian decisions procedures by an entirely randomized mechanism. The argument is based on a hypothetical model of a randomized system of judicial review, and proceeds to show …

An Institutional Conception Of Authority, Andrei Marmor

Andrei Marmor

The essay develops a conception of practical authorities that ties their legitimacy to the particular nature of the social practice or institution in which practical authorities invariably operate, and the terms of the subjects’ participation in that practice. The main argument of the paper draws on the distinction between what it takes to have practical authority and what would make it legitimate. The general idea is that what it takes to have practical authority is always determined by a social or institutional practice, and thus the legitimacy of any given authority crucially depends on the nature of the practice and …

African Courts And Separation Of Powers: A Comparative Study Of Judicial Review In Uganda & South, Joseph M. Isanga

Joseph Isanga

Achieving political stability in a transitional democracy is a fundamental goal, the resoluteness of which is in part maintained by courts of judicial review that are independent from political bias and devoid of deference to traditionally more powerful branches of government. The recent democratic transitions occurring in the African nations of South Africa and Uganda provide a unique, contemporary insight into the formation of a constitutional jurisprudence. This study is an examination of pivotal cases decided by the Constitutional Courts of South Africa and Uganda, the roles that these decisions play in political stability, and the potential for political bias …

African Judicial Review, The Use Of Comparative African Jurisprudence, And The Judicialization Of Politics, Joseph M. Isanga

Joseph Isanga

This Article examines African constitutional courts’ jurisprudence—that is, jurisprudence of courts that exercise judicial review—and demonstrates the increasing role of sub-Saharan Africa’s constitutional courts in the development of policy, a phenomenon commonly referred to as 'judicialization of politics' or a country’s 'judicialization project.' This Article explores the jurisprudence of constitutional courts in select African countries and specifically focuses on the promotion of democracy, respect for human rights, and the rule of law, and presupposes that although judges often take a positivist approach to adjudication, they do impact policy nevertheless. The use of judicial review in Africa has been painfully slow, …

United States V. Hubbell: Encryption And The Discovery Of Documents, Gregory S. Sergienko

Greg Sergienko

Five years ago, in a contribution to these pages, I suggested that the Supreme Court's oldest precedents and the original intent of the framers of the Constitution precluded the use of evidence produced under a grant of immunity against the producer, even though the material produced included documents that the producer had not been compelled to write. This implied that information concealed with a cryptographic key could not be used in a criminal prosecution against someone from whom the key had been obtained under a grant of immunity. The issue, however, was doubtful given the tendency of the Court to …

Social Contract Neutrality And The Religion Clauses Of The Federal Constitution, Gregory S. Sergienko

Greg Sergienko

'Neutrality' has become the slogan that the Supreme Court uses for judging all claims of freedom of religion whether under the Establishment Clause or the Free Exercise Clause. However, the word 'neutrality' conceals the Court's inconsistent use of the concept. Thus, in Rosenberger v. Rectors of the University of Virginia, the recent debate about funding for religious publications, both the majority and the dissent asserted that only their approach was truly neutral. This inconsistency in the meaning of neutrality in the religion clauses is merely part of a general inconsistency in the Court's treatment of the religion clauses. Some of …

Self Incrimination And Cryptographic Keys, Gregory S. Sergienko

Greg Sergienko

Modern cryptography can make it virtually impossible to decipher documents without the cryptographic key thus making the availability of the contents of those documents depend on the availability of the key. This article examines the Fourth and Fifth Amendments' protection against the compulsory production of the key and the scope of the Fifth Amendment immunity against compelled production. After analyzing these questions using prevailing Fourth and Fifth Amendment jurisprudence, I shall describe the advantages of a privacy-based approach in practical and constitutional terms. [excerpt]