Law Commons^™

Who Has The Body? The Paths To Habeas Corpus Reform, Cary H. Federman

Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The purpose of this article is to place the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) of 1996 within a political and historical framework that describes the effort by the Supreme Court and various interested parties to restrict prisoners’ access to the federal courts by way of habeas corpus. Of principal concern here is how an act of terrorism against the United States provides an opportunity for Congress to restrict death row prisoners from obtaining habeas corpus review. Along with an analysis of Supreme Court decisions, three attempts to limit federal habeas corpus review for state prisoners from the late …

Re-Mapping Equal Protection Jurisprudence: A Legal Geography Of Race And Affirmative Action,, Reginald Oh

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Oh argues that when the United States Supreme Court decided Richmond v. Croson in 1989 and imposed strict scrutiny on state and local government affirmative action programs, it marked a critical moment and turning point in the evolution and development of public and legal discourse on race, racism, and race relations in America. Although many scholars have critically examined the Croson opinion, curiously, scholars have yet to recognize its full ramifications and implications. Aside from the technical doctrinal changes made to equal protection law, the Croson decision is also important because of the way the Court produced and mapped a …

Supreme Court Watch, Reginald Oh

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Oh discusses how the U.S. Supreme Court, in General Dynamics Land Systems, Inc. v. Cline, 124 S. Ct. 1236 (2004), settled a circuit court conflict over the viability of "reverse age discriminations" claim under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA). The Court, in a 6-3 decision, held that statutorily protected workers over the age of forty may not bring an ADEA claim alleging that their employer discriminated against them in favor of older employees.

Supreme Court Statistical Overview, October Term 2003, Georgetown University Law Center, Supreme Court Institute, Liz Hollander

Supreme Court Overviews

No abstract provided.

Supreme Court Watch, Reginald Oh

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Professor Oh briefly describes Locke v. Davey in which the U.S. Supreme Court, in its 2003-04 term, attempted to clarify its First Amendment jurisprudence on the religion clauses. In a 7-2 decision, the Court held that the State of Washington did not violate the First Amendment Free Exercise Clause by denying government financial aid to college students seeking to pursue a course of study in religious devotional studies.

Ub Viewpoint – Journalists May Face Contempt For Protecting Sources, Eric Easton

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Can Treasury Overrule The Supreme Court?, Gregg D. Polsky

Scholarly Works

This article considers whether the Treasury's check-the-box regulations, which have been widely praised by tax practitioners, are valid. These regulations generally allow any unincorporated entity to elect whether it will be treated as a corporation or a partnership for tax purposes. When these regulations were first proposed, there was some debate as to whether such an elective regime was foreclosed by the statutory scheme, which requires that "associations" be taxed as corporations. This article argues that the focus of this debate was misplaced because, even assuming that the statutory scheme itself was sufficiently ambiguous as to permit an elective regime, …

Brief For The Respondent, Commissioner Of Internal Revenue V. Banks, 543 U.S. 426 (Supreme Court Of The United States 2004) (No. 03-892), Glenn P. Schwartz

Court Documents and Proposed Legislation

No abstract provided.

Retooling The Intent Requirement Under The Fourteenth Amendment, Henry L. Chambers, Jr.

Law Faculty Publications

Racial classifications carry the largest taint and require the most justification. Strict scrutiny-the level of scrutiny with which the remainder of the article will be concerned-requires that race-based differentiation serve a compelling state interest and be narrowly tailored to serve that interest, guaranteeing that the reason for the differentiation is extremely important and that the link between the means chosen to meet the ends is extremely tight. Though strict scrutiny is difficult to survive, it is triggered only when a state actor engages in intentional or purposeful racial discrimination. Controversy surrounds whether such a trigger is necessary. However, rather than …

Speech And Strife, Robert L. Tsai

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

The essay strives for a better understanding of the myths, symbols, categories of power, and images deployed by the Supreme Court to signal how we ought to think about its authority. Taking examples from free speech jurisprudence, the essay proceeds in three steps. First, Tsai argues that the First Amendment constitutes a deep source of cultural authority for the Court. As a result, linguistic and doctrinal innovation in the free speech area have been at least as bold and imaginative as that in areas like the Commerce Clause. Second, in turning to cognitive theory, he distinguishes between formal legal argumentation …

Supreme Court 2002 Term - The Property Cases: Iolta, Qui Tam Actions, And Punitive Damages (Symposium: The Fifteenth Annual Supreme Court Review), Leon D. Lazer

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Affirmative Action And Colorblindness From The Original Position, Guy-Uriel Charles

Faculty Scholarship

In this Article, the author explores Grutter v. Bollinger from the vantage point of the colorblindness principle. He posits that the Grutter decision is noteworthy for two reasons. First, the Court rejected the argument that the Constitution is colorblind and that the classifications based on race are per se unconstitutional. Second, the Court explicitly recognized that racial categorizations are not all morally equivalent. The author uses classical liberalism as a heuristic for exploring whether the colorblindness argument is necessarily a moral imperative. He ultimately concludes that the Court adopted the correct approach in Grutter in rejecting the allure of the …

Defining Democracy: The Supreme Court's Campaign Finance Dilemma, Lori A. Ringhand

Scholarly Works

On December 10, 2003 the United States Supreme Court issued its decision in McConnell v. FEC. In McConnell, the Court was asked to determine the constitutionality of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act ("BCRA"). A divided Court, in a deeply fractured decision in which six justices wrote individual opinions, upheld the major provisions of the legislation. Yet despite the almost 300 pages of reasoning provided by the Court, and a voluminous record developed by the district court, the Justices could not agree on what purportedly is the central issue in campaign finance law: whether the challenged regulations were necessary …

Foreseeing Greatness - Measurable Performance Criteria And The Selection Of Supreme Court Justices Symposium: Empirical Measures Of Judicial Performance, James J. Brudney

Faculty Scholarship

This article contributes to an ongoing debate about the feasibility and desirability of measuring the merit of appellate judges - and their consequent Supreme Court potential - by using objective performance variables. Relying on the provocative and controversial tournament criteria proposed by Professors Stephen Choi and Mitu Gulati in two recent articles, Brudney assesses the Supreme Court potential of Warren Burger and Harry Blackmun based on their appellate court records. He finds that Burger's appellate performance appears more promising under the Choi and Gulati criteria, but then demonstrates how little guidance these quantitative assessments actually provide when reviewing the two …

Countermajoritarian Hero Or Zero - Rethinking The Warren Court's Role In The Criminal Procedure Revolution, Corinna Barrett Lain

Law Faculty Publications

With last fall marking the fiftieth anniversary of Earl Warren's appointment as Chief Justice, enough time has passed to place the criminal procedure revolution in proper historical perspective and rethink the Court's role there as countermajoritarian hero. In the discussion that follows, I aim to do that by examining five of the revolution's most celebrated decisions: Mapp v. Ohio, Gideon v. Wainwright, Miranda v. Arizona, Katz v. United States, and Terry v. Ohio. In none of these cases, I argue, did the Supreme Court act in a manner truly deserving of its countermajoritarian image. To be clear, I do not …

Demythologizing The Legal History Of The Jehovah’S Witnesses And The First Amendment, Allen K. Rostron

Faculty Works

In 2002, for the first time in more than 20 years, the Supreme Court of the United States decided a case involving the First Amendment rights of Jehovah's Witnesses. The Court ruled that Witnesses cannot be required to give their names to local government authorities in order to obtain permits before going door-to-door to distribute their publications and preach their religious message.

While the amount of new law being generated by the religion's followers has slowed, scholars have finally begun in recent years to give significant attention to the legal history of the Jehovah's Witnesses, and, in particular, to their …

Federalism Re-Constructed: The Eleventh Amendment's Illogical Impact On Congress' Power, Marcia L. Mccormick

All Faculty Scholarship

The Constitution is designed to protect individual liberty and equality by diffusing power among the three branches of the federal government and between the federal and state governments, and by providing a minimum level of protection for individual rights. Yet, the Supreme Court seems to think that federalism is about protecting states as states rather than balancing governmental power to protect individuals. In the name of federalism, the Supreme Court has been paring away at Congress' power to enact civil rights legislation. In doing so, it has transformed the Fourteenth Amendment into a vehicle for protecting states rights rather than …

Supreme Court Watch, Reginald Oh

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Discusses the Supreme Court decision Lawrence v. Texas, 123 S. Ct. 24 72 (2003). Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy held that the Texas anti-sodomy statute, by criminalizing adult consensual sexual conduct, violated the petitioners' vital interests in liberty and privacy as protected by the substantive due process doctrine under the Fourteenth Amendment.

Putting The Supreme Court Back In Place: Ideology, Yes; Agenda, No, Steven H. Goldberg

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This essay is about the permanent damage to the Supreme Court and to the country that may occur if the current approach to judicial appointments continues, and offers an approach to the nomination and confirmation of Supreme Court justices that will help put the Court back in its proper place - out of the eye of the elective political storm.

'A Flame Of Fire': The Fourth Amendment In Perilous Times, John Burkoff

Articles

The important questions we need to ask and to answer in the perilous times in which we live is whether the Fourth Amendment applies in the same fashion not just to run of the mill criminals, but also to terrorists and suspected terrorists, individuals who are committing or who have committed B or who may be poised to commit B acts aimed at the destruction of extremely large numbers of people? Professor Burkoff argues that we can protect ourselves from cataclysmic threats of this sort and still maintain a fair and objective application of Fourth Amendment doctrine that respects our …

The Dark Side Of Grutter, Girardeau A. Spann

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Liberals have generally cheered the Supreme Court's decision in Grutter v. Bollinger as validating the continued use of affirmative action in the struggle against racial injustice. But the Supreme Court's modern race cases rest on a misunderstanding of the nature of contemporary racial discrimination. From Brown, to Bakke, to Grutter, the Court has advanced a colorblind conception of racial equality that treats race-conscious affirmative action as constitutionally suspect, because it deviates from an aspirational baseline of race neutrality that lies at the core of the equal protection clause. However, race neutrality is a hopelessly artificial concept in …

Contrived Conflicts: The Supreme Court Versus The Basics Of Intellectual Property Law, F. Scott Kieff

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Asked by conference organizers to consider the impact of the Supreme Court on intellectual property this millennium, this essay offers the view that the Supreme Court's intellectual property decisions by its present members generally are premised upon what may be viewed as contrived conflicts among bodies of law. Proceeding from this faulty foundation, the Court's efforts to resolve those conflicts subsequently have generated bodies of judge-made law that frustrate in important ways the basic statutory framework of intellectual property law. Examples of cases employing this problematic approach include Bonito Boats, Dastar, Warner-Jenkinson, Festo, TrafFix, and Holmes. Avoiding the contrivances not …

Preemption Of State Tort Law By Federal Safety Statutes: Supreme Court Preemption Jurisprudence Since Cipollone, Richard C. Ausness

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This article shall attempt to trace the twists and turns of Supreme Court preemption jurisprudence. Part I provides a brief overview of federal preemption law, considering the constitutional sources of preemption and the traditional preemption categories. Part II analyzes Cipollone v. Liggett Group, Inc., the source of modem Supreme Court doctrine regarding preemption of state tort law by federal safety legislation. Part III reviews seven post-Cipollone Supreme Court preemption cases: CSX Transportation, Inc. v. Easterwood, Freightliner Corp. v. Myrick, Medtronic, Inc. v. Lohr, Norfolk Southern Railway Co. v. Shanklin, Geier v. American Honda Motor …

Resorting To External Norms And Principles In Constitutional Decision-Making, Alvin L. Goldman

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Given the very significant role of constitutional law in the American political system and the fact that Supreme Court Justices are appointed through a political process, it is understandable that the appropriate judicial approach to resolving constitutional issues often is the subject of political commentary. Unfortunately, discourse by politicians concerning this issue seldom rises to the deserved level of wisdom. One of President George W. Bush's public mantras is illustrative of political commentary respecting federal judicial appointments: "I'm going to put strict constructionists on the bench." On its face, and as understood by politically naive audiences, the statement appears to …

Lawrence V. Texas: The Decision And Its Implications For The Future, Martin A. Schwartz

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Grutter And Gratz: A Critical Analysis, Lackland H. Bloom Jr.

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This Article will analyze the Grutter and Gratz opinions, especially Justice O'Connor's important opinion for the majority in Grutter, and will consider the significance of these decisions in terms of university admissions policy, justifications for racial preferences, and equal protection doctrine. The article will conclude that the Court's defense of the use of racial preferences does not square well with the Powell opinion in Bakke on which it relied so heavily. It will suggest that the Court could have offered a more persuasive explanation for the result it reached but probably felt precluded by precedent from doing so.

Copyright Under Siege: The First Amendment Front, Lackland H. Bloom Jr.

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Over the past decade, the law of copyright - traditionally an arcane and obscure specialty - has evolved into an extraordinarily controversial legal arena. To a significant extent, though not exclusively, this has been caused by the emerging clashes between copyright on the one hand and digital technology and the internet on the other. Some see copyright as the aggressor in the copyright wars, guilty of threatening the digital revolution, the internet, information policy, privacy, freedom of speech and the public domain. Much of this assault on copyright is culturally driven by the Internet's champions. Inevitably, this cultural challenge is …

May A Foreign Plaintiff Sue A Foreign Defendant For Conduct Outside The U.S. That Caused Antitrust Injury Outside The U.S.?, Antonio F. Perez

Scholarly Articles

May the respondents, five foreign companies that purchased goods outside the United States from other foreign companies, pursue Sherman Act claims seeking recovery for overcharges paid in transactions occurring entirely outside U.S. commerce under the Foreign Trade Antitrust Improvements Act of 1982 (FTAIA), 15 U.S.C. § 6a? Do such foreign plaintiffs lack standing under Section 4 of the Clayton Act, 15 U.S.C. § 15(a)?

Can Congress Regulate Intrastate Endangered Species Under The Commerce Clause?, Bradford Mank

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

In Spring 2003, both the 5th Circuit and the D.C. Circuit agreed that Congress has the authority under the Commerce Clause to protect intrastate endangered species on private lands under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), but used completely opposite reasoning to reach the same result. The 5th Circuit in GDF Realty v. Norton rejected the government's argument that the economic impact of the commercial development regulated under the statute was the appropriate focus for whether the statute has a substantial effect on interstate commerce. Instead, the 5th Circuit concluded that intrastate spiders and beetles, which have no economic value, do …

Citizens To Preserve Overton Park V. Volpe, Peter L. Strauss

Faculty Scholarship

This essay is one of a series destined to appear in a Foundation Press book, Administrative Law Stories, now set for publication in the fall of 2005. The decision in Citizens to Preserve Overton Park v. Volpe represents a transition from political to judicial controls over decisions broadly affecting a wide range of community interests. Unmistakable and dramatic as it is, that transition is not universally applauded. But the transition was striking and quick. The late sixties and early seventies saw an explosion of new national legislation on social and environmental issues, that often provided explicitly or implicitly for citizen …