Law Commons^™

Vol. 4 No. 1, Fall 2012; Illinois's Drug-Induced Homicide Statute: Injecting Some Sense Into A Misinterpreted Law, Seth Mcclure

Northern Illinois Law Review Supplement

In 1988, Illinois went on the offensive in the War on Drugs by creating the Drug-Induced Homicide Statute. In essence, this statute creates increased punishment beyond normal drug trafficking penalties when a person delivers drugs to another person and, as a result of that delivery, somebody dies. For twenty years, the law remained mostly dormant, only being charged and prosecuted in a handful of cases. In a new push to fight drug-related deaths across Illinois over the last few years, prosecutors have dusted off the old law and vastly increased the number of drug-induced homicide charges. As these charges become …

Expanding Stare Decisis: The Role Of Precedent In The Unfolding Dialectic Of Brady V. Maryland, Colin Starger

All Faculty Scholarship

Does stare decisis constrain the expansion of constitutional doctrine? Does existing precedent preclude the Supreme Court from expanding a criminal defendant’s right to exculpatory evidence? While commentators frequently clash on when stare decisis should prevent the Court from overruling its own precedents, the question of when fidelity to precedent should inhibit doctrinal expansion is surprisingly under-theorized. This Article begins to fill this gap through an in-depth case study of stare decisis and the expansion of criminal due process doctrine.

This Article analyzes the longstanding constitutional dialectic between procedural and substantive schools of criminal due process. Focus is on Brady v. …

Rethinking Children As Property, Kevin Noble Maillard

College of Law - Faculty Scholarship

Despite the collective view in law and social practice that it is intrinsically taboo to consider human beings as chattel, the law persists in treating children as property. Applying principles of property, this Article examines paternity disputes to explain and critique the law’s view of children as property of their parents. As evidenced in these conflicts, I demonstrate that legal paternity exposes a rhetoric of ownership, possession, and exchange. The law presumes that a child born to a married woman is fathered by her husband, even when irrefutable proof exists that another man fathered the child. Attempts by the non-marital …

How Not To Criminalize Cyberbullying, Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky, Andrea Garcia

UF Law Faculty Publications

This essay provides a sustained constitutional critique of the growing body of laws criminalizing cyberbullying. These laws typically proceed by either modernizing existing harassment and stalking laws or crafting new criminal offenses. Both paths are beset with First Amendment perils, which this essay illustrates through 'case studies' of selected legislative efforts. Though sympathetic to the aims of these new laws, this essay contends that reflexive criminalization in response to tragic cyberbullying incidents has led law-makers to conflate cyberbullying as a social problem with cyberbullying as a criminal problem, creating pernicious consequences. The legislative zeal to eradicate cyberbullying potentially produces disproportionate …

Defending Junk-Debt-Buyer Lawsuits, Peter A. Holland

Faculty Scholarship

Junk debt buyer lawsuits have overwhelmed the courts all across the United States. These lawsuits wreak havoc on consumers and their families. Often overlooked is the fact that judgments against consumers which are based on junk debt are part of a zero sum game, where every bogus judgment deprives a legitimate creditor of the chance to get paid from scarce resources. Thus, the legitimate creditor to whom money is owed is materially harmed by the junk debt buyer who extracts money based on an illegitimate claim, or who causes someone to declare bankruptcy. Providing representation to this otherwise unrepresented population …

Due Process As Separation Of Powers, Nathan S. Chapman, Michael W. Mcconnell

Scholarly Works

From its conceptual origin in Magna Charta, due process of law has required that government can deprive persons of rights only pursuant to a coordinated effort of separate institutions that make, execute, and adjudicate claims under the law. Originalist debates about whether the Fifth or Fourteenth Amendments were understood to entail modern “substantive due process” have obscured the way that many American lawyers and courts understood due process to limit the legislature from the Revolutionary era through the Civil War. They understood due process to prohibit legislatures from directly depriving persons of rights, especially vested property rights, because it was …

Madness Alone Punishes The Madman: The Search For Moral Dignity In The Court's Competency Doctrine As Applied In Capital Cases, J. Amy Dillard

All Faculty Scholarship

The purposes of the competency doctrine are to guarantee reliability in criminal prosecutions, to ensure that only those defendants who can appreciate punishment are subject to it, and to maintain moral dignity, both actual and apparent, in criminal proceedings. No matter his crime, the “madman” should not be forced to stand trial. Historically, courts viewed questions of competency as a binary choice, finding the defendant either competent or incompetent to stand trial. However, in Edwards v. Indiana, the Supreme Court conceded that it views competency on a spectrum and offered a new category of competency — borderline-competent. The Court held …

Exactions For The Future, Timothy M. Mulvaney

Faculty Scholarship

New development commonly contributes to projected infrastructural demands caused by multiple parties or amplifies the impacts of anticipated natural hazards. At times, these impacts only can be addressed through coordinated actions over a lengthy period. In theory, the ability of local governments to attach conditions, or “exactions,” to discretionary land use permits can serve as one tool to accomplish this end. Unlike traditional exactions that regularly respond to demonstrably measurable, immediate development harms, these “exactions for the future” — exactions responsive to cumulative anticipated future harms — admittedly can present land assembly concerns and involve inherently uncertain long-range government forecasting. …

Originalism And Loving V. Virginia, Steven G. Calabresi, Andrea Matthews

Faculty Working Papers

This article makes an originalist argument in defense of the Supreme Court's holding in Loving v. Virginia that antimiscegenation laws are unconstitutional. This article builds on past work by Professor Michael McConnell defending Brown v. Board of Education on originalist grounds and by Professor Calabresi defending strict scrutiny for gender classifications on originalist grounds. Professor Calabresi's work in this area was defended and praise recently by Slate magazine online. The article shows that Loving v. Virginia is defensible using the public meaning originalism advocated for by Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. This article shows that the issue in Loving …

Dean's Column: Unchain The Children, Mary Berkheiser

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Mass Torts And Due Process, Sergio J. Campos

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Master Mason: How Professor Baldus Built A Bridge From Learning To Law And The Legacy Of Equal Justice He Leaves Behind, James E. Baker

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

These are Chief Judge Baker’s remarks eulogizing the late Professor David Baldus. Chief Judge Baker observes that Professor Baldus was an extraordinary educator-lawyer who mastered the fields of social science and statistics. He adds that Professor Baldus was diligent in his research and strived to make the law accessible. Chief Judge Baker discusses how Professor Baldus’s research on the death penalty and proportionality review successfully bridged the law and learning, without ever losing sight of compassion.

The Past And Future Of Deinstitutionalization Litigation, Samuel R. Bagenstos

Articles

Two conflicting stories have consumed the academic debate regarding the impact of deinstitutionalization litigation. The first, which has risen almost to the level of conventional wisdom, is that deinstitutionalization was a disaster. The second story challenges the suggestion that deinstitutionalization has uniformly been unsuccessful, as well as the causal link critics seek to draw with the growth of the homeless population. This Article, which embraces the second story, assesses the current wave of deinstitutionalization litigation. It contends that things will be different this time. The particular outcomes of the first wave of deinstitutionalization litigation, this Article contends, resulted from the …

Access-To-Justice Analysis On A Due Process Platform, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

In their article, Forum Non Conveniens and The Enforcement of Foreign Judgments, Christopher Whytock and Cassandra Burke Robertson provide a wonderful ride through the landscape of the law of both forum non convenience and judgments recognition and enforcement. They explain doctrinal development and current case law clearly and efficiently, in a manner that educates, but does not overburden, the reader. Based upon that explanation, they then provide an analysis of both areas of the law and offer suggestions for change. Those suggestions, they tell us, are necessary to close the “transnational access-to-justice gap” that results from apparent differences between rules …

The Constitutional Right Not To Kill, Mark L. Rienzi

Scholarly Articles

Federal and state governments participate in and/or permit a variety of different types of killings. These include military operations, capital punishment, assisted suicide, abortion and self-defense or defense of others. In a pluralistic society, it is no surprise that there will be some members of the population who refuse to participate in some or all of these types of killings. The question of how governments should treat such refusals is older than the Republic itself. Since colonial times, the answer to this question has been driven largely by statutory protections, with the Constitution playing a smaller role, particularly since the …

A Due Process Right To Record The Police, Glenn Harlan Reynolds

Scholarly Works

There has been considerable discussion of citizens' First Amendment right to record the police. This essay, however, argues that independent of any First Amendment right, there is also a due process right to record the actions of law enforcement, and that this right applies even when the interaction takes place in private, and not in public places. This question of a due process right to record the police has not yet produced the degree of attention and litigation that public recording has, but the growth of inexpensive recording equipment and its inclusion in smart phones ensures that such attention and …

Judicial Engagement Through The Lens Of Lee Optical, Randy E. Barnett

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Keynote remarks at the symposium on "Judicial Engagement and the Role of Judges in Enforcing the Constitution", delivered on March 22, 2012 at the George Mason University School of Law.

Wetlands, Property Rights, And The Due Process Deficit In Environmental Law, Jonathan H. Adler

Faculty Publications

In Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency a unanimous Supreme Court held that private landowners could seek judicial review of an Administrative Compliance Order issued by the Environmental Protection Agency alleging that their land contained wetlands subject to regulation under the Clean Water Act. The Court’s decision rested on statutory grounds, but the same result may have been dictated by principles of due process. Under the CWA, federal regulators have asserted authority over waters and dry lands alike and sought to expand federal jurisdiction well beyond constitutional limits. Under existing regulations, landowners have little notice or certainty as to whose lands …

Introduction: Jessica Lenahan (Gonzales) V. United States: Implementation, Litigation, And Mobilization Strategies, Caroline Bettinger-López

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Inextricable Merits Problem In Personal Jurisdiction, Cassandra Burke Robertson

Faculty Publications

In 1984, Hollywood star Shirley Jones convinced the Supreme Court to adopt an effects-based test for personal jurisdiction when she brought suit in California against a Florida defendant for defaming her reputation. After adopting the test in Calder v. Jones, the Court never returned to the issue, and in fact avoided personal jurisdiction questions entirely for more than two decades. This past spring, however, the Supreme Court not only revisited the personal jurisdiction doctrine but also signaled an intention to return to personal jurisdiction issues in the near future, with two justices calling specifically for development of the doctrine in …

The Rise, Decline And Fall(?) Of Miranda, Yale Kamisar

Articles

There has been a good deal of talk lately to the effect that Miranda1 is dead or dying-or might as well be dead.2 Even liberals have indicated that the death of Miranda might not be a bad thing. This brings to mind a saying by G.K. Chesterton: "Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason why it was put up."4

Spatial Legality, Anthony J. Colangelo

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

For too long, state interests have dominated public jurisdiction and private choice-of-law analyses regarding the reach and application of a state’s law, or prescriptive jurisdiction. Individual rights — whether of criminal defendants or private litigants — have been marginalized. Yet states are projecting regulatory power over actors abroad with unprecedented frequency and aggression. State interest analyses proceed from the perennially critiqued but remarkably sticky concept of sovereignty. Now more than ever, legal thinkers, courts and litigants need a bedrock concept from which to build individual rights arguments against jurisdictional overreach. And it should be one that holds not only theoretical …

Direct Employer Liability For Punitive Damages, Sandra F. Sperino

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

In Punitive Damages, Due Process, and Employment Discrimination, Joseph Seiner tackles the growing complexity of employment discrimination punitive damages claims and provides a workable solution to a difficult problem. Given the importance of punitive damages in shaping incentives to bring discrimination suits, his contribution is valuable, especially in trying to align recent constitutional punitive damages cases with the underlying discrimination law.

This Essay begins by emphasizing the fundamental idea on which Professor Seiner and I agree-that there should be little room for courts to reduce punitive damages in federal employment discrimination cases based on constitutional concerns about excessiveness. Title …

What The New Deal Settled, Jamal Greene

Faculty Scholarship

Not since George H.W. Bush banned it from the menu of Air Force One did broccoli receive as much attention as during the legal and political debate over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act ("ACA"). Opponents of the ACA have forcefully and repeatedly argued that if Congress has the power to require Americans to purchase health insurance as a means of reducing health care costs, then it likewise has the power to require Americans to eat broccoli. Broccoli is mentioned twelve times across the four Supreme Court opinions issued in the ACA decision – that's eleven more appearances than …

Juvenile Justice After Graham V. Florida: Keeping Due Process, Autonomy, And Paternalism In Balance, Kristin N. Henning

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Legal disputes involving children invariably evoke a complex matrix of issues such as child and adolescent capacity, individual rights and autonomy, parental authority, and in the criminal justice context-diminished culpability for a minor's actions. While it is difficult to identify a clear and cohesive jurisprudence regarding the balance between children's autonomy and children's vulnerability across Supreme Court cases, a series of cases over the last decade, including Roper v. Simmons, Graham v. Florida, and J.D.B. v. North Carolina, offer a more consistent view of children as vulnerable, malleable, and in need of protection, at least in the …