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Property, Liberty, And The Rights Of The Community: Lessons From Munn V.Illinois, Paul Kens Dr.

Paul Kens Dr.

Property, Liberty, and the Rights of the Community:

Lessons from Munn v. Illinois

By Paul Kens

Abstract

When considering the extent to which the United States Constitution places a limit on government regulation of business, today’s historians and constitutional theorists treat the question as a matter of balancing economic liberty or property rights against government power. Moreover, modern scholars commonly maintain that this balancing formula represents the predominant tradition in constitutional history. Tracing it back to the tenants of Jacksonian democracy that emphasized distrust of government, they imply that constitutional history has developed as a straight line: always with an …

Antisemitism In The Academic Voice: Confronting Bigotry While Protecting Free Speech, Kenneth Lasson

Kenneth Lasson

ANTISEMITISM IN THE ACADEMIC VOICE Confronting Bigotry While Protecting Free Speech By Kenneth Lasson * Abstract Among the abuses of the academic enterprise that have been taking place in American universities over the past several decades, and continue to this day, are failures of intellectual rigor: the abandonment of reliance on facts, common sense, and logic in the pursuit of narrow political agendas – which all too often presented in the academic voice. Students today increasingly find themselves confronted by curricula manipulated by scholarly extremists. While the number of overt antisemitic incidents has declined markedly in the United States over …

Extracting Lessons From Illinois’ 2010 Special Election Fiasco: A Closer Look At The Seventh Circuit’S Decision In Judge V. Quinn And The Special Election Requirement Of The Seventeenth Amendment, Furqan Mohammed

Furqan Mohammed

This Note discusses the recent Seventh Circuit decision in Judge v. Quinn, in which the Seventh Circuit unanimously set aside Illinois’ Election Code under the Seventeenth Amendment because of the manner in which they filled vacant seats for U.S. Senator. This issue arose when then-Senator Barack Obama resigned from the Senate in November, 2008, to become President. When he resigned, Roland Burris was appointed to fill the seat. Illinois was not planning to hold a special election to fill Obama's seat because under Illinois Election Code, a special election to fill a vacant senate seat could only occur with the …

The Changing Face Of Liberalism In Workplace Democracy: The Shift From Collective To Individual Rights, Emily Eschenbach Barker

Emily Eschenbach Barker

The 1960s and 1970s saw a drastic change in the liberal conception of workplace equality. Post-war liberals defined equality in terms of collective rights, with labor law and unions epitomizing this conception. The civil rights generation, on the other hand, thought equality to be based in the rights of the individual. As new laws upholding individual civil rights proliferated, employers found themselves increasingly bound by incompatible legal duties under the two parallel systems governing labor rights.

Through their union agreements, employers were bound to treat all employees identically; administering vacations, bonuses, and promotions according to seniority as outlined in the …

Strengthening The Rule Of Virtue And Finding Chinese Law In "Other" Places: Gods, Kin, Guilds And Gifts, Mary Szto

Mary Szto

Discussions about the rule of law in China today often do not consider the role of virtue or ritual. At the same time, many bemoan slow or no legal reform. Before the tumultuous events of the 20th century, traditional Chinese law (TCL) was remarkably continuous and stable for centuries. It was a blend of ritual and law focused on flourishing and virtue formation. Ritual was communion with, and law accountability to, the invisible spirit world. This inseparable blend spanned multiple jurisdictions, from state codes and courts to divine petitions and courts, to ancestral rites and family codes, to merchant codes …

Law, Economics, And Politics: The Untold History Of The Due Process Limitation On Punitive Damages, Daniel W. Morton-Bentley

Daniel W Morton-Bentley

Where did the idea that the Due Process clause limits the size of punitive damage awards come from? This question remains unanswered despite a large body of legal scholarship on the Supreme Court’s punitive damage jurisprudence. I contend that the argument won acceptance due to a cultural shift which began in the 1970s: the move towards evaluating social policies based solely on their adherence to free-market ideology. In the face of the economic disruptions of the 1970s, conservative and Republican policymakers relied heavily on free-market economic arguments. According to these arguments, any policies that reduce corporate profits – including punitive …

Museum And Royalties: A Proposal To Facilitate Loans, Daniella Fischetti

Daniella Fischetti

This paper will consider the ways in which the principles of copyright may be extended to otherwise unprotected works thereby allowing for a system of royalties, similar to that used by ASCAP or BMI in the music industry, applicable to cultural property located outside its source county and of disputed provenance and legal controversy. While a system of royalties is predicated on the ownership of a copyright of a work in a fixed, tangible form, antiquities and other types of cultural property predate copyright, placing them in the public domain. By comparing the underlying ideas of copyright and intellectual property …

Violent Video Games & "Constitutionalized" Negligence, Deana Ann Pollard Sacks

Deana A Pollard

Violent video games create serious risks of harm to children’s brain functioning, health, and safety. Extremely wealthy game producers’ demonstrated disregard for children’s safety raises questions about lower courts’ negligent speech liability rules that effectively bar tort liability for unreasonably dangerous speech, including violent video games. Violent Video Games & “Constitutionalized” Negligence reviews the latest scientific data on the effects of violent video games on children and challenges the prevailing negligent speech liability rules generally, and specifically relative to violent video game producers’ relationship with children. Most courts have adopted the Brandenburg incitement test to prove fault and causation in …

Returning To First Principles Of Privilege Law: Focusing On The Facts In Internal Corporate Investigations, Christopher T. Hines

Christopher T Hines

In the aftermath of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, it is necessary and appropriate to ask some fundamental questions on the economic laws and regulations that, for better or worse, played a contributing role in the recent financial crisis. Although the ongoing financial reform efforts have already resulted in significant changes in applicable laws, a further discussion regarding the principles and practices that existed within the enforcement of law is worthy of consideration. Specifically stated, are there any improvements that can be made to the current federal securities enforcement regime that would work to the benefit of …

The Tea Party And The Constitution, Christopher W. Schmidt

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article considers the Tea Party as a constitutional movement. I explore the Tea Party’s ambitious effort to transform the role of the Constitution in American life, examining both the substance of the Tea Party’s constitutional claims and the tactics movement leaders have embraced for advancing these claims. No major social movement in modern American history has so explicitly tied its reform agenda to the Constitution. From the time when the Tea Party burst onto the American political scene in early 2009, its supporters claimed in no uncertain terms that much recent federal government action overstepped constitutionally defined limitations. A …

Elizabeth Cady Stanton And The Notion Of A Legal Class Of Gender, Tracy A. Thomas

Akron Law Faculty Publications

In the mid-nineteenth century, Elizabeth Cady Stanton used narratives of women and their involvement with the law of domestic relations to collectivize women. This recognition of a gender class was the first step towards women’s transformation of the law. Stanton’s stories of working-class women, immigrants, Mormon polygamist wives, and privileged white women revealed common realities among women in an effort to form a collective conscious. The parable-like stories were designed to inspire a collective consciousness among women, one capable of arousing them to social and political action. For to Stanton’s consternation, women showed a lack of appreciation of their own …

Law, History, And Feminism, Tracy A. Thomas

Akron Law Faculty Publications

This is the introduction to the book, Feminist Legal History. This edited collection offers new visions of American legal history that reveal women’s engagement with the law over the past two centuries. It integrates the stories of women into the dominant history of the law in what has been called “engendering legal history,” (Batlan 2005) and then seeks to reconstruct the assumed contours of history. The introduction provides the context necessary to appreciate the diverse essays in the book. It starts with an overview of the existing state of women’s legal history, tracing the core events over the past two …

Law, History, And Feminism, Tracy A. Thomas

Tracy A. Thomas

This is the introduction to the book, Feminist Legal History. This edited collection offers new visions of American legal history that reveal women’s engagement with the law over the past two centuries. It integrates the stories of women into the dominant history of the law in what has been called “engendering legal history,” (Batlan 2005) and then seeks to reconstruct the assumed contours of history. The introduction provides the context necessary to appreciate the diverse essays in the book. It starts with an overview of the existing state of women’s legal history, tracing the core events over the past two …

Elizabeth Cady Stanton And The Notion Of A Legal Class Of Gender, Tracy A. Thomas

Tracy A. Thomas

In the mid-nineteenth century, Elizabeth Cady Stanton used narratives of women and their involvement with the law of domestic relations to collectivize women. This recognition of a gender class was the first step towards women’s transformation of the law. Stanton’s stories of working-class women, immigrants, Mormon polygamist wives, and privileged white women revealed common realities among women in an effort to form a collective conscious. The parable-like stories were designed to inspire a collective consciousness among women, one capable of arousing them to social and political action. For to Stanton’s consternation, women showed a lack of appreciation of their own …

Stoney Road Out Of Eden: The Struggle To Recover Insurance For Armenian Genocide Deaths And Its Implications For The Future Of State Authority, Contract Rights, And Human Rights, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Jeffrey W Stempel

The Armenian Genocide during the waning days of the Ottoman Empire continues to represent one of history’s underappreciated atrocities. Comparatively few people even know about the 1.5 million deaths or the government-sponsored extermination attempt that provided Hitler with a blueprint for the Nazi Holocaust. Unlike the Holocaust, however, there was never any accounting demanded of those responsible for the Armenian Genocide. In the aftermath of both tragedies, insurers seized upon the resulting disarray and victimization to deny life insurance benefits owed as a result of the killings. American-based litigation to vindicate rights under the Armenian polices faced substantial legal and …

Judicial Recess Appointments In The Modern Era: Majority Preferences For An Anti Majoritarian Institution, Robert M. Howard

Robert M Howard

The purpose of the recess appointment clause is clear – it allows the executive to keep the operations of government running even when the Senate is not in session and unable to confirm presidential appointees. We want to determine why this practice, common several decades ago, virtually disappeared in the 1960s and why it reappeared in the form of three controversial appointments to the Circuit Courts of Appeals—one by outgoing President Clinton in 2000 and two by President Bush in the congressional session preceding his reelection in 2004. We analyze every vacancy on the federal Courts of Appeals in the …

Trifling Violence: The U.S. Supreme Court, Domestic Violence And The Golden Rule, Jeffrey R. Baker

Jeffrey R Baker

Domestic violence is ubiquitous across eras, cultures, religions and political systems. Feminist responses to domestic violence seek to free women from gender subjugation, but such movement inevitably challenges moral and natural claims about marriage and family in traditional society. These traditions often claim religious and moral authority, while reformers often have overreacted by abandoning established moral thought in favor of relativistic, individual moral discernment. This tension is manifest in the struggle at common law to adjust moral language to the gradual, radical evolution of gender status and marriage. The plight of women and girls in the developing world is the …

Why Is Small Business The Chief Business Of Congress?, Mirit Eyal-Cohen

Mirit Eyal-Cohen

Small business is a sacred cow in America. In 1958, Congress created the Small Business Investment Company ("SBIC"), a unique public-private program that provides long-term capital to small entrepreneurs. From its inception, however, the SBIC has been plagued by inefficiency and failure. Yet, Congress continues to pour millions of dollars into the SBIC program, with no end in sight. What explains this failed policy course?

This article argues that the SBIC program exemplifies the pitfalls of legal and political institutional path dependency and should be replaced by private institutional lending system. Pursuant to this account, past decisions can influence future …

"Reputation, Reputation, Reputation": Fred Rodell, Felix Frankfurter, And The Reproduction Of Hierarchy In The Unlikeliest Of Places, Andrew Yaphe

Andrew Yaphe

If he is remembered at all, Fred Rodell is thought of as a marginal legal realist who spent his time irreverently mocking legal academia and the legal profession. Save for the “marginal” part, this description would be accepted even by Rodell’s admirers. But, as this Article shows, there is more to Rodell than witticisms. Rodell’s humor conceals a radical critique of elite legal education that prefigures the better-known critique put forth decades later by Duncan Kennedy. For Rodell, the institutions of elite legal education work to inculcate careerism and servility. And, for Rodell, the prime exemplar of the baleful influence …

The Principle Of Complementarity In The Origins Of Federal Civil Rights Enforcement, 1866-1871, Matthew A. Smith

Matthew A Smith

When the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court was adopted in 1998, it was praised for its potential to ensure the punishment of international crimes without subjecting states to overzealous international prosecution. The Statute’s careful balance of individual security and sovereign autonomy—achieved by employing a legal concept known as complementarity—is credited as one of its core innovations. However, complementarity’s historical roots run deeper than commentators on the Rome Statute have recognized: complementarity also played a central role over a hundred years earlier in the United States Congress’s efforts to enforce the civil rights of United States citizens. This article …

Weak Loyalties: How The Rule Of Law Prevents Coups D'Etat And Generates Long-Term Political Stability, Ivan Perkins

Ivan Perkins

The “rule of law” is lauded for producing a variety of positive governance characteristics, including minimal corruption, human rights, and economic prosperity. What has been overlooked, however, is that rule-of-law institutions are also responsible for another phenomenon: the fact that certain states experience long-term political stability, without any coups or coup attempts (defined as internal efforts to seize central state authority through force). The prevailing theory of stability holds that “professional” military officers refrain from coups because they have internalized norms of civilian authority and constitutional procedure. However, this theory requires a system of socialization capable of counteracting self-interest, throughout …

Fragile Merchandise: A Comparative Analysis Of The Privacy Rights For Public Figures, Scott Shackelford

Scott Shackelford

Over a century after Warren and Brandeis first presented the right to U.S. jurists for their consideration, privacy has become a central player in U.S. law. But nations around the world, in particular the common and civil law nations of Europe that share similar legal cultures with the United States, are grappling with how best to strike a balance between the competing rights of privacy and freedom of expression—both of which are critical to the functioning of democratic society. Existing literature has not fully drawn from this reservoir of international experience to inform the debate about U.S. privacy rights. This …

The Constitutional Right To Refuse: Roe, Casey, And The Fourteenth Amendment Rights Of Healthcare Providers, Mark L. Rienzi

Mark L Rienzi

The Fourteenth Amendment rights of various parties in the abortion context—the pregnant woman, the fetus, the fetus’ father, the state—have been discussed at length by commentators and the courts. Surprisingly, the Fourteenth Amendment rights of the healthcare provider asked to provide the abortion have not. Roe and Casey establish a pregnant woman’s Fourteenth Amendment right to decide for herself whether to have an abortion. Do those same precedents also protect her doctor’s right to decide whether to participate in abortion procedures?

The Court’s substantive due process analysis typically looks for rights that are “deeply rooted” in our history and traditions. …

Originalism As Popular Constitutionalism?: Theoretical Possibilities And Practical Differences, Lee Strang

Lee J Strang

The common perception is that originalism and popular constitutionalism are incompatible. Supporting this perception is the widely-shared opinion that most advocates for popular constitutionalism are liberal while most originalists are conservative-libertarian. Not only is this the perception, it has a basis in reality. Looking at the names of leading originalists and popular constitutionalists reveals that there is significant overlap between originalism and conservatism-libertarianism, and between popular constitutionalism and liberalism.

In this Article, I argue that the common perception that originalism and popular constitutionalism are incompatible is mistaken. Instead, I show that there is no uniquely correct answer to the question …

The Federal Trade Commission And Privacy: Defining Enforcement And Encouraging The Adoption Of Best Practices., Andrew B. Serwin

Andrew B. Serwin

This article examines the history of privacy enforcement by the Federal Trade Commission, including the FTC’s jurisdiction under Section 5, and its privacy enforcement matters, as well as the FTC's recently issued report, "Protecting Consumer Privacy in an Era of Rapid Change: A proposed Framework for Businesses and Policymakers", in which the FTC examines past enforcement models, noting their failings. In light of the FTC’s examination of past enforcement models, this article then analyzes these models, including the accountability-centric model that has previously been utilized in the United States, as well as the FTC’s proposed solution to the privacy problems …

Race And Place In Post-Reconstruction America: How The Cleveland Bar Became Segregated, 1870-1930, Robert N. Strassfeld

Robert N. Strassfeld

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Cleveland bar could fairly be described as racially integrated. The openness of the bar and the response of African American lawyers shaped the day-to-day professional lives of those lawyers. This openness manifested itself in a number of interracial law practices, in a client base for black lawyers that was predominantly white, in the court appointment practices of white judges, and in the general openness of the institutions of the Cleveland legal community to black participation. The bar was also geographically integrated. African American lawyers opened their offices in the same downtown office …

Interpreting Judicial Interpretations Of The Criminal Statutes Of The Trafficking Victims Protection Act: Ten Years Later, Mohamed Mattar

Mohammad Mattar

The Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) established for the first time the crime of trafficking in persons. This article will analyze court cases that have been decided under the TVPA. The article will show that American courts, relying upon the text of the criminal statutes of the TVPA, as well as the findings of Congress, have broadened the interpretation of the offenses recognized under the Act to expand criminal liability, whether in cases of sex trafficking or labor trafficking. The article will also address cases in which the TVPA was challenged on constitutional grounds and whether it may apply on …

Treaties And The Constitution: Enforcing Treaties Against The States, David Sloss

David Sloss

Since the end of the Cold War, the nation’s leading foreign affairs scholars have debated issues involving the domestic application of treaties. The debate implicates fundamental constitutional questions concerning federalism, separation of powers, and individual rights. Central to the debate is the distinction between self-executing and non-self-executing treaties. Despite deep ideological divisions between nationalists and transnationalists, partisans on both sides agree on two points: first, that the “intent of the treaty makers” is the touchstone for self-execution analysis; and second, that Chief Justice Marshall applied the intent-based doctrine in his seminal opinion in Foster v. Neilson. The consensus view is …

The Ancient And Honorable Court Of Dover: Mock Trials, Fraternal Orders, And Solemn Foolery In Nineteenth-Century New York State, Angela Fernandez

Angela Fernandez

This article is about a fraternal order operating in the first half of the Nineteenth Century in New York called “The Ancient and Honorable Court of Dover.” This group organized a mock trial, probably in 1834, to prosecute one of its members. A prosecutor was appointed and the President of the group gave a long speech. At issue was whether or not non-members could participate in the trial. After a description of these records and an account of their discovery, this article explains who the individuals involved in the trial were, Jacksonian politicians and lawyers with connections to the Custom …

The Rule Of Law At The Crossroads: Consequences Of Targeted Killing Of Citizens, Ryan P. Alford

Ryan P Alford

In December 2010 (in Al-Aulaqi v. Obama) the District Court held that the President's decision to authorize the targeted killing of American citizen could not be reviewed in any court. The article discusses whether this decision is compatible with the vision of the rule of law embodied in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, which is illuminated with an explanation of the historical analysis of the key influences on the Framers. It concludes that the Al-Aulaqi decision is a more significant threat to our constitutional order than the indefinite detention enjoined by Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, and accordingly this warrants …