Law Commons^™

Interrogation Of Detainees: Extending A Hand Or A Boot?, Amos N. Guiora

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The current "war on terror" provides the Bush administration with a unique opportunity to both establish clear guidelines for the interrogation of detainees and to make a forceful statement about American values. How the government chooses to act can promote either an ethical commitment to the norms of civil society, or an attitude analogous to Toby Keith's "American Way," where Keith sings that "you'll be sorry that you messed with the USofA, 'Cuz we'll put a boot in your ass, It's the American Way."

Nothing Improper? Examining Constitutional Limits, Congressional Action, Partisan Motivation, And Pretextual Justification In The U. S. Attorney Removals, David C. Weiss

Michigan Law Review

The forced mid-term resignations of nine U.S. Attorneys was an unprecedented event in American history. Nearly one year after the administration executed the removals, the House Judiciary Committee was still reviewing and publicizing emails, memoranda, and other documents in an effort to understand how the firings were effectuated. This Note examines many of those documents and concludes that the removals were likely carried out for partisan reasons. It then draws on the Constitution, Supreme Court precedent, and separation of powers principles to argue that Congress is constitutionally empowered to enact removal limitations for inferior officers such as U.S. Attorneys so …

Section 1: Moot Court, Fcc V. Fox Television Stations, Institute Of Bill Of Rights Law, William & Mary Law School

Supreme Court Preview

No abstract provided.

Section 3: Election Law, Institute Of Bill Of Rights Law, William & Mary Law School

Supreme Court Preview

No abstract provided.

Section 2: 2008 Election And The Supreme Court, Institute Of Bill Of Rights Law, William & Mary Law School

Supreme Court Preview

No abstract provided.

Section 6: Theories Of Interpretation, Institute Of Bill Of Rights Law, William & Mary Law School

Supreme Court Preview

No abstract provided.

Section 5: Civil Rights, Institute Of Bill Of Rights Law, William & Mary Law School

Supreme Court Preview

No abstract provided.

Section 7: Criminal Law, Institute Of Bill Of Rights Law, William & Mary Law School

Supreme Court Preview

No abstract provided.

Section 8: Bush's Legal Legacy, Institute Of Bill Of Rights Law, William & Mary Law School

Supreme Court Preview

No abstract provided.

Kewanee Revisited: Returning To First Principles Of Intellectual Property Law To Determine The Issue Of Federal Preemption, Sharon K. Sandeen

Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review

In the early 1970s it was thought that states could regulate in the areas of trade secrets without interfering with federal patent policies. However, this concept was called into question in the Sixth Circuit's ruling in Kewanee Oil Co. v. Bicron. In 1974 the Supreme Court ruled that Ohio's trade secret law was not preempted by federal patent law. This article revisits the issues raised in Kewanee in light of the Supreme Court's current preemption jurisprudence, changes in patent law, copyright law, and trade secret law since that time. First, the article reviews the history and context of the Kewanee …

The Federalization Of Punitive Damages And The Effect On Illinois Law, Frank A. Perrecone, Lisa R. Fabiano

Northern Illinois University Law Review

Punitive damages have traditionally been a matter of state law, left to state courts and legislatures to review and regulate. But in the midst of the tort reform movement of the 1990s, the United States Supreme Court took sides in the policy debate, fashioning a novel substantive due process right limiting punitive damage awards and suppressing the power of juries to punish and deter egregious conduct. This article traces the evolution of the federalization of punitive damages based on questionable authority, criticizes the Supreme Court's intrusion into an area of state law, demonstrates how Supreme Court precedent has been misapplied …

Money As Property: The Effects Of Doctrinal Misallocation On Campaign Finance Reform, Maneesh Sharma

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

By applying First Amendment jurisprudence to campaign finance measures, this Note argues that the Supreme Court has misallocated campaign finance within its doctrinal scheme. This doctrinal misallocation has stymied the ability of legislatures to enact effective reforms to reduce the role of money in politics. This Note argues that money in the political process more closely resembles property than speech and should therefore be analyzed under a less stringent property review. This Note concludes by proposing a standard of review developed from the Court's property jurisprudence.

An "Unintended Consequence": Dred Scott Reinterpreted, Sam Erman

Michigan Law Review

Austin Allen's monograph marks the 150th anniversary of the decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford with a revisionist interpretation of that oft-examined case. Many scholars have portrayed the case as a proslavery decision that fanned sectional fires. After all, the Court held that blacks were not U.S. citizens and that Congress was impotent to bar slavery in U.S. territories. Allen, by contrast, understands the case primarily as a judicial attempt to rationalize federal commerce and slavery jurisprudences. Part I argues that this ambitious reinterpretation enriches, but does not topple, existing Dred Scott historiography. In the case of the Court's citizenship …

Supreme Court Nominees And The Fourth Circuit Curse, Adam M. Gershowitz

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

From Pedagogical Sociology To Constitutional Adjudication: The Meaning Of Desegregation In Social Science Research And Law, Anne Richardson Oakes

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

In the United States following the case of Brown v. Board of Education (1954) federal judges with responsibility for public school desegregation but no expertise in education or schools management appointed experts from the social sciences to act as court advisors. In Boston, MA, educational sociologists helped Judge W. Arthur Garrity design a plan with educational enhancement at its heart, but the educational outcomes were marginalized by a desegregation jurisprudence conceptualized in terms of race rather than education. This Article explores the frustration of outcomes in Boston by reference to the differing conceptualizations of desegregation in law and social science. …

Let's Not Jump To Conclusions: Approaching Felon Disenfranchisement Challenges Under The Voting Rights Act, Thomas G. Varnum

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 invalidates voting qualifications that deny the right to vote on account of race or color. This Article confronts a split among the federal appellate courts concerning whether felons may rely on Section 2 when challenging felon disenfranchisement laws. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals allows felon disenfranchisement challenges under Section 2; however, the Second and Eleventh Circuits foresee unconstitutional consequences and thus do not. After discussing the background of voting rights jurisprudence, history of felon disenfranchisement laws, and evolution of Section 2, this Article identifies the points of contention among the …

Equality In Germany And The United States, Edward J. Eberle

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Meddimmune, Microsoft, And Ksr: The United States Supreme Court In 2007 Tips The Balance In Favor Of Innovation In Patent Cases, And Thrice Reverses The Federal Circuit, Sue Ann Mota

Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review

In 2007 the Supreme Court reversed three patent cases from the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The three cases were MedImmune, Inc. v. Genentech, Inc. (holding a patent licensee does not have to breach a license agreement before seeking declaratory judgment that the underlying patent is invalid, unenforceable, or not infringed), Microsoft Corp. v. AT&T Corp. (holding Microsoft did not supply a component of an invention from the United States that had the possibility of infringing under the Patent Act), and KSR International Co. v. Teleflex Inc. (holding the requirement of non-obviousness under the Patent Act is analyzed …

Ideological Endowment: The Staying Power Of The Electoral College And The Weaknesses Of The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, Daniel P. Rathbun

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

The National Popular Vote (“NPV”) movement is designed to eliminate the federalist impact of the Electoral College without amending the Constitution. By fashioning an interstate compact to grant participating states’ electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, NPV proponents suppose they can induce states to forfeit their electoral “weights” and replace the current, federalist election process with a fully majoritarian one. But by leaving the Electoral College in place, the NPV movement is setting itself up for a double pushback: first, in the form of immediate legal resistance, and second, through states’ long-term involvement in a meaningfully …

Can Glucksberg Survive Lawrence? Another Look At The End Of Life And Personal Autonomy, Yale Kamisar

Articles

In Washington v. Glucksberg, the Court declined to find a right to physician-assisted suicide ("PAS") in the Constitution. Not a single Justice dissented. One would expect such a ruling to be quite secure. But Lawrence v. Texas, holding that a state cannot make consensual homosexual conduct a crime, is not easy to reconcile with Glucksberg. Lawrence certainly takes a much more expansive view of substantive due process than did Glucksberg. It is conceivable that the five Justices who made up the Lawrence majority-all of whom still sit on the Court-might overrule Glucksberg. For various reasons, …

Cooper's Quiet Demise (A Short Response To Professor Strauss), Frederic M. Bloom

Publications

No abstract provided.

From Judge To Justice: Social Background Theory And The Supreme Court, Tracey E. George

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The Roberts Court Justices already have revealed many differences from one another, but they also share a (possibly) significant commonality: Presidents promoted all of them to the U.S. Supreme Court from the U.S. Courts of Appeals. This means, of course, that they initially learned how to be judges while serving on a circuit court. How might the Justices' common route to the Court affect their actions on it? Social background theory hypothesizes that prior experience influences subsequent behavior such as voting, opinion writing, and coalition formation. This Article empirically analyzes promotion to the Supreme Court and examines the implications of …

Public Rights, Social Equality, And The Conceptual Roots Of The Plessy Challenge, Rebecca J. Scott

Articles

This Article argues that the test case that gave rise to the 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson is best understood as part of a wellestablished, cosmopolitan tradition of anticaste activism in Louisiana rather than as a quixotic effort that contradicted nineteenth-century ideas of the boundaries of citizens' rights. By drawing a dividing line between civil and political rights, on the one hand, and social rights, on the other, the Supreme Court construed challenges to segregation as claims to a "social equality" that was beyond the scope of judicially cognizable rights. The Louisiana constitutional convention of 1867-68, however, had defined …

"The Threes": Re-Imagining Supreme Court Decisionmaking, Tracey E. George, Chris Guthrie

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In this Essay--the first in a series of essays designed to reimagine the Supreme Court--we argue that Congress should authorize the Court to adopt, in whole or part, panel decision making... With respect to the prospect of different Court outcomes, we demonstrate empirically in this Essay that the vast majority of cases decided during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries--including "Grutter", "Roe", and "Bush v. Gore" --would have come out the same way if the Court had decided them in panels rather than as a full Court.

"The Threes": Re-Imagining Supreme Court Decisionmaking, Chris Guthrie, Tracey E. George

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In this Essay--the first in a series of essays designed to reimagine the Supreme Court--we argue that Congress should authorize the Court to adopt, in whole or part, panel decision making... With respect to the prospect of different Court outcomes, we demonstrate empirically in this Essay that the vast majority of cases decided during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries--including "Grutter", "Roe", and "Bush v. Gore" --would have come out the same way if the Court had decided them in panels rather than as a full Court.

Is A Forensic Laboratory Report Identifying A Substance As A Narcotic 'Testimonial'?, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

Is a state forensic analyst's laboratory report, prepared for use in a criminal proceeding and identifying a substance as cocaine, "testimonial" evidence and so subject to the demands of the Confrontation Clause as set forth in Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004)?

Does An Accused Forfeit The Confrontation Right By Murdering A Witness, Absent A Purpose To Render Her Unavailable?, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

If an accused murdered a witness, should he be deemed to have forfeited the right under the Sixth Amendment "to be confronted with" the witness, absent proof that the accused committed the murder for the purpose of rendering her unavailable as a witness?

Plainly Wrong: The High Court Takes The Low Road, David E. Wilkins

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

The court's most recent salvo in the Long case is no exception. I wrote about this case in April in this paper when the court had just heard oral arguments. My column was titled "A Matter of Disrespect" because in reading the transcript of the oral arguments, it was plainly evident in the questions raised by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Antonin Scalia that they had very little respect for the legitimacy of tribal courts or their decisions.

The question that must be asked: Why are tribal courts treated differently than non-Indian courts? Not willing to confront this head-on, …

Back To The Beginning: An Essay On The Court, The Law Of Democracy, And Trust, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The law of democracy is in a state of incoherence. The experiment begun by Baker v. Carr showed great promise yet soon gave way to disappointment. The promise was one of modest review and respect for political choices made elsewhere. A presumption was still against judicial involvement: absent self-entrenchment or distrust of political outcomes, the Court would stay its hand. But, the reality has been far from that. The presumption has now clearly shifted, and the Court intervenes in politically-charged controversies as a matter of course. This raises a question at the heart of the law of democracy: can we …

Climate Change In The Supreme Court, Lisa Heinzerling

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, the Supreme Court confronted the issue of climate change for the first time. The Court held that the Clean Air Act gives the Environmental Protection Agency the authority to regulate greenhouse gases and that the agency may not decline to exercise this authority based either on factors not present in the statute or inconclusive gestures toward uncertainty in the science of climate change. I had the privilege of serving as the lead author of the winning briefs in this case. This Article provides an insider's perspective on the choices that went into bringing and …