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Full-Text Articles in Law
Religious Liberty, Discriminatory Intent, And The Conservative Constitution, Luke Boso
Religious Liberty, Discriminatory Intent, And The Conservative Constitution, Luke Boso
Utah Law Review
The Supreme Court shocked the world at the end of its 2021–22 term by issuing landmark decisions ending constitutional protection for abortion rights, expanding gun rights, and weakening what remained of the wall between church and state. One thread uniting these cases that captured the public’s attention is the rhetoric common of originalism—a backwards-looking theory of constitutional interpretation focused on founding-era meaning and intent. This Article identifies the discriminatory intent doctrine as another powerful tool the Court is using to protect the social norms and hierarchies of a bygone era, and to build a conservative Constitution.
Discriminatory intent rose to …
The Meaning Of Judicial Impartiality: An Examination Of Supreme Court Confirmation Debates And Supreme Court Rulings On Racial Equality, Stuart Chinn
Utah Law Review
Three years into the Trump presidency and especially in the aftermath of Justice Kavanaugh’s elevation to the Supreme Court, the ideal of judicial impartiality is once again central in our public discourse. Because we have, in turn, a president especially skeptical of the judiciary’s separation from partisanship, heightened political polarization, and heightened stakes around judicial rulings in this age of gridlocked governance, the question of how judges approach their work has assumed a significance that goes beyond concern over the outcomes they will reach.
However, as important as the concept of judicial impartiality may be, it is worth pausing to …
Equal Protection And Scrutinizing Scrutiny: The Supreme Court’S Decision In Sessions V. Morales-Santana, Jonathan Burt
Equal Protection And Scrutinizing Scrutiny: The Supreme Court’S Decision In Sessions V. Morales-Santana, Jonathan Burt
Utah Law Review
This Note attempts to synthesize the cases on 8 U.S.C. § 1409(c) and provide a workable framework for intermediate scrutiny in the equal protection realm. Intermediate scrutiny, like all levels of scrutiny, is an ends-means balancing test. Under intermediate scrutiny, the ends must be “important.” The interest cannot be “hypothetical” or “invented post hoc in response to litigation.”234 Instead, it must be the actual reason behind the statutory classification and this must be clearly demonstrated by the government. On the other side, the means must “substantially relate” to the asserted interest. The means chosen cannot result from overbroad assumptions about …