Law Commons^™

Terry V.Ohio, Massiah V. United States, And Zurcher V. Stanford Daily, Robert Bloom

Robert Bloom

No abstract provided.

Posthumously Conceived Children And Social Security Entitlements; Or Things (Not) To Do In Little Rock When You’Re Dead, Mel Cousins

Mel Cousins

This case note examines a number of recent decisions of the Arkansas state courts concerning the entitlements of posthumously conceived children under social security and workers compensation law. These decisions highlight the differences in approach which have been adopted in this important area and the difficulties caused by the lack of a uniform approach in federal law.

Balancing Competing Individual Constitutional Rights: Raising Some Questions, Taunya Banks

Taunya Lovell Banks

Despite increasing support for global human rights ..., some scholars and constitutional democracies, like the United States, continue to resist constitutionalizing socio-economic rights. Socio-economic rights, unlike political and civil constitutional rights that usually prohibit government actions, are thought to impose positive obligations on government. As a result, constitutionalizing socio-economic rights raises questions about separation of powers and the competence of courts to decide traditionally legislative and executive matters. ... [W]hen transitional democracies, like South Africa, choose to constitutionalize socio-economic rights, courts inevitably must grapple with their role in the realization of those rights.... Two questions immediately come to mind: (1) …

Eloquence And Reason: Creating A First Amendment Culture, Robert L. Tsai

Robert L Tsai

This book presents a general theory to explain how the words in the Constitution become culturally salient ideas, inscribed in the habits and outlooks of ordinary Americans. "Eloquence and Reason" employs the First Amendment as a case study to illustrate that liberty is achieved through the formation of a common language and a set of organizing beliefs. The book explicates the structure of First Amendment language as a distinctive discourse and illustrates how activists, lawyers, and even presidents help to sustain our First Amendment belief system. When significant changes to constitutional law occur, they are best understood as the results …

Equal Sentences For Unequal Participation: Should The Eighth Amendment Allow All Juvenile Murder Accomplices To Receive Life Without Parole?, Brian Gallini

Brian Gallini

A Darwinist View Of The Living Constitution, Scott Dodson

Scott Dodson

The metaphor of a “living" Constitution imports terms from biology into law and, in the process, relies on biology for its meaning. A proper understanding of biology is therefore central to understanding living constitutionalism. Yet despite its rampant use by both opponents and proponents of living constitutionalism, and despite the current fervent debate over whether biology can be useful to the law, no one has evaluated the metaphor from a biological perspective.

This Essay begins that inquiry in an interdisciplinary study of law, science, and philology. The Essay first evaluates the metaphor as it is currently used and concludes that …

Gender And Justice: Parity And The United States Supreme Court, Paula A. Monopoli

Paula A Monopoli

There is a deep concern among many American women that only one woman remains on the United States Supreme Court. When Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was sworn in on September 25, 1981, most people never imagined that twenty-five years later there would still be only one woman on the Court. It appears that it will be many more years before there is a critical mass of women sitting on the high court. Given its central role, the Court should better represent the gender balance in American society. In a number of other countries, voluntary or involuntary parity provisions have been …

Listener Interests In Compelled Speech Cases, Laurent Sacharoff

Laurent Sacharoff

The Lecture Notes Of St. George Tucker; A Framing Period View Of The Bill Of Rights, David T. Hardy

David T. Hardy

This article reflects a transcription of the lecture notes of St. George Tucker, relevant to the newly ratified Bill of Rights. Tucker lectured law at the College of William and Mary from 1790 to 1804, and was well informed on the legal events of his day, with a brother in the first Senate and a friend in the First House. Tucker's notes reflect an astonishingly modern, and broad, view of the Bill of Rights' protections. His notes recently came to some prominence, being debated last term by majority and dissent in District of Columbia v. Heller.

The Duty Of Treatment: Human Rights And The Hiv/Aids Pandemic, Noah B. Novogrodsky

Noah B Novogrodsky

This article argues that the treatment of HIV and AIDS is spawning a juridical, advocacy and enforcement revolution. The intersection of AIDS and human rights was once characterized almost exclusively by anti-discrimination and destigmatization efforts. Today, human rights advocates are demanding life-saving treatment and convincing courts and legislatures to make states pay for it. Using a comparative Constitutional law methodology that places domestic courts at the center of the struggle for HIV treatment, this article shows how the provision of AIDS medications is reframing the right to health and the implementation of socio-economic rights. First, it locates an emerging right …

Op-Ed., Signing Statements Risk Abuse Of Power, Robert Lipkin

Robert Justin Lipkin

No abstract provided.

Of Persons And Prenatal Humans: Why The Constitution Is Not Silent On Abortion, Lawrence Nelson

Lawrence J Nelson

Many jurists and legal commentators have concluded that the Constitution does not protect a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy because nothing in the Constitution’s text and no principle or rule derived from its structure, internal logic, or propositions supports striking down restrictive legislation on abortion. In short, Roe v. Wade, Casey v. Planned Parenthood, and their progeny have been wrongly decided because the Constitution has absolutely no bearing on abortion other than to leave it to the legislative branch.

The conclusion that the Constitution is silent on abortion is false because the Constitution, in the text of the Fourteenth …

With A Little Help From The Courts: Mark Tushnet On Judicial Review Of Social And Economic Rights, Adam Shinar

Adam Shinar

This is a review of Mark Tushnet's "Weak Courts, Strong Rights: Judicial Review and Social Welfare Rights in Comparative Constitutional Law". The review outlines the main arguments in the book and then moves to elaborate on two preconditions, which, I think, are necessary for Tushnet's project to succeed – the existence of a strong civil society and an institutional willingness to implement social welfare rights. In addition, this review seeks to situate the book within Tushnet's broader constitutional theory project. In particular, the review attempts to reconcile this work with Tushnet's "Taking the Constitution Away from the Courts", a work …

Conditional Rules In Criminal Procedure: Alice In Wonderland Meets The Constitution., David Rossman

David Rossman

Without recognizing that it has done so, the Supreme Court has created a category of constitutional rules of criminal procedure that are all in a peculiar format, conditional rules. A conditional rule depends on some future event to determine whether one has failed to honor it. In a wide variety of contexts, if a police officer, prosecutor, judge or defense attorney does something that the Constitution regulates, one cannot determine if the constitutional rule has been violated or not until some point in the future.

The Court has used three methods to create these rules. One looks to prejudice, and …

"Mr. Presidential Candidate: Whom Would You Nominate?", Stuart M. Benjamin, Mitu Gulati

Stuart M Benjamin

Presidential candidates compete on multiple fronts for votes. Who is more likeable? Who will more effectively negotiate with allies and adversaries? Who has the better vice-presidential running mate? Who will make better appointments to the Supreme Court and the cabinet? This last question is often discussed long before the inauguration, for the impact of a Secretary of State or a Supreme Court Justice can be tremendous. The importance of such appointments notwithstanding, presidential candidates are not pushed to name their prospective appointees, pre-election. In other words, we do not expect candidates to compete on naming the better slates of nominees. …

State Courts, State Territory, State Power: Reflections On The Extraterritoriality Principle In Choice Of Law And Legislation, Katherine J. Florey

Katherine J. Florey

An important (if sometimes poorly understood) extraterritoriality principle constrains the reach of the laws state legislatures may constitutionally enact. Indeed, the Supreme Court has at times suggested that this principle serves to invalidate any “application of a state statute to commerce that takes place wholly outside of the State’s borders.” In the choice-of-law context, however, state courts make the decision to apply state law (including state statutory law) to out-of-state activities (including commercial activities) constantly and routinely. Yet because state courts’ choice-of-law decisions are subject only to the very minimal constraints of the Due Process Clause, the application of forum …

Boumediene V. Bush And Guantánamo, Cuba: Does The "Empire Strike Back"?, Ernesto A. Hernandez

Ernesto A. Hernandez

Focusing on the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Boumediene v. Bush (2008) and the U.S. occupation of the Naval Station at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, this article argues that the base’s legal anomaly heavily influences “War on Terror” detention jurisprudence. Anomaly is created by agreements between the U.S. and Cuba in 1903 and 1934. They affirm that the U.S. lacks sovereignty over Guantánamo but retains “complete jurisdiction and control” for an indefinite period; while Cuba has “ultimate sovereignty.” Gerald Neuman labels this as an anomalous zone with fundamental legal rules locally suspended. The base was chosen as a detention center because …

The Appropriations Power And Sovereign Immunity, Jay Tidmarsh, Paul F. Figley

Jay Tidmarsh

Historical discussions of sovereign immunity assume that the Constitution contains no explicit text regarding sovereign immunity. As a result, arguments about the existence — or non-existence — of sovereign immunity begin with the English and American common-law doctrines of sovereign immunity, and ask whether the founding period altered that doctrine. Exploring political, fiscal, and legal developments in England and the American colonies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, this article shows that focusing on common-law developments is misguided. The common-law approach to sovereign immunity ended in the early 1700s. The Bankers’ Case (1690-1700), which is often regarded as the first …

The Right To Privacy And America's Aging Population, Kristine Knaplund

Kristine Knaplund

As the number of elderly grows significantly, especially those with cognitive impairments, how do we as a society deal with their need for privacy and intimate association? Two critical issues have so far gone unaddressed in the legal literature: the lack of personal freedom suffered by those who move into large assisted living facilities and nursing homes, versus the lack of social support for those who remain in their own homes. While seniors in nursing homes are lectured and ridiculed, even transferred involuntarily, for having a sexual relationship, elderly living alone are being preyed upon by unscrupulous caregivers who know …

Guns And Speech Technologies: How The Right To Bear Arms Affects Copyright Regulations Of Speech Technologies, Edward Lee

Edward Lee

This Essay examines the possible effect the Supreme Court’s landmark Second Amendment ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller will have on future cases brought under the Free Press Clause. Based on the text and history of the Constitution, the connection between the two Clauses is undeniable, as the Heller Court itself repeatedly suggested. Only two provisions in the entire Constitution protect individual rights to a technology: the Second Amendment’s right to bear “arms” and the Free Press Clause’s right to the freedom of the “press,” meaning the printing press. Both rights were viewed, moreover, as preexisting, natural rights to …

“Mr. Presidential Candidate: Whom Would You Nominate?”, Stuart M. Benjamin, Mitu Gulati

Stuart M Benjamin

Presidential candidates compete on multiple fronts for votes. Who is more likeable? Who will more effectively negotiate with allies and adversaries? Who has the better vice-presidential running mate? Who will make better appointments to the Supreme Court and the cabinet? This last question is often discussed long before the inauguration, for the impact of a Secretary of State or a Supreme Court Justice can be tremendous. The importance of such appointments notwithstanding, presidential candidates are not pushed to name their prospective appointees, pre-election. In other words, we do not expect candidates to compete on naming the better slates of nominees. …

The Gay Agenda, Libby Adler

Libby S. Adler

The Gay Agenda argues that the current gay rights agenda has been overly determined by the culture war and calls for a deliberate step outside of culture war discourse in order to see law reform possibilities that have largely been obscured. When anti-gay forces speak in terms of traditional family values, the paper observes, pro-gay rejoinders tend to come in the form of rights claims accompanied by rhetorical efforts to depict the gay family as morally indistinct from an idealized version of the heterosexual family (i.e., monogamous, bourgeois, and more about love than sex). These dual strategies of rights—especially equality—and …

Appellate Courts Inside And Out, Maxwell L. Stearns

Maxwell L. Stearns

Commentary on "Inside Appellate Courts: The Impact of Court Organization on Judicial Decision Making in the United States Courts of Appeal" by Jonathan Matthew Cohen. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 2002.

The Second Amendment: Scope And Criminological Considerations, Clayton E. Cramer

Clayton E Cramer

The recent decision D.C. v. Heller (2008) has opened up the question of what the Second Amendment protects. What “arms” are protected? What classes of persons may be properly prohibited from being armed?

Belonging And Empowerment: A New "Civil Rights" Paradigm Based On Lessons Of The Past, Rebecca E. Zietlow

Rebecca E Zietlow

ABSTRACT: Despite the advances that African Americans have made in our country as a result of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, poverty stubbornly persists in communities of color throughout our country. Our current civil rights paradigm, which is rooted in the Equal Protection Clause, and prohibits intentional state discrimination on the basis of immutable characteristics, simply is not working. This article suggests an alternative approach, one based not solely in equality norms but in facilitating the belonging of outsiders in our society. The subordination of people of color in our society has never been just about race. Rather, …

The Wages Of Originalist Sin: District Of Columbia V. Heller, Jeffrey M. Shaman

Jeffrey M. Shaman

This essay analyzes and critiques the Supreme Court’s recent decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, which ruled that that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess firearms unconnected with service in a militia. The focus of the essay is on Justice Scalia’s majority opinion in Heller, which adheres strictly to an extreme view of originalism holding that the Constitution should be interpreted by ascertaining its original meaning at the time it was adopted. Justice Scalia believes that the Constitution has a static meaning, and that changes in the world around us are of no relevance to constitutional …

Popular Constitutionalism, Judicial Supremacy, And The Complete Lincoln-Douglas Debates, Mark A. Graber

Mark Graber

No abstract provided.

Enumeration And Other Constitutional Strategies For Protecting Rights: The View From 1787/1791, Mark A. Graber

Mark Graber

This paper interprets the constitution of 1791 in light of the constitution of 1787. The persons responsible for the original constitution thought they had secured fundamental rights by a combination of representation, the separation of powers, and the extended republic. The Bill of Rights, in their view, was a minor supplement to the strategies previously employed for preventing abusive government practices. Proposed amendments were less a list of fundamental freedoms than an enumeration of those rights likely to appease moderate anti-Federalists. That many vaguely phrased rights lacked clear legal meaning was of little concern to their Federalist sponsors, who trusted …

Introduction: Ancients, Moderns And Guns, Mark A. Graber

Mark Graber

No abstract provided.

False Modesty: Felix Frankfurter And The Tradition Of Judicial Restraint, Mark A. Graber

Mark Graber

Professor Jeffrey Rosen is the leading champion of judicial modesty among legal academics and public philosophers. Throughout his career, Professor Rosen has vigorously condemned justices “when they have tried to impose intensely contested visions of the Constitution on a divided nation.” This commentary on his Foulston lecture at Washburn Law School suggests that proponents of judicial restraint must avoid traps of false modesty which ensnared Justice Felix Frankfurter. The constitutional politics responsible for Poe v. Ullman and Barnette v. West Virginia State Board of Education challenge the too simple understanding of judicial unilateralism that Frankfurter advanced in his opinions in …