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Full-Text Articles in Law
Kent State And The Failure Of First Amendment Law, Gregory P. Magarian
Kent State And The Failure Of First Amendment Law, Gregory P. Magarian
Scholarship@WashULaw
Since the U.S. Supreme Court decided its first free speech case 100 years ago, two very different eras have defined First Amendment law. For a half century, before 1970, the Supreme Court focused on protecting the expressive freedom of political dissidents and social reformers. In 1970, amid protests against the Vietnam War, the Ohio National Guard senselessly gunned down four students at Kent State University. The Kent State massacre exposed the fragility in our country of political protest, free speech, and democracy itself. That atrocity should have inspired First Amendment law to affirm and enhance its protection of dissenters and …
Designing Supreme Court Term Limits, Kyle Rozema, Adam Chilton, Daniel Epps, Maya Sen
Designing Supreme Court Term Limits, Kyle Rozema, Adam Chilton, Daniel Epps, Maya Sen
Scholarship@WashULaw
Since the Founding, Supreme Court justices have enjoyed life tenure. This helps insulate the justices from political pressures, but it also results in unpredictable deaths and strategic retirements determining the timing of Court vacancies. In order to regularize the appointment process, a number of academics and policymakers have put forward detailed term limits proposals. However, many of these proposals have been silent on many key design decisions and there has been almost no empirical work assessing the impact that term limits would have on the composition of the Supreme Court.
Supreme Court Reform And American Democracy, Daniel Epps, Ganesh Sitaraman
Supreme Court Reform And American Democracy, Daniel Epps, Ganesh Sitaraman
Scholarship@WashULaw
In "How to Save the Supreme Court," we identified the legitimacy challenge facing the Court, traced it to a set of structural flaws, and proposed novel reforms. Little more than a year later, the conversation around Supreme Court reform has only grown louder and more urgent. In this Essay, we continue that conversation by engaging with critics of our approach. The current crisis of the Supreme Court is, we argue, inextricable from the question of the Supreme Court’s proper role in our democracy. For those interested in reform, there are three distinct strategies for ensuring the Supreme Court maintains its …