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Michigan Law Review

United States Supreme Court

Constitutional Law

1987

Articles 1 - 5 of 5

Full-Text Articles in Law

The 1986 And 1987 Affirmative Action Cases: It's All Over But The Shouting, Herman Schwartz Dec 1987

The 1986 And 1987 Affirmative Action Cases: It's All Over But The Shouting, Herman Schwartz

Michigan Law Review

For the moment, the affirmative action wars are over. In a ten-year set of decisions, culminating in five during the last two terms, the Court has now legitimated almost all types of race and gender preferences, even if they benefit nonvictims, including voluntarily adopted preferences in hiring, promotion, university admissions, and government contracting; hiring and promotion preferences in consent decrees; and court-ordered hiring and promotions. It has approved preferences by both public and private bodies, and for both racial-ethnic minorities and women. It has barred only layoffs of white (and presumably male) employees who have more seniority than employees hired …


Dormant Commerce Clause Claims Under 42 U.S.C. § 1983: Protecting The Right To Be Free Of Protectionist State Action, Gregory A. Kalscheur Oct 1987

Dormant Commerce Clause Claims Under 42 U.S.C. § 1983: Protecting The Right To Be Free Of Protectionist State Action, Gregory A. Kalscheur

Michigan Law Review

This Note will attempt to show that some commerce clause violations should give rise to cognizable section 1983 claims. Two fundamental questions will be addressed: Is the commerce clause the source of any "rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution?" and if so, Does section 1983 protect whatever "rights, privileges, or immunities" grow out of the commerce clause? Part I will describe the present status of authority on this issue and argue that none of the conflicting opinions have adequately addressed the fundamental questions involved. Part II will demonstrate that the commerce clause does indeed protect a "right[], privilege[ …


Disorder In The Court: The Death Penalty And The Constitution, Robert A. Burt Aug 1987

Disorder In The Court: The Death Penalty And The Constitution, Robert A. Burt

Michigan Law Review

This article has two purposes. Its first aim is to trace the significance of these shifting characterizations of American society in the Justices' successive approaches to the death penalty by retelling the story of the Court's capital punishment jurisprudence. Its second purpose is to suggest that belief in implacable social hostility destroys the coherence of the judicial role in constitutional adjudication. America may indeed be an irreconcilably polarized society; I cannot dispositively prove or disprove the proposition. I mean only to claim that in constitutional adjudication a judge is obliged to act as if this proposition were false; and, moreover, …


The Rise Of Modern Judicial Review: From Constitutional Interpretation To Judge-Made Law, Ward A. Greenberg May 1987

The Rise Of Modern Judicial Review: From Constitutional Interpretation To Judge-Made Law, Ward A. Greenberg

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Rise of Modern Judicial Review: From Constitutional Interpretation to Judge-Made Law by Christopher Wolfe


Commerce Clause Restraints On State Taxation: Purposeful Economic Protectionism And Beyond, Walter Hellerstein Feb 1987

Commerce Clause Restraints On State Taxation: Purposeful Economic Protectionism And Beyond, Walter Hellerstein

Michigan Law Review

Few questions in recent years have spawned as much controversy and as little academic interest as the scope of commerce clause restraints on state tax power. The Supreme Court has handed down an extraordinary number of significant decisions addressed to the limitations the commerce clause imposes on state taxation. Yet these decisions have barely caught the eye of the nation's leading law reviews or constitutional scholars. Even those observers who have recognized the Court's renaissance of interest in the dormant commerce clause have largely confined their attention to state regulation, as distinguished from state taxation, of interstate commerce. If there …