Law Commons^™

"The House Was Quiet And The World Was Calm The Reader Became The Book", Burt Neuborne

Vanderbilt Law Review

Professor Neuborne argues that we err in reading the Bill of Rights "in splendid isolation" as a randomly ordered set of clause-bound norms. Instead, he argues that the disciplined order and placement of the thirty-three ideas in the Bill of Rights, especially the six textual ideas united in the First Amendment, reveals a deep contextual structure imposed by the Founders that sheds important light on the meaning of the constitutional text. He argues that the "vertical" order of the first ten amendments, as well as the "horizontal" order of ideas within each amendment, provides important clues to a judge seeking …

The Troubling Influence Of Equality In Constitutional Criminal Procedure: From Brown To Miranda, Furman And Beyond, Scott W. Howe

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Article identifies and critiques a view of the criminal-procedure clauses in the Bill of Rights that is revealed in Supreme Court decisions after Brown v. Board of Education. Professor Howe argues that the Court has gone astray in constructing these clauses by focusing on equality. He contends that the criminal-procedure clauses are better understood as discrete protections of individual liberty than as reflecting a unified theory or separate theories about equality. Building on this perspective, the Article proposes a reformulation of doctrine in varied realms of constitutional criminal procedure, including police -interrogation, capital sentencing, and administrative searches and seizures. …

A Precarious Path: The Bill Of Rights After 200 Years, Tony A. Freyer

Vanderbilt Law Review

The Bill of Rights occupies an ambiguous place in American society. Americans favor the Bill of Rights in principle, but when asked whether they support particular rights guarantees for real-life practices such as gun ownership, capital punishment, abortion, and flag burning, Americans fervently and profoundly disagree. The essays David J. Bodenhamer and James W. Ely, Jr. have compiled in The Bill of Rights in Modern America After 200 Years, richly suggest why Americans have reconciled principle and practice with such difficulty. Written for a popular audience by specialists who possess a profound knowledge of and differing views concerning the technical …

Another View: Our Magnificent Constitution, William B. Reynolds

Vanderbilt Law Review

Let me start with the observation that I regard myself to be most privileged to be a public servant at a time when we celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Constitution a magnificent document that has, in my view, no equal in history and every reason to be feted. It is by now no revelation that the Framers would be aghast at the size and reach of government today; but they would also be enormously proud of how much of their legacy has endured. The vitality of the original Constitution, and its various amendments, is reflected by its ability to …

Promoting Truth In The Courtroom, Edwin Meese, Iii

Vanderbilt Law Review

It is a distinct privilege to be with you and to join my predecessors as Attorney General-Elliot Richardson, Judge Griffin Bell,and William French Smith-in becoming a Cecil Sims Lecturer.One of the best features of university life is the freedom it affords to pursue the search for knowledge. In virtually all disciplines an understanding of certain truths, of the way various historical or scientific facts fit together, is an important starting point for further learning and deliberation. The search for truth is also a tremendously important undertaking beyond the campus walls,especially in the realm of criminal justice. That endeavor, the effort …

Tension Between The First And Twenty-First Amendments In State Regulation Of Alcohol Advertising, Brian S. Steffey

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Recent Development examines the tension between the first and twenty-first amendments when a state uses its twenty-first amendment power to regulate advertisements of alcoholic beverages that qualify for first amendment protection. Part II of this Recent Development explores the Court's standard of review in cases in which the twenty-first amendment impinges upon a fourteenth amendment right. Part II also reviews the scope of constitutional protection that the first amendment accords commercial speech. Part III examines three recent cases in which states have regulated alcohol advertising. Part IV criticizes these decisions for misapplying the appropriate standard and for relying extensively …

Book Review, Lyman R. Patterson

Vanderbilt Law Review

A revolution wrought by judges with the pen is more rare than one carried out by citizens with arms. The Warren Court did make a revolution--"the due process revolution," as the-- author calls it--and it is this transformation in our law that is the subject of Fred Graham's book, The Self-Inflicted Wound. The wound referred to in the title is Miranda v. Arizona,' in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that before the police can interrogate an accused in custody, they must warn him that he is entitled to a lawyer and that anything he says may …

Book Reviews, Robert J. Harris (Reviewer), John Raeburn Green (Reviewer), H. C. Nixon (Reviewer)

Vanderbilt Law Review

----------------------------------- Book Reviews ----------------------------------

The Forgotten Ninth Amendment

By Bennett B. Patterson

Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1955. Pp. ix, 217. $4.00.

reviewer: Robert J. Harris

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The Birth of the Bill of Rights, 1776-1791

By Robert Allen Rutland

Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1955. Pp. vii,243. $5.00.

reviewer: John Raeburn Green

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James Wilson: Founding Father, 1742-1798

By Charles Page Smith

Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1956. Pp. xii, 426.$7.50.

reviewer: H. C. Nixon