Law Commons^™

Slaughtering Slaughter-House: An Assessment Of 14th Amendment Privileges Or Immunities Jurisprudence, Caleb Webb

Senior Honors Theses

In 1872, the Supreme Court decided the Slaughter-House Cases, which applied a narrow interpretation of the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the 14^th Amendment that effectually eroded the clause from the Constitution. Following Slaughter-House, the Supreme Court compensated by utilizing elastic interpretations of the Due Process Clause in its substantive due process jurisprudence to cover the rights that would have otherwise been protected by the Privileges or Immunities Clause. In more recent years, the Court has heard arguments favoring alternative interpretations of the Privileges or Immunities Clause but has yet to evaluate them thoroughly. By applying the …

Regulating Social Media Through Family Law, Katharine B. Silbaugh, Adi Caplan-Bricker

Faculty Scholarship

Social media afflicts minors with depression, anxiety, sleeplessness, addiction, suicidality, and eating disorders. States are legislating at a breakneck pace to protect children. Courts strike down every attempt to intervene on First Amendment grounds. This Article clears a path through this stalemate by leveraging two underappreciated frameworks: the latent regulatory power of parental authority arising out of family law, and a hidden family law within First Amendment jurisprudence. These two projects yield novel insights. First, the recent cases offer a dangerous understanding of the First Amendment, one that should not survive the family law reasoning we provide. First Amendment jurisprudence …

Constitutional Restraints On Intrastate Distribution Of Taxing Authority, Walter Hellerstein

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Full Faith And Credit In The Post-Roe Era, Celia P. Janes

Duke Journal of Constitutional Law & Public Policy Sidebar

In 2022, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, once again leaving the question of whether abortion should be legal to individual state legislatures. This decision allowed the Texas law known as S.B. 8, alternatively known as the Texas Heartbeat Act, to go into effect. The law allows private individuals to sue anyone who has performed or has aided and abetted the performance or inducement of an abortion in Texas. California responded to this law with Assembly Bill 2091, which prevents California state courts from issuing subpoenas arising under S.B. 8 and similar laws in other states. This Note addresses …

An Exegesis Of The Meaning Of Dobbs: Despotism, Servitude, & Forced Birth, Athena D. Mutua

Journal Articles

The Dobbs decision has been leaked. Gathered outside of New York City's St. Patrick's Old Cathedral, pro-choice protesters chant: "Not the church, not the state, the people must decide their fate."

A white man wearing a New York Fire Department sweatshirt and standing on the front steps responds: "l am the people, l am the people, l am the people, the people have decided, the court has decided, you lose . . . . You have no choice. Not your body, not your choice, your body is mine and you're having my baby."

Despicable but not unexpected,³ this man's comments …

The New Gender Panic In Sport: Why State Laws Banning Transgender Athletes Are Unconstitutional, Deborah Brake

Articles

The scope and pace of legislative activity targeting transgender individuals is nothing short of a gender panic. From restrictions on medical care to the regulation of library books and the use of pronouns in schools, attacks on the transgender community have reached crisis proportions. A growing number of families with transgender children are being forced to leave their states of residence to keep their children healthy and their families safe and intact. The breadth and pace of these developments is striking. Although the anti-transgender backlash now extends broadly into health and family governance, sport was one of the first settings—the …

Brief Of Amici Curiae In Support Of The United States: Moyle & Idaho V. United States, David S. Cohen, Greer Donley, Rachel Rebouché

Amici Briefs

This amicus brief, submitted to the Supreme Court in Moyle v. United States, argues that Moyle, and the impending circuit split surrounding it, is a symptom of a larger workability problem with the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization framework. Dobbs is already proving, in its brief existence, to be unworkable, and must be overturned. In short order, the Dobbs ruling has ushered in an era of unprecedented legal and doctrinal chaos, precipitating a fury of disorienting legal battles across the country. The Dobbs framework has created destabilizing conflicts between federal and state authorities, as in the current …

Lest We Be Lemmings, Claire Wright

Faculty Articles

Lest We Be Lemmings concerns global warming, which is the most grave threat facing humanity today. In this article, I first: (1) discuss how the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Executive Branch, for decades, have been aware of the existence of global warming and its main cause – the burning of fossil fuels and emission of CO₂ - but have consistently failed to regulate the fossil fuel industry, reduce the lucrative subsidies that they provide to the fossil fuel industry, and hold the fossil fuel industry responsible for global warming; (2) explain how the fossil fuel industry, for decades, …

Converse-Osborn: State Sovereign Immunity, Standing, And The Dog-Wagging Effect Of Article Iii, Carlos Manuel Vázquez

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

“[T]he legislative, executive, and judicial powers, of every well-constructed government, are co-extensive with each other . . . [T]he judicial department may receive from the Legislature the power of construing any . . . law [which the Legislature may constitutionally make].” Chief Justice Marshall relied on this axiom in Osborn v. Bank of the United States to stress the breadth of the federal judicial power: The federal courts must have the potential power to adjudicate any claim based on any law Congress has the power to enact. In recent years, however, the axiom has sometimes operated in the opposite direction: …

The Philosophy Of Ai: Learning From History, Shaping Our Future. Hearing Before The Committee On Homeland Security And Government Affairs, Senate, One Hundred Eighteenth Congress, First Session., Margaret Hu

Congressional Testimony

No abstract provided.

Firearm Contagion: A New Look At History, Rachel Martin, Michael Ulrich

Faculty Scholarship

Gun violence is widely considered a serious public health problem in the United States, but less understood is what this means, if anything, for evolving Second Amendment doctrine. In New York Pistol & Rifle Association, Inc. v. Bruen, the Supreme Court held that laws infringing Second Amendment rights can only be sustained if the government can point to sufficient historical analogues. Yet, what qualifies as sufficiently similar, a suitable number of jurisdictions, or the most important historical eras all remain unclear. Under Bruen, lower courts across the country have struck down gun laws at an alarming pace, while …

Brief Of Amici Curiae Administrative And Federal Regulatory Law Professors In Support Of Respondents, Andrew F. Popper

Amicus Briefs

Amici write to address the first question presented: whether Chevron should be overruled. Properly understood, it should not. Chevron has been much discussed but not always understood. On the one hand, courts have sometimes misapplied the doctrine or failed to understand its legal foundations. On the other, courts and commentators alike have criticized Chevron, often as a result of such aggressive applications. This case provides an opportunity for the Court to clarify what Chevron does and does not entail, while reaffirming the essential role that judicial recognition of constitutionally delegated policymaking authority plays in federal statutory programs. Many of …

Care Work, Gender Equality, And Abortion: Lessons From Comparative Feminist Constitutionalism, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

Julie Suk, After Misogyny: How the Law Fails Women and What to Do About It (2023).

Julie Suk’s ambitious book, After Misogyny: How the Law Fails Women and What to Do About It, contributes to a feminist literature on equality and care spanning centuries and national boundaries, yet offers timely diagnoses and prescriptions for the United States at a very particular moment. That “moment” includes being four years into the COVID-19 pandemic and over one year into the post-Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey world wrought by Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. That moment …

Originalism, Official History, And Perspectives Versus Methodologies, Keith N. Hylton

Faculty Scholarship

This paper addresses a well-worn topic: originalism, the theory that judges should interpret the Constitution in a manner consistent with the intent of its framers. I am interested in the real-world effects of originalism. The primary effect advanced by originalists is the tendency of the approach to constrain the discretion of judges. However, another effect of originalism that I identify is the creation of official histories, a practice that imposes a hidden tax on society. Another question I consider is whether originalism should be considered a methodology of analyzing the law or a perspective on the law. I argue that …

Movement On Removal: An Emerging Consensus On The First Congress, Jed Handelsman Shugerman

Faculty Scholarship

What did the “Decision of 1789” decide about presidential removal power, if anything? It turns out that an emerging consensus of scholars agrees that there was not much consensus in the First Congress.

Two more questions follow: Is the “unitary executive theory” based on originalism, and if so, is originalism a reliable method of interpretation based on historical evidence?

The unitary executive theory posits that a president has exclusive and “indefeasible” executive powers (i.e., powers beyond congressional and judicial checks and balances). This panel was an opportunity for unitary executive theorists and their critics to debate recent historical research questioning …

Why The Court Should Reexamine Administrative Law's Chenery Ii Doctrine, Gary S. Lawson, Joseph Postell

Faculty Scholarship

Part I of this article begins by discussing some fundamental constitutional principles that were raised, sometimes implicitly and indirectly, in the Chenery cases. Those principles point to limits on administrative adjudication that go well beyond those recognized in current doctrine. We do not here seek to push those principles as far as they can go, though we offer no resistance to anyone who wants to trod that path. Instead, we identify and raise those principles to help understand the scope and limits of actual doctrine. Our modest claims here are that constitutional concerns about at least some classes of agency …

Freehold Offices Vs. 'Despotic Displacement': Why Article Ii 'Executive Power' Did Not Include Removal, Jed Handelsman Shugerman

Faculty Scholarship

The Roberts Court has relied on an assertion that Article II’s “executive power” implied an “indefeasible” or unconditional presidential removal power. In the wake of growing historical evidence against their theory, unitary executive theorists have fallen back on a claim of a “backdrop” or default removal rule from English and other European monarchies. However, unitary theorists have not provided support for these repeated assertions, while making a remarkable number of errors, especially in the recent “The Executive Power of Removal” (Harvard L. Rev. 2023).

This Article offers an explanation for the difficulty in supporting this historical claim: Because …

(E)Racing Speech In School, Francesca I. Procaccini

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Speech on race and racism in our nation’s public schools is under attack for partisan gain. The Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment teaches a lot about the wisdom and legality of laws that chill such speech in the classroom. But more importantly, a First Amendment analysis of these laws reveals profound insights about the health and meaning of our free speech doctrine.

Through a First Amendment analysis of “anti-critical race theory” laws, this essay illuminates the first principles of free speech law. Specifically, it shows that the First Amendment offers little refuge to teachers or parents looking to …

An Originalist Theory Of Due Process Of Law, Randy E. Barnett

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

As the sole originalist on the program, my first task is to define what originalism is so that we are all on the same page. Originalism can be summarized in one sentence: the meaning of the Constitution should remain the same until it's properly changed - by amendment.

Originalism is not a single theory. It is a family of theories, and that family shares two common precepts. The first is called the Fixation Thesis: the meaning of a text is fixed at the time that that text is promulgated. The Fixation Thesis is a descriptive claim about how language works …

Balkinization Symposium On Christian G. Fritz, Monitoring American Federalism: The History Of State Legislative Resistance, Christian G. Fritz

Faculty Scholarship

Balkinization, the blog founded by Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment Jack Balkin (Yale Law School), hosted a symposium on Christian Fritz's book Monitoring American Federalism: The History of State Legislative Resistance (Cambridge University Press, 2023) June 14-26, 2023. Six scholars from law schools across the United States discussed the book and the symposium concluded with Professor Fritz's response to the commentators.

The Problem Is The Court, Not The Constitution, Jonathan Feingold

Faculty Scholarship

“But first, we must believe.” So concludes The Antiracist Constitution, where Brandon Hasbrouck confronts an uneasy question: In the quest for racial justice, is the Constitution friend or foe? Even the casual observer knows that constitutional law is no friend to racial justice. In the nineteenth century, Plessy v. Ferguson blessed Jim Crow. In the twentieth century, Washington v. Davis insulated practices that reproduce Jim Crow. Now in the twenty-first century, pending affirmative action litigation invites the Supreme Court to outlaw efforts to remedy Jim Crow.

Foreword: New Supreme Court Cases: Duquesne Law Faculty Explains, Wilson Huhn

Law Faculty Publications

On September 30, 2022, several members of the faculty of the Thomas R. Kline School of Law of Duquesne University presented a Continuing Legal Education program, New Supreme Court Cases: Duquesne Law Faculty Explains, reviewing these developments. Duquesne Law Review graciously invited the faculty panel to contribute their analysis of these cases from the Supreme Court's 2021- 2022 term for inclusion in this symposium issue of the Law Review.

An Alternative To The Independent State Legislature Doctrine, Bruce Ledewitz

Law Faculty Publications

One of the most momentous actions taken by the United States Supreme Court in the last term was not deciding a case but granting review at the end of the term in Moore v. Harper, the North Carolina congressional redistricting case. This is the case in which the Supreme Court appears likely to adopt some version of the Independent State Legislature Doctrine (Doctrine). In this essay, I will describe the actual case and the Doctrine. But I will also be offering an alternative to the Doctrine, one that I believe achieves some of the goals that the Justices who …

Analysis Of Carson V. Makin, Wilson Huhn

Law Faculty Publications

Many school districts in the State of Maine lack high schools, so the children in those districts must attend another school selected by their parents. In 1873 the State of Maine enacted a tuition assistance program that offers a stipend to participating schools to partially defray the cost of educating children from districts that lack a high school. In 1981 the State of Maine enacted a law that categorically excludes sectarian schools’ from participating in the tuition assistance program.

Three sets of parents sued the Commissioner of the Maine Department of Education, asserting that the exclusion of sectarian schools, from …

The Constitution As A Source Of Remedial Law, Carlos Manuel Vázquez

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In Equity’s Constitutional Source, Owen W. Gallogly argues that Article III is the source of a constitutional default rule for equitable remedies—specifically, that Article III’s vesting of the “judicial Power” “in Equity” empowers federal courts to afford the remedies traditionally afforded by the English Court of Chancery at the time of the Founding, and to develop such remedies in an incremental fashion. This Response questions the current plausibility of locating such a default rule in Article III, since remedies having their source in Article III would be available in federal but not state courts and would apply to state-law …

The Indecisions Of 1789: Inconstant Originalism And Strategic Ambiguity, Jed Handelsman Shugerman

Faculty Scholarship

The unitary executive theory relies on the First Congress and an ostensible "Decision of 1789" as an originalist basis for unconditional presidential removal power. In light of new evidence, the First Congress was undecided on any constitutional theory and retreated to ambiguity in order to compromise and move on to other urgent business.

Seila Law's strict separation-of-powers argument depends on indefeasibility (i.e., Congress may not set limits or conditions on the president's power of civil removal). In fact, few members of the First Congress defended or even discussed indefeasibility. Only nine of fifty-four participating representatives explicitly endorsed the presidentialist …

The Disembodied First Amendment, Nathan Cortez, William M. Sage

Faculty Scholarship

First Amendment doctrine is becoming disembodied—increasingly detached from human speakers and listeners. Corporations claim that their speech rights limit government regulation of everything from product labeling to marketing to ordinary business licensing. Courts extend protections to commercial speech that ordinarily extended only to core political and religious speech. And now, we are told, automated information generated for cryptocurrencies, robocalling, and social media bots are also protected speech under the Constitution. Where does it end? It begins, no doubt, with corporate and commercial speech. We show, however, that heightened protection for corporate and commercial speech is built on several “artifices” - …

Reevaluating Regional Law Reform Strategies After Dobbs, Jamie Abrams

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This article studies the triad of 2016 social media campaigns known as “#AskDr.Kasich,” “#askbevinaboutmyvag,” and “#PeriodsforPence.” While these campaigns, each located in the regional mid-South, were motivated by restrictive state abortion bills, they uniquely positioned menstruation and women’s bodies at the center of their activism—not abortion alone. They leveraged, as a political fault line, the contradiction of these states’ governors’ perceived disgust relating to basic women’s reproductive health, relative to their patriarchal assuredness in regulating and controlling women’s bodies.

In so doing, they tapped into meaningful disruptions in the geographies, religiosities, and masculinities of abortion politics. These campaigns achieved regional …

Lessons Of The Plague Years, Barry Sullivan

Faculty Publications & Other Works

The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged governments of every description across the globe, and it surely would have tested the mettle of any American administration. But the pandemic appeared in the United States at a particularly inopportune time. January 2020 marked the beginning of a presidential election year in a deeply polarized country. President Donald Trump was a controversial figure, beginning the fourth year of a highly idiosyncratic administration. He was both a candidate for re-election and the subject of an ongoing impeachment proceeding. In these circumstances, the pandemic quickly became politicized. President Trump's response to the COVID-19 pandemic has often …

Deities’ Rights?, Deepa Das Acevedo

Faculty Articles

A brief commotion arose during the hearings for one of twenty-first-century India’s most widely discussed legal disputes, when a dynamic young attorney suggested that deities, too, had constitutional rights. The suggestion was not absurd. Like a human being or a corporation, Hindu temple deities can participate in litigation, incur financial obligations, and own property. There was nothing to suggest, said the attorney, that the same deity who enjoyed many of the rights and obligations accorded to human persons could not also lay claim to some of their constitutional freedoms. The lone justice to consider this claim blandly and briefly observed …