Law Commons^™

The Unwritten Rules Of Liberal Democracy, Charles W. Collier

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Article is set amidst the distinctly unsettled and unsettling state of governmental practices, legislative policy, and presidential politics of contemporary America. Immediacy, too, introduces its own uncertainty—as compared to the comfortable vantage point of the distant future. But, as I shall argue, there is no realistic alternative to beginning in medias res. To address these issues as they inherently demand, the usual precedents and protocols and precautions must be set aside—if they are not already “gone with the wind.”6 Since the 2016 Presidential Election, and even before, threats to liberal democracy have emerged, in plausible form, as never before …

Virtual Equality As Constitutional Reality: An Introduction, Berta E. Hernández-Truyol

UF Law Faculty Publications

Equality is, to be sure, an elusive concept. More often than not, we find it much easier to describe what is unequal (we know it when we see it) than affirmatively to explain equality. This definitional dilemma rises to new heights when courts, in exercising their interpretive legal functions, have to provide all persons the equal protection of the laws."

Over the course of American history and jurisprudence, the Supreme Court itself has a checkered past when it comes to judicial application of rights to equality. In the beginning, there was slavery - the quintessence of unequality - and the …