Law Commons^™

America’S Relation To World Order: Two Indictments, Two Thought Experiments, And A Misquotation, Philip C. Bobbitt

Faculty Scholarship

The State is undergoing a crisis of legitimacy owing to its inability to cope with novel problems of weapons proliferation, transnational threats including climate change, a fragile global financial infrastructure, cultural influences carried by electronic communications, and an undemocratic regime of human rights law. These fatal inadequacies are summoning forth a new constitutional order, the latest in a series of century-spanning archetypal regimes that have arisen since the Renaissance and the collapse of feudalism. A backlash against the harbingers of this new order, however, is crippling the development of those modes of action that are required to deal with the …

Freedom From Ignorance: The International Duty To Provide Public Education, Areto A. Imoukhuede

Faculty Scholarship

This paper argues that public education is an international human right that the U.S. ought to recognise and protect. Recognising a right to public education would correct a major inconsistency in U.S. law by bringing education rights docrtine more in line with international human rights law. This piece discusses how current U.S. education rights doctrine is inconsistent with U.S. tradition and legal precedent. It then demonstrates how international law recognises public education as a fundamental duty of government before arguing for why the U.S. is obligated to follow international law regarding the right to public education.

Analogies And Institutions In The First And Second Amendments: A Response To Professor Magarian, Darrell A.H. Miller

Faculty Scholarship

In this essay, Professor Darrell Miller responds to Professor Gregory Magarian's criticism of the manner in which judges, advocates, and scholars have used the First Amendment to frame Second Amendment interpretive questions.

Hollingsworth V. Perry, Brief For Foreign And Comparative Law Experts Harold Hongju Koh Et. Al. As Amici Curiae Supporting Respondents, Harold Hongju Koh, Sarah H. Cleveland, Laurence R. Helfer, Ryan Goodman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Second Things First: What Free Speech Can And Can’T Say About Guns, Joseph Blocher

Faculty Scholarship

Professor Blocher responds to Gregory Magarian’s article on the implications of the First Amendment for the Second.

Rights To And Not To, Joseph Blocher

Faculty Scholarship

When and why should a “right to” include a “right not to”? If a person has a right to engage in an activity or to receive a particular form of procedural protection, under what circumstances should he also have a right not to engage in that activity or to refuse that process? The basic project of this Article is to show why these questions are important in American constitutional law, to explore how doctrine and scholarship have implicitly and sometimes awkwardly dealt with them, and to suggest normative frameworks with which they can be answered.

The Right Not To Keep Or Bear Arms, Joseph Blocher

Faculty Scholarship

Sometimes a constitutional right to do a particular thing is accompanied by a right not to do that thing. The First Amendment, for example, guarantees both the right to speak and the right not to speak. This Article asks whether the Second Amendment should likewise be read to encompass both the right to keep or bear arms for self-defense and the inverse right to protect oneself by avoiding them, and what practical implications, if any, the latter right would have. The Article concludes - albeit with some important qualifications - that a right not to keep or bear arms is …

The United States And Human Rights Treaties: Race Relations, The Cold War, And Constitutionalism, Curtis A. Bradley

Faculty Scholarship

The United States prides itself on being a champion of human rights and pressures other countries to improve their human rights practices, and yet appears less willing than other nations to embrace international human rights treaties. Many commentators attribute this phenomenon to the particular historical context that existed in the late 1940s and early 1950s when human rights treaties were first being developed. These commentators especially emphasize the race relations of the time, noting that some conservatives resisted the developing human rights regime because they saw it as an effort by the federal government to extend its authority to address …

Embedded International Law And The Constitution Abroad, Sarah H. Cleveland

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay explores the role of "embedded" international law in U.S. constitutional interpretation, in the context of extraterritorial application of the Constitution. Traditional U.S. understandings of the Constitution's application abroad were informed by nineteenth-century international law principles of jurisdiction, which largely limited the authority of a sovereign state to its geographic territory. Both international law and constitutional law since have developed significantly away from strictly territorial understandings of governmental authority, however. Modern international law principles of jurisdiction and state responsibility now recognize that states legitimately may exercise power in a number of extraterritorial contexts, and that legal obligations may apply …

The Unbearable Lightness Of Marriage In The Abortion Decisions Of The Supreme Court: Altered States In Constitutional Law, William W. Van Alstyne

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A System Of Wholesale Denial Of Rights, Michael E. Tigar

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Universal Rights And Wrongs, Michael E. Tigar

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Personal Rights And Rule Dependence: Can The Two Co-Exist?, Matthew D. Adler

Faculty Scholarship

Constitutional doctrine is typically "rule-dependent." Typically, a constitutional litigant will not prevail unless she can show that a particular kind of legal rule is in force, e.g., a rule that discriminates against "suspect classes" in violation of the Equal Protection Clause, or that targets speech in violation of the First Amendment, or that is motivated by a religious purpose in violation of the Establishment Clause. Further, the litigant must typically establish a violation of her "personal rights." The Supreme Court has consistently stated that a reviewing court should not invalidate an unconstitutional governmental action at the instance of a claimant …

Rights, Rules And The Structure Of Constitutional Adjudication: A Response To Professor Fallon, Matthew D. Adler

Faculty Scholarship

Constitutional doctrine is typically rule-dependent. A viable constitutional challenge typically hinges upon the existence of a discriminatory, overbroad, improperly motivated, or otherwise invalid rule, to which the claimant has some nexus. In a prior article, Prof. Adler proposed one model of constitutional adjudication that tries to make sense of rule-dependence. He argued that reviewing courts are not vindicating the personal rights of claimants, but rather are repealing or amending invalid rules. IN a Commentary in this issue, Professor Fallon now puts forward a different model of constitutional adjudication, equally consistent with rule-dependence. Fallon proposes that a reviewing court should overturn …

Rights Against Rules: The Moral Structure Of American Constitutional Law, Matthew D. Adler

Faculty Scholarship

Constitutional rights are conventionally thought to be "personal" rights. The successful constitutional litigant is thought to have a valid claim that some constitutional wrong has or would be been done "to her"; the case of "overbreadth," where a litigant prevails even though her own conduct is permissibly regulated, is thought to be unique to the First Amendment. This "personal" or "as-applied" view of constitutional adjudication has been consistently and pervasively endorsed by the Supreme Court, and is standardly adopted by legal scholars.

In this Article, I argue that the conventional view is incorrect. Constitutional rights, I claim, are rights against …

A Constitutional Right Of Religious Exemption: An Historical Perspective, Philip A. Hamburger

Faculty Scholarship

Did late eighteenth-century Americans understand the Free Exercise Clause of the United States Constitution to provide individuals a right of exemption from civil laws to which they had religious objections? Claims of exemption based on the Free Exercise Clause have prompted some of the Supreme Court's most prominent free exercise decisions, and therefore this historical inquiry about a right of exemption may have implications for our constitutional jurisprudence. Even if the Court does not adopt late eighteenth-century ideas about the free exercise of religion, we may, nonetheless, find that the history of such ideas can contribute to our contemporary analysis. …

The Japanese International Law 'Revolution': International Human Rights Law And Its Impact In Japan, Kenneth L. Port

Faculty Scholarship

Some observers have argued that because of a lack of enforcement powers, international law has relatively little impact on the conduct of nations and, in fact, may not be "law" at all. Others have inquired whether legal norms which underlie international human rights law have any influence on the domestic law of signatory nations. This article argues that international law can profoundly influence the development of the domestic laws of nations regardless of the lack of coercive enforcement powers. This point becomes clear through a consideration of Japan's experience in adopting and internalizing international law norms.

The Constitutional Rights Of Public Employees: A Comment On The Inappropriate Uses Of An Old Analogy, William W. Van Alstyne

Faculty Scholarship

Beginning with Justice Douglass's assertion that the State is bound in the same ways when acting as an employer as it is when acting as a governing body, this examination delves deeper to determine how this doctrine actually limits the government when it acts as an employer. This article endorses the theory of examining these limits not in the context of if the government is allowed to enforce them in the public sphere, but if the government may mandate such limits in the private sphere