Law Commons^™

Delegating Or Divesting?, Philip A. Hamburger

Faculty Scholarship

A gratifying feature of recent scholarship on administrative power is the resurgence of interest in the Founding. Even the defenders of administrative power hark back to the Constitution’s early history – most frequently to justify delegations of legislative power. But the past offers cold comfort for such delegation.

A case in point is Delegation at the Founding by Professors Julian Davis Mortenson and Nicholas Bagley. Not content to defend the Supreme Court’s current nondelegation doctrine, the article employs history to challenge the doctrine – arguing that the Constitution does not limit Congress’s delegation of legislative power. But the article’s most …

Dehumanization 'Because Of Sex': The Multiaxial Approach To The Title Vii Rights Of Sexual Minorities, Shirley Lin

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Although Title VII prohibits discrimination against any employee “because of such individual’s . . . sex,” legal commentators have not yet accurately appraised Title VII’s trait and causation requirements embodied in that phrase. Since 2015, most courts assessing the sex discrimination claims of LGBT employees began to intentionally analyze “sex” as a trait using social-construction evidence, and evaluated separately whether the discriminatory motive caused the workplace harm. Responding to what this Article terms a “doctrinal correction” to causation within this groundswell of decisions, the Supreme Court recently issued an “expansive” and “sweeping” reformulation of but-for causation in Bostock v. Clayton …

The Genius Of Hamilton And The Birth Of The Modern Theory Of The Judiciary, William M. Treanor

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In late May 1788, with the essays of the Federalist on the Congress (Article I) and the Executive (Article II) completed, Alexander Hamilton turned, finally, to Article III and the judiciary. The Federalist’s essays 78 to 83 – the essays on the judiciary - had limited effect on ratification. No newspaper outside New York reprinted them, and they appeared very late in the ratification process – after eight states had ratified. But, if these essays had little immediate impact – essentially limited to the ratification debates in New York and, perhaps, Virginia – they were a stunning intellectual achievement. Modern …

The Legal And Medical Necessity Of Abortion Care Amid The Covid-19 Pandemic, Greer Donley, Beatrice Chen, Sonya Borrero

Articles

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, states have ordered the cessation of non-essential healthcare. Unfortunately, many conservative states have sought to capitalize on those orders to halt abortion care. In this short paper, we argue that abortion should not fall under any state’s non-essential healthcare order. Major medical organizations recognize that abortion is essential healthcare that must be provided even in a pandemic, and the law recognizes abortion as a time-sensitive constitutional right. Finally, we examine the constitutional arguments as to why enforcing these orders against abortion providers should not stand constitutional scrutiny. We conclude that no public health purpose …

Parental Autonomy Over Prenatal End-Of-Life Decisions, Greer Donley

Articles

When parents learn that their potential child has a life-limiting, often devastating, prenatal diagnosis, they are faced with the first (and perhaps, only) healthcare decisions they will make for their child. Many choose to terminate the pregnancy because they believe it is in their potential child’s best interest to avoid a short and painful life. I argue that these decisions should be protected in the same way that parental healthcare decisions are constitutionally protected after birth—including a parent’s refusal or withdrawal of life-saving treatment for an infant or child who is very sick or dying. Parental autonomy ensures that parents …

The Superfluous Fifteenth Amendment?, Travis Crum

Scholarship@WashULaw

This Article starts a conversation about reorienting voting rights doctrine toward the Fifteenth Amendment. In advancing this claim, I explore an unappreciated debate—the “Article V debate”—in the Fortieth Congress about whether nationwide black suffrage could and should be achieved through a statute, a constitutional amendment, or both. As the first significant post-ratification discussion of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Article V debate provides valuable insights about the original public understandings of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and the distinction between civil and political rights.

The Article V debate reveals that the Radical Republicans’ initial proposal for nationwide black suffrage included both …

A Public Health Law Path For Second Amendment Jurisprudence, Michael Ulrich

Faculty Scholarship

The two landmark gun rights cases, District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. City of Chicago, came down in 2008 and 2010, respectively. In the decade that has followed, two things have become abundantly clear. First, these cases provide little clarity about the nature and scope of Second Amendment rights, resulting in chaos and circuit splits in the lower courts. Second, growing empirical evidence has revealed that, in the background of the debate on individual constitutional rights, a serious gun violence epidemic is intensifying around the country. In one corner, gun rights advocates worry that increased firearm regulation will …

The Right Approach To Harmless Error, Daniel Epps

Scholarship@WashULaw

My article “Harmless Errors and Substantial Rights” challenged conventional wisdom about the harmless constitutional error doctrine in criminal procedure. Specifically, I contended that the traditional way of understanding harmless error as a remedial doctrine rooted in so-called “constitutional common law” created significant anomalies. Instead, harmless constitutional error doctrine can only be understood as part of the definition and judicial enforcement of constitutional rights.

Few legal scholars have thought as deeply about the mysteries of harmless error as Professor John M. Greabe, and he is well equipped to give the remedial perspective the best possible defense. Nonetheless, despite Professor Greabe’s able …

Taking Stock Of The Religion Clauses, John D. Inazu

Scholarship@WashULaw

After a few decades of relative quiet, the Supreme Court has in recent years focused once again on the religion clauses and related statutes.

Reconstructing Racially Polarized Voting, Travis Crum

Scholarship@WashULaw

Racially polarized voting makes minorities more vulnerable to discriminatory changes in election laws and therefore implicates nearly every voting rights doctrine. In Thornburg v. Gingles, the Supreme Court held that racially polarized voting is a necessary—but not a sufficient—condition for a vote dilution claim under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The Court, however, has recently questioned the propriety of recognizing the existence of racially polarized voting. This colorblind approach threatens not only the Gingles factors but also Section 2’s constitutionality.

The Court treats racially polarized voting as a modern phenomenon. But the relevant starting point is the 1860s, …