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Articles 1 - 26 of 26
Full-Text Articles in Law
Judicial Fidelity, Caprice L. Roberts
Judicial Fidelity, Caprice L. Roberts
Pepperdine Law Review
Judicial critics abound. Some say the rule of law is dead across all three branches of government. Four are dead if you count the media as the fourth estate. All are in trouble, even if one approves of each branch’s headlines, but none of them are dead. Not yet. Pundits and scholars see the latest term of the Supreme Court as clear evidence of partisan politics and unbridled power. They decry an upheaval of laws and norms demonstrating the dire situation across the federal judiciary. Democracy is not dead even when the Court issues opinions that overturn precedent, upends long-standing …
The Power Of State Legislatures To Invalidate Private Deed Restrictions: Is It An Unconstitutional Taking?, Ken Stahl
Pepperdine Law Review
Over the past several years, state legislatures confronting a severe housing shortage have increasingly preempted local land use regulations that restrict housing supply in an effort to facilitate more housing production. But even where state legislatures have been successful, they now confront another problem: many of the preempted land use regulations are duplicated at the neighborhood or block level through private “covenants, conditions and restrictions” (CCRs) enforced by homeowners associations (HOAs). In response, California’s legislature has begun aggressively invalidating or “overriding” these CCRs. While many states have barred HOAs from prohibiting pets, clotheslines, signs, and flags, California has moved much …
Using Bruen To Overturn New York Times V. Sullivan, Michael L. Smith, Alexander S. Hiland
Using Bruen To Overturn New York Times V. Sullivan, Michael L. Smith, Alexander S. Hiland
Pepperdine Law Review
While New York Times Co. v. Sullivan is a foundational, well-regarded First Amendment case, Justice Clarence Thomas has repeatedly called on the Court to revisit it. Sullivan, Thomas claims, is policy masquerading as constitutional law, and it makes almost no effort to ground itself in the original meaning of the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Thomas argues that at the time of the founding, libelous statements were routinely subject to criminal prosecution—including libel of public figures and public officials. This Essay connects Justice Thomas’s calls to revisit Sullivan to his recent opinion for the Court in New York State Rifle & …
No Amendment? No Problem: Judges, “Informal Amendment,” And The Evolution Of Constitutional Meaning In The Federal Democracies Of Australia, Canada, India, And The United States, John V. Orth, John Gava, Arvind P. Bhanu, Paul T. Babie
No Amendment? No Problem: Judges, “Informal Amendment,” And The Evolution Of Constitutional Meaning In The Federal Democracies Of Australia, Canada, India, And The United States, John V. Orth, John Gava, Arvind P. Bhanu, Paul T. Babie
Pepperdine Law Review
This article considers the way in which judges play a significant role in developing the meaning of a constitution through the exercise of interpretive choices that have the effect of “informally amending” the text. We demonstrate this by examining four written federal democratic constitutions: those of the United States, the first written federal democratic constitution; India, the federal constitution of the largest democracy on earth; and the constitutions of Canada and Australia, both federal and democratic, but emerging from the English unwritten tradition. We divide our consideration of these constitutions into two ideal types, identified by Bruce Ackerman: the “revolutionary” …
Court Expansion And The Restoration Of Democracy: The Case For Constitutional Hardball, Aaron Belkin
Court Expansion And The Restoration Of Democracy: The Case For Constitutional Hardball, Aaron Belkin
Pepperdine Law Review
Neither electoral politics, norms preservation, nor modest good government reform can restore the political system because they cannot mitigate the primary threat to the American democracy, Republican radicalism. Those who believe otherwise fail to appreciate how and why radicalism will continue to impede democratic restoration regardless of what happens at the ballot box, misdiagnose the underlying factors that produce and sustain GOP radicalism, and under-estimate the degree of democratic deterioration that has already taken place. Republicans do not need to prevail in every election to forestall the restoration of democracy or to prevent Democrats from governing. The only viable path …
Comparing Literary And Biblical Hermeneutics To Constitutional And Statutory Interpretation, Robert J. Pushaw Jr.
Comparing Literary And Biblical Hermeneutics To Constitutional And Statutory Interpretation, Robert J. Pushaw Jr.
Pepperdine Law Review
Interpreters determine the meaning of language. To interpret literary and biblical texts, scholars have developed detailed rules, methods, and theories of human understanding. This branch of knowledge, “hermeneutics,” features three basic approaches. First, “textualists” treat words as directly conveying their ordinary meaning to a competent reader today. Second, “contextualists” maintain that verbal meaning depends on generally shared linguistic conventions in the particular historical and cultural environment of the author—and that therefore translations or commentaries are necessary to make the writing intelligible to a modern reader. Third, “hermeneutic circle” scholars argue that texts have no objective meaning. Rather, a person’s subjective …
Hearing The States, Anthony Johnstone
Hearing The States, Anthony Johnstone
Pepperdine Law Review
The 2016 Presidential and Senate elections raise the possibility that a conservative, life-tenured Supreme Court will preside for years over a politically dynamic majority. This threatens to weaken the public’s already fragile confidence in the Court. By lowering the political stakes of both national elections and its own decisions, federalism may enable the Court to defuse some of the most explosive controversies it hears. Federalism offers a second-best solution, even if neither conservatives nor liberals can impose a national political agenda. However, principled federalism arguments are tricky. They are structural, more prudential than legal or empirical. Regardless of ideology, a …
Eight Justices Are Enough: A Proposal To Improve The United States Supreme Court, Eric J. Segall
Eight Justices Are Enough: A Proposal To Improve The United States Supreme Court, Eric J. Segall
Pepperdine Law Review
Over the last twenty-five years, some of the most significant Supreme Court decisions involving issues of national significance like abortion, affirmative action, and voting rights were five-to-four decisions. In February 2016, the death of Justice Antonin Scalia turned the nine-Justice court into an eight-Justice court, comprised of four liberal and four conservative Justices, for the first time in our nation’s history. This article proposes that an evenly divided court consisting of eight Justices is the ideal Supreme Court composition. Although the other two branches of government have evolved over the years, the Supreme Court has undergone virtually no significant changes. …
Justice As Fair Division, Ian Bartrum, Kathryn Nyman, Peter Otto
Justice As Fair Division, Ian Bartrum, Kathryn Nyman, Peter Otto
Pepperdine Law Review
The current hyperpoliticization of the Court grows out of a feedback loop between politicized appointments and politicized decision-making. This Article suggests a change in the internal procedures by which the Court hears and decides particular cases. A three-Justice panel hears and decides each case. Appeal to an en banc sitting of the entire Court would require a unanimous vote of all non-recused Justices. This Article explores several possible approaches in selecting the three-Justice panel. This Article proposes that applying a fair division scheme to the Court’s decision-making process might act to reverse this loop and work to depoliticize the Court …
How The Prohibition On "Under-Ruling" Distorts The Judicial Function (And What To Do About It), A. Christopher Bryant, Kimberly Breedon
How The Prohibition On "Under-Ruling" Distorts The Judicial Function (And What To Do About It), A. Christopher Bryant, Kimberly Breedon
Pepperdine Law Review
Lower courts face a dilemma when forced to choose between older Supreme Court precedent that directly controls the present legal dispute and an intervening Supreme Court ruling that relies on rationale which erodes or undermines the rationale of the direct precedent. Nearly thirty years ago, the Supreme Court announced a rule requiring lower courts to follow the older precedent and disregard any inconsistency resulting from intervening rulings, effectively barring lower courts from “under-ruling” the older Supreme Court precedent. This prohibition on “under-ruling,” here referred to as the “Agostini Rule,” reflects a departure from the core rule-of-law values requiring similar cases …
The Pirate’S Code: Constitutional Conventions In U.S. Constitutional Law, Mark Tushnet
The Pirate’S Code: Constitutional Conventions In U.S. Constitutional Law, Mark Tushnet
Pepperdine Law Review
A convention is a practice not memorialized in a formal rule but regularly engaged in out of a sense of obligation, where the sense of obligation arises from the view that adhering to the practice serves valuable goals of institutional organization and the public good. Constitutional conventions are important in making it possible for the national government to achieve the goals set out in the Preamble. Over the past twenty years or so, however, such conventions have eroded. This article addresses the role and importance of constitutional conventions in the United States, arguing that conventions’ erosion has been accompanied by …
Economic Protectionism: Irrationally Constitutional, Joshua Park
Economic Protectionism: Irrationally Constitutional, Joshua Park
Pepperdine Law Review
The Constitution is built on the principle that all citizens are created equal. Naturally, we believe that no law should be passed solely for the sake of benefiting one group over another. Yet, governments continue to pass economic regulations that have no purpose other than maintaining wealth within a specific group, and the judiciary continues to uphold such regulations. While the judiciary purports to uphold challenged legislation only if it passes “rational basis review,” the term “review” is a misnomer because the analysis has essentially become automatic deference. Under the judiciary’s modern treatment of the Equal Protection Clause, successfully challenging …
The Unintended Consequences Of California Proposition 47: Reducing Law Enforcement’S Ability To Solve Serious, Violent Crimes, Shelby Kail
Pepperdine Law Review
For many years, DNA databases have helped solve countless serious, violent crimes by connecting low-level offenders to unsolved crimes. Because the passage of Proposition 47 reduced several low-level crimes to misdemeanors, which do not qualify for DNA sample collection, Proposition 47 has severely limited law enforcement’s ability to solve serious, violent crimes through California’s DNA database and reliable DNA evidence. This powerful law enforcement tool must be preserved to prevent additional crimes from being committed, to exonerate the innocent, and to provide victims with closure through conviction of their assailants or offenders. Proposition 47’s unintended consequences have led to devastating …
A Diverse Student Body Without Student Bodies?: Online Classrooms And Affirmative Action, Ryan H. Nelson
A Diverse Student Body Without Student Bodies?: Online Classrooms And Affirmative Action, Ryan H. Nelson
Pepperdine Law Review
America’s public universities engage students in myriad classroom environments that range from traditional, entirely-in-person classroom environments to entirely-online, virtual classrooms, with every shade of grey in between. These varied learning environments pose a fascinating question with respect to the ways such universities use affirmative action in admissions. In Grutter v. Bollinger, the United States Supreme Court held that “student body diversity is a compelling state interest that can justify the use of race in university admissions.” Indeed, student body diversity remains one of the few “compelling interests” that the Court has held satisfies the constitutional imperative that the “government may …
The Outer Limits: Imsi-Catchers, Technology, And The Future Of The Fourth Amendment, Ryan C. Chapman
The Outer Limits: Imsi-Catchers, Technology, And The Future Of The Fourth Amendment, Ryan C. Chapman
Pepperdine Law Review
Recent advances in technology are posing new challenges for a legal system based on decades-old precedent. Nowhere is this more apparent than in law enforcement’s warrantless use of IMSI Catchers. These devices mimic a cell phone tower, and when the device is activated, cell phones will naturally connect to them. Law enforcement officers can use those intercepted cell phone signals to track a suspect’s movements in real time with startling accuracy. Scholarly commentary on these devices has largely concluded that their use requires a warrant. This Comment engages in a close examination of Fourth Amendment precedent and argues that, as …
The Vice Presidency In The Twenty-First Century, Jody C. Baumgartner
The Vice Presidency In The Twenty-First Century, Jody C. Baumgartner
Pepperdine Law Review
The vice presidency has undergone almost revolutionary change since its inception 227 years ago. Conceived as a convenient solution to a problem created by the Electoral College, the Vice President has only two constitutional functions—to serve as a successor to the President and as the President of the Senate. However, over the past sixty years, vice presidents have become increasingly part of and integral to American governance, and the last three (Al Gore, Dick Cheney, and Joe Biden) have been exceptionally active executive actors. What was once an all-but forgotten office is now an essential part of a president’s administration. …
The Vice President-More Than An Afterthought?, Richard B. Cheney, Edwin Meese Iii, Douglas W. Kmiec
The Vice President-More Than An Afterthought?, Richard B. Cheney, Edwin Meese Iii, Douglas W. Kmiec
Pepperdine Law Review
A round-table discussion among former U.S. Vice President Richard B. Cheney, Caruso Family Professor of Law and retired U.S. Ambassador Douglas Kmiec, and former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese III considered the practical implications of conceiving the Vice President as a legislative officer, an executive officer, or both. It was noted that until the second half of the twentieth century, the Office of the Vice President was conceived as legislative. Funding for the Office appeared in budget lines relating to Congress and physically, the Vice President’s office was in the Capitol. Beginning with Walter Mondale’s service as Vice President, presidents …
A Constitutional Afterthought: The Origins Of The Vice Presidency, 1787 To 1804, Edward J. Larson
A Constitutional Afterthought: The Origins Of The Vice Presidency, 1787 To 1804, Edward J. Larson
Pepperdine Law Review
At the origins of the office, even though the Vice President was, as its first occupant John Adams declared, “only one breath” away from the presidency, the Office of the Vice President was an afterthought of the Constitutional Convention. Never discussed during the first three months of the four-month long Convention, the Committee of Eleven introduced the vice presidency as a byproduct of how it resolved to fix the presidential selection process. Under this process, the Electoral College emerged, with each state assigned the same number of electors as its members in the House of Representatives and Senate. Each elector …
Government Identity Speech Programs: Understanding And Applying The New Walker Test, Leslie Gielow Jacobs
Government Identity Speech Programs: Understanding And Applying The New Walker Test, Leslie Gielow Jacobs
Pepperdine Law Review
In Walker v. Texas Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans, Inc., the Court extended its previous holding in Pleasant Grove City, Utah v. Summum, that a city’s donated park monuments were government speech, to the privately proposed designs that Texas accepts and stamps onto its specialty license plates. The placement of the program into the new doctrinal category is significant because the selection criteria for government–private speech combinations that produce government speech are “exempt from First Amendment scrutiny.” By contrast, when the government selects private speakers to participate in a private speech forum, its criteria must be reasonable in light of …
Protecting America’S Children: Why An Executive Order Banning Juvenile Solitary Confinement Is Not Enough, Carina Muir
Protecting America’S Children: Why An Executive Order Banning Juvenile Solitary Confinement Is Not Enough, Carina Muir
Pepperdine Law Review
Despite its devastating psychological, physical, and developmental effects on juveniles, solitary confinement is used in juvenile correctional facilities across the United States. This Comment posits that such treatment violates the Eighth Amendment’s Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause, the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. It likewise argues that that President Obama’s recent Executive Order banning juvenile solitary confinement is simply not a powerful enough remedy and discusses why it must be paired with Congressional legislation or Supreme Court jurisprudence if it is to …
Ending Perpetual War? Constitutional War Termination Powers And The Conflict Against Al Qaeda, David A. Simon
Ending Perpetual War? Constitutional War Termination Powers And The Conflict Against Al Qaeda, David A. Simon
Pepperdine Law Review
This Article presents a framework for interpreting the constitutional war termination powers of Congress and the President and applies this framework to questions involving how and when the war against Al Qaeda and associated forces could end. Although constitutional theory and practice suggest the validity of congressional actions to initiate war, the issue of Congress’s constitutional role in ending war has received little attention in scholarly debates. Theoretically, this Article contends that terminating war without meaningful cooperation between the President and Congress generates tension with the principle of the separation of powers underpinning the U.S. constitutional system, with the Framers’ …
The Likely Impact Of National Federation On Commerce Clause Jurisprudence, Robert J. Pushaw Jr., Grant S. Nelson
The Likely Impact Of National Federation On Commerce Clause Jurisprudence, Robert J. Pushaw Jr., Grant S. Nelson
Pepperdine Law Review
In National Federation of Independent Businesses v. Sebelius, the Supreme Court exhaustively analyzed Congress’s constitutional power to enact the watershed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA or “Obamacare”). The ACA imposes a “shared responsibility requirement,” popularly known as the “Individual Mandate” (IM), which forces Americans to buy medical insurance or pay a “penalty.” The ACA’s text and legislative history, as well as the public defenses of it by President Obama and his supporters, consistently described the IM as a valid exercise of Congress’s power “[t]o regulate Commerce . . . among the several States.” This reliance on the Commerce …
Separation Of Powers Doctrine On The Modern Supreme Court And Four Doctrinal Approaches To Judicial Decision-Making, R. Randall Kelso
Separation Of Powers Doctrine On The Modern Supreme Court And Four Doctrinal Approaches To Judicial Decision-Making, R. Randall Kelso
Pepperdine Law Review
No abstract provided.
Disentangling Symmetries: Speech, Association, Parenthood, Laurence H. Tribe
Disentangling Symmetries: Speech, Association, Parenthood, Laurence H. Tribe
Pepperdine Law Review
No abstract provided.
The Supreme Court's Most Extraordinary Term - Introduction, Douglas W. Kmiec
The Supreme Court's Most Extraordinary Term - Introduction, Douglas W. Kmiec
Pepperdine Law Review
No abstract provided.
Hypothetical Jurisdiction And Interjurisdictional Preclusion: A "Comity" Of Errors, Ely Todd Chayet
Hypothetical Jurisdiction And Interjurisdictional Preclusion: A "Comity" Of Errors, Ely Todd Chayet
Pepperdine Law Review
No abstract provided.