Law Commons^™

Unconstitutional Animus, Susannah W. Pollvogt

Susannah W Pollvogt

It is well established that animus can never constitute a legitimate state interest for purposes of equal protection analysis. But neither precedent nor scholarship has stated conclusively what exactly animus is, or what counts as evidence of animus in any given case. The United States Supreme Court has explicitly addressed the question of animus only a handful of times, and these cases do not appear to be particularly congruent with one another, at least on the surface. Further, while scholars have discussed animus in terms of moral philosophy, no one has attempted to articulate a unified theory of animus as …

Judicial Review And Deliberative Politics. A Tension In Need Of Analysis., Donald E. Bello Hutt

Donald E. Bello Hutt

Champions of judicial review of legislation have defended this institution even before John Marshall decided Marbury v. Madison in 1803. Nevertheless, those defenses have to face with several difficulties, both practical and abstract. The aim of this paper is to analyze those difficulties and the context in which the defenses have been successful. We shall discuss the origins of judicial review in the work of James Iredell, Alexander Hamilton and John Marshall in order to introduce not only the first defenses of judicial review, but to fix the political context and dominant constitutional philosophy at their time: departmentalism and popular …

Opting Out Of The Procedural Morass: A Solution To The Class Arbitration Problem, Emanwel J. Turnbull

Emanwel J Turnbull

American class actions are internationally regarded as a procedural form to avoid and widely criticized in the United States. They have been narrowed and restricted by U.S. statutes and case law. Plaintiffs' lawyers in consumer class actions are portrayed as greedy and fraudulent, while businesses are increasingly acting to avoid class actions through mandatory pre-dispute arbitration clauses. Even class arbitration is criticized as leading to a “procedural morass.” This Article proposes that parties and arbitral fora opt out of the American procedural morass (and the attendant long-running disputes about American class actions) by adopting an English procedural rule for aggregation. …

Defying Gravity: The Development Of Standards By States In The International Prosecution Of International Atrocity Crimes, Matthew H. Charity

Matthew H Charity

The number of nations that have signed and ratified the Rome Treaty of the International Criminal Court continues to expand, but the number of cases prosecuted remains fairly small. One issue that defies resolution is the place of complementarity in the post-conflict jurisdictional decisions of the I.C.C. and national tribunals. Although the Rome Statute crystallizes definitions of core international crimes, the interpretation of processes leaving jurisdiction with the nation or allowing jurisdiction to the I.C.C. continues to lack structure.

One step that some states have taken in implementing legislation and processes in support of jurisdiction over I.C.C. core crimes is …

Can The Supreme Court Be Fixed? Lessons From Judicial Activism In First Amendment And Sherman Act Jurisprudence, Warren S. Grimes

Warren S Grimes

The Supreme Court has become an unelected superlegislature that, instead of narrowly deciding cases or controversies, tends to issue sweeping policy decisions that deprive democratic institutions at federal, state and local levels of their appropriate democratic role. Part I of this paper describes content-neutral measures of judicial activism, most repeatedly acknowledged by the Court. Part II addresses specific examples of judicial activism in Supreme Court decisions involving the Sherman Act and First Amendment election law cases. Part III concludes by urging a public debate on possible reforms of the Court, some easily implemented, others more involved, that could constrain judicial …

Can The Supreme Court Be Fixed? Lessons From Judicial Activism In First Amendment And Sherman Act Cases, Warren S. Grimes

Warren S Grimes

The Court has strayed from its role as a decider of cases or controversies to become an unelected policy board that undermines democratic institutions at the federal, state, and local levels. Part I of this paper describes content-neutral measures of judicial activism, most repeatedly acknowledged by the Court. Part II addresses specific examples of judicial activism in Supreme Court decisions involving the Sherman Act and First Amendment election law cases. Part III concludes by urging a public debate on possible reforms of the Court, some easily implemented, others more involved, that could constrain judicial activism and restore the Court’s primary …

Can The Supreme Court Be Fixed? Lessons From Judicial Activism In First Amendment And Sherman Act Jurisprudence, Warren S. Grimes

Warren S Grimes

The paper addresses judicial activism in Supreme Court decisions. It defines judicial activism as decisions that use statutory or constitutional provisions to reach broad decisions that make it difficult or impossible for democratically elected officials in local, state or federal government to implement a desired policy. It offers six content-neutral tests for measuring judicial activism and applies them to key Supreme Court decisions involving First Amendment election law and the Sherman Antitrust Act. A final section of the paper reviews possible reform options aimed at restoring the Court to a role as a traditional judicial tribunal that decides cases or …

Can The Supreme Court Be Fixed? Lessons From Judicial Activism In First Amendment And Sherman Act Jurisprudence, Warren S. Grimes

Warren S Grimes

The paper addresses judicial activism in Supreme Court decisions. It defines judicial activism as decisions that use statutory or constitutional provisions to reach broad decisions that make it difficult or impossible for democratically elected officials in local, state or federal government to implement a desired policy. It offers six content-neutral tests for measuring judicial activism and applies them to key Supreme Court decisions involving First Amendment election law and the Sherman Antitrust Act. A final section of the paper reviews possible reform options aimed at restoring the Court to a role as a traditional judicial tribunal that decides cases or …

Death To Immunity From Service Of Process Doctrine!, John Martinez

John Martinez

The immunity from service of process doctrine provides that a nonresident cannot be served while going to, attending, and leaving an ongoing judicial proceeding. However, the doctrine evolved while "tag" jurisdiction was in vogue, whereby mere presence in the forum state sufficed, and the nonresident only had to be "tagged" with service to confer jurisdiction on the forum state. This article suggests that modern "minimum contacts" territorial jurisdiction theory more adequately addresses the concerns of efficiency of judicial proceedings and fairness to nonresidents than the immunity from service of process doctrine. The article proposes that the immunity from service of …

Evaluating Contracts For Customized Litigation By The Norms Underlying Civil Procedure, Colter Paulson

Colter Paulson

Recent scholarship on the potential for contractual modifications of litigation procedure focuses on contractual theories of enforcement, with constraints supplied by public policy. But this approach ignores the fact that such contracts purport to bind a third-party, the court, that did not agree to change its procedures. Nor can contractual theories of enforcement fully account for the societal and institutional interests in existing procedures. These problems are resolved, however, when contractual procedures are seen primarily as procedures, rather than as contracts, and are evaluated in light of the norms underlying civil procedure.

These norms are found both in the explicit …

Litigation-Fostered Bureaucratic Autonomy: Administrative Law Against Political Control, Daniel E. Walters

Daniel E Walters

No abstract provided.

The Constitutional Procedural Principle: A Normative Morphology For Gauging Threats To Judicial Independence, Tara Price

Tara Price

For more than two hundred years, judicial review has served as the foundation of the American judicial branch. And yet, more than two centuries later, scholars and political figures continue to debate its proper place in American government. Recently, Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich waded into this debate, calling for members of Congress and the President to take stronger actions to check and balance what he termed “judicial supremacy.” Cries for a weakened judicial branch and insistence on the importance of reining in activist judges are becoming commonplace throughout American history.

As Gingrich and many before him have realized, the President …

Death To Immunity From Service Of Process Doctrine!, John Martinez

John Martinez

Death to Immunity From Service of Process Doctrine!

By John Martinez, Professor of Law

S.J. Quinney College of Law

at the University of Utah

ABSTRACT

The immunity from service of process doctrine provides that a nonresident cannot be served while going to, attending, and leaving an ongoing judicial proceeding. However, the doctrine evolved while "tag" jurisdiction was in vogue, whereby mere presence in the forum state sufficed, and the nonresident only had to be "tagged" with service to confer jurisdiction on the forum state. This article suggests that modern "minimum contacts" territorial jurisdiction theory more adequately addresses the concerns of …

Partisanship, Politics, And The Voting Rights Act: The Curious Case Of U.S. V. Ike Brown, Donald E. Campbell

Donald E. Campbell

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 has been described as the “crown jewel” of the civil rights movement. The success of the Act to remove official obstacles to voting is undeniable, and the influx of African American voters into the political system changed the nature of politics in the United States at all levels. The political and cultural context has changed so greatly that in 2006, it was politically possible for the Justice Department of President George W. Bush to bring the first claim against an African American for violating the voting rights of white citizens. This article seeks to …

Vanishing Point: Alzheimer's Disease And Its Challenges To The Federal Rules Of Evidence, Ann Murphy

Ann Murphy

ABSTRACT Vanishing Point: Alzheimer’s Disease and Its Challenges to the Federal Rules of Evidence As of 2012, an estimated 5.4 million Americans suffer from Alzheimer’s disease (AD). By the year 2030, due to the overall aging of our population, the number of individuals with AD is expected to increase dramatically. Courts will consequently confront evidentiary issues involving parties, defendants, witnesses, and victims who are suffering from various stages of the disease. Testimony of course involves descriptions of events that happened in the past and thus frequently involves memory. This article explores three specific areas of evidence that will be affected …

Constitutional Newspeak: Learning To Love The Affordable Care Act Decision, A. Christopher Bryant

Aaron Christopher Bryant

Constitutional Newspeak: Learning to Love the Affordable Care Act Decision In his classic dystopian novel, 1984, George Orwell imagines a world in which language is regularly contorted to mean its opposite – as in the waging of war by the Ministry of Peace and infliction of torture by the Ministry of Love. A core claim of Orwell’s was that such abuse of language – which in his novel he labeled “Newspeak” -- would ultimately channel thought. Whatever the merits of this claim as a theory of linguistics, constitutional developments too recent to be called history demonstrate that as a practical …

The Mandatory Meaning Of Miller, William W. Berry Iii

William W Berry III

In June 2012, the United States Supreme Court held in Miller v. Alabama that the imposition of mandatory life-without-parole sentences on juveniles violated the Eighth Amendment’s ban on “cruel and unusual” punishment. This case continued the Supreme Court’s slow but steady expansion of the scope of the Eighth Amendment over the past decade. In light of the Court’s decision in Miller to preclude mandatory sentences of life without parole for juveniles, this article explores the possibility of further expansion of the Eighth Amendment to proscribe other kinds of mandatory sentences. Applying the approach of the Court in Miller to other …

The Ideological Divide: Conflict And The Supreme Court’S Certiorari Decision, Emily Grant, Scott A. Hendrickson, Michael S. Lynch

Emily Grant

This Article bridges a gap in existing literature by evaluating, from an empirical perspective, the impact of conflict among the lower courts on the Supreme Court’s decision to grant or deny a petition for a writ of certiorari. Specifically, this Article looks at the political ideology of the lower courts involved in a split of authority on federal law and compares those positions to the political ideology of the Supreme Court itself. This Article concludes that the ideological content of lower court opinions in a conflict case impacts the Supreme Court’s certiorari decisions in a statistically significant way, and thus …

The Racial Injustice Of The War On Drugs: The Sentencing Laws And Police Practices Responsible For The Injustice And A Policy Prescription For A New Way Forward, Brad R. Schlesinger

Brad R Schlesinger

The War on Drugs is a discriminatory policy that results in blacks being overrepresented as those arrested and imprisoned for drug crimes – creating incalculable damages to black communities and families. The culprits are sentencing laws and law enforcement tactics that cannot be considered race-neutral as these policies overwhelmingly affect blacks. While attempts to ameliorate these disparities through sentencing reform has had mild successes, these prescriptions are limited, failing to address the underlying problem: the way the drug war is policed. I contend that legalizing and regulating drugs is necessary to reverse the injustice and blatant discrimination of the drug …

The Racial Injustice Of The War On Drugs: The Sentencing Laws And Police Practices Responsible For The Injustice And A Policy Prescription For A New Way Forward, Brad R. Schlesinger

Brad R Schlesinger

The War on Drugs is a discriminatory policy that results in blacks being overrepresented as those arrested and imprisoned for drug crimes – creating incalculable damages to black communities and families. The culprits are sentencing laws and law enforcement tactics that cannot be considered race-neutral as these policies overwhelmingly affect blacks. While attempts to ameliorate these disparities through sentencing reform has had mild successes, these prescriptions are limited, failing to address the underlying problem: the way the drug war is policed. I contend that legalizing and regulating drugs is necessary to reverse the injustice and blatant discrimination of the drug …

The Racial Injustice Of The War On Drugs: The Sentencing Laws And Police Practices Responsible For The Injustice And A Policy Prescription For A New Way Forward, Brad R. Schlesinger

Brad R Schlesinger

The War on Drugs is a discriminatory policy that results in blacks being overrepresented as those arrested and imprisoned for drug crimes – creating incalculable damages to black communities and families. The culprits are sentencing laws and law enforcement tactics that cannot be considered race-neutral as these policies overwhelmingly affect blacks. While attempts to ameliorate these disparities through sentencing reform has had mild successes, these prescriptions are limited, failing to address the underlying problem: the way the drug war is policed. I contend that legalizing and regulating drugs is necessary to reverse the injustice and blatant discrimination of the drug …

Textualism And Obstacle Preemption, John D. Ohlendorf

John D Ohlendorf

Commentators, both on the bench and in the academy, have perceived an inconsistency between the Supreme Court’s trend, in recent decades, towards an increasingly formalist approach to statutory interpretation and the Court’s continued willingness to find state laws preempted as “obstacles to the accomplishment and execution of the full purposes and objectives of Congress,” — so-called “obstacle preemption.” This Article argues that by giving the meaning contextually implied in a statutory text ordinary, operative legal force, we can justify most of the current scope of obstacle preemption based solely on theoretical moves textualism already is committed to making.

The Article …

Hope, Fear And Loathing, And The Post-Sebelius Disequilibrium: Assessing The Relationship Between Parties, Congress, And Courts In Tea Party America, Bruce Peabody

Bruce Peabody

The article examines recent website commentary by members of the U.S. House on the judiciary, court cases, and judicial power. We consider member websites both before and after the just-completed 2011 Supreme Court term. With this unique data at our disposal, we argue that three features of today’s political environment—the rise of the Tea Party, instability in traditional party allegiances to courts, and low voter ratings of the legislature’s institutional performance—have combined to create a moment of disequilibrium when it comes to Congress’s public assessments of the judiciary. We sketch a picture of institutional, partisan, and ideological engagement with the …

The Rules Of Engagement, David D. Butler

David D. Butler

This 1,650 word essay examines how law influences life and life influences the law in the context of a criminal, jury trial.

Monopolies And The Constitution: A History Of Crony Capitalism, Steven G. Calabresi

Steven G Calabresi

This article explores the right of the people to be free from government granted monopolies or from what we would today call “Crony Capitalism.” We trace the constitutional history of this right from Tudor England down to present day state and federal constitutional law. We begin with Darcy v. Allen (also known as the Case of Monopolies decided in 1603) and the Statute of Monopolies of 1624, both of which prohibited English Kings and Queens from granting monopolies. We then show how the American colonists relied on English rights to be free from government granted monopolies during the Revolutionary War …

Changed Circumstances: The Federal Rules Of Civil Procedure And The Future Of Institutional Reform Litigation After Horne V. Flores, Catherine Y. Kim

Catherine Y Kim

Since Brown v. Board of Education, the federal courts have played an expansive role in institutional reform litigation to restructure state and local government institutions such as public school systems, prisons, law enforcement agencies, and health care facilities accused of violating individual rights. The 2009 decision in Horne v. Flores, in which a five-four majority of the Supreme Court employed a novel interpretation of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to substantially enlarge government-defendants’ ability to terminate ongoing judicial oversight in these types of cases, threatens the future viability of this model of social reform. The propriety of institutional reform …

Civil Rule 54(B); Seventy-Five And Ready For Retirement, Andrew S. Pollis

Andrew S Pollis

As we commemorate the diamond anniversary of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, this Article takes a critical look at one of the failed rules: Rule 54(b). Although many commentators have noted difficulties with Rule 54(b), this is the first to describe them comprehensively, analyze their root causes, and offer a workable alternative. When an order resolves a discrete claim in a multi-claim action, Rule 54(b) permits a district court to sever the order for immediate appeal by finding “no just reason for delay.” The rule was designed to ease the hardship on litigants who would otherwise have to await …

State Constitutional Prohibitions On Special Laws, Justin R. Long

Justin R Long

Since the nineteenth century, most states have had constitutional clauses prohibiting “special laws.” These clauses were ratified to protect the people of each state from domination by narrow economic elites, who would use their economic power to win grants of privilege from the state legislatures. To fight the corrupt favors garnered by private interests in this way, state constitutional drafters wrote clauses requiring their legislatures to pass only “general” laws that would apply equally to all members of the regulated class. For a brief period, these clauses were enforced in the courts—but more to protect economic elites than the democratic …

Burdens Of Proof And Qualified Immunity, Kenneth J. Duvall

Kenneth J Duvall

Despite the need to strike a proper balance between effective § 1983 suits to deter government misconduct and corresponding, robust defenses to deter frivolous suits, courts across the nation cannot agree on the fundamental questions of what the proper defenses to § 1983 actions are or how to allocate the burdens of proof in such litigation. This Article would remedy this situation, proposing an approach that offers both a single defense to § 1983 claims and a uniform allocation of the burdens of proof when that defense is raised. In Part I, this Article briefly explains the burdens of proof, …

Keeping The Inference In The Adverse Inference Instruction: Why Federal Courts Cannot—And Should Not—Give The Instruction Based On The Spoliator’S Negligence, William G. Lambert

William G. Lambert

The adverse inference instruction is one tool that a judge has to combat spoliation, the destruction of evidence. The instruction allows a jury to infer that a party destroyed evidence because that evidence was harmful to the party’s case. Traditionally, courts would give the instruction only when the spoliator acted with bad faith. Since the 1990s, however, some federal courts and many scholars have argued that a spoliator’s negligent destruction of evidence should suffice to allow courts to give an adverse inference instruction. As a result of this shift, the circuits are now split on the level of mental culpability …