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Full-Text Articles in Civil Rights and Discrimination
Windsor Beyond Marriage: Due Process, Equality & Undocumented Immigration, Anthony O'Rourke
Windsor Beyond Marriage: Due Process, Equality & Undocumented Immigration, Anthony O'Rourke
William & Mary Law Review
The Supreme Court’s recent decision in United States v. Windsor, invalidating part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, presents a significant interpretive challenge. Early commentators have criticized the majority opinion’s lack of analytical rigor, and expressed doubt that Windsor can serve as a meaningful precedent with respect to constitutional questions outside the area of same-sex marriage. This Article offers a more rehabilitative reading of Windsor and shows how the decision can be used to analyze a significant constitutional question concerning the use of state criminal procedure to regulate immigration.
From Windsor’s holding, the Article distills two concrete doctrinal propositions …
Is Guilt Dispositive? Federal Habeas After Martinez, Justin F. Marceau
Is Guilt Dispositive? Federal Habeas After Martinez, Justin F. Marceau
William & Mary Law Review
Federal habeas review of criminal convictions is not supposed to be a second opportunity to adjudge guilt. Oliver Wendell Holmes, among others, has said that the sole question on federal habeas is whether the prisoner’s constitutional rights were violated. By the early 1970s, however, scholars criticized this rights-based view of habeas and sounded the alarm that postconviction review had become too far removed from questions of innocence. Most famously, in 1970 Judge Friendly criticized the breadth of habeas corpus by posing a single question: Is innocence irrelevant? In his view habeas review that focused exclusively on questions of rights in …
Presidential Constitutionalism And Civil Rights, Joseph Landau
Presidential Constitutionalism And Civil Rights, Joseph Landau
William & Mary Law Review
As the judicial and legislative branches have taken a more passive approach to civil rights enforcement, the President’s exercise of independent, extrajudicial constitutional judgment has become increasingly important. Modern U.S. presidents have advanced constitutional interpretations on matters of race, gender, HIV-status, self-incrimination, reproductive liberty, and gun rights, and President Obama has been especially active in promoting the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons—most famously by refusing to defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Commentators have criticized the President’s refusal to defend DOMA from numerous perspectives but have not considered how the President’s DOMA policy fits within …