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Full-Text Articles in Constitutional Law
The High Price Of Poverty: A Study Of How The Majority Of Current Court System Procedures For Collecting Court Costs And Fees, As Well As Fines, Have Failed To Adhere To Established Precedent And The Constitutional Guarantees They Advocate., Trevor J. Calligan
Trevor J Calligan
No abstract provided.
Free Expression, In-Group Bias, And The Court's Conservatives: A Critique Of The Epstein-Parker-Segal Study, Todd E. Pettys
Free Expression, In-Group Bias, And The Court's Conservatives: A Critique Of The Epstein-Parker-Segal Study, Todd E. Pettys
Todd E. Pettys
In a recent, widely publicized study, a prestigious team of political scientists concluded that there is strong evidence of ideological in-group bias among the Supreme Court’s members in First Amendment free-expression cases, with the current four most conservative justices being the Roberts Court’s worst offenders. Beneath the surface of the authors’ conclusions, however, one finds a surprisingly sizable combination of coding errors, superficial case readings, and questionable judgments about litigants’ ideological affiliations. Many of those problems likely flow either from shortcomings that reportedly afflict the Supreme Court Database (the data set that nearly always provides the starting point for empirical …
Balancing The Scales: Adhuc Sub Judice Li Est Or Trial By Media, Casey J. Cooper
Balancing The Scales: Adhuc Sub Judice Li Est Or Trial By Media, Casey J. Cooper
Casey J Cooper
The right to freedom of expression and free press is recognized under almost all major human rights instruments and domestic legal systems—common and civil—in the world. However, what do you do when a fundamental right conflicts with another equally fundamental right, like the right to a fair trial? In the United States, the freedom of speech, encompassing the freedom of the press, goes nearly unfettered: the case is not the same for other common law countries. In light of cultural and historic facts, institutional factors, modern realities, and case-law, this Article contends that current American jurisprudence does not take into …
Suspect Classification And Its Discontents, Susannah W. Pollvogt
Suspect Classification And Its Discontents, Susannah W. Pollvogt
Susannah W Pollvogt
Suspect classification analysis and the associated tiers of scrutiny framework are the primary doctrinal features of contemporary equal protection jurisprudence. How plaintiffs fare under these twin doctrines determines the ultimate fate of their equal protection claims. But neither doctrine finds firm footing in precedent or theory. Rather, a close examination of the United States Supreme Court’s equal protection jurisprudence reveals these doctrines as historically contingent and lacking in any principled justification. But rather than disregard the contributions of these cases altogether, this Article mines that same body of law not for the discrete doctrinal mechanisms developed in each case, but …
Neoliberalism And The Law: How Historical Materialism Can Illuminate Recent Governmental And Judicial Decision Making, Justin Schwartz
Neoliberalism And The Law: How Historical Materialism Can Illuminate Recent Governmental And Judicial Decision Making, Justin Schwartz
Justin Schwartz
Neoliberalism can be understood as the deregulation of the economy from political control by deliberate action or inaction of the state. As such it is both constituted by the law and deeply affects it. I show how the methods of historical materialism can illuminate this phenomenon in all three branches of the the U.S. government. Considering the example the global financial crisis of 2007-08 that began with the housing bubble developing from trade in unregulated and overvalued mortgage backed securities, I show how the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which established a firewall between commercial and investment banking, allowed this …
Judicial Independence In Post-Conflict Iraq: Establishing The Rule Of Law In An Islamic Constitutional Democracy, David Pimentel, Brian Anderson
Judicial Independence In Post-Conflict Iraq: Establishing The Rule Of Law In An Islamic Constitutional Democracy, David Pimentel, Brian Anderson
David Pimentel
Contemporary Iraq is facing the full range of challenges that come with post-conflict transitional justice, including “paving the road toward peace and reconciliation” and establishing a functional state, characterized by the Rule of Law. Prospects for the establishment of an independent judiciary in Iraq are obstructed by a number of factors, including (1) how to apply the explicit recognition of the law of Islam in the Iraqi Constitution, (2) the inability to pass legislation on the Federal Courts of Iraq, leaving several provisions of the Iraqi Constitution unimplemented, and other critical elements of judicial independence unaddressed, including provisions for tenure, …
Not Only ‘Who Decides’: The Rhetoric Of Conflicts Over Judicial Appointments, Fernando Muñoz
Not Only ‘Who Decides’: The Rhetoric Of Conflicts Over Judicial Appointments, Fernando Muñoz
Fernando Muñoz
This article looks at the conflicts surrounding the appointment of constitutional judges, focusing not so much on the characteristics of particular candidates but on the debates that they give rise to. Who are the actors in these conflicts? What arguments do they employ? What are their agendas? What is at stake in these disputes?
University Of Baltimore Symposium Report: Debut Of “The Matthew Fogg Symposia On The Vitality Of Stare Decisis In America”, Zena D. Crenshaw-Logal
University Of Baltimore Symposium Report: Debut Of “The Matthew Fogg Symposia On The Vitality Of Stare Decisis In America”, Zena D. Crenshaw-Logal
Zena Denise Crenshaw-Logal
On the first of each two day symposium of the Fogg symposia, lawyers representing NGOs in the civil rights, judicial reform, and whistleblower advocacy fields are to share relevant work of featured legal scholars in lay terms; relate the underlying principles to real life cases; and propose appropriate reform efforts. Four (4) of the scholars spend the next day relating their featured articles to views on the vitality of stare decisis. Specifically, the combined panels of public interest attorneys and law professors consider whether compliance with the doctrine is reasonably assured in America given the: 1. considerable discretion vested in …
Clear As Mud: How The Uncertain Precedential Status Of Unpublished Opinions Muddles Qualified Immunity Determinations, David R. Cleveland
Clear As Mud: How The Uncertain Precedential Status Of Unpublished Opinions Muddles Qualified Immunity Determinations, David R. Cleveland
David R. Cleveland
While unpublished opinions are now freely citeable under Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 32.1, their precedential value remains uncertain. This ambiguity muddles the already unclear law surrounding qualified immunity and denies courts valuable precedents for making fair and consistent judgments on these critical civil rights issues. When faced with a claim that they have violated a person’s civil rights, government officials typically claim qualified immunity. The test is whether they have violated “clearly established law.” Unfortunately, the federal circuits differ on whether unpublished opinions may be used in determining clearly established law. This article, Clear as Mud: How the Uncertain …
Of Metaphor, Metonymy, And Corporate Money: Rhetorical Choices In Supreme Court Decisions On Campaign Finance Regulation, Linda L. Berger
Of Metaphor, Metonymy, And Corporate Money: Rhetorical Choices In Supreme Court Decisions On Campaign Finance Regulation, Linda L. Berger
Linda L. Berger
No abstract provided.