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Full-Text Articles in Constitutional Law
October 16, 2009: Higher Law In The Public Square Meets The High School Cheerleader, Bruce Ledewitz
October 16, 2009: Higher Law In The Public Square Meets The High School Cheerleader, Bruce Ledewitz
Hallowed Secularism
Blog post, “Higher Law in the Public Square Meets the High School Cheerleader“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.
October 12, 2009: Steve Waldman Doesn't Get The Cross, Bruce Ledewitz
October 12, 2009: Steve Waldman Doesn't Get The Cross, Bruce Ledewitz
Hallowed Secularism
Blog post, “Steve Waldman Doesn't Get the Cross“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.
October 7, 2009: The Temptations Of Standing, Bruce Ledewitz
October 7, 2009: The Temptations Of Standing, Bruce Ledewitz
Hallowed Secularism
Blog post, “The Temptations of Standing“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.
October 2, 2009: Higher Law In The Public Square, Bruce Ledewitz
October 2, 2009: Higher Law In The Public Square, Bruce Ledewitz
Hallowed Secularism
Blog post, “Higher Law in the Public Square“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.
In Defense Of Ideology: A Principled Approach To The Supreme Court Confirmation Process, Lori A. Ringhand
In Defense Of Ideology: A Principled Approach To The Supreme Court Confirmation Process, Lori A. Ringhand
Scholarly Works
In this paper, Professor Ringhand offers a principled defense of an ideological approach to the Supreme Court justice confirmation process. In constructing her argument, she does three things. First, she explores how the insights provided by recent empirical legal scholarship have created a need to re-think the role of the Supreme Court and, consequently, the process by which we select Supreme Court justices. In doing so, Professor Ringhand explains how these insights have called into question much of our conventional constitutional narrative, and how this failure of the conventional narrative has in turn undermined traditional objections to an ideologically-based confirmation …
September 9, 2009: How Did Corporations Get Constitutional Rights?, Bruce Ledewitz
September 9, 2009: How Did Corporations Get Constitutional Rights?, Bruce Ledewitz
Hallowed Secularism
Blog post, “How Did Corporations Get Constitutional Rights?“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.
August 4, 2009: Posting The Declaration Of Independence In Public School Classrooms, Bruce Ledewitz
August 4, 2009: Posting The Declaration Of Independence In Public School Classrooms, Bruce Ledewitz
Hallowed Secularism
Blog post, “Posting the Declaration of Independence in Public School Classrooms“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.
July 30, 2009: Jesus Is Back In The Legislature, Thank God, Bruce Ledewitz
July 30, 2009: Jesus Is Back In The Legislature, Thank God, Bruce Ledewitz
Hallowed Secularism
Blog post, “Jesus is Back in the Legislature, Thank God“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.
July 19, 2009: Getting Jesus Out Of The Legislature, Bruce Ledewitz
July 19, 2009: Getting Jesus Out Of The Legislature, Bruce Ledewitz
Hallowed Secularism
Blog post, “Getting Jesus Out of the Legislature“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.
July 9, 2009: How Is The Constitution Interpreted?, Bruce Ledewitz
July 9, 2009: How Is The Constitution Interpreted?, Bruce Ledewitz
Hallowed Secularism
Blog post, “How is the Constitution Interpreted?“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.
Ink Blot Or Not: The Meaning Of Privileges And/Or Immunities, Richard Aynes
Ink Blot Or Not: The Meaning Of Privileges And/Or Immunities, Richard Aynes
Akron Law Faculty Publications
This article examines the meaning of the terms privileges and immunities as used in Article IV of the U.S. Constitution and the Fourteenth Amendment. It begins by tracing the American use of the terms to April 10, 1606 in the first Charter of Virginia. Building upon the work of other scholars and citing original documents, it concludes that these words has a well-established meaning as “rights” well before the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted. The article notes that in Justice Miller’s decision in the Slaughter-House Cases he refers to the privileges and immunities of Corfield v. Coryell as “those rights which …
May 27, 2009: Judge Sonia Sotomayor And Judicial Activism, Bruce Ledewitz
May 27, 2009: Judge Sonia Sotomayor And Judicial Activism, Bruce Ledewitz
Hallowed Secularism
Blog post, “Judge Sonia Sotomayor and Judicial Activism“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.
May 24, 2009: President Barack Obama’S Criteria For Justice Of The Supreme Court, Bruce Ledewitz
May 24, 2009: President Barack Obama’S Criteria For Justice Of The Supreme Court, Bruce Ledewitz
Hallowed Secularism
Blog post, “ President Barack Obama’s Criteria for Justice of the Supreme Court“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.
May 21, 2009: Tom Krattenmaker On The Rights Of Religious Students At High School Graduations, Bruce Ledewitz
May 21, 2009: Tom Krattenmaker On The Rights Of Religious Students At High School Graduations, Bruce Ledewitz
Hallowed Secularism
Blog post, “Tom Krattenmaker on the Rights of Religious Students at High School Graduations“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.
May 6, 2009: Judicial Pragmatism And Justice Souter's Replacement, Bruce Ledewitz
May 6, 2009: Judicial Pragmatism And Justice Souter's Replacement, Bruce Ledewitz
Hallowed Secularism
Blog post, “Judicial Pragmatism and Justice Souter's Replacement“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.
May 3, 2009: Justice Souter’S Replacement And The Future Of The Establishment Clause, Bruce Ledewitz
May 3, 2009: Justice Souter’S Replacement And The Future Of The Establishment Clause, Bruce Ledewitz
Hallowed Secularism
Blog post, “Justice Souter’s Replacement and the Future of the Establishment Clause“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.
April 16, 2009: What Can The Courts Do About Gay Marriage?, Bruce Ledewitz
April 16, 2009: What Can The Courts Do About Gay Marriage?, Bruce Ledewitz
Hallowed Secularism
Blog post, “What Can the Courts Do About Gay Marriage?“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.
April 2, 2009: The Secular Mind On The Huffington Post, Bruce Ledewitz
April 2, 2009: The Secular Mind On The Huffington Post, Bruce Ledewitz
Hallowed Secularism
Blog post, “The Secular Mind on the Huffington Post“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.
The Partially Prudential Doctrine Of Mootness, Matthew I. Hall
The Partially Prudential Doctrine Of Mootness, Matthew I. Hall
Scholarly Works
The conventional understanding of mootness doctrine is that it operates as a mandatory bar to federal court jurisdiction, derived from the "cases or controversies" clause of the United States Constitution, Article III. In two crucial respects, however, this Constitutional model - which was first adopted by the Supreme Court less than 45 years ago - fails to account for the manner in which courts actually address contentions of mootness. First, the commonly-applied exceptions to the mootness bar are not derived from the "cases or controversies" clause and cannot be reconciled with the Constitutional account of mootness. Second, courts regularly consider …
March 22, 2009: A Restatement Of The Establishment Clause, Bruce Ledewitz
March 22, 2009: A Restatement Of The Establishment Clause, Bruce Ledewitz
Hallowed Secularism
Blog post, “A Restatement of the Establishment Clause“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.
March 16, 2009: Proposition 8 And The Threat Of, And To, Religious Liberty, Bruce Ledewitz
March 16, 2009: Proposition 8 And The Threat Of, And To, Religious Liberty, Bruce Ledewitz
Hallowed Secularism
Blog post, “Proposition 8 and the Threat of, and to, Religious Liberty“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.
March 1, 2009: Imagine The Court Being Helpful, Bruce Ledewitz
March 1, 2009: Imagine The Court Being Helpful, Bruce Ledewitz
Hallowed Secularism
Blog post, “Imagine the Court Being Helpful“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.
January 22, 2009: Rick Warren's Prayer, Bruce Ledewitz
January 22, 2009: Rick Warren's Prayer, Bruce Ledewitz
Hallowed Secularism
Blog post, “Rick Warren's Prayer“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.
January 15, 2009: The Problem With Today's Church-State Jurisprudence, Bruce Ledewitz
January 15, 2009: The Problem With Today's Church-State Jurisprudence, Bruce Ledewitz
Hallowed Secularism
Blog post, “The Problem with Today's Church-State Jurisprudence“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.
January 9, 2009: So Help Me God?, Bruce Ledewitz
January 9, 2009: So Help Me God?, Bruce Ledewitz
Hallowed Secularism
Blog post, “So Help Me God?“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.
The Unexceptionalism Of Evolving Standards, Corinna Barrett Lain
The Unexceptionalism Of Evolving Standards, Corinna Barrett Lain
Law Faculty Publications
Conventional wisdom is that outside the Eighth Amendment, the Supreme Court does not engage in the sort of explicitly majoritarian state nose-counting for which the "evolving standards of decency" doctrine is famous. Yet this impression is simply inaccurate. Across a stunning variety of civil liberties contexts, the Court routinely-and explicitly--determines constitutional protection based on whether a majority of states agree with it. This Article examines the Supreme Court's reliance on the majority position of the states to identify and apply constitutional norms, and then turns to the qualifications, explanations, and implications of state polling as a larger doctrinal phenomenon. While …
The Unbearable Lightness Of Marriage In The Abortion Decisions Of The Supreme Court: Altered States In Constitutional Law, William W. Van Alstyne
The Unbearable Lightness Of Marriage In The Abortion Decisions Of The Supreme Court: Altered States In Constitutional Law, William W. Van Alstyne
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Categoricalism And Balancing In First And Second Amendment Analysis, Joseph Blocher
Categoricalism And Balancing In First And Second Amendment Analysis, Joseph Blocher
Faculty Scholarship
The least discussed element of District of Columbia v. Heller might ultimately be the most important: the battle between the majority and dissent over the use of categoricalism and balancing in the construction of constitutional doctrine. In Heller, Justice Scalia’s categoricalism essentially prevailed over Justice Breyer’s balancing approach. But as the opinion itself demonstrates, Second Amendment categoricalism raises extremely difficult and still-unanswered questions about how to draw and justify the lines between protected and unprotected “Arms,” people, and arms-bearing purposes. At least until balancing tests appear in Second Amendment doctrine—as they almost inevitably will—the future of the Amendment will depend …
Judicial Review, Local Values, And Pluralism, Richard W. Garnett
Judicial Review, Local Values, And Pluralism, Richard W. Garnett
Journal Articles
At the Federalist Society's 2008 National Student Symposium, a panel of scholars was asked to consider the question, does pervasive judicial review threaten to destroy local identity by homogenizing community norms? The answer to this question is yes, pervasive judicial review certainly does threaten local identity, because such review can homogenize[e] community norms, either by dragging them into conformity with national, constitutional standards or (more controversially) by subordinating them to the reviewers' own commitments. It is important to recall, however, that while it is true that an important feature of our federalism is local variation in laws and values, it …
Ruth Bader Ginsburg And Sensible Pragmatism In Federal Jurisdictional Policy, Tobias Barrington Wolff
Ruth Bader Ginsburg And Sensible Pragmatism In Federal Jurisdictional Policy, Tobias Barrington Wolff
All Faculty Scholarship
This article, written as part of a symposium celebrating the work of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the occasion of her fifteenth year on the Supreme Court, examines the strain of sensible legal pragmatism that informs Justice Ginsburg's writing in the fields of Civil Procedure and Federal Jurisdiction. Taking as its point of departure the Supreme Court's decision in City of Chicago v. International College of Surgeons, in which Ginsburg dissented, the article develops an argument against strict textualism in federal jurisdictional analysis. In its place, the article urges a purposive mode of interpretation that approaches jurisdictional text with a …