Legal History Commons^™

"Send Freedom House!": A Study In Police Abolition, Tiffany Yang

Washington Law Review

Sparked by the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, the 2020 uprisings accelerated a momentum of abolitionist organizing that demands the defunding and dismantling of policing infrastructures. Although a growing body of legal scholarship recognizes abolitionist frameworks when examining conventional proposals for reform, critics mistakenly continue to disregard police abolition as an unrealistic solution. This Essay helps dispel this myth of “impracticality” and illustrates the pragmatism of abolition by identifying a community-driven effort that achieved a meaningful reduction in policing we now take for granted. I detail the history of the Freedom House Ambulance Service, a Black civilian …

The Meaning, History, And Importance Of The Elections Clause, Eliza Sweren-Becker, Michael Waldman

Washington Law Review

Historically, the Supreme Court has offered scant attention to or analysis of the Elections Clause, resulting in similarly limited scholarship on the Clause’s original meaning and public understanding over time. The Clause directs states to make regulations for the time, place, and manner of congressional elections, and grants Congress superseding authority to make or alter those rules.

But the 2020 elections forced the Elections Clause into the spotlight, with Republican litigants relying on the Clause to ask the Supreme Court to limit which state actors can regulate federal elections. This new focus comes on the heels of the Clause serving …

“Unconstitutional Beyond A Reasonable Doubt” – A Misleading Mantra That Should Be Gone For Good, Hugh Spitzer

Washington Law Review Online

For a century, Washington State Supreme Court opinions periodically have intoned that the body will not invalidate a statute on constitutional grounds unless it is “unconstitutional beyond a reasonable doubt.” This odd declaration invokes an evidentiary standard of proof as a rule of decision for a legal question of constitutionality, and it confuses practitioners and the public alike. “Unconstitutional beyond a reasonable doubt” is not peculiar to Washington State. Indeed, it began appearing in state court decisions in the early nineteenth century and, rarely, in opinions of the United States Supreme Court. But the use of the phrase rapidly increased …