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Full-Text Articles in Public Law and Legal Theory
Obergefell V. Hodges: How The Supreme Court Should Have Ruled, Adam Lamparello
Obergefell V. Hodges: How The Supreme Court Should Have Ruled, Adam Lamparello
Adam Lamparello
In Obergefell, et al. v. Hodges, Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion legalizing same-sex marriage was based on “the mystical aphorisms of a fortune cookie,” and “indefensible as a matter of constitutional law.” Kennedy’s opinion was comprised largely of philosophical ramblings about liberty that have neither a constitutional foundation nor any conceptual limitation. The fictional opinion below arrives at the same conclusion, but the reasoning is based on equal protection rather than due process principles. The majority opinion holds that same-sex marriage bans violate the Equal Protection Clause because they: (1) discriminate on the basis of gender; (2) promote gender-based stereotypes; and …
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.
Beyond The Written Constitution: A Short Analysis Of Warren Court, Thiago Luis Santos Sombra
Beyond The Written Constitution: A Short Analysis Of Warren Court, Thiago Luis Santos Sombra
Thiago Luís Santos Sombra
This essay propose an analysis about how Warren Court became one of the most particular in American History by confronting Jim Crow law, especially by applying the Bill of Rights. In this essay, we propose an analysis of how complex the unwritten Constitution is. Cases like Brown vs. Board of Education will be analyzed from a different point of view to understand the methods of the Court.
Fundamental Unenumerated Rights Under The Ninth Amendment And Privileges Or Immunities Clause, Adam Lamparello
Fundamental Unenumerated Rights Under The Ninth Amendment And Privileges Or Immunities Clause, Adam Lamparello
Adam Lamparello
The failure to link the Ninth Amendment and Privileges or Immunities Clause for the purpose of creating unenumerated fundamental rights has been a persistent but rarely discussed aspect of the Court’s jurisprudence. That should change. There need not be an ongoing tension between the Court’s counter-majoritarian role and the authority of states to govern through the democratic process. If the Constitution’s text gives the Court a solid foundation upon which to recognize new rights and thereby create a more just society, then the exercise of that power is fundamentally democratic. The Ninth Amendment and Privileges or Immunities Clause provides that …
Why Chief Justice Roy Moore And The Alabama Supreme Court Just Made The Best Case For Same-Sex Marriage, Adam Lamparello
Why Chief Justice Roy Moore And The Alabama Supreme Court Just Made The Best Case For Same-Sex Marriage, Adam Lamparello
Adam Lamparello
The Alabama Court of the Judiciary should remove Roy Moore from the Supreme Court of Alabama for a second and final time. Over ten years after being ousted from the Alabama Supreme Court, Chief Justice Moore is embroiled in yet another controversy that involves disregarding the federal courts and creating chaos in the legal system. In fact, Moore recently stated that he would ignore the Supremacy Clause and not respect a U.S. Supreme Court decision invalidating same-sex marriage bans. That statement brings back memories of Governor Wallace’s infamous stand at the schoolhouse door. At least Wallace had a change of …
City Of Los Angeles V. Patel: The Upcoming Supreme Court Case No One Is Talking About, Adam Lamparello
City Of Los Angeles V. Patel: The Upcoming Supreme Court Case No One Is Talking About, Adam Lamparello
Adam Lamparello
Focusing solely on whether a hotel owner has a reasonable expectation of privacy in a guest registry is akin to asking whether Verizon Wireless has a reasonable expectation of privacy in its customer lists. The answer to those questions should be yes, but the sixty-four thousand dollar question—and the proverbial elephant in the room—is whether hotel occupants and cell phone users forfeit their privacy rights simply because they check into the Beverly Hills Hotel or call their significant others from a Smart Phone on the Santa Monica Freeway. Put differently, a hotel owner’s expectation of privacy in a guest registry …
With All Deliberate Speed: Nlrb V. Canning And The Case For Originalism, Adam Lamparello
With All Deliberate Speed: Nlrb V. Canning And The Case For Originalism, Adam Lamparello
Adam Lamparello
Record numbers of Americans are renouncing their citizenship. California’s citizens have amassed enough signatures to place on the 2016 ballot a proposal to divide California into six separate states. At least 34 states recently called for a second constitutional convention. Several states have ignored or enacted laws defying Supreme Court precedent. One has threatened to secede. Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens has responded to this crisis by calling for the addition of six constitutional amendments, several of which expand federal authority. That, in a nutshell, is the problem. This Article argues that, to remedy the imbalance in power …
It's The Constitution, Stupid: Two Liberals Pay Tribute To Antonin Scalia's Legacy, Adam Lamparello, Charles E. Maclean
It's The Constitution, Stupid: Two Liberals Pay Tribute To Antonin Scalia's Legacy, Adam Lamparello, Charles E. Maclean
Adam Lamparello
Living constitutionalism may achieve “good” results, but with each Roe v. Wade, and Bush v. Gore, the Constitution’s vision takes more shallow breaths, and democracy fades into elitism’s shadow. The debate over constitutional interpretation is, in many ways, reducible to this question: if a particular outcome is desirable, and the Constitution’s text is silent or ambiguous, should the United States Supreme Court (or any court) disregard constitutional constraints to achieve that outcome? If the answer is yes, nine unelected judges have the power to choose outcomes that are desirable. If the answer is no, then the focus must be on …
It's The Constitution, Stupid: Two Liberals Pay Tribute To Antonin Scalia's Legacy, Adam Lamparello, Charles E. Maclean
It's The Constitution, Stupid: Two Liberals Pay Tribute To Antonin Scalia's Legacy, Adam Lamparello, Charles E. Maclean
Adam Lamparello
Living constitutionalism may achieve “good” results, but with each Roe v. Wade, and Bush v. Gore, the Constitution’s vision takes more shallow breaths, and democracy fades into elitism’s shadow. The debate over constitutional interpretation is, in many ways, reducible to this question: if a particular outcome is desirable, and the Constitution’s text is silent or ambiguous, should the United States Supreme Court (or any court) disregard constitutional constraints to achieve that outcome? If the answer is yes, nine unelected judges have the power to choose outcomes that are desirable. If the answer is no, then the focus must be on …
Surveillance, Speech Suppression And Degradation Of The Rule Of Law In The “Post-Democracy Electronic State”, David Barnhizer
Surveillance, Speech Suppression And Degradation Of The Rule Of Law In The “Post-Democracy Electronic State”, David Barnhizer
David Barnhizer
None of us can claim the quality of original insight achieved by Alexis de Tocqueville in his early 19th Century classic Democracy in America in his observation that the “soft” repression of democracy was unlike that in any other political form. It is impossible to deny that we in the US, the United Kingdom and Western Europe are experiencing just such a “gentle” drift of the kind that Tocqueville describes, losing our democratic integrity amid an increasingly “pretend” democracy. He explained: “[T]he supreme power [of government] then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society …
Valuing Our Discordant Constitutional Discourse: Autonomous-Text Constitutionalism And The Jewish Legal Tradition, Shlomo C. Pill
Valuing Our Discordant Constitutional Discourse: Autonomous-Text Constitutionalism And The Jewish Legal Tradition, Shlomo C. Pill
Shlomo C. Pill
This paper considers the viability of autonomous-text constitutionalism, a constitutional interpretive and adjudicative theory based on Hans Georg-Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics. As the paper explains, this theory is premised on the subjectivity of all interpretive activity; it admits the legitimacy of a wide spectrum of reasonable interpretations of the Constitution, each given their unique character by the dialectical merging of experiential horizons between the fixed text and individual interpreter. This theory embraces a plurality of constitutional meanings in theory, limited by the need for unity in national spheres of constitutional practice. Such practical certainty is achieved by our empowering judicial institutions …
Three-Dimensional Sovereign Immunity, Sarah L. Brinton
Three-Dimensional Sovereign Immunity, Sarah L. Brinton
Sarah L Brinton
The Supreme Court has erred on sovereign immunity. The current federal immunity doctrine wrongly gives Congress the exclusive authority to waive immunity (“exclusive congressional waiver”), but the Constitution mandates that Congress share the waiver power with the Court. This Article develops the doctrine of a two-way shared waiver and then explores a third possibility: the sharing of the immunity waiver power among all three branches of government.
The United States Constitution And Its History Through The Barristers And Political, Allen E. Shoenberger
The United States Constitution And Its History Through The Barristers And Political, Allen E. Shoenberger
Allen E Shoenberger
No abstract provided.
Chief Justice Roberts' Individual Mandate: The Lawless Medicine Of Nfib V. Sebelius, Gregory Magarian
Chief Justice Roberts' Individual Mandate: The Lawless Medicine Of Nfib V. Sebelius, Gregory Magarian
Gregory P. Magarian
After the U.S. Supreme Court in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius held nearly all of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act constitutional, praise rained down on Chief Justice John Roberts. The Chief Justice’s lead opinion broke with his usual conservative allies on the Court by upholding the Act’s individual mandate under the Taxing Clause. Numerous academic and popular commentators have lauded the Chief Justice for his political courage and institutional pragmatism. In this essay, Professor Magarian challenges the heroic narrative surrounding the Chief Justice’s opinion. The essay contends that the opinion is, in two distinct senses, fundamentally …
The Risky Interplay Of Tort And Criminal Law: Punitive Damages, Daniel M. Braun
The Risky Interplay Of Tort And Criminal Law: Punitive Damages, Daniel M. Braun
Daniel M Braun
The rise of modern mass tort litigation in the U.S. has transformed punitive damages into something of a “hot button” issue. Since the size of punitive damage awards grew so dramatically in the past half century, this private law remedy has begun to involve issues of constitutional rights that traditionally pertained to criminal proceedings. This has created a risky interplay between tort and criminal law, and courts have thus been trying to find ways to properly manage punitive damage awards. The once rapidly expanding universe of punitive damages is therefore beginning to contract. There remain, however, very serious difficulties. Despite …
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, …
"Linguistic Cleansing": Strategies For Redesigning Human Perception And Behavior, David Barnhizer
"Linguistic Cleansing": Strategies For Redesigning Human Perception And Behavior, David Barnhizer
David Barnhizer
James Madison recognized the need to balance competing interests in his analysis of factious groups. In Federalist No. 10, Madison sets out the idea of faction in the following words. “By a faction I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.” Madison goes on to describe two “cures” for faction. One is to “destroy the liberty” that allows it to bloom, …
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 …