Digital Commons Network^™

George R. R. Martin's Faith Militant In Modern America: The Establishment Clause And A State's Ability To Delegate Policing Powers To Private Police Forces Operated By Religious Institutions, Andrew Gardner

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

Since the very founding of the United States, the complex relationship between government and religion has troubled and concerned lawmakers. The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution was one of the first attempts to help define and restrain the government's role in that nexus. Thomas Jefferson, in a letter praising the Establishment Clause, famously wrote that the clause "buil[t] a wall of separation between Church [and] State." However, the extent of the protections that the Establishment Clause was intended to provide is unclear, and judges as well as legal scholars have struggled with interpreting the …

The Nature Of Standing, Matthew Hall, Christian Turner

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

Most academic studies of standing have focused on restrictions on federal court jurisdiction drawn from Article III of U.S. Constitution and related doctrinal schemes developed by state courts. These rules are constructed atop a few words of the Constitution: "The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity," arising under various circumstances. The Supreme Court has interpreted these words to require federal courts to assess whether a plaintiff has suffered an injury in fact that is both fairly traceable to the actions of the defendant and redressable by a favorable ruling before proceeding to the merits of …

Democratizing Education Rights, Joshua E. Weishart

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

If the United States is to reverse its creeping, illiberal descent, generations of youth must emerge from this tribal, post-truth, pandemic-shattered era to mend democracy. Hope for that uncertain future lies in re-engineering how schoolchildren learn democracy-- not from a civics textbook but by experiencing it in the classroom. The sad irony is that we still lack a knowledge base, grounded in research, for that type of democratic education. Nearly two and a half centuries into the republic's existence, our commitment to democratic education is honored more in the breach than in observance. And our uninformed, polarized, and disaffected electorate …

The Global Rise Of Judicial Review Since 1945, Steven G. Calabresi

Catholic University Law Review

This article expands upon the theory put forth in Professor Bruce Ackerman’s book, Revolutionary Constitutions: Charismatic Leadership and the Rule of Law, in which he posits that twentieth century revolutions in a variety of countries led to the constitutionalization of charisma, thus binding countries to the written constitutions established by their revolutionary leaders.

Constitutional law scholar, Steven G. Calabresi, argues here that world constitutionalism, in fact, existed prior to 1945, and what is especially striking about the post-1945 experience is that the constitutionalism of charisma included not only the adoption of written constitutions, but also the adoption of meaningful …

When Is Police Interrogation Really Police Interrogation? A Look At The Application Of The Miranda Mandate, Paul Marcus

Catholic University Law Review

Decades after the Supreme Court’s decision in Miranda v. Arizona, questions abound as to what constitutes interrogation when a suspect is in custody. What appeared a concise, uniform rule has, in practice, left the Fifth Amendment waters muddied. This article addresses a potential disconnect between law enforcement and the courts by analyzing examples of issues arising from Miranda’s application in an array of case law. Ultimately, it attempts to clarify an ambiguity by offering a standard for what conduct classifies as an interrogation.

A Venerable Bulwark: Reaffirming The Primacy Approach To Interpreting Maine's Free Exercise Clause, Joshua Dunlap

Maine Law Review

Does the Maine Constitution afford guarantees for individual rights that are independent of those afforded by the United States Constitution? As set forth in Part I, the answer to this question is “yes.” Because state constitutions are a “font of individual liberties,” the Law Court has adopted the primacy approach to interpreting the 200-year-old Maine Constitution. Under this approach, state courts must consider state constitutional claims before reaching any federal claims and must not give controlling weight to the interpretation given to the United States Constitution. This approach gives the state constitution the significance that it deserves as a consequential …

Shikata Ga Nai: Statelessness And Sacrifice For Japanese-American Volunteers During The Second World War, Kenzo E. Okazaki

Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal

Through a Philosophical analysis of the nature of Internment Camps as well as oral histories of veterans who volunteered to serve in the US military from the camps, this paper will argue that the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII was an event that the Supreme Court and surrounding legal discourse placed outside of legal jurisdiction. Those within the camps were thus condemned to a life lacking political qualification and juridical personhood. Faced with the dangers of this condition, interned Japanese Americans who served in the U.S. Army consciously laid claim to the American political community through the sacrifice of …

Is New York's Market-To-Market Act Unconstitutionally Retroactive?, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, David Gamage, Darien Shanske, Kirk J. Stark

Articles

In this installment of Academic Perspectives on SALT, the authors argue that if New York’s proposed Billionaire Mark-to-Market Tax Act is enacted, it should be upheld against any constitutional challenge based on retroactivity.

The Constitution And Democracy In Troubled Times, John M. Greabe

Law Faculty Scholarship

Does textualism and originalism approach positively impact democracy?

Introduction – 2019 Constitutional Cases At The Supreme Court: Up Close And In Person, Sonia Lawrence

Articles & Book Chapters

From the vantage point of Summer 2020, 2019 seems almost a mirage. The conditions created across Canada by government and individual responses to COVID-19 were all but unimaginable when 2019 drew to a close, and the legal issues that preoccupy those interested in constitutional and public law now revolve around rapidly evolving rules and policies designed to protect public goods like health and health care. Questions of profound significance to constitutional lawyers, such as the location of limits on state powers, the appropriate roles and relative competencies of courts and governments, the place of state law in creating the good …

A Separation Of Powers Analysis Of Forum Non Conveniens’ Adequate Available Forum, Jason S. Palmer

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

“Boehner snubs [White House], invites Netanyahu to address Congress.” These words, or words remarkably similar, headlined newspapers all around the United States on January 21, 2015. Without consulting President Obama, House Speaker John Boehner invited Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress in opposition to the White House’s overtures to Iran with respect to its nuclear program. Speaker Boehner extended the invitation in apparent response to President Obama’s State of the Union Address, in which he informed Congress that any further economic sanctions bill against Iran at that time would be detrimental to ongoing …

Can I Have Some Privacy?: A Look Into The Unfortunate Truth Of Pregnancy Tests Throughout Sports And The Negative Impact On Female Athletes, Hannah Rogers

Jeffrey S. Moorad Sports Law Journal (1994 - )

No abstract provided.

The Establishment Clause: Its Original Public Meaning And What We Can Learn From The Plain Text, Carl H. Esbeck

Faculty Publications

Modern times in church-state relations began in 1947 with the Supreme Court’s decision in Everson v. Board of Education. The justices in both the majority and dissent said they were interpreting the Establishment Clause based on the intent of the founding generation. However, rather than looking to Congress’s lawmaking in the summer of 1789 that led to the First Amendment, the justices relied on the Virginia disestablishment from four years prior, as well as the efforts of just two statesmen, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson.

For the next half century, the High Court’s search was for events and prominent …

Military Service And Offending Behaviors Of Emerging Adults: A Conceptual Review, Christopher Salvatore, Travis A. Taniguchi

Department of Counseling Scholarship and Creative Works

Focusing on the United States, this paper examines the impact of military service for the cohort of individuals that have experienced the social factors that characterize emerging adulthood as a unique stage in the life course. We argue that military service, as a turning point, may act differently in contemporary times compared to findings from past research. This difference is driven by changes in military service, the draft versus volunteer military service, and the prevalence of emerging adulthood. As a background, we describe emerging adulthood, examine how emerging adulthood relates to crime and deviance, explore the impact of military life …

Thirteenth Amendment Litigation In The Immigration Detention Context, Jennifer Safstrom

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article analyzes how the Thirteenth Amendment has been used to prevent forced labor practices in immigration detention. The Article assesses the effectiveness of Thirteenth Amendment litigation by dissecting cases where detainees have challenged the legality of labor requirements under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. Given the expansion in immigration detention, the increasing privatization of detention, and the significant human rights implications of this issue, the arguments advanced in this Article are not only currently relevant but have the potential to shape ongoing dialogue on this subject.

Illiberalism And Authoritarianism In The American States, James A. Gardner

Journal Articles

Federalism contemplates subnational variation, but in the United States the nature and significance of that variation has long been contested. In light of the recent turn, globally and nationally, toward authoritarianism, and the concurrent sharp decline in public support not merely for democracy but for the philosophical liberalism on which democracy rests, it is necessary to discard or to substantially revise prior accounts of the nature of state-to-state variation in the U.S. All such accounts implicitly presuppose a common commitment, across the political spectrum, to the core tenets of democratic liberalism, and consequently that subnational variations in policy preferences and …

Rethinking The Reasonable Response: Safeguarding The Promise Of Kingsley For Conditions Of Confinement, Hanna Rutkowski

Michigan Law Review

Nearly five million individuals are admitted to America’s jails each year, and at any given time, two-thirds of those held in jail have not been convicted of a crime. Under current Supreme Court doctrine, these pretrial detainees are functionally protected by the same standard as convicted prisoners, despite the fact that they are formally protected by different constitutional amendments. A 2015 decision, Kingsley v. Hendrickson, declared that a different standard would apply to pretrial detainees and convicted prisoners in the context of use of force: consistent with the Constitution’s mandate that they not be punished at all, pretrial detainees …

Against Congressional Case Snatching, Ronald J. Krotoszynski, Atticus Deprospro

William & Mary Law Review

Congress has developed a deeply problematic habit of aggrandizing itself by snatching cases from the Article III courts. One form of contemporary case snatching involves directly legislating the outcome of pending litigation by statute. These laws do not involve generic amendments to existing statutes but rather dictate specific rulings by the Article III courts in particular cases. Another form of congressional case snatching involves rendering ongoing judicial proceedings essentially advisory by unilaterally permitting a disgruntled litigant to transfer a pending case from an Article III court to an executive agency for resolution. Both practices involve Congress reallocating the business of …

Are We Still Not Saved? Race, Democracy, And Educational Inequality, Lia Epperson

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Thirty-four years ago, in his seminal book, "And We Are Not Saved: The Elusive Quest for Racial Justice," Derrick Bell provided a critical view of American history and constitutional jurisprudence to illustrate the challenges the United States faces in reaching true equality. In his enlightened observations about the structure of our republic, Bell refers to “the American contradiction.” To see true progress toward meaningful equality, he contends, we must reckon with the challenging truth of our history—that we are a nation founded on this “constitutional contradiction”... In his work, Professor Bell argued that this American contradiction, “shrouded by myth,” serves …

The Power Of Interpretation: Minimizing The Construction Zone, John O. Mcginnis, Michael B. Rappaport

Notre Dame Law Review

One of the most important conceptual innovations within modern originalism is the distinction between a zone of interpretation and a zone of construction. When constitutional provisions have a determinate meaning, decisions find that meaning occurs within the interpretation zone. But when the original meaning of a constitutional provision is indeterminate, decisions are based on something other than the original meaning and occur within the construction zone.

This Article represents the first sustained challenge to the importance of the distinction. It argues that a variety of techniques enhance the power of interpretation to resolve uncertainties and thus greatly reduce the size …

Protesting In America, Timothy Zick

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Religious Exemptions As Rational Social Policy, Justin W. Aimonetti, M. Christian Talley

University of Richmond Law Review

In its 1963 decision Sherbert v. Verner, the Supreme Court interpreted the Free Exercise Clause to permit religious exemptions from general laws that incidentally burdened religious practice. Sherbert, in theory, provided stringent protections for religious freedom. But those protections came at a price. Religious adherents could secure exemptions even if they had no evidence the laws they challenged unfairly targeted their religious conduct. And they could thereby undermine the policy objectives those laws sought to achieve. Because of such policy concerns, the Court progressively restricted the availability of religious exemptions. In its 1990 decision Employment Division v. Smith …

The Power To “Try” “Cases Of Impeachment”: Some Reflections On The Finality, Transparency And Integrity Of Senate Adjudications Of Presidential Impeachments (Including That Of Donald J. Trump), Vikram D. Amar, Jason Mazzone

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

Impeachment As A ‘Madisonian Device’ Reconsidered, Amanda Hollis-Brusky

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Senate, The Trump Impeachment Trial And Constitutional Morality, Joel K. Goldstein

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Constitution, The Common Good, And The Ambition Of Adrian Vermeule, Sotirios Barber, Stephen Macedo, James E. Fleming

Faculty Scholarship

Public trust in the U.S. government has declined steadily over the last sixty years, from 73% in 1958 to 17% in 2018 (Pew 12/9/20). Public support for the U.S. Constitution has remained higher. When support for the government dipped to an all-time low of 15% in 2010, support for the Constitution stood at 74%. But the gap has narrowed. From 2010 to 2017 support for the Constitution fell from 74% to around 50%—a drop of 24 points in seven years (AP/NCC 8/12; Rasmussen 2017). These figures suggest that if Americans continue to believe that their government isn’t working, they’ll eventually …

The Constitutional Status Of The Administrative State, Kate Glover Berger

All Papers

This paper considers the constitutional status of the administrative state. It argues that, after decades of growth in size, reach, and power, the administrative state can now be understood as an architectural feature of the Canadian constitution. To make this argument, the paper first provides an account of the concept of architecture in Canadian constitutional law and the analytical framework it offers for thinking through the status question. It then looks to developments in Canadian public law that shed light on the status of the administrative state. The analysis focuses on three such developments: the expansion of the role of …

Pa. Senate Republicans Need To Seat Sen. Jim Brewster, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

The Future Of Materialist Constitutionalism, Robert L. Tsai

Faculty Scholarship

This is a review essay of Camila Vergara, Systemic Corruption (Princeton 2020). In this lively and important book, Vergara argues that corruption should be given a structural definition, one that connects corruption with inequality and is plebeian rather than elitist. After surveying the work of thinkers from Machiavelli to Arendt, she proposes a set of solutions grounded in the civic republican tradition.
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/="/">I press several points in my essay. First, Vergara's linkage of corruption with inequality is promising, but introduces tension between a general problem (domination of the many by the few) and a more specific problem (the …

Forget Pro-Life And Pro-Choice: Refocus Transvaginal Ultrasound Abortion Laws On Medicine, Casey Hughes

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

This Note reconciles the divide between the TV US debate and the original intent of abortion regulations to protect women’s health. By first analyzing the medicine and then applying it to the law, this Note proves transvaginal ultrasound regulations are not undue burdens on women’s access to abortion. Part I of this Note discusses transvaginal ultrasounds and their medical use in obstetrics, demonstrating they are not undue burdens, but rather beneficial to women and often necessary to support women’s health prior to abortions. Part II of this Note discusses abortion and ultrasound-related legal decisions and how they apply to …