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The Path To Habeas Corpus Narrows: Interpreting 28 U.S.C. § 2254(D)(1), Sharad Sushil Khandelwal

Michigan Law Review

The enforcement of the U.S. Constitution within the criminal justice system is an odd subspecies of constitutional law. In areas other than criminal law, federal courts act as the ultimate guarantors of constitutional rights by providing remedies whenever violations occur. Criminal law, however, is different by necessity; the bulk of criminal justice occurs in state courthouses, leaving constitutional compliance largely to state judges. The U.S. Supreme Court, of course, may review these decisions if it chooses, but a writ of certiorari can be elusive, especially given the Court's shrinking docket. After World War II, however, this feature of criminal constitutional …

Equal Protection, Class Legislation, And Colorblindness, Melissa L. Saunders

Michigan Law Review

Scholars and judges have long assumed that the Equal Protection Clause is concerned only with state action that has the effect of singling out certain persons or groups of persons for special benefits or burdens. Under the traditional doctrinal framework, state action that has this purpose and effect bears a certain burden of justification under the clause, a burden whose stringency varies, depending on the criteria used to define the class being singled out for special treatment and the importance of the interest affected. But state action that lacks such a "discriminatory effect" is not, on the traditional understanding, subject …

Ignorance Of Law Is An Excuse - But Only For The Virtuous, Dan M. Kahan

Michigan Law Review

It's axiomatic that "ignorance of the law is no excuse." My aim in this essay is to examine what the "mistake of law doctrine" reveals about the relationship between criminal law and morality in general and about the law's understanding of moral responsibility in particular. The conventional understanding of the mistake of law doctrine rests on two premises, which are encapsulated in the Holmesian epigrams with which I've started this essay. The first is liberal positivism. As a descriptive claim, liberal positivism holds that the content of the law can be identified without reference to morality: one needn't be a …

Recent Books, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

Books recently received by the Michigan Law Review.

Securities Disclosure In A Globalizing Market: Who Should Regulate Whom, Merritt B. Fox

Michigan Law Review

One of the most dramatic examples of increasing interaction across national boundaries in recent years has been the burgeoning volume of transnational transactions in corporate equities. Most developed capitalist countries impose affirmative obligations on issuers of corporate equity to disclose certain information about themselves. While these obligations are imposed on issuers, they are triggered by transactions. The growth in transnational transactions is thus increasingly raising difficult issues concerning the reach of differing national regimes. Given the magnitude of legal resources devoted to compliance with such disclosure regulations, they promise to feature prominently in the larger discussion of the role of …

The "Solely Criminal Purpose" Defense To The Enforcement Of Irs Summonses, Darius J. Mehraban

Michigan Law Review

Recent years have witnessed a gradual erosion of the practical distinctions between the civil and criminal investigations performed by federal administrative agencies. This trend arose naturally from a growing number of federal statutes and regulations that carry both civil and criminal penalties for their violation. Administrative agencies today wield investigative summons power almost as expansive as the grand jury subpoena power and can use that power to investigate without first deciding whether criminal or civil liability ultimately will be sought. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has participated to some extent in this intermingling of civil and criminal inquiry - with …

The Devil And The One Drop Rule: Racial Categories, African Americans, And The U.S. Census, Christine B. Hickman

Michigan Law Review

For generations, the boundaries of the African-American race have been formed by a rule, informally known as the "one drop rule," which, in its colloquial definition, provides that one drop of Black blood makes a person Black. In more formal, sociological circles, the rule is known as a form of "hypodescent" and its meaning remains basically the same: anyone with a known Black ancestor is considered Black. Over the generations, this rule has not only shaped countless lives, it has created the African-American race as we know it today, and it has defined not just the history of this race …

The Idea Of Fairness In The Law Of Enterprise Liability, Gregory C. Keating

Michigan Law Review

The theory and practice of enterprise liability are oddly disjoined. On the one hand, case rhetoric insists that considerations of fairness are among the primary justifications for imposing enterprise liability. On the other hand, normatively inclined and theoretically ambitious scholarship on enterprise liability is overwhelmingly economic in cast. Economically inclined scholars have flocked to the field, while other kinds of tort theorists have shunned it, implicitly or explicitly conceding it to economic analysis. This paper argues that, contrary to this consensus, there is a powerful and important fairness case to be made for enterprise liability. This case fits the rhetoric …

The Casey Standard For Evaluating Facial Attacks On Abortion Statutes, John Christopher Ford

Michigan Law Review

Since the Supreme Court declared in 1973 that the Constitution grants women a limited right to an abortion, the Justices have decided abortion cases with reference to such weighty matters as religious freedom, the disadvantaged position of women in society, and the proper role of the judiciary. Understandably, the Supreme Court's writings on abortion deal extensively with these large themes. The Court, and certainly others, view abortion cases as rivaling Brown v. Board of Education in their importance to the nation. While the Court has focused on the big issues, however, it has neglected an equally important, if less emotionally …

Restoring Rights To Rites: The Religious Motivation Test And The Religious Freedom Restoration Act, Steven C. Seeger

Michigan Law Review

This Note argues that the religious motivation test best secures the religious liberty guaranteed by the Constitution and the RFRA. Part I examines the text and legislative history of the Act and establishes that Congress intended to protect religiously motivated practices. Part II argues that the free exercise case law prior to Smith, to which the RFRA explicitly appeals, did not require litigants to prove centrality or compulsion. Part III demonstrates that the religious motivation test protects the full spectrum of religious practices and religious groups, unlike the centrality test and the compulsion test. Part IV illustrates that the motivation …

Foreword: "Racialism" And Reason, Frank I. Michelman

Michigan Law Review

Clueless, I am not; but still I can wonder why I, of all people, was recruited to write a foreword for this symposium - sight unseen, before its component papers had even been submitted. Neither legal representation nor the teaching of it has ever been for me a main activity or focus of scholarly reflection. Although I have written occasionally about race - in defense of busing, on the side of affirmative action - no one could mistake me for a critical race theorist. I am the original-model imperial scholar, as of last report only partially redeemed. "Liberal" is the …

Beyond "Sellouts" And "Race Cards": Black Attorneys And The Straitjacket Of Legal Practice, Margaret M. Russell

Michigan Law Review

For attorneys of color, the concept of "representing race" within the context of everyday legal practice is neither new nor voluntarily learned; at a basic level, it is what we do whenever we enter a courtroom or conference room in the predominantly white legal system of this country.

The Underrepresentation Of Minorities In The Legal Profession: A Critical Race Theorist's Perspective, Alex M. Johnson Jr.

Michigan Law Review

Over the last four years, I have taught a course in Critical Race Theory at the University of Virginia School of Law three times. Although each course is different, given the interplay between the teacher and the students and the integration of new developments into the course, there has been one constant subject that the students and I address: Of what import is the development of Critical Race Theory for the legal profession and larger society? Can Critical Race Theory have a positive or any effect for those outside legal academia? This article represents an attempt to explore that question …

Rodrigo's Thirteenth Chronicle: Legal Formalism And Law's Discontents, Richard Delgado

Michigan Law Review

Professor! You're back! Rodrigo leaped to his feet and shook my hand fervently. "I heard a rumor you might be coming. What good news! Sit down. Did the authorities give you any trouble?"

Critical Race Praxis: Race Theory And Political Lawyering Practice In Post-Civil Rights America, Eric K. Yamamoto

Michigan Law Review

At the end of the twentieth century, the legal status of Chinese Americans in San Francisco's public schools turns on a requested judicial finding that a desegregation order originally designed to dismantle a system subordinating nonwhites now invidiously discriminates against Chinese Americans. Brian Ho, Patrick Wong, and Hilary Chen, plaintiffs in Ho v. San Francisco Unified School District, represent "all [16,000] children of Chinese descent" eligible to attend San Francisco's public schools. Their high-profile suit, filed by small-firm attorneys, challenges the validity of a 1983 judicial consent decree desegregating San Francisco's schools. Approved in response to an NAACP class action …

Straightjacketing Professionalism: A Comment On Russell, David B. Wilkins

Michigan Law Review

Professor Russell's essay sounds a much needed cautionary note about the public's characterization of Christopher Darden and Johnnie Cochran both during and after the spectacle of O.J. Simpson's criminal trial. Russell cogently argues that Darden and Cochran's choices, as well as those of other black lawyers confronting similar problems, must be evaluated against the backdrop of racism that devalues and constrains the lives of African Americans in general and African-American lawyers in particular. Black lawyers, Russell insists, not only face "glass ceilings" inhibiting their advancement, but must also live inside "glass bubble[s] ... that severely circumscribe[ ] the flexibility and …

Revitalizing Environmental Federalism, Daniel C. Esty

Michigan Law Review

Politicians from Speaker Newt Gingrich to President Bill Clinton, cheered on by academics such as Richard Revesz, are eagerly seeking to return authority over environmental regulation to the states. In the European Union, localist opponents of environmental decisionmaking in Brussels rally under the banner of "subsidiarity." And in debates over international trade liberalization, demands abound for the protection of "national sovereignty" in environmental regulation. All of these efforts presume that a decentralized approach to environmental policy will yield better results than more centralized programs. This presumption is misguided. While the character of some environmental concerns warrants a preference for local …

Is Turn About Fair Play? Copyright Law And The Fair Use Of Computer Software Loaded Into Ram, Chad G. Asarch

Michigan Law Review

Computer systems, especially those in heavy-use commercial settings, often require routine maintenance to continue functioning properly. Many businesses turn to an independent service organization ("IS0") to provide computer maintenance services because ISOs frequently charge less than the original equipment manufacturer ("OEM") for those services. The tremendous growth in computer use has spawned a multi-billion dollar computer maintenance industry in the United States, and ISOs and OEMs have become engaged in fierce competition for this computer service business. The struggle between ISOs and OEMs to capture this expanding market has spilled over into the courts, spawning a number of recent decisions …

A More Sensible Approach To Regulating Independent Expenditures: Defending The Constitutionality Of The Fed's New Express Advocacy Standard, Michael D. Leffel

Michigan Law Review

Campaign finance reformers argue that the "unholy alliance of private money and public elections" has created "a crisis of confidence in our elected officials." The now-deceased campaign reform advocate Philip M. Stem summed up the role of money in campaigns this way: "[M]oney-power has replaced people-power as the driving force in American politics and the determinant of electoral victory." One form of "money-power" in elections that received a great deal of attention in the last election cycle was "independent expenditures." Independent expenditures are funds spent by interested individuals or groups - usually in the form of television or radio advertisements …

Determining Ripeness Of Substantive Due Process Claims Brought By Landowners Against Local Governments, David S. Mendel

Michigan Law Review

Landowners who sustain economic harm from arbitrary and capricious applications of land use regulations may sue the local government entities responsible for applying those regulations under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that the local government entities deprived them of substantive due process in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. A landowner who brings this claim - an "as-applied arbitrary and capricious substantive due process" claim - may in appropriate cases seek declaratory and injunctive relief, damages, and attorney's fees. Despite controversy among courts and commentators over both the definition of property interests protected by the Due Process Clause and the standard …

The First Amendment Comes Of Age: The Emergence Of Free Speech In Twentieth-Century America, G. Edward White

Michigan Law Review

As the number of issues perceived as having First Amendment implications continues to grow, and the coterie of potential beneficiaries of First Amendment protection continues to widen - including not only the traditional oppressed mavericks and despised dissenters but some rich and powerful members from the circles of political and economic orthodoxy - alarms have been sounded. Another period of stocktaking for free speech theory appears to be dawning, and some recent commentators have proposed a retrenchment from the long twentieth- century progression of increasingly speech-protective interpretations of the First Amendment. At the heart of the retrenchment literature lies the …

Attainder And Amendment 2: Romer's Rightness, Akhil Reed Amar

Michigan Law Review

Call me silly. In fact, call me terminally silly. For despite Justice Scalia's remarkably confident claim, I believe, and shall try to prove below, that the Romer Court majority opinion invalidating Colorado's Amendment 2 was right both in form and in substance, both logically and sociologically. I stress "form" and "logic" at the outset because I share Justice Scalia's belief in the importance of these things in constitutional adjudication. I also share his commitment to constitutional text, history, and structure, and his suspicion of "free-form" constitutionalism. And so I shall highlight the text, history, and spirit of a constitutional clause …

Is Amendment 2 Really A Bill Of Attainder? Some Questions About Professor Amar's Analysis Of Romer, Roderick M. Hills Jr.

Michigan Law Review

As I first discovered as a law student in Professor Amar's classes on legal history and federal courts, it is generally an intellectual treat to listen to Professor Amar's legal analysis, even when he is attacking one's own arguments. So my pleasure at reading Professor Amar's analysis of the Court's decision in Romer v. Evans was only partly dampened by his disapproval of the respondents' brief that I and other plaintiffs' counsel filed with the Court. According to Amar, this respondents' brief provided the Court with "so little help" that it had to rely on an entirely different and much …

Antitrust Balancing In A (Near) Coasean World: The Case Of Franchise Tying Contracts, Alan J. Meese

Michigan Law Review

Antitrust law has largely succumbed to the hegemony of balancing. Courts applying the rule of reason are told to balance a restraint's procompetitive effects against its anticompetitive impact. Mergers once deemed anticompetitive solely because they facilitated the exercise of market power are now evaluated by weighing the anticompetitive effects of such increased power against any efficiencies created by the transaction. Finally, some activities once deemed per se illegal are now subject to a balancing approach, either by explicit application of the rule of reason, or by recognition of certain affirmative defenses to otherwise per se violations. Unlike many other balancing …

Congressional Ethics And Constitutent Advocacy In An Age Of Mistrust, Ronald M. Levin

Michigan Law Review

Like lawyer-bashing, Congress-bashing seems never to go out of style. As every newspaper reader knows, and as public opinion surveys confinn, the public's regard for the legislative branch has been discouragingly low for years. One of the incidents that has done most to fuel this mood is the Keating Five affair. The Senate Ethics Committee's decision in the Keating case, which has been called "the ultimate metaphor for political corruption," provides a fitting prologue for this article's theme: the ethical dimensions of intervention by members of Congress into administrative agency proceedings.

Computers, Urinals, And The Fourth Amendment: Confessions Of A Patron Saint, Wayne R. Lafave

Michigan Law Review

At least the title indicates that the article is somehow concerned with "the Fourth Amendment," though for anyone who knows me or is at all familiar with my work, that piece of information hardly would come as a revelation. The fact of the matter is that I almost always write about the Fourth Amendment; I am in an academic rut so deep as to deserve recognition in the Guinness Book World of Records. Search and seizure has been my cheval de bataille during my entire time as a law professor and even when I was a mere law student. …

Random Thoughts By A Distant Collaborator, Wayne R. Lafave

Michigan Law Review

A Tribute to Jerry Israel

The Limits Of Legal Language: Decisionmaking In Capital Cases, Jordan M. Steiker

Michigan Law Review

To make the case for the proposed changes, I will first describe briefly in Parts I and II the structure of pre- and post-Furman capital decisiorurtaking and the weaknesses of those approaches. I then will set forth in Part III the specific rationales for each proposed reform.

The scheme I propose raises a significant constitutional question. Can the death penalty be retained as a punishment if we abandon the pretense of providing meaningful guidance through detailed sentencing instructions? Would the reestablishment of relatively unstructured penalty phase deliberations similar to, but also importantly different from, those characteristic of pre-Furman …

A Peculiar Privilege In Historical Perspective: The Right To Remain Silent, Albert W. Alschuler

Michigan Law Review

Supreme Court decisions have vacillated between two incompatible readings of the Fifth Amendment guarantee that no person "shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself." The Court sometimes sees this language as affording defendants and suspects a right to remain silent. This interpretation - a view that countless repetitions of the Miranda warnings have impressed upon the public - asserts that government officials have no legitimate claim to testimonial evidence tending to incriminate the person who possesses it. Although officials need not encourage a suspect to remain silent, they must remain at least neutral toward …

Counter-Revolution In Constitutional Criminal Procedure? Two Audiences, Two Answers, Carol S. Steiker

Michigan Law Review

For the purposes of my argument, I adapt Professor Meir Dan-Cohen's distinction (which he in turn borrowed from Jeremy Bentham) between "conduct" rules and "decision" rules. Bentham and Dan-Cohen make this distinction in the context of substantive criminal law; for their purposes, "conduct" rules are addressed to the general public in order to guide its behavior (for example, "Let no person steal") and "decision" rules are addressed to public officials in order to guide their decisionmaking about the consequences of violating conduct rules (for example, "Let the judge cause whoever is convicted of stealing to be hanged"). But as any …