Law Commons^™

"The People" Of The Second Amendment: Citizenship And The Right To Bear Arms, Pratheepan Gulasekaram

Faculty Publications

The Supreme Court's recent Second Amendment decision, District of Columbia v. Heller asserts that the Constitution's right to bear arms is an individual right to armed self-defense held by law-abiding “citizens.” This Article examines the implications of this description, concluding that the Second Amendment cannot concurrently be a right of armed self-defense and restricted to citizens. The Article proceeds in three parts. First, it analyzes the term "the people" as it has been interpreted in recent Court cases. The Article concludes that constitutional text and Supreme Court jurisprudence provide no sustainable basis to believe the Second Amendment is limited …

Thirteen Ways Of Looking At Buck V. Bell: Thoughts Occasioned By Paul Lombardo's "Three Generations, No Imbeciles", Michelle Oberman

Faculty Publications

Paul Lombardo's recent book, Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme Court and Buck v. Bell, chronicles the history of state-sponsored sterilization over the course of the 20th century. As a historical endeavor, it is rich and rewarding, permitting the reader a broad understanding of the social, cultural and legal context for the case that inspired Oliver Wendell Holmes' famous quotation, "Three generations of imbeciles are enough." Lombardo's work masterfully ties the eugenics movement of the early 20th century to the broader policies informing the government's role in regulating reproduction .

Lombardo's book, which I originally picked up solely …

The Constitutional Right To A Treaty Preemption Defense, David Sloss

Faculty Publications

The Constitution includes several provisions specifically designed to protect criminal defendants. For example, the Fourth Amendment prohibits "unreasonable searches and seizures," the Sixth Amendment guarantees that criminal defendants have a right to legal representation, and the Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishments. The Constitution' s Founders recognized that state power is at its apex when the state threatens individuals with criminal sanctions. Accordingly, they adopted special constitutional rules to protect "the individual defendant from the awesome power of the State."

The Due Process Clause provides critical protection for criminal defendants; it stipulates that no State shall "deprive any person …

Business, The Roberts Court, And The Solicitor General: Why The Supreme Court's Recent Business Decisions May Not Reveal Very Much, Sri Srinivasan, Bradley W. Joondeph

Faculty Publications

This essay presents an empirical examination of the full universe of the Roberts Court’s decisions affecting the interests of business from January 2006, when Justice Alito joined the Court, to January 2009. As a purely descriptive matter, we find that the Court tended to reach results favorable to business interests, and that it tended to adopt the positions urged by the Bush administration. Moreover, when those two positions diverged-most saliently, in cases where the United States and the United States Chamber of Commerce filed opposing amicus briefs-the Roberts Court overwhelmingly sided with the government.

While these findings are interesting, our …

A Constitutional Analysis Of Parents Involved In Community Schools V. Seattle School District No. 1 And Voluntary School Integration Policies, Angelo N. Ancheta

Faculty Publications

On June 28, 2007, a sharply divided United States Supreme Court invalidated student assignment plans in Seattle, Washington and Louisville, Kentucky that were designed to promote racial diversity and to address racial isolation in K-12 education. By a 5-to-4 vote in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. I and McFarland v. Jefferson County Board of Education, the Court struck down voluntary integration plans under the "strict scrutiny" standard applied to race-conscious policies challenged under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and ruled that the plans were not narrowly tailored to the interests asserted by …

But Can It Be Fixed? A Look At Constitutional Challenges To Lethal Injection Executions, Ellen Kreitzberg, David Richter

Faculty Publications

This article argues that California's Procedure 770 as currently implemented is unconstitutional. Judge Fogel, after an exhaustive review of evidence from all parties,agrees. Although Judge Fogel believes that the lethal injection system, while broken "can be fixed," we argue that lethal injection, as a method of execution, is always unconstitutional because the procedures employed in its administration can never ensure against unnecessary risk of pain to the inmate. We also argue that the California legislature must step in to publicly review lethal injection executions and to investigate the conduct of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) in the …

Resisting Deep Capture: The Commercial Speech Doctrine And Junk-Food Advertising To Children, David Yosifon

Faculty Publications

The present Article is more precisely dedicated to analyzing, from a critical realist perspective, the wisdom and constitutional viability of one possible policy response to the obesity crisis: a ban on junk-food advertising to children.

This Article seeks not only to show that an effective junk-food advertising ban could pass constitutional scrutiny, but also to demonstrate, through the rigor of a constitutional analysis, the wisdom of such an approach to this substantial social problem. Simultaneously, my purpose is to show, in the context of a difficult First Amendment question, that the critical realist approach to legal theory is capable of …

Speech Showdowns At The Virtual Corral, Eric Goldman

Faculty Publications

INTRODUCTION

This article considers the tension between free speech rights and private property/contract rights. Neither free speech rights nor private property and contract rights are absolute. Where they intersect in the physical world, confusing legal doctrines usually emerge, such as the U.S. Supreme Court cases addressing private speech at privately owned company towns and shopping centers. Though a bright-line rule has emerged-the First Amendment pertains only to stateactors-the rule provides little prospective guidance because private actors can be characterized as state actors in some circumstances.

In the online world, the speech/rights dichotomy also raises complex issues. Online private actors routinely …

The Anti-Monopoly Origins Of The Patent And Copyright Clause, Tyler T. Ochoa, Mark Rose

Faculty Publications

The British experience with patents and copyrights prior to 1787 is instructive as to the context within which the Framers drafted the Patent and Copyright Clause. The 1624 Statute of Monopolies, intended to curb royal abuse of monopoly privileges, restricted patents for new inventions to a specified term of years. The Stationers' Company, a Crown-chartered guild of London booksellers, continued to hold a monopoly on publishing, and to enforce censorship laws, until 1695. During this time, individual titles were treated as perpetual properties held by booksellers. In 1710, however, the Statute of Anne broke up these monopolies by imposing strict …