Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Publication Type
Articles 1 - 7 of 7
Full-Text Articles in Law
Reviving The Poll Tax: Voter Id And Debt Laws, Cynthia Boyer
Reviving The Poll Tax: Voter Id And Debt Laws, Cynthia Boyer
ConLawNOW
In the United States, disenfranchisement is deeply rooted in history as a form of punishment—a dual penalty. In the late nineteenth century, the poll tax first emerged to restrict voting and limit the expansion of suffrage to Black men. Primarily aimed at minorities, these laws on disenfranchisement became a significant barrier to U.S. ballot boxes. Even though the poll tax was finally outlawed in federal elections in 1964, nowadays it takes another subtle form through the prism of voter identification laws. Thirty-five states currently have voter ID laws, with varying criteria and accepted forms of documentation, thus requesting or requiring …
Book Talk: The Cult Of The Constitution, Mary Anne Franks
Book Talk: The Cult Of The Constitution, Mary Anne Franks
ConLawNOW
In this essay based on remarks delivered as the 2020 Constitution Day lecture at the Center for Constitutional Law, Professor Franks previews her book, The Cult of the Constitution. It addresses Franks’ key thesis about fundamentalist approaches to legal texts and Constitution, which read texts in selective and self-interested ways that verify a particular world view and ignore interpretations or passages that complicate it. Her work highlights debates over guns and the Second Amendment and Black Lives Matter protests and the First Amendment as examples of this problematic constitutional fundamentalism. Instead, the book and essay point to the Fourteenth …
Justice Gorsuch's Choice: From Bostock V. Clayton County To Dobbs V. Jackson Women's Health Organization, Marc Spindelman
Justice Gorsuch's Choice: From Bostock V. Clayton County To Dobbs V. Jackson Women's Health Organization, Marc Spindelman
ConLawNOW
Informed speculation holds that the Supreme Court’s decision to hear and decide Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization spells bad news for constitutional abortion rights. Recognizing both the stakes and the odds, this brief commentary engages Justice Neil Gorsuch’s majority opinion in Bostock v. Clayton County and the prospects that it opens up in Dobbs for a future for—not against—abortion rights. Bostock’s pro-gay and pro-trans sex discrimination rulings are built atop—and go out of their way to reaffirm—women’s statutorily-grounded economic and social rights, and hence women’s equal citizenship stature. Moreover, the final decision in the case emerges after judicial wrestling …
Identical Constitutional Language: What Is A State Court To Do? The Ohio Case Of State V. Robinette, Marianna Brown Bettman
Identical Constitutional Language: What Is A State Court To Do? The Ohio Case Of State V. Robinette, Marianna Brown Bettman
Akron Law Review
We are in the era of rediscovery of state constitutional law. In Ohio, there has been an official announcement of this in the syllabus of a highly significant case, Arnold v. City of Cleveland. In Ohio, the syllabus is the law of the case. The syllabus of Arnold begins with the simple but dramatic statement, "The Ohio Constitution is a document of independent force." It goes on to state, in the remainder of the paragraph, the basic guidepost of federal/state relations in the area of individual rights: In the areas of individual rights and civil liberties, the United States Constitution, …
Abortion Rights In The Supreme Court: A Tale Of Three Wedges, Jennifer S. Hendricks
Abortion Rights In The Supreme Court: A Tale Of Three Wedges, Jennifer S. Hendricks
ConLawNOW
In May 2021, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in a case designed to overrule Roe v. Wade. The assumption is that six justices are inclined to repudiate Roe, and that some of those six would like to go further, declaring a constitutional right to life that would prevent the abortion issue from going “back to the states” at all. The question for the next year is not whether Roe will be overruled—it already was, in Planned Parenthood v. Casey—but how far the Court will go. This essay describes the arc of the Supreme Court’s abortion jurisprudence in …
Symposium: Examining Black Citizenship From Reconstruction To Black Lives Matter: Falling Short Of The Promise Of The Thirteenth Amendment: Time For Change, Michael A. Lawrence
Symposium: Examining Black Citizenship From Reconstruction To Black Lives Matter: Falling Short Of The Promise Of The Thirteenth Amendment: Time For Change, Michael A. Lawrence
ConLawNOW
This Essay seeks to shine additional light on the potential of the underutilized Thirteenth Amendment (as contrasted to the much-litigated Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clause) for advancing racial justice and equity. The Essay suggests the Thirteenth Amendment provides strong constitutional basis for an unapologetic embrace of the sorts of new, race-conscious measures that will be necessary to begin to achieve true racial equity in a country that for centuries has erected massive structural barriers to Black opportunity and advancement
The Long History Of Feminist Legal Theory, Tracy Thomas
The Long History Of Feminist Legal Theory, Tracy Thomas
Con Law Center Articles and Publications
This chapter challenges the conventional idea that feminist legal theory began in the 1970s. The advent of legal feminism is usually placed in the second wave feminist movement, birthed by the political activism of the women’s liberation movement and nurtured by the intellectual leadership of women scholars newly entering legal academia. However, legal feminism has a much longer history, going back more than a century earlier. While the term “feminist” was not used in the United States until the 1910s, the foundations of feminist legal theory were first conceptualized as early as 1848 and developed over the next one hundred …