Law Commons^™

Driver’S License Suspensions For Nonpayments: A Discriminatory And Counterproductive Policy, Melissa Toback Levin

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

Driver’s license suspensions for nonpayments of traffic debt disproportionately harm people of color and are legally untenable. Across the country, at least seven million people have had their driver’s license suspended for traffic debt—nonpayments of traffic tickets and nonappearances in traffic court. As this article demonstrates, traffic debt suspensions force people to make an impossible choice: stop driving—and lose access to work, childcare, healthcare, food, and other basic necessities— or keep driving, and risk criminal charges, more unaffordable fines and fees, and even incarceration. License-for-payment laws ultimately create conditions that parallel modern-day debtor’s prisons and are vulnerable to several legal …

Exclusionary Zoning, School Segregation, And Housing Segregation: An Investigation Into A Modern Desegregation Case And Solutions To Housing Segregation, Sara Zeimer

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

No abstract provided.

Foreword, Richelle Joy Gernan

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

No abstract provided.

Black Lives Matter: Banning Police Lynchings, Mitchell F. Crusto

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

In the United States, police officers are granted a license to use lethal force and are subsequently exonerated from personal criminal liability for fatal killings, particularly when the victim is an African American. This Article advances the normative claim that the Court’s death penalty jurisprudence, including the “Cruel and Unusual Punishment” Clause of the Eighth Amendment, protects the victims of police homicides. Further, it contends that the police use of lethal force against African Americans constitutes “lynching”—a State-sponsored act of terror that supports systemic racism. Finally, it posits that the Constitution mandates that the police use of lethal force be …

Masthead

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

No abstract provided.

Furtive Blackness: On Blackness And Being, T. Anansi Wilson

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

Furtive Blackness: On Blackness and Being (“Furtive Blackness”) and The Strict Scrutiny of Black and BlaQueer Life (“Strict Scrutiny”) take a fresh approach to both criminal law and constitutional law; particularly as they apply to African descended peoples in the United States. This is an intervention as to the description of the terms of Blackness in light of the social order but, also, an exposure of the failures and gaps of law. This is why the categories as we have them are inefficient to account for Black life. The way legal scholars have encountered and understood the language of law …

The Strict Scrutiny Of Black And Blaqueer Life, T. Anansi Wilson

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

No abstract provided.

Masthead

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

No abstract provided.

Foreword, Wendy Melissa Hernandez

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

No abstract provided.

Worse Than Punishment: How The Involuntary Commitment Of Persons With Mental Illness Violates The United States Constitution, Samantha M. Caspar, Artem M. Joukov

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

This Article highlights that individuals who suffer from mental health problems can be particularly defenseless against an attack on their liberty through criminal and civil law. Specifically, it delineates how the current laws allow for a potential indefinite commitment of a person who may not have even committed a single crime. The Article explains that constitutionally mandated standards should be required to protect individuals who face losing their liberty due to the perceived threat of future harm. The authors posit that, while preventing individuals from harming themselves or others is an honorable goal, the state should only be able to …

You Don’T Have To Pay The Troll Toll: Antitrust Violations Of Patent Assertion Entities And The Noerr-Pennington Doctrine “Sham Litigation” Exception, Katheryn M. Wenger

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

This Note discusses the implications of possible antitrust violations when Patent Assertion Entities (“PAEs”) enforce their vast patent portfolios against alleged infringers by forcing a license of the entire portfolio or threatening continuous and costly litigation. This Note analyzes this PAE conduct under antitrust laws, using Intellectual Ventures I, LLC v. Capital One Financial Corp. as an exemplar case study. Further, the Note explains that PAEs are not immune to antitrust counterclaims under the Noerr-Pennington doctrine because their anticompetitive conduct meets the standard for the “sham litigation” exception to the doctrine. Ultimately, this Note offers preventative solutions to this PAE …

Comparative Cruelty: A Comparative Analysis Of The Eighth Amendment To The United States Constitution And Section Nine Of The New Zealand Bill Of Rights Act, Carrie Leonetti

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

Given that the United States Constitution and the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act both contain prohibitions against governmental acts of cruelty and torture, this Article offers a comparative analysis of the judicial interpretations of the meaning of “cruel” in the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment in the two country’s founding documents. The Article beings by considering the shared historical underpinnings of the prohibitions, which require a proportionality analysis when assessing whether a punishment is excessive. Next, it examines the meaning of “cruelty” and the scope of the prohibitions in New Zealand and the United States. The Article documents …

Neurodiversity In Public Schools: A Critique Of Special Education In America, Pallavi M. Vishwanath

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

This Note provides a comparative critique to the special education practices in the U.S. and Canada. The Note reasons that a country or democracy is most benefitted when there is a recognized governmental duty to maximize the potential of every student via public education. The Note further exposes how a difference in governmental duty to provide equal education drastically affects students’ dignity and potential. This Note describes the history of the American public education system; explains the development of special education in the United States and the ambiguous governmental duty to educate American students; and discusses Canadian case law regarding …

Masthead

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

No abstract provided.

Foreword, Wendy Melissa Hernandez

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

No abstract provided.

Weeding Out Injustice: Amnesty For Pot Offenders, Mitchell F. Crusto

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

There are a growing number of States that have legalized marijuana, challenging the view that marijuana is a dangerous drug. These States are taking positions relative to both the retroactivity of the new laws and to amelioration of past offenses, which arguably contradict United States Supreme Court decisions on the retroactivity of changes in substantive criminal standards. And, many States recognize that past marijuana laws have greatly contributed to the problems related to a broken criminal justice system, including mass incarceration and racial disparities, particularly to the devastation of communities of color.

In response to these legal developments, this Article …

The Twenty-First Century Poll Tax, Ryan A. Partelow

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

Although disenfranchising voters over outstanding legal financial obligations (“LFOs”) is widely criticized, no court has yet been persuaded to strike down these laws. The practice continues to disenfranchise people based on wealth, and disproportionately affects the voting rights of people of color due to inherent racial disparities in socioeconomic status and the American criminal justice system. Although the concept of felon disenfranchisement itself has been affirmatively upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, this Article argues that disenfranchisement for outstanding LFOs is more akin to the poll tax jurisprudence than to the felon-voting cases.

This Article aims to add to a …

Toward Tax Reform That Mirrors Our Better Selves Book Review: Anthony C. Infanti, Our Selfish Tax Laws (2018), Leo P. Martinez

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

Professor Infanti does everyone a service by using comparative law principles to inform the tax policy debate. The lack of discipline overlap—tax law and constitutional law come easily to mind—only worsens the scarcity of scholarship that examines the Code in nuanced and constructive ways.

In his book, Tony Infanti uses comparative law principles to show how effective it can be to look at tax law in a different light Professor Infanti has chosen two separate areas as his vehicles for comparative illustration and examination of the selfishness of tax law: (1) U.S. housing policy and (2) the concept of the …

Expanding The Regulation Of Online Speech Through The Commerce Clause To Reduce Cyber Harassment, Katherine Parker

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

This Note focuses on one potential solution for harassment many women face online: federal regulation of cyber-threats and cyber harassment. It argues that speech used online to harass and intimidate women may be regulated because the speech is not protected under the First Amendment and because the mode of communication—the Internet—is a regulatable instrumentality of commerce. Thus, this Note posits that online harassment can and should be regulated through the Commerce Clause to ensure that women can enjoy use of the internet without cyber-threats and cyber harassment.

Masthead

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

No abstract provided.

Addiction And Expression, Luke Morgan

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

Addictive products—such as tobacco, alcohol, and gambling—have been considered legitimate regulatory targets throughout American history and for thousands of years prior. Expressive products—such as newspapers, books, movies, and video games—have in the United States been considered essentially immune from content-based regulation, thanks to the First Amendment. But what if the content of an expressive product makes it addictive? Which tradition must give in: the ancient power of legislatures to protect society at large from the wideranging impacts of addiction, or the legal shield that has generated a thriving culture of artistic independence? This Article is the first to explore the …

It’S A Blowhorn, Not A Dog-Whistle: How President Trump’S Travel Ban Orders, Not His Statements, Are Enough To Establish A Violation Under The Religion Clauses, Charles Adside Iii

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

Most bigots speak softly. They use dog-whistles, code words employed to prime bigoted sentiments within the listener. Not President Donald J. Trump; his voice on Islam is like a blow horn. His orders imposing travel bans on seven Muslimmajority countries were just as loud. Although the Trump v. Hawaii Court claimed that the executive order it reviewed was religiously neutral, adherence to precedent reveals that all three executive orders violated the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment. There is much discussion, however, regarding the President’s remarks about Islam. Many jurists conclude that they should be used for interpretative purposes in …

Constitutional Discourse And The Rhetoric Of Treason, J. Richard Broughton

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

This Article asserts that treason talk is a form of constitutional discourse. Further, the Article explains that although treason remains a crime worth taking seriously in American criminal and constitutional law, colloquial invocations of treason have the potential to undermine treason’s seriousness and erode its constitutional and historical foundations, as well as diminish an appreciation of its limits. That is particularly true when treason is invoked by a sitting president, whose unique role in constitutional government—and potential to influence criminal prosecutions— requires special caution with respect to public rhetoric about treason. This Article then cites two specific and complicated areas …

The First Amendment And Modern Technology: The Free Speech Clause And Chatbot Speech, Hilda Kajbaf

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

Our contemporary conversations with chatbots raise a constitutional question not previously considered: is the speech produced by chatbots constitutionally protected? If so, whose speech is the Constitution protecting—that of the chatbot or the human who programmed it with algorithms? If the Supreme Court recognizes the human programmer as the speaker of chatbot speech, as this Note contends it should, what are the potential liabilities the programmer could face as a result of such recognition, and how would this change the doctrinal landscape of the First Amendment for government regulation of speech? This Note proceeds in five parts. Section I defines …