Law Commons^™

A New Federalist Approach To Reducing Gun Violence: Model State Policy For Medicaid-Funded, Hospital-Based Violence Intervention Programs, Racquel Bozzelli

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Gettysburg Address: Lincoln’S Model Legal Argument, Patrick J. Long

Buffalo Law Review

The Gettysburg Address does not appear to be a legal argument. One cannot find a rule anywhere in its few words. Nor does there seem to be any application of a rule to the facts of the case. There is a simple reason for this absence: the law in 1863 was wrong. Lincoln knew that, but he was too much the lawyer to advocate law-breaking. Instead, he used all the skills he had learned from his years in the courtroom to urge his listeners to look beyond the law’s flaws to find the truth of the Declaration’s “self-evident truth.”

An Exegesis Of The Meaning Of Dobbs: Despotism, Servitude, & Forced Birth, Athena D. Mutua

Journal Articles

The Dobbs decision has been leaked. Gathered outside of New York City's St. Patrick's Old Cathedral, pro-choice protesters chant: "Not the church, not the state, the people must decide their fate."

A white man wearing a New York Fire Department sweatshirt and standing on the front steps responds: "l am the people, l am the people, l am the people, the people have decided, the court has decided, you lose . . . . You have no choice. Not your body, not your choice, your body is mine and you're having my baby."

Despicable but not unexpected,³ this man's comments …

Dividing The Body Politic, James A. Gardner

Journal Articles

It has long been assumed in large, modern, democratic states that the successful practice of democratic politics requires some kind of internal division of the polity into subunits. In the United States, the appropriate methods and justifications for doing so have long been deeply and inconclusively contested. One reason for the intractability of these disputes is that American practices of political self-division are rooted in, and have been largely carried forward from, premodern practices that rested originally on overtly illiberal assumptions and justifications that are difficult or impossible to square with contemporary commitments to philosophical liberalism.

The possibility of sorting …

Life Without Parole: An Eighth Amendment Analysis, Alexis Dicarlo

Buffalo Human Rights Law Review

This Article will analyze the constitutionality of life without parole under the U.S. Supreme Court’s test for categorical bans on sentencing practices. This article first addresses the cruelty of prison and how that affects individuals with life sentences specifically. Next, it will analyze life without parole under the Supreme Court’s Eighth Amendment analysis, starting with examining evolving standards of decency. In doing so, this article will address how the U.S. operates with respect to sentencing compared to the rest of the world. Importantly, it will engage in a culpability analysis, following the Supreme Court’s logic, that ultimately favors abolition of …

Progressive State Constitutionalism, Jorge M. Farinacci-Fernós

Buffalo Law Review

Unlike the U.S. Constitution, many state constitutions are truly modern documents that address important social, economic, and political issues from a progressive perspective. This is due to the combination of several key features, including: socially oriented historical circumstances; democratic creation processes; significant substantive content guided by ideas of social justice; and adequate judicial enforcement that takes into account these crucial normative elements. As a result, these progressive state constitutions can become powerful allies in the search for a transformative constitutionalism in the United States that facilitates the goals of social justice and collective prosperity.

The constitutional processes in California (1880), …

Constitutional Patriotism As Europe’S Public Philosophy? On The Responsiveness Of Post-National Law, Paul Linden-Retek

Contributions to Books

Published as Chapter 13 in Constitutional Patriotism as Europe’s Public Philosophy? On the Responsiveness of Post-National Law, Jan Komárek, ed.

This chapter critiques Jürgen Habermas’s concept of constitutional patriotism—and its basis in his discourse theory of democracy and law—from the analytic perspective of ‘constitutional imaginaries’, and details the consequences of this critique for the constitutional discourse of the contemporary European judiciary. In the first instance, analysis of constitutional imaginaries reveals the extent to which civic attachment to constitutional law is oriented not merely to legal principles simpliciter but also to the historical settlement of political conflict those principles reflect. This …

Guide To Bill Of Attainder Clauses In Article I, Sections 9 And 10, Matthew J. Steilen

Contributions to Books

These are commentaries on the Bill of Attainder Clauses in Article I, sections 9 and 10. Each is 2000 words long. They are forthcoming in the 3d edition of Heritage Guide to the Constitution. Topics covered include the history of English bills of attainder, the meaning of "bill," "notorious," "attainder," and other key terms, bills of attainder passed against loyalists during the American revolution, the Josiah Philips case, the legislative history of the clauses in the Philadelphia Convention, early Supreme Court decisions involving bills of attainder, and the modern doctrine. Inline citations and a short bibliography are included. The author …

Life And Afterlife In The Steel Seizure Case, Matthew Steilen

Buffalo Law Review

This Essay examines the proper role of the Supreme Court in deciding disputes between Congress and the President. Progressive commentators are now urging the Court to dismiss these cases as political questions, at least where doing so would give effect to congressional regulations of the President. The Court’s interference is criticized as antidemocratic. This Essay advances a different conception of the Supreme Court’s role by examining the famous Steel Seizure Case. In that case, the Court upheld an injunction barring President Truman from seizing the nation’s steel mills, on grounds that doing so was inconsistent with congressional will and without …

The Committee Of Style And The Federalist Constitution, David S. Schwartz

Buffalo Law Review

The conventional interpretation of the Constitution assumes that the Committee of Style, which created the final draft of the Constitution, lacked authority to engage with substance; therefore, any arguably substantive changes it purportedly made should be disregarded in favor of earlier draft language found in the records of the Constitutional Convention. This “Style doctrine” has been embraced by the Supreme Court and several leading constitutional scholars. This Article argues that the Style doctrine is historically unfounded and obscures the Constitution’s original meaning. The Committee of Style was not prohibited from proposing substantive changes. In any case, most of the revisions …

Standing For Democracy: Is Democracy A Procedural Right In Vacuo? A Democratic Perspective On Procedural Violations As A Basis For Article Iii Standing, Helen Hershkoff, Stephen Loffredo

Buffalo Law Review

Many commentators express concern that democracy in the United States is under threat, whether from the pressure of concentrated wealth and structural racism, government secrecy and authoritarian tendencies, an outdated constitutional structure and old-fashioned corruption, or perhaps a combination of them all. Against this background, this Article argues that the Supreme Court’s treatment of procedural rights for determining standing—the key that opens the door to federal court—is an overlooked factor in contributing to democratic erosion. According to the Court, violation of a congressionally conferred procedural right that does not safeguard some separate, non-procedural, concrete interest of plaintiff—a “procedural right in …

Neither Trumps Nor Interests: Rights, Pluralism, And The Recovery Of Constitutional Judgment Of Constitutional Judgment, Paul Linden-Retek

Journal Articles

This Article develops a novel framework for the adjudication of rights in an age of partisan and societal polarization. In so doing, it defends judicial review in a divided polity on new grounds. The Article makes two broad interventions.

First, the Article cautions against recent calls to shift rights adjudication in the United States from Dworkinian categoricalism toward proportionality analysis. Such calls correctly identify how categoricalism, by embracing the absolute nature of rights as “trumps,” pits citizens harshly against one another. The problem, however, is that proportionality’s proponents fail to see how it imposes a rights absolutism of its own. …

The Presidential Coup, Anthony J. Ghiotto

Buffalo Law Review

What prevents the President from abusing the military power at his disposal to stage a coup and actively impose presidential rule upon the United States? What if generations of presidential assertions of authority, congressional acquiescence, and judicial abdication have not only laid the groundwork for the President to use military power to impose his will, but in fact have legally sanctioned such a presidential coup? And what if the informal checks and balances that historically protected against such abuse—specifically a benevolent President, a constitutionally faithful military, intra-executive branch checks, and public opinion—have also eroded to no longer function as checks? …

Developing Police, Madalyn K. Wasilczuk

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Clouded Precedent: Tandon V. Newsom And Its Implications For The Shadow Docket, Alexander Gouzoules

Buffalo Law Review

The Supreme Court’s “shadow docket”—the decisions issued outside its procedures for deciding cases on the merits—has drawn increasing attention and criticism from scholars, commentators, and elected representatives. Shadow docket decisions have been criticized on the grounds that they are made without the benefit of full briefing and argument, and because their abbreviated, per curiam opinions can be difficult for lower courts to interpret.

A spate of shadow docket decisions in the context of free-exercise challenges to COVID-19 public health orders culminated in Tandon v. Newsom, a potentially groundbreaking decision that may upend longstanding doctrines governing claims brought under the Free …

The Irrepressible Myth Of Jacobson V. Massachusetts, Josh Blackman

Buffalo Law Review

During the COVID-19 outbreak, Jacobson v. Massachusetts became the fountainhead for pandemic jurisprudence. Courts relied on this 1905 precedent to resolve disputes about religious freedom, abortion, gun rights, voting rights, the right to travel, and many other contexts. But Justice John Marshall Harlan’s decision was very narrow. It upheld the state’s power to impose a nominal fine on an unvaccinated person. No more, no less. Yet, judges now follow a variant of Jacobson that is far removed from the Lochner-era decision. And the Supreme Court is largely to blame for these errors. Over the course of a century, four prominent …

The Complexities Of Conscience: Reconciling Death Penalty L Aw With Capital Jurors’ Concerns, Meredith Martin Rountree, Mary R. Rose

Buffalo Law Review

Jurors exercise unique legal power when they are asked to decide whether to sentence someone to death. The Supreme Court emphasizes the central role of the jury’s moral judgment in making this sentencing decision, noting that it is the jurors who are best able to “express the conscience of the community on the ultimate question of life or death.” Manylower courts nevertheless narrow the range of admissible evidence at the mitigation phase of a capital trial, insisting on a standard of legal relevance that interferes with the jury’s ability to exercise the very moral judgment the Supreme Court has deemed …

Federalism And The Limits Of Subnational Political Heterogeneity, James A. Gardner

Journal Articles

With an epidemic of democratic backsliding now afflicting many of the world’s democracies, including the United States, some scholars have suggested that federalism might serve as a useful defense for liberal democracy by impeding the ability of an authoritarian central government to stamp it out at the subnational level. In this Essay, I dispute that contention. An examination of both federal theory on one hand and the behavior and tactics of central control employed by ancient and early modern empires on the other leads to the conclusion that the protective value of federalism against the effects of national authoritarianism is …

The Illiberalization Of American Election Law: A Study In Democratic Deconsolidation, James A. Gardner

Journal Articles

For many years, the dominant view among American election law scholars has been that the U.S. Supreme Court’s constitutional jurisprudence of democratic practice got off to a promising start during the mid-twentieth century but has since then slowly deteriorated into incoherence. In light of the United States’ recent turn toward populist authoritarianism, that view needs to be substantially revised. With the benefit of hindsight, it now appears that the Supreme Court has functioned, in its management of the constitutional jurisprudence of democracy, as a vector of infection—a kind of super-spreader of populist authoritarianism.

There is, sadly, nothing unusual these days …

Solidarity As A Constitutional Value, Tamar Hostovsky Brandes

Buffalo Human Rights Law Review

No abstract provided.

Subnational Constitutionalism In The United States: Powerful States In A Powerful Federation, James A. Gardner

Contributions to Books

Published as Chapter 19 in Routledge Handbook of Subnational Constitutions and Constitutionalism, Patricia Popelier, Nicholas Aroney & Giacomo Delledonne, eds.

The United States has an extremely robust network of subnational constitutions. It is one of the few federations in the world in which subnational entities are understood to be fully competent polities with virtually complete constituent powers of self-organization and self-authorization. The authority to adopt a subnational constitution is consequently understood to be an incident of subnational sovereignty, a concept in turn derived from a conception of the basic federal order itself as highly decentralized.

Lake Erie Bill Of Rights Struck Down: Why The Rights Of Nature Movement Is A Nonviable Legislative Strategy For Municipalities Plagued By Pollution, Kathleen M. Mannard

Buffalo Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

One Man’S Trash: Constitutional Principles Of Federalism And Privacy Implicated In San Francisco’S Mandatory Recycling Ordinance And Future Similar Legislation, J. Tyler Smith

Buffalo Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Temporary Eminent Domain, Amnon Lehavi

Buffalo Law Review

Times of emergency call for drastic measures. These steps may include the physical takeover of privately-owned assets by the government for a certain period of time and for various purposes, aimedat addressing the state of emergency. When will such acts amount to a taking, and what compensation should be paid to the property owner? How do temporary physical appropriations during times of emergencydiverge, if at all, from temporary takeovers in more ordinary times?

The doctrinal and theoretical analysis of potential temporary takings has been done mostly in the context of non-physical government intervention with private property, such as when a …

Whither The Neutral Agency? Rethinking Bias In Regulatory Administration, Daniel B. Rodriguez

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

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 …

Virtual Trials: Necessity, Invention, And The Evolution Of The Courtroom, Susan A. Bandes, Neal Feigenson

Buffalo Law Review

Faith in the legitimating power of the live hearing or trial performed at the place of justice is at least as old as the Iliad. In public courtrooms, litigants appear together, evidence is presented, and decisions are openly and formally pronounced. The bedrock belief in the importance of the courtroom is rooted in common law, constitutional guarantees, and venerated tradition, as well as in folk knowledge. Courtrooms are widely believed to imbue adjudication with “a mystique of authenticity and legitimacy.” The COVID-19 pandemic, however, by compelling legal systems throughout the world to turn from physical courtrooms to virtual ones, disrupts …

Police Body Cameras: Go Big Or Go Home?, Ronald J. Coleman

Buffalo Law Review

Police body-worn cameras have proliferated since the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, and the recent George Floyd-related protests seem set to continue or even accelerate that trend. Indeed, in her recent Nieves v. Bartlett dissent, Justice Sotomayor took time to note that many departments equip their police officers with body cameras. Body camera advocates have touted the cameras’ benefits, such as decreasing misconduct, reducing complaints, and improving accountability. At the same time, serious concerns have been raised regarding the impact of these cameras on privacy, public resources, and fairness. Despite the increased interest in body cameras, important empirical …

A Poll Tax By Another Name: Considering The Constitutionality Of Conditioning Naturalization And The “Right To Have Rights” On An Ability To Pay, John Harland Giammatteo

Journal Articles

Permanent residents must naturalize to enjoy full access to constitutional rights, particularly the right to vote. However, new regulations from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), finalized in early August and originally slated to go into effect one month before the 2020 election, would drastically increase the cost of naturalization, moving it out of reach for many otherwise-qualified permanent residents, while at the same time abolishing any meaningful fee waiver for low-income applicants. In doing so, USCIS has sought to condition naturalization and its attendant rights on an individual’s financial status. In this Essay, I juxtapose the new fee regulations …

Access To Literacy Under The United States Constitution, Christine M. Naassana

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.