Law Commons^™

The Federalist Dimension Of Regulatory Takings Jurisprudence, Stewart E. Sterk

Articles

Conventional wisdom teaches that the Supreme Court's takings doctrine is a muddle. Appearances, however, are deceiving. The "property" protected by the Takings Clause is defined not by a single sovereign, but by the legislative enactments and judicial pronouncements of fifty separate states. As a result, federalism concerns - underappreciated in the takings literature - do and should play an important role in shaping the Court's takings doctrine. In particular, these concerns make it inappropriate for the Court to use the Takings Clause as a vehicle for articulating a comprehensive theory of the limits on government power to regulate land. This …

Agora: The United States Constitution And International Law Editors' Introduction, Lori Fisler Damrosh, Bernard H. Oxman

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No abstract provided.

A Look Back On A Half-Century Of Teaching, Writing And Speaking About Criminal Law And Criminal Procedure, Yale Kamisar

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When I look back at my academic career, I realize that, as hard as I tried to plan things, various events often overrode my plans.

Of Power And Responsibility: The Political Morality Of Federal Systems, Daniel Halberstam

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In comparative constitutional discourse, Americans are from Mars and Europeans from Venus; we eagerly tell our European counterparts about the U.S. constitutional experience, but rarely do we listen when they talk to us about their own. Whereas Europeans routinely examine U.S. constitutionalism as an illuminating point of comparison or contrast, as Americans, we seem convinced that we have nothing to learn from looking abroad. This Article challenges that assumption. In particular, it argues that American courts and scholars have overlooked an important alternative to the dominant interpretation of the division of powers in the United States by ignoring the theory …

The Inevitable Failure Of Nuisance-Based Theories Of The Takings Clause: A Reply To Professor Claeys, Stewart E. Sterk

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Rejecting the proposition (advanced by Professor Eric Claeys) that the Rehnquist Court's conservatives have missed an opportunity to transform takings law, this commentary demonstrates that a nuisance-based theory cannot provide a comprehensive basis for takings clause jurisprudence. The commentary further establishes that no plausible vision of originalism supports a nuisance based theory, and concludes by arguing that judicial scrutiny of state and local land use practices is less deferential than it was at the inception of the Rehnquist Court.

Courts As Forums For Protest, Jules Lobel

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For almost half a century, scholars, judges and politicians have debated two competing models of the judiciary's role in a democratic society. The mainstream model views courts as arbiters of disputes between private individuals asserting particular rights. The reform upsurge of the 1960s and 1970s led many to argue that courts are not merely forums to settle private disputes, but can also be used as instruments of societal change. Academics termed the emerging model the hein"public law" or "institutional reform" model.

The ongoing debate between these two views of the judicial role has obscured a third model of the role …

The First Free Exercise Case, Walter J. Walsh

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Part I of this Article tells the colonial history of religious freedom in New York State from a minority perspective, with specific reference to the secrecy of the confessional-the very practice that would be constitutionally tested in Philips. Part II describes the immediate social and political issues raised by the influx of Irish Catholic refugees into New York City in the wake of the failed United Irish Rebellion of 1798. Part III treats the unfriendly 1811 ruling of the federalist Chief Justice James Kent in People v. Ruggles as representative of the dominant Anglocentric constitutional legacy of imperial Protestant …

Bolling Alone, Richard A. Primus

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Under the doctrine of reverse incorporation, generally identified with the Supreme Court's decision in Bolling v. Sharpe, equal protection binds the federal government even though the Equal Protection Clause by its terms is addressed only to states. Since Bolling, however, the courts have almost never granted relief to litigants claiming unconstitutional racial discrimination by the federal government. Courts have periodically found unconstitutional federal discrimination on nonracial grounds such as sex and alienage, and reverse incorporation has also limited the scope of affirmative action. But in the presumed core area of preventing federal discrimination against racial minorities, Boiling has virtually no …

A Thirteenth Amendment Framework For Combating Racial Profiling, William M. Carter Jr.

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Law enforcement officers’ use of race to single persons out for criminal suspicion (“racial profiling”) is the subject of much scrutiny and debate. This Article provides a new understanding of racial profiling. While scholars have correctly concluded that racial profiling should be considered a violation of the Fourth Amendment, the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, and existing federal statutes, this Article contends that the use of race as a proxy for criminality is also a badge and incident of slavery in violation of the Thirteenth Amendment.

Racial profiling is not only a denial of the right to equal treatment, but …

When Equality Leaves Everyone Worse Off: The Problem Of Leveling Down In Equality Law, Deborah Brake

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This Article addresses the problem of leveling down as a response to discrimination. Existing case law and legal scholarship generally assume that inequality may be remedied in one of two ways: improving the lot of the disfavored group to match that of the most favored group, or worsening the treatment of the favored group until they fare as badly as everyone else. The term "leveling down" refers to the latter response. This Article contends that courts and commentators have overstated the flexibility of equality rights in accepting leveling down as a response to inequality, and proposes a new framework that …

Revisiting Title Ix's Feminist Legacy: Moving Beyond The Three-Part Test, Deborah Brake

Articles

This essay addresses three issues surrounding Title IX's application to women's sports that have been largely eclipsed by the recent controversy over Title IX's three-part test: the increasingly male composition of athletic leadership positions; the focus on cutting men's sports as a remedy to discrimination against women; and the role of revenue and massive spending on men's elite sports in justifying gender inequality in sports. The essay links each of these issues to broader questions and concerns in discrimination law more generally, and concludes that deeper cultural change is needed to fulfill Title IX's promise.

The Anti-Emergency Constitution, Laurence H. Tribe, Patrick O. Gudridge

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No abstract provided.

The Crawford Transformation, Richard D. Friedman

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Crawford v. Washington, 124 S. Ct. 1354 (2004), is one of the most dramatic Evidence cases in recent history, radically transforming the doctrine governing the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Crawford is a very positive development, but leaves many open questions - and forces Evidence teachers to rethink how they teach hearsay and confrontation.

A Glimpse Behind And Beyond Grutter, Evan H. Caminker

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Many people have suggested that the recent battle over affirmative action was a defining moment for the contemporary relevance of Brown v. Board of Education and that it would determine the promise and potential for widespread societal integration. In my remarks, I want to comment upon a couple of comparisons and links between the Brown, Bakke, Grutter, and Gratz cases.

Postscript: Another Look At Patane And Seibert, The 2004 Miranda 'Poisoned Fruit' Cases, Yale Kamisar

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Some months after I finished writing an article that, inter alia, discussed the lower court opinions in Patane and Seibert (an article that appears elsewhere in this issue of the Journa),1 the Supreme Court handed down its decisions in those cases.2 In Patane, a 5-4 majority held admissible a Glock pistol located as a result of a failure to comply with Miranda. In Seibert, a 5-4 majority agreed with the state court that a "second confession," one obtained after the police had deliberately used a two-stage interrogation technique designed to undermine the Miranda warnings, was inadmissible. 3 In Patane, Justice …

Adjusting To Crawford: High Court Decision Restores Confrontation Clause Protection, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

In Crawford v. Washington, 124 S. Ct. 1354 (2004), the U.S. Supreme Court radically transformed its doctrine governing the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Craitiord is a very positive development, restoring to its central position one of the basic protections of the common law system of criminal justice. But the decision leaves many open questions, and all lawyers involved in the criminal justice process will have to adjust to the new regime that it creates. This article outlines and summarizes the problems with the law as it stood before Crait/brd. It then explains the theoretical …

The Confrontation Clause Re-Rooted And Transformed, Richard D. Friedman

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For several centuries, prosecution witnesses in criminal cases have given their testimony under oath, face to face with the accused, and subject to cross-examination at trial. The Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees the procedure, providing that ‘‘[i]n all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right . . . to be confronted with the witness against him.’’ In recent decades, however, judicial protection of the right has been lax, because the U.S. Supreme Court has tolerated admission of outof- court statements against the accused, without cross-examination, if the statements are deemed ‘‘reliable’’ or ‘‘trustworthy.’’ …

Face To Face': Rediscovering The Right To Confront Prosecution Witnesses, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution protects the right of an accused 'to confront the witnesses against him'. The United States Supreme Court has treated this Confrontation Clause as a broad but rather easily rebuttable rule against using hearsay on behalf of a criminal prosecution; with respect to most hearsay, the exclusionary rule is overcome if the court is persuaded that the statement is sufficiently reliable, and the court can reach that conclusion if the statement fits within a 'firmly rooted' hearsay exception. This article argues that this framework should be abandoned. The clause should not be regarded …

Public Ruses, James E. Krier, Christopher Serkin

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The public use requirement of eminent domain law may be working its way back into the United States Constitution. To be sure, the words "public use" appear in the document-and in many state constitutions as well, but the federal provision applies to the states in any event-as one of the Fifth Amendment's limitations on the government's inherent power to take private property against the will of its owners. (The other limitation is that "just compensation" must be paid, of which more later.) Any taking of private property, the text suggests, must be for public use. Those words, however, have amounted …

Grutter V. Bollinger: This Generation's Brown V. Board Of Education, Michelle Adams

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At first blush, Grutter appears to be a deviation from the body of the Court's recent affirmative action jurisprudence: it says "yes" where the other cases said "no." But it is not so clear that Grutter is a deviation from current law. Instead, it might be seen as consistent with it, in that the justification for the racial preference recognized in Grutter transcended the justifications offered in the previous cases, and the method used to achieve that end, "race as a factor," diffused rather than highlighted race. From this perspective, Grutter addressed several concerns that had troubled the Court for …