Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Keyword
-
- Constitutional law (5)
- BLM (3)
- Constitutional Law (3)
- Abortion (2)
- Black Lives Matter (2)
-
- Thirteenth Amendment (2)
- Bostock (1)
- Citizenship; abolitionist movement; African American; Black Reconstruction; equal citizenship; Reconstruction (1)
- Civil Rights Cases (1)
- Criminal justice reform (1)
- Defund the police (1)
- Dobbs (1)
- Fourteenth Amendment (1)
- Fourteenth amendment (1)
- Fundamentalism (1)
- Neil Gorsuch (1)
- Poll tax (1)
- Privilege (1)
- Racial justice (1)
- Reproductive rights (1)
- Roe v Wade (1)
- Supreme Court (1)
- Voter id (1)
- Voting rights (1)
Articles 1 - 9 of 9
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 …
Why The Civil Rights Cases Belong In The Anti-Canon: Black Citizenship, The Fourteenth Amendment, And Judicial Interposition, Matthew Norman, Christopher Bryant
Why The Civil Rights Cases Belong In The Anti-Canon: Black Citizenship, The Fourteenth Amendment, And Judicial Interposition, Matthew Norman, Christopher Bryant
ConLawNOW
This essay analyzes the Supreme Court’s ruling in The Civil Rights Cases (1883) and surveys both contemporary and scholarly responses to it. Citizenship should mean something, and the Court’s ruling in The Civil Rights Cases invalidated much of the Civil Rights Act of 1875, the most ambitious and progressive civil rights legislation that Congress enacted prior to 1964. When the Supreme Court issued its decision in Dred Scott, Abraham Lincoln warned of a sequel that would nationalize slavery. While the Thirteenth Amendment eliminated the possibility of such a decision, Dred Scott is widely recognized as one of the Court’s …
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 …
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 …
Fellow Citizens, James W. Fox Jr.
Fellow Citizens, James W. Fox Jr.
ConLawNOW
This article explores the idea of equal citizenship central to the reconstructed Constitution that originated in the crucible of African American experience and framed by the Black abolitionist movement of the antebellum North. It identifies some of the key concepts of this mid-nineteenth-century African American Constitutionalism embodied in the phrase used at the time of “Emancipate, Enfranchise, Educate.” These became the core principles of Black Reconstruction as Black leaders and their white allies sought to secure civil freedom, free labor, equal suffrage and political power, and access to education and economic and social advancement. The essay addresses primary source materials …
Symposium: Examining Black Citizenship From Reconstruction To Black Lives Matter: Black Citizenship, Dehumanization, And The Fourteenth Amendment, Reginald Oh
ConLawNOW
The fight for full Black citizenship has been in large measure a fight against the systematic dehumanization of African Americans. Dehumanization is the process of treating people as less than human, as subhuman. Denying Blacks full and equal citizenship has gone hand in hand with denying their full humanity. To effectively promote equal citizenship for African Americans, therefore, requires an explicit commitment to ending their dehumanization. This essay examines the concept of dehumanization and its connection to formal, political, civil, and social citizenship. It elaborates on the less familiar idea of social citizenship, entailing the right to have personal relationships …
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
Symposium: Examining Black Citizenship From Reconstruction To Black Lives Matter: Rhetoric And Nostalgia In The Criminal Justice Reform Movement, Michael Gentithes
Symposium: Examining Black Citizenship From Reconstruction To Black Lives Matter: Rhetoric And Nostalgia In The Criminal Justice Reform Movement, Michael Gentithes
ConLawNOW
Today’s movement for criminal justice reform and its attendant "defund the police" slogan contain nuanced calls to redirect public funds in ways that will both control crime and support downtrodden neighborhoods. But the language in those calls can easily be misinterpreted. Such poor messaging misleads both the movement’s members and the public in two important ways. First, it repeats many of the mistakes made by protest anthems of the past. For too many Americans enduring today’s all-too-real dystopia, calls to defund sound like calls to anarchy, not arguments for peaceable, sensible reforms. Second, defunding rhetoric contains an element of historical …