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Full-Text Articles in Law
Obergefell V. Hodges: How The Supreme Court Should Have Ruled, Adam Lamparello
Obergefell V. Hodges: How The Supreme Court Should Have Ruled, Adam Lamparello
Adam Lamparello
In Obergefell, et al. v. Hodges, Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion legalizing same-sex marriage was based on “the mystical aphorisms of a fortune cookie,” and “indefensible as a matter of constitutional law.” Kennedy’s opinion was comprised largely of philosophical ramblings about liberty that have neither a constitutional foundation nor any conceptual limitation. The fictional opinion below arrives at the same conclusion, but the reasoning is based on equal protection rather than due process principles. The majority opinion holds that same-sex marriage bans violate the Equal Protection Clause because they: (1) discriminate on the basis of gender; (2) promote gender-based stereotypes; and …
Beyond The Written Constitution: A Short Analysis Of Warren Court, Thiago Luis Santos Sombra
Beyond The Written Constitution: A Short Analysis Of Warren Court, Thiago Luis Santos Sombra
Thiago Luís Santos Sombra
This essay propose an analysis about how Warren Court became one of the most particular in American History by confronting Jim Crow law, especially by applying the Bill of Rights. In this essay, we propose an analysis of how complex the unwritten Constitution is. Cases like Brown vs. Board of Education will be analyzed from a different point of view to understand the methods of the Court.
Justice Kennedy's Decision In Obergefell: A Sad Day For The Judiciary, Adam Lamparello
Justice Kennedy's Decision In Obergefell: A Sad Day For The Judiciary, Adam Lamparello
Adam Lamparello
Same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marriage under the Equal Protection Clause, not under Justice Kennedy’s self-serving and ever-changing definition of liberty. The long-term impact of Kennedy’s decision will be to the Court’s institutional legitimacy. Chief Justice Roberts emphasized that the legitimacy of this Court ultimately rests “upon the respect accorded to its judgments,” which is based on the perception—and reality—that we exercise humility and restraint in deciding cases according to the Constitution and law.” Justice Kennedy’s decision eschewed these values, giving the Court the power to discover “new dimensions of freedom,” and to ensure that all citizens, through …
A Call For An Overhaul Of The U.S. Federal Court System, Huhnkie Lee
A Call For An Overhaul Of The U.S. Federal Court System, Huhnkie Lee
Huhnkie Lee
No abstract provided.
A Call For An Overhaul Of The U.S. Federal Court System, Huhnkie Lee
A Call For An Overhaul Of The U.S. Federal Court System, Huhnkie Lee
Huhnkie Lee
No abstract provided.
A Fourth Amendment Framework For The Fee Exercise Clause, Adam Lamparello
A Fourth Amendment Framework For The Fee Exercise Clause, Adam Lamparello
Adam Lamparello
This article proposes a paradigm for resolving disputes under the free exercise clause that is analogous to the framework used by the court under the fourth amendment when balancing privacy rights against investigatory powers of law enforcement. In its Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, the Court provides varying degrees of protection to privacy – and imposes different evidentiary requirements on law enforcement – depending on the context in which privacy is affected, the intrusiveness of a particular search, and the asserted governmental interests. For example, privacy receives the strongest protections in areas such as the home, thus requiring law enforcement to have …
Stop Blaming The Prosecutors: The Real Causes Of Wrongful Convictions And Rightful Exonerations, And What Should Be Done To Fix Them, Adam Lamparello, Charles E. Maclean, James J. Berles
Stop Blaming The Prosecutors: The Real Causes Of Wrongful Convictions And Rightful Exonerations, And What Should Be Done To Fix Them, Adam Lamparello, Charles E. Maclean, James J. Berles
Adam Lamparello
Wrongfully convicted and rightfully exonerated criminal defendants spent, on average, ten years in prison before exoneration, and the ramifications to the defendants, the criminal justice system, and society are immeasurable.Prosecutorial misconduct, however, is not the primary cause of wrongful convictions. To begin with, although more than twenty million new adult criminal cases are opened in state and federal courts each year throughout the United States, there have been only 1,281 total exonerations over the last twenty-five years. In only six percent of those cases was prosecutorial misconduct the predominant factor resulting in those wrongful convictions. Of course, although prosecutorial misconduct …
Fundamental Unenumerated Rights Under The Ninth Amendment And Privileges Or Immunities Clause, Adam Lamparello
Fundamental Unenumerated Rights Under The Ninth Amendment And Privileges Or Immunities Clause, Adam Lamparello
Adam Lamparello
The failure to link the Ninth Amendment and Privileges or Immunities Clause for the purpose of creating unenumerated fundamental rights has been a persistent but rarely discussed aspect of the Court’s jurisprudence. That should change. There need not be an ongoing tension between the Court’s counter-majoritarian role and the authority of states to govern through the democratic process. If the Constitution’s text gives the Court a solid foundation upon which to recognize new rights and thereby create a more just society, then the exercise of that power is fundamentally democratic. The Ninth Amendment and Privileges or Immunities Clause provides that …
Why Chief Justice Roy Moore And The Alabama Supreme Court Just Made The Best Case For Same-Sex Marriage, Adam Lamparello
Why Chief Justice Roy Moore And The Alabama Supreme Court Just Made The Best Case For Same-Sex Marriage, Adam Lamparello
Adam Lamparello
The Alabama Court of the Judiciary should remove Roy Moore from the Supreme Court of Alabama for a second and final time. Over ten years after being ousted from the Alabama Supreme Court, Chief Justice Moore is embroiled in yet another controversy that involves disregarding the federal courts and creating chaos in the legal system. In fact, Moore recently stated that he would ignore the Supremacy Clause and not respect a U.S. Supreme Court decision invalidating same-sex marriage bans. That statement brings back memories of Governor Wallace’s infamous stand at the schoolhouse door. At least Wallace had a change of …
Jones, Lackey, And Teague, Richard Broughton
Jones, Lackey, And Teague, Richard Broughton
Richard Broughton
In a recent, high-profile ruling, a federal court finally recognized that a substantial delay in executing a death row inmate violated the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishments. Courts have repeatedly rejected these so-called “Lackey claims,” making the federal court’s decision in Jones v. Chappell all the more important. And yet it was deeply flawed. This paper focuses on one of the major flaws in the Jones decision that largely escaped attention: the application of the non-retroactivity rule from Teague v. Lane. By comprehensively addressing the merits of the Teague bar as applied to Lackey claims, and making …
Free Expression, In-Group Bias, And The Court's Conservatives: A Critique Of The Epstein-Parker-Segal Study, Todd E. Pettys
Free Expression, In-Group Bias, And The Court's Conservatives: A Critique Of The Epstein-Parker-Segal Study, Todd E. Pettys
Todd E. Pettys
In a recent, widely publicized study, a prestigious team of political scientists concluded that there is strong evidence of ideological in-group bias among the Supreme Court’s members in First Amendment free-expression cases, with the current four most conservative justices being the Roberts Court’s worst offenders. Beneath the surface of the authors’ conclusions, however, one finds a surprisingly sizable combination of coding errors, superficial case readings, and questionable judgments about litigants’ ideological affiliations. Many of those problems likely flow either from shortcomings that reportedly afflict the Supreme Court Database (the data set that nearly always provides the starting point for empirical …
Negotiating Federalism And The Structural Constitution: Navigating The Separation Of Powers Both Vertically And Horizontally (A Response To Aziz Huq), Erin Ryan
Erin Ryan
This essay explores the emerging literature on the negotiation of structural constitutional governance, to which Professor Aziz Huq has made an important contribution in The Negotiated Structural Constitution, 114 Colum. L. Rev. 1595 (2014). In the piece, Professor Huq reviews the negotiation of constitutional entitlements and challenges the conventional wisdom about the limits of political bargaining as a means of allocating authority among the three branches of government. He argues that constitutional ambiguities in the horizontal allocation of power are sometimes best resolved through legislative-executive negotiation, just as uncertain grants of constitutional authority are already negotiated between state and federal …