Law Commons^™

Brett Kavanaugh Vs. The Exonerated Central Park Five: Exposing The President's "Presumption Of Innocence" Double Standard, Sofia Yakren

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

In the service of Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the United States Supreme Court, the President of the United States (and Republican Senators) both misappropriated and further eroded the already compromised concepts of due process and presumption of innocence. This Essay uses the prominent “Central Park Five” case in which five teenagers of color were wrongly convicted of a white woman’s widely-publicized beating and rape to expose the President’s disparate use of the presumption along race and status lines. This narrative is consistent with larger systemic inequities that leave poor black and brown criminal defendants less likely to benefit …

"I Still Like Smear": The Senate Judiciary Committee's Obstructing Politics Surrounding The Kavanaugh Hearing And A Solution To The Chaos That Ensued, Frank J. Tantone

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

The incredible events and raucous behavior by members of the Committee that colored Justice Kavanaugh’s confirmation process rose to a level of intensity and virulence never seen before in this specific area of American government and politics. Nevertheless, the most analogous situation that somewhat closely reflects the events that transpired in 2018 occurred seventeen years earlier. President George H.W. Bush, on July 1, 1991, nominated then District of Columbia Circuit Court Judge, Clarence Thomas, to replace Justice Thurgood Marshall on the Supreme Court. Thomas’s confirmation hearing was also opposed from the outset but by civil rights and feminist organizations …

Commonwealth And Commodity: Shakespeare's "King John", Robert J. Delahunty

Journal of Catholic Legal Studies

(Excerpt)

Part I begins, as does KJ itself, with the French ambassador questioning the King’s legitimacy, and continues with a dispute between two brothers over their inheritance. The problem of just title reverberates throughout the play. Part II explores the development and moral growth of Philip Falconbridge/Sir Richard Plantagenet—“The Bastard”—the play’s central character and if there is one, its hero. Part III analyzes the two concepts whose polar opposition structures the play: “commonwealth” and “commodity.” The contrast between these two ideas is found elsewhere in Tudor literature, but Shakespeare gives it a new resonance and depth. The service of one …

Aquinas's Prohibition Of Killing Reconsidered, John Makdisi

Journal of Catholic Legal Studies

(Excerpt)

St. Thomas Aquinas speaks to the heart of what it means to be human in our relationship with God when he expounds the way of the moral life in his Summa Theologiae. A classic example of the depth of his understanding is evident in his treatment of acts that knowingly kill. His style of writing is succinct and sometimes his ideas are distributed among several texts, but one can mine the riches of his thought with patient reading and reflection. This Article focuses exclusively on the extreme case where a person is certain to die if nothing is …

Comments On Steven Smith, Pagans And Christians In The City, Michael P. Moreland

Journal of Catholic Legal Studies

(Excerpt)

One of the most interesting aspects of this generally very interesting book was the discussion of sexual morality in paganism and Christianity. I have thought for a while that much of the contemporary debate about religious freedom is not about religious freedom in a generic sense but instead about religious freedom in a very particular context—sex. But that is a descriptive point—much more challenging is trying to give an account of why sex should have come to be (or as Smith’s argument implies, has long been) the battlefield on which much of the fight over religious freedom takes place. …

A Tale Of Two Cities: Religious Freedom In A Secular Age, Anna Su

Journal of Catholic Legal Studies

(Excerpt)

Understanding the terms under which Christianity and paganism could coexist in antiquity thus gives us a semblance of an answer to the question posed early on in the book. In ancient Rome, Pliny asks why Christians were being subjected to legal sanctions, while in our present time, Douglas Laycock asks why people—referring to same-sex couples suing wedding photographers, florists, and bakers who object on religious grounds to their union—would insist on these services they neither need nor want? The paganism of ancient Rome welcomed a plurality of cults and religions but only up to a certain point. When Christians …

Many Cities, One Nation: A Response To Steven Smith's Pagans And Christians In The City, Bruce P. Frohnen

Journal of Catholic Legal Studies

(Excerpt)

In his treatment of contemporary legal issues and, more deeply, his analysis of the manner in which changing religious assumptions and goals shape the culture from which law naturally grows, Smith has provided both a strong critique of contemporary “secular” pieties and an explanation for the culture wars so often derided or minimized by those most determined to deconstruct traditional culture. Still, I would argue that Smith’s wide-ranging, radical rethinking of contemporary social disorder does not go far enough. As Smith’s discussion of contemporary judicial treatment of social structure makes clear, today’s legal elites are at heart totalitarian in …

Establishment Of The Antitrust Division Of The U.S. Department Of Justice, Gregory J. Werden

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

To fill in the knowledge gaps, this Article proceeds largely in reverse chronological order. First, it reviews Order No. 2507 and related circumstances, finding clear and convincing evidence that the Order did not create the Antitrust Division. Next, the Article examines the prior tenure of AG Cummings, finding clear and convincing evidence that the Antitrust Division existed before Roosevelt became President and Cummings became AG, and that Cummings lowered the standing of the Antitrust Division within the DOJ prior to issuing Order No. 2507. Finally, the Article scours the prior history of the DOJ and determines that the Antitrust …

The Faith Of My Fathers, Robert H. Jackson, John Q. Barrett

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

In his final years, United States Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson worked on a number of autobiographical writing projects. The previously unknown Jackson text that follows this Introduction is one such writing. Justice Jackson wrote this essay in longhand on thirteen yellow legal pad pages in the early 1950s. It is Jackson’s writing about religion in his life.

After Justice Jackson’s death in 1954, his secretary Elsie L. Douglas found the thirteen pages among his papers. She concluded that the pages were “undoubtedly prepared as part of his autobiography,” typed them up, and gave a file folder containing …