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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Never-Ending Struggle For Reproductive Rights, Stephanie Toti
The Never-Ending Struggle For Reproductive Rights, Stephanie Toti
Michigan Law Review
For me, the annual Book Review issue is a time for reflection. It provides an opportunity to take stock of scholarly trends, reassess conventional wisdom, and gather new insights to apply to the practice of law. The reviews contained in this year’s issue address a wide range of subjects, including the history of public defenders, the use of bigotry rhetoric in conflicts over marriage and civil rights law, the role of cost-benefit analysis in federal policymaking, and racial inequities in tax policy. This impressive commentary on an astute and varied collection of books about the law will inspire many of …
Roe As We Know It, Cary Franklin
Roe As We Know It, Cary Franklin
Michigan Law Review
The petitioners in last year’s historic same-sex marriage case cited most of the Supreme Court’s canonical substantive due process precedents. They argued that the right of same-sex couples to marry, like the right to use birth control and the right to guide the upbringing of one’s children, was among the liberties protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court in Obergefell v. Hodges agreed, citing many of the same cases. Not once, however, did the petitioners or the majority in Obergefell cite the Court’s most famous substantive due process decision. It was the dissenters in Obergefell who invoked Roe v. Wade.
Some Effects Of Identity-Based Social Movements On Constitutional Law In The Twentieth Century, William N. Eskridge Jr.
Some Effects Of Identity-Based Social Movements On Constitutional Law In The Twentieth Century, William N. Eskridge Jr.
Michigan Law Review
What motivated big changes in constitutional law doctrine during the twentieth century? Rarely did important constitutional doctrine or theory change because of formal amendments to the document's text, and rarer still because scholars or judges "discovered" new information about the Constitution's original meaning. Precedent and common law reasoning were the mechanisms by which changes occurred rather than their driving force. My thesis is that most twentieth century changes in the constitutional protection of individual rights were driven by or in response to the great identity-based social movements ("IBSMs") of the twentieth century. Race, sex, and sexual orientation were markers of …
Rights Against Rules: The Moral Structure Of American Constitutional Law, Matthew D. Adler
Rights Against Rules: The Moral Structure Of American Constitutional Law, Matthew D. Adler
Michigan Law Review
The Bill of Rights, by means of open-ended terms such as "freedom of speech," "equal protection," or "due process," refers to moral criteria, which take on constitutional status by virtue of being thus referenced. We can disagree about whether the proper methodology for judicial application of these criteria is originalist or nonoriginalist. The originalist looks, not to the true content of the moral criteria named by the Constitution, but to the framers' beliefs about that content; the nonoriginalist tries to determine what the criteria truly require, and ignores or gives less weight to the framers' views. Bracketing this disagreement, however, …
The Casey Standard For Evaluating Facial Attacks On Abortion Statutes, John Christopher Ford
The Casey Standard For Evaluating Facial Attacks On Abortion Statutes, John Christopher Ford
Michigan Law Review
Since the Supreme Court declared in 1973 that the Constitution grants women a limited right to an abortion, the Justices have decided abortion cases with reference to such weighty matters as religious freedom, the disadvantaged position of women in society, and the proper role of the judiciary. Understandably, the Supreme Court's writings on abortion deal extensively with these large themes. The Court, and certainly others, view abortion cases as rivaling Brown v. Board of Education in their importance to the nation. While the Court has focused on the big issues, however, it has neglected an equally important, if less emotionally …
Progressive And Conservative Constitutionalism, Robin West
Progressive And Conservative Constitutionalism, Robin West
Michigan Law Review
The article's central thesis is that the understandings of the constitutional tradition most central to both paradigms are determined by sometimes implicit, but more often explicit, political dispositions toward various forms of social and private power, and the normative authority to which social and private power gives rise. Very broadly, conservative constitutionalists view private or social normative authority as the legitimate and best source of guidance for state action; accordingly, they view both the Constitution and constitutional adjudication as means of preserving and protecting that authority and the power that undergirds it against either legislative or judicial encroachment. Progressive constitutionalists, …
Roe V. Wade And The Lesson Of The Pre-Roe Case Law, Richard Gregory Morgan
Roe V. Wade And The Lesson Of The Pre-Roe Case Law, Richard Gregory Morgan
Michigan Law Review
The politically unsettled and judicially confused law of abortion in 1971 and 1972, when the Court twice heard arguments and deliberated Roe, should have warned it not to decide the case. By doing so; the Court thrust itself into a political debate and stunted the development of a thoughtful lower-court case law. If the Court did perceive the warnings but continued toward a decision anyway, perhaps trusting that its own considerable wits would devise an answer the lower courts had not, the result suggests that the judicial system's axioms deserve more respect than they received. This Article, by showing …