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Creating Precedents Through Words And Deeds, Harold Krent
Creating Precedents Through Words And Deeds, Harold Krent
All Faculty Scholarship
Book review: Untrodden ground: how presidents interpret the Constitution. By Harold H. Bruff. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015. 557 pages. Reviewed by Harold J. Krent
Distinguishing The Corporal From The Divine: Legal Fictions Create Bodies Not Souls, Daisy Ayllon
Distinguishing The Corporal From The Divine: Legal Fictions Create Bodies Not Souls, Daisy Ayllon
Seventh Circuit Review
Can a for-profit, secular corporation exercise religion? If so, does the Affordable Care Act's requirement that employer-provided health insurance plans offer women of reproductive age contraceptives violate free exercise rights?
Plaintiffs challenging the "contraceptive mandate," as it is commonly known, argue that it violates their rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) because it imposes a substantial burden on their religious exercise without meeting strict scrutiny. Although these challenges do present courts with a novel issue (whether a secular, for-profit corporation is a "person" capable of "exercising religion"), the answer to the broader question should be clear: requiring corporate-provided …
From Roach Powder To Radical Humanism: Professor Derrick Bell's 'Critical' Constitutional Pedagogy, Vinay Harpalani
From Roach Powder To Radical Humanism: Professor Derrick Bell's 'Critical' Constitutional Pedagogy, Vinay Harpalani
All Faculty Scholarship
This essay is a tribute to the late Professor Derrick Bell, who passed away on October 5, 2011. The author was the Derrick Bell Fellow at New York University School of Law in 2009-10 and assisted Professor Bell in teaching his constitutional law courses. The essay discusses Professor Bell's 'critical' constitutional and life pedagogy, by giving illustrations from Professor Bell's classes and anecdotes from several of his former students. It highlights not only Professor Bell's comprehensive approach to constitutional law, but also the "radical humanism" he brought to teaching and mentoring students.
Excavating Constitutional Antecedents In Asia: An Essay On The Potential And Perils, Arun K. Thiruvengadam
Excavating Constitutional Antecedents In Asia: An Essay On The Potential And Perils, Arun K. Thiruvengadam
Chicago-Kent Law Review
This essay seeks to endorse Tom Ginsburg's call for studies that expand the relatively limited range of historically informed scholarship on constitutional law in Asia. Such a trend will no doubt also broaden the focus of the discipline of contemporary constitutional scholarship, which remains unjustifiably narrow and excludes many regions of the globe. While appreciating the virtues of Ginsburg's broader analysis, the essay also seeks to draw attention to the potential pitfalls of such historically-oriented inquiry. I emphasize the fact that in many Asian societies, contemporary constitutional practice marks radical departures from pre-existing traditions of law and constitutionalism. Drawing upon …
Constitutionalism And The Rule Of Law: Considering The Case For Antecedents, Rogers M. Smith
Constitutionalism And The Rule Of Law: Considering The Case For Antecedents, Rogers M. Smith
Chicago-Kent Law Review
Tom Ginsburg credibly establishes that East Asian legal traditions include elements that can be considered antecedents for perhaps the strongest form of the rule of law, constitutional restraints that apply even to sovereigns. Treating these precedents chiefly as anticipations of Western-style constitutionalism, however, may be historically misleading and may inhibit reflection on the desirability of practices that represent alternatives to Western conceptions of the rule of law.
The Long And Winding Road From Monroe To Connick, Sheldon Nahmod
The Long And Winding Road From Monroe To Connick, Sheldon Nahmod
All Faculty Scholarship
In this article, I address the historical and doctrinal development of § 1983 local government liability, beginning with Monroe v. Pape in 1961 and culminating in the Supreme Court’s controversial 2011 failure to train decision in Connick v. Thompson. Connick has made it exceptionally difficult for § 1983 plaintiffs to prevail against local governments in failure to train cases. In the course of my analysis, I also consider the oral argument and opinions in Connick as well as various aspects of § 1983 doctrine. I ultimately situate Connick in the Court’s federalism jurisprudence which doubles back to Justice Frankfurter’s view …
The Structural Constitutional Principle Of Republican Legitimacy, Mark D. Rosen
The Structural Constitutional Principle Of Republican Legitimacy, Mark D. Rosen
All Faculty Scholarship
Representative democracy does not spontaneously occur by citizens gathering to choose laws. Instead, republicanism takes place within an extensive legal framework that determines who gets to vote, how campaigns are conducted, what conditions must be met for representatives to make valid law, and many other things. Many of the “rules-of-the-road” that operationalize republicanism have been subject to constitutional challenges in recent decades. For example, lawsuits have been brought against “partisan gerrymandering” (which has led to most congressional districts not being party-competitive, but instead being safely Republican or Democratic) and against onerous voter identification requirements (which reduce the voting rates of …
The Inviolate Home: Housing Exceptionalism In The Fourth Amendment, Stephanie M. Stern
The Inviolate Home: Housing Exceptionalism In The Fourth Amendment, Stephanie M. Stern
All Faculty Scholarship
The ideal of the inviolate home dominates the Fourth Amendment. The case law accords stricter protection to residential search and seizure than to many other privacy incursions. The focus on protection of the physical home has decreased doctrinal efficiency and coherence and derailed Fourth Amendment residential privacy from the core principle of intimate association. This Article challenges Fourth Amendment housing exceptionalism. Specifically, I critique two hallmarks of housing exceptionalism: first, the extension of protection to residential spaces unlikely to shelter intimate association or implicate other key privacy interests; and second, the prohibition of searches that impinge on core living spaces …
Payment Finality And Discharge In Funds Transfers, Benjamin Geva
Payment Finality And Discharge In Funds Transfers, Benjamin Geva
Chicago-Kent Law Review
The article explores the occurrence of "final payment" in funds transfers in the form of "accountability" by a bank instructed to pay to a payee/beneficiary. Both the accountability of the drawee/payor bank in a check-collection debit-pull system and that of the beneficiary's bank in a wire-transfer credit-push system are discussed. The article further examines the relationship between "final payment" and the discharge of an obligation paid by means of the "funds transfer." It analyzes relevant provisions of Articles 3, 4, and 4A of the Uniform Commercial Code, sometimes against the background of general common law principles. The article proposes minor …
Latin American Competition Policy: From Nirvana Antitrust Policy To Reality-Based Institutional Competition Building, Ignacio De Leon
Latin American Competition Policy: From Nirvana Antitrust Policy To Reality-Based Institutional Competition Building, Ignacio De Leon
Chicago-Kent Law Review
The inception of antitrust policy in Latin America is marred with misconceptions about the role of this policy. The seemingly pro-competitive goals declared under the law collide with the pursuit of welfare efficiency goals that could impair the natural outcomes of unfettered market forces. This article argues that the inherent contradiction between the stated goals of antitrust policy and its practical effects ultimately rests on the lack of analytical relevance attached to the institutional milieu within which antitrust policy is to produce its effects. Institutional connections are necessary to convey relevant information across the system; without these, the market would …
Dred Scott And The Crisis Of 1860, Louise Weinberg
Dred Scott And The Crisis Of 1860, Louise Weinberg
Chicago-Kent Law Review
Recent suggestions to the contrary notwithstanding, the Dred Scott decision and the controversy over the extension of slavery into the territories were at the very center of the crisis of 1860. This paper fills in the social, political, economic, and legal backgrounds of that crisis in order to clarify the centrality of Dred Scott in the election of Abraham Lincoln and to the ensuing destruction of the Union.
Thirteen Ways Of Looking At Dred Scott, Jack M. Balkin, Sanford Levinson
Thirteen Ways Of Looking At Dred Scott, Jack M. Balkin, Sanford Levinson
Chicago-Kent Law Review
Dred Scott v. Sandford is a classic case that is relevant to almost every important question of contemporary constitutional theory.
Dred Scott connected race to social status, to citizenship, and to being a part of the American people. One hundred fifty years later these connections still haunt us; and the twin questions of who is truly American and who America belongs to still roil our national debates.
Dred Scott is a case about threats to national security and whether the Constitution is a suicide pact. It concerns whether the Constitution follows the flag and whether constitutional rights obtain in federally …
Rethinking Dred Scott: New Context For An Old Case, Austin Allen
Rethinking Dred Scott: New Context For An Old Case, Austin Allen
Chicago-Kent Law Review
Scholars have misunderstood the context in which Dred Scott emerged. Leading historical interpretations of the decision have relied too heavily on accounts developed by antebellum Republicans and on mid-twentieth-century legal theory. This article offers an alternative account of Dred Scott's origins and argues that the decision emerged from a series of unintended consequences resulting from the Taney Court's efforts to incorporate a Jacksonian vision of governance into constitutional law. By 1857, this effort had generated tensions that made a sweeping decision like Dred Scott nearly unavoidable. The inescapable nature of Dred Scott carries implications for constitutional theorists, especially those …
The New Fiction: Dred Scott And The Language Of Judicial Authority, Mark A. Graber
The New Fiction: Dred Scott And The Language Of Judicial Authority, Mark A. Graber
Chicago-Kent Law Review
Claims that the Justices in Dred Scott abandoned a tradition of judicial restraint rely on an anachronistic measure for judicial activism. Antebellum Justices asserted that laws were unconstitutional only when restraining state officials. Judicial etiquette, in their opinion, required more circumspection when imposing constitutional limits on a coordinate branch of the national government. Contrary to accepted wisdom, the Justices before the Civil War imposed constitutional limitations on federal power in approximately twenty cases. They did so, however, without explicitly declaring federal legislation unconstitutional. The Justices in some federal cases ignored the plain meaning of federal statutes on the ground that …
Dred Scott: Tiered Citizenship And Tiered Personhood, Henry L. Chambers Jr.
Dred Scott: Tiered Citizenship And Tiered Personhood, Henry L. Chambers Jr.
Chicago-Kent Law Review
The Dred Scott Court accepted and perpetuated the notion that our Constitution afforded multiple tiers of citizenship and multiple tiers of personhood through which different groups of citizens and different groups of persons would receive varying sets of rights. Through their language and interpretation, the Reconstruction Amendments largely resolved this issue by providing a formal equality that created a single tier of citizenship and a single tier of personhood. Though, as a formal matter, tiered citizenship and tiered personhood are unacceptable, the issue is not fully resolved as a practical matter. Tiered citizenship and tiered personhood may exist when the …
Emergence Of Equality As A Constitutional Value: The First Century, William M. Wiecek
Emergence Of Equality As A Constitutional Value: The First Century, William M. Wiecek
Chicago-Kent Law Review
Equality as a constitutional value was unprecedented when it made its appearance in 1868 in the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. It reflected antebellum abolitionist ideals adopted hesitantly by Northern Republicans during Reconstruction, but these were incompatible with the expectations of most white Americans of the era, as well as with all previous American experiences. In this sense, equality was a revolutionary constitutional value. The framers of the Fourteenth Amendment intended the Equal Protection Clause and its embedded ideal of interracial equality to reverse the racist dicta of the Dred Scott opinion, to validate the Civil Rights Act …
The Last Angry Man: Benjamin Robbins Curtis And The Dred Scott Case, Earl M. Maltz
The Last Angry Man: Benjamin Robbins Curtis And The Dred Scott Case, Earl M. Maltz
Chicago-Kent Law Review
The dissenting opinion of Justice Benjamin Robbins Curtis in Dred Scott has generally received lavish praise from commentators. Curtis is typically praised not only for his substantive conclusions, but also for his seemingly dispassionate analysis of the legal issues presented by the case. In many respects, this praise is well-deserved; Curtis's discussions of the issues of slavery in the territories and citizenship for free blacks are models of legal reasoning. However, a close analysis of other aspects of his opinion reveals that Curtis's analysis was at times distorted by his anger with the actions of Chief Justice Taney and other …
Legality And Legitimacy In Dred Scott: The Crisis Of The Incomplete Constitution, Michael P. Zuckert
Legality And Legitimacy In Dred Scott: The Crisis Of The Incomplete Constitution, Michael P. Zuckert
Chicago-Kent Law Review
The original Constitution was incomplete in that it contained a disparity between the principles of legitimacy of the system and the legality of the institution of slavery. Political communities marked by such disharmony are beset with pressures to make the system consistent in one way or another. Such indeed was the fate of the U.S. during the antebellum era. Three typical responses arose: to make legality correspond to legality (by redefining the principles of legitimacy of the system), to make legality conform to legitimacy (by doing away with slavery), or to maintain the tension in ever more creative ways. The …
Benjamin Curtis: Top Of The List, R. Owen Williams
Benjamin Curtis: Top Of The List, R. Owen Williams
Chicago-Kent Law Review
Among the many brave and brilliant dissents from the Supreme Court, few are more historically significant than that of Benjamin Curtis in Dred Scott v. Sandford. Earl Maltz insists that the traditional view of Curtis as a dispassionate Justice is incorrect; Curtis is better seen as the "Last Angry Man." This paper considers the famous dissent, the man who wrote it, and the technical analysis Maltz claims as sine qua non to a proper understanding of the opinion.
Foreign Authority, American Exceptionalism, And The Dred Scott Case, Sarah H. Cleveland
Foreign Authority, American Exceptionalism, And The Dred Scott Case, Sarah H. Cleveland
Chicago-Kent Law Review
One distinctive feature of the Dred Scott decision for modern readers is the extent to which the Supreme Court Justices looked to foreign and international law in support of their decisions. The legal status of a slave who entered a free jurisdiction was a question that had been confronted by many courts at home and abroad, and international law had played an important role in American and European adjudication of slavery questions. The Justices therefore were confronted with the strikingly modern question of the extent to which U.S. law embraced, or distinguished itself from, foreign practice. Arguments from foreign and …
Searching For A Needle In A Haystack: The Constitutionality Of Police Dna Dragnets, Sepideh Esmaili
Searching For A Needle In A Haystack: The Constitutionality Of Police Dna Dragnets, Sepideh Esmaili
Chicago-Kent Law Review
DNA dragnets—the mass warrantless DNA testing of individuals whom authorities have neither probable cause nor reasonable suspicion to believe perpetrated a crime, but who merely live or work near a crime scene—have increasingly been used by police departments in a desperate attempt to solve puzzling crimes. The lack of success and the Fourth Amendment constitutional concerns raised by DNA dragnets, however, lead this practice to be suspect. Under the Fourth Amendment, all searches of an individual must be reasonable. The reasonableness of any search typically depends on the government obtaining a warrant prior to the search. While there are well-established …
Politics, Police, Past And Present: Larry Kramer's The People Themselves, Christopher Tomlins
Politics, Police, Past And Present: Larry Kramer's The People Themselves, Christopher Tomlins
Chicago-Kent Law Review
This article addresses aspects of the debate over Larry Kramer's The People Themselves and, more generally, current interest in popular constitutionalism before engaging, briefly, with the book itself. Because I find Kramer's book in general terms unexceptionable I see no particular reason to engage in the kind of lengthy critical assessment undertaken by those scholars whose disagreements with the book are pronounced. Instead I focus on three "sites" that the book traverses that I consider sites of missed opportunity. They are, first, the question of the people and the Constitution; second, the people and politics; third, the question of police …
A Discrete And Cosmopolitan Minority: The Loyalists, The Atlantic World, And The Origins Of Judicial Review, Daniel J. Hulsebosch
A Discrete And Cosmopolitan Minority: The Loyalists, The Atlantic World, And The Origins Of Judicial Review, Daniel J. Hulsebosch
Chicago-Kent Law Review
Historical interest in popular constitutionalism has enlivened the search for the origins of judicial review. Several precursors of judicial review in the state courts during the 1780s, in particular, demand explanation. If early modern Anglo-Americans did not perceive courts as enforcers of constitutional limits on legislatures, what explains these attempts by judges to curtail statutes in the "critical period" before the Philadelphia Convention? This article argues that these cases involved antiloyalist legislation and related laws that violated the Peace Treaty of 1783 or the law of nations, or otherwise obstructed diplomatic and commercial relations with the other empires of the …
Kramer's Popular Constitutionalism: A Quick Normative Assessment, Sarah Harding
Kramer's Popular Constitutionalism: A Quick Normative Assessment, Sarah Harding
Chicago-Kent Law Review
This paper steps outside of the historical debate about the origins and development of judicial review and focuses on the normative claim that Kramer makes near the end of Popular Constitutionalism. Should the Court, as Kramer argues, have a little more humility when it comes to judicial review and its authority over constitutional interpretation? Should the Court have more respect for legislative decision-making? These questions are addressed through a brief exploration of the ideas of a leading skeptic of judicial review, Jeremy Waldron, and a glimpse at the experiences of other rights-respecting nations.
A Historiography Of The People Themselves And Popular Constitutionalism, Morton J. Horwitz
A Historiography Of The People Themselves And Popular Constitutionalism, Morton J. Horwitz
Chicago-Kent Law Review
The People Themselves intervenes in a growing contemporary debate about the role of the Supreme Court in our constitutional system that began to emerge after the end of the Warren Court and reached a crescendo with Bush v. Gore. For the second time since Lochner v. New York was decided, some liberals have begun once again to switch sides on the virtues of judicial review. Many recent liberal books and articles inevitably bring to mind the flood of Progressive attacks on the democratic legitimacy of judicial review written between 1905 and 1937. Yet the book can be approached independently …
Iredell Reclaimed: Farewell To Snowiss's History Of Judicial Review, Gerald Leonard
Iredell Reclaimed: Farewell To Snowiss's History Of Judicial Review, Gerald Leonard
Chicago-Kent Law Review
Even after the publication of Larry Kramer's The People Themselves, the early history of judicial review suffers from the unfortunate influence of Sylvia Snowiss's Judicial Review and the Law of the Constitution. Snowiss misread, among other things, James Iredell's foundational argument in 1786 for the inevitability and necessity of judicial review. Snowiss claimed that early understandings of judicial review conceptualized it not as a legal doctrine but as a doctrine of political and revolutionary resistance. In fact, however, Iredell argued for judicial review as a straightforward, legalistic consequence of popular sovereignty. In Iredell's influential account, the transition from …
Pre-Revolutionary Popular Constitutionalism And Larry Kramer's The People Themselves, Richard J. Ross
Pre-Revolutionary Popular Constitutionalism And Larry Kramer's The People Themselves, Richard J. Ross
Chicago-Kent Law Review
Larry Kramer's depiction of pre-Revolutionary constitutionalism rests on two dichotomies that are valuable yet exclude middle positions. First, he distinguishes between fundamental law and ordinary law. Second, he argues that pre-Revolutionary judges could play one of two roles—since they were not supreme constitutional interpreters (the first of these roles), they must have possessed no special authority to determine constitutional meanings (the second, and remaining, possibility). Both of these dichotomies obscure middle positions that capture important aspects of the pre-Revolutionary constitutional tradition. My comments briefly identify these middle positions and suggest what is at stake in recovering them.
Popular Constitutionalism As Political Law, Mark Tushnet
Popular Constitutionalism As Political Law, Mark Tushnet
Chicago-Kent Law Review
The People Themselves develops the idea that constitutional law is a special kind of law, political law. Examining some of the book's reviews, this Article explains how political law can be developed through relatively unstructured interactions among the people, political leaders in Congress and the presidency, and the courts. It argues that understanding how constitutional law as political law is developed requires, not the development of crisp analytic criteria, but close historical analysis of particular interactions. The Article identifies criteria for evaluating how popular constitutionalism compares to judicial review as a mechanism for enforcing constitutional rights, arguing that a serious …
Tom Delay: Popular Constitutionalist?, Neal Devins
Tom Delay: Popular Constitutionalist?, Neal Devins
Chicago-Kent Law Review
Focusing on congressional efforts to override state court decisionmaking in the Terri Schiavo case, this essay examines some of the practical problems associated with implementing Larry Kramer's popular constitutionalism. In particular, lawmakers will invoke the "will of the people" when, in fact, they are pursuing special interest politics. More than that, the Schiavo case calls attention to the increasing partisanship within Congress. This partisanship, contrary to the objectives of popular constitutionalism, makes lawmakers less likely to advance the national interest and more likely to focus their energies on their increasingly partisan base. For this very reason, today's Congress is less …
Constitutional Education For The People Themselves, Sheldon Nahmod
Constitutional Education For The People Themselves, Sheldon Nahmod
Chicago-Kent Law Review
Professor Nahmod, like Dean Kramer, remains profoundly disturbed by the Supreme Court's triumphalist decision in Bush v. Gore. However, he does not go so far as Dean Kramer in arguing normatively for a return to "popular constitutionalism." Rather, his more modest position is that the Supreme Court, Congress, and the President, together with the bar and the media, have a normative obligation to educate "the people themselves" in constitutional matters. This often-overlooked and vitally important "constitutional education" of the people is based on the self-government rationale of both our constitutional structure and the First Amendment. Professor Nahmod suggests how …