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Standing On Holy Ground: How Rethinking Justiciability Might Bring Peace To The Establishment Clause, John M. Bickers
Standing On Holy Ground: How Rethinking Justiciability Might Bring Peace To The Establishment Clause, John M. Bickers
Cleveland State Law Review
The Establishment Clause is home to both procedural and substantive disorder. Particularly when evaluating religious speech by the government, the Supreme Court has applied a number of distinct tests, with varying degrees of strictness. There has never been an overarching principle for determining which test would appear at which time; commentators, and occasionally the Justices themselves, have suspected that desired results drove the choice of tests. At the same time, the Court has articulated a series of requirements necessary for a plaintiff to have standing to challenge government action, only to ignore them in government religious speech cases. The resulting …
State Constitutional Prohibitions On Special Laws , Justin R. Long
State Constitutional Prohibitions On Special Laws , Justin R. Long
Cleveland State Law Review
Since the nineteenth century, most states have had constitutional clauses prohibiting “special laws.” These clauses were ratified to protect the people of each state from domination by narrow economic elites, who would use their economic power to win grants of privilege from the state legislatures. To fight the corrupt favors garnered by private interests in this way, state constitutional drafters wrote clauses requiring their legislatures to pass only “general laws” that would apply equally to all members of the regulated class. For a brief period, these clauses were enforced in the courts—but more to protect economic elites than the democratic …
Constitutional Cases And The Four Cardinal Virtues, R. George Wright
Constitutional Cases And The Four Cardinal Virtues, R. George Wright
Cleveland State Law Review
In addressing constitutional cases, judges face no shortage of legal rules, tests, principles, doctrines, and policies upon which to draw. In those cases, the challenge is assumed to be to identify and apply the most relevant such legal rules, tests, principles, doctrines, and policies. An accompanying judicial opinion tries to articulate this process, partly to legitimize the outcome, partly to provide guidance, and perhaps partly for purposes of civic education and inspiration. This Article recommends a somewhat different approach to constitutional adjudication. Specifically, this Article recommends supplementing the above standard forms of constitutional adjudication with appropriate and legitimate attention to …