Law Commons^™

Assault On The Constitution: Why The Southern District Of California Got It Right, Robert F. Brawner Ii

Georgia State University Law Review

This Note will examine and analyze the tests applied by federal courts that have heard similar cases, culminating with the recent decision in the Southern District of California, Duncan v. Becerra. In Part I, this Note provides the context surrounding the current bill being considered by Congress and examines Supreme Court and federal circuit court cases addressing this issue. Part II provides analysis of application of the tests applied by the federal courts. Part III argues that the Supreme Court should adopt Judge Benitez’s reasoning laid out in Duncan and apply his test to any Second Amendment challenge to …

"We The Citizens?": A Corpus Linguistic Inquiry Into The Use Of "People" And "Citizens" In The Founding Era, Abigail Stout, Diana Coetzee, Ute Römer

Georgia State University Law Review

The last Amendment included in the Bill of Rights, the Tenth Amendment, states: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”1 Employed as a tool to invalidate statutes2 and also interpreted as a “truism,”3 ultimately the Tenth Amendment has largely been regarded as an Amendment which explicitly secures what the Constitution sets forth in its structural framework: that the United States government is a federalist system, meaning that it is one of shared powers between the national government and state …

Effective But Limited: A Corpus Linguistic Analysis Of The Original Public Meaning Of Executive Power, Eleanor Miller, Heather Obelgoner

Georgia State University Law Review

This paper will engage linguistic and historical analysis in an effort to discern the original public meaning of the phrase executive power as used in Article II of the United States Constitution. In light of significant modern controversy surrounding the proper limits of executive authority, an original meaning interpretation of this critical phrase will illuminate the executive’s function as it was commonly understood at the time of constitutional ratification. Part I will engage in a linguistic analysis of the phrase executive power, drawing primarily on corpus linguistic methodology surrounding the phrase’s Founding Era usage. Part II will analyze the history …

"Questions Involving National Peace And Harmony" Or "Injured Plaintiff Litigation"? The Original Meaning Of "Cases" In Article Iii Of The Constitution, Haoshan Ren, Margaret Wood, Clark D. Cunningham, Noor Abbady, Ute Römer, Heather Kuhn, Jesse Egbert

Georgia State University Law Review

If a federal official is deliberately violating the Constitution, is it possible no federal court has the power to halt that conduct? Federal judges have been answering “yes” for more than a century— dismissing certain kinds of lawsuits alleging unconstitutional conduct by ruling the lawsuits were not “cases” as meant in the phrase “[t]he Judicial Power shall extend to all Cases” in Article III, Section Two, of the Constitution.

For example, in July 2019, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit dismissed a lawsuit that the State of Maryland and the District of Columbia brought against President Donald …

Using Empirical Data To Investigate The Original Meaning Of "Emolument" In The Constitution., Clark D. Cunningham, Jesse Egbert

Georgia State University Law Review

The United States Constitution prohibits federal officials from receiving any “present, Emolument, Office or Title” from a foreign state without the consent of Congress. In interpreting the Constitution’s text, we are to be guided “by the principle that ‘[t]he Constitution was written to be understood by the voters; its words and phrases were used in their normal and ordinary as distinguished from technical meaning.’" However, in trying to determine the “normal” meaning of “emolument” in the Founding Era we are confronted with a term that might as well be a foreign word from an unknown language. The word emolument has …