Law Commons^™

A Personal Constitution, Michael Serota

NULR Online

Today’s law school graduates face two disturbing trends in the professional world. Each is well known, but neither is openly discussed in the law school setting. First, lawyers suffer from chronic professional dissatisfaction. Approximately one out of every four lawyers is dissatisfied with her job. Second, this dissatisfaction exacts an extraordinarily high price on lawyers, the legal profession, and society as a whole. Most startling, however, is the fact that the widespread dissatisfaction and the associated mental health-related problems prevalent in the legal profession actually begin in law school.

Rethinking The Order Of Battle In Constitutional Torts: A Reply To John Jeffries, Nancy Leong

NULR Online

The Supreme Court’s decision in Pearson v. Callahan ended an eight-year experiment in the adjudication of qualified immunity claims. That experiment began with Saucier v. Katz, in which the Court held that lower courts mustdecide whether a government officer violated a plaintiff’s constitutional rights before addressing the question of whether the government officer was entitled to immunity. The Court’s rationale for requiring lower courts to first address the merits was the need to clarify constitutional law for the benefit of both government actors (who could then better conform their behavior to constitutional standards) and future plaintiffs (who could then …

Why More Antitrust Immunity For The Media Is A Bad Idea, Maurice E. Stucke, Allen P. Grunes

NULR Online

The U.S. newspaper industry specifically and traditional media industries generally are in transition. In response to declining audiences and advertising revenue, many traditional media firms have laid off journalists and cut back on news. With their financial difficulties, some traditional media firms have called for greater leniency under the federal antitrust laws. Newspaper owners and journalists have called for greater antitrust immunity for joint advertising, joint fees for readership and accessing content online, and joint reporting. Others have called on the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) to loosen further its Cross-Ownership Rules. Some politicians have suggested that the federal antitrust agencies …

Mcdonald V. Chicago: Which Standard Of Scrutiny Should Apply To Gun-Control Laws?, Lawrence Rosenthal, Joyce Lee Malcolm

NULR Online

In this debate, Professors Rosenthal and Malcolm debate the standard of scrutiny that the Supreme Court should apply to restrictions on the Second Amendment in the wake of its recent decision, McDonald v. City of Chicago. Professor Rosenthal begins Part I by noting the importance of gun-control laws to police; he considers a lower standard of scrutiny necessary to allow law enforcement officials to protect the community. Turning to the practical consequences of Chicago and Washington, D.C.'s recent gun-control laws, which make owning a gun nearly impossible in those cities, Professor Malcolm argues for a standard of strict scrutiny …

Salazar V. Buono: The Perils Of Piecemeal Adjudication, Lisa Shaw Roy

NULR Online

The recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Salazar v. Buono, a case involving a Latin cross placed on federal land in the Mojave Desert by the Veterans of Foreign Wars, approaches what many would assume to be the central issue in the case from an oblique. Does the Mojave Desert cross, sitting atop Sunrise Peak in a federal park preserve, violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment? Neither Justice Kennedy’s plurality opinion nor any of the concurring or dissenting opinions in Salazar answers that question. Salazar’s complicated web of facts and procedural history precluded the Court from …

Salazar V. Buono And The Future Of The Establishment Clause, Christopher C. Lund

NULR Online

Commentators often complain that Establishment Clause jurisprudence is incoherent and unprincipled. That accusation usually seems overwrought—perhaps we should not expect so much consistency from a Court that decides only the cases that come before it, holds multiple values, operates with continually changing personnel, and gives significant but unquantifiable weight to precedent. Yet of the areas of Establishment Clause litigation, this complaint carries the most force in the context of passive-display cases—cases where the government passively displays a religious symbol, like a cross or a crèche, a Ten Commandments monument, or an illuminated Bible. Here the critics have a point.

Salazar V. Buono: The Cross Between Endorsement And History, Mary Jean Dolan

NULR Online

The striking image of a white cross on stark rock, silhouetted against the desert sky, now symbolizes not only Christianity and, arguably, World War I military sacrifice, but also the equally dramatic, prolonged saga of the Salazar v. Buono litigation. The photos invoke the most recent Supreme Court battle in the legal and cultural war to define religion’s role in the public square. Competing approaches stress either preserving history or avoiding government endorsement of religion; this brief article analyzes a potential new synthesis suggested by Buono.

The original cross war memorial was erected in 1934 by a local group …

Salazar V. Buono: Sacred Symbolism And The Secular State, Ian Bartrum

NULR Online

After oral argument, Salazar v. Buono looked like it might be a dud. As Adam Liptak observed in the New York Times, the Justices spent most of their energy pressing then-Solicitor General Elena Kagan and her opponent, Peter Eliasberg of the ACLU, on the case’s tangled procedural history, and “only Justice Antonin Scalia appeared inclined to reach the Establishment Clause question” that gave rise to the legal controversy. But, in the intervening months, the case has gotten more and more interesting. First, most members of the Court did—in at least some way—reach the substantive merits in the decision; …

Dying For Privacy: Pitting Public Access Against Familial Interests In The Era Of The Internet, Clay Calvert

NULR Online

“I just killed my two kids. . . . I drowned them. . . . They are 2 and 4. . . . I just shot myself. . . . with a gun. . . . Please hurry.”

That was the dying declaration of 21-year-old Julia Murray on February 16, 2010, preserved for all of posterity on a 911 emergency telephone recording and available to anyone and everyone in Florida—from journalists and police to even voyeurs and perverts—under that state’s open records laws. Murray and one of her three children are gone (the second child survived the drowning …

Procreation, Harm, And The Constitution, Carter Dillard

NULR Online

This Essay provides relatively novel answers to two related questions: First, are there moral reasons to limit the sorts of existences it is permissible to bring people into, such that one would be morally prohibited from procreating in certain circumstances? Second, can the state justify a legal prohibition on procreation in those circumstances using that moral reasoning, so that the law would likely be constitutional?

These questions are not new, but my answers to them are and add to the existing literature in several ways. First, I offer a possible resolution to a recent debate among legal scholars regarding what …

The Riddle Underlying Refusal-To-Deal Theory, Michael Jacobs, Alan Devlin

NULR Online

May a dominant firm refuse to share its intellectual property (IP) with its rivals? This question lies at the heart of a highly divisive, international debate concerning the proper application of the antitrust laws. In this short Essay, we consider a profound, yet previously unaddressed, incongruity underlying the controversy. Specifically, why is it that monopolists refuse to share their IP, even at monopoly prices? To resolve this issue, some have recommended compulsory licensing, which would require monopolists to license their IP in certain circumstances. This proposal, however, entails an inescapable contradiction, one rooted in the issue of monopolists’ seemingly inexplicable …

Heterosexuality And Military Service, Zachary A. Kramer

NULR Online

The Kentucky National Guard’s 940th Military Police Company is based in Walton, Kentucky, just south of the Kentucky-Ohio border. In November 2004, in anticipation of its deployment to Iraq, the 940th was mobilized and stationed at Fort Dix, New Jersey. Love was in the air at Fort Dix that fall. While the 940th was preparing for its year of service in Iraq, five couples in the unit got married. Amanda and Todd McCormick were one of those couples. The McCormicks spent their first year of marriage in an active war zone, where their duties included training the Iraqi police force, …

The Intersection Of Constitutional Law And Civil Procedure: Review Of Wholesale Justice—Constitutional Democracy And The Problem Of The Class Action Lawsuit (Part Ii), Douglas G. Smith

NULR Online

In the first portion of this Essay, I reviewed Professor Martin Redish’s theory that the application of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23 in modern class action practice is unconstitutional. Professor Redish argues that modern class action procedures violate absent class members’ due process rights by sweeping large numbers of individual plaintiffs into litigation without their explicit consent. I then set forth Professor Redish’s proposals for reform, including increased scrutiny of class actions to weed out “faux” class actions that benefit lawyers but not class members, abandonment of the opt-out procedure under Rule 23 in favor of an opt-in procedure …

The Intersection Of Constitutional Law And Civil Procedure: Review Of Wholesale Justice—Constitutional Democracy And The Problem Of The Class Action Lawsuit, Douglas G. Smith

NULR Online

Much ink has been spilled over the class action device. Commentators have thoroughly analyzed both the plain language and intent behind the federal rules authorizing the aggregation of claims in a single lawsuit as well as the policy implications of the class action in both theory and practice. Seldom does a work break new ground in a field that has been plowed as often as that of class actions. Martin Redish’s Wholesale Justice: Constitutional Democracy and the Problem of the Class Action Lawsuit is the rare exception.

In Wholesale Justice, Professor Redish provides a thorough analysis of the constitutional …

Mending Holes In The Rule Of (Administrative) Law, Evan J. Criddle

NULR Online

The past decade has witnessed a surge of interest in Carl Schmitt’s controversial assertion that the rule of law inevitably bends under the demands of state necessity during national emergencies. According to Schmitt, legal norms cannot constrain sovereign discretion during emergencies because “the precise details of an emergency cannot be anticipated” in advance. The sovereign must therefore possess unfettered discretion to determine both “whether there is an extreme emergency” and “what must be done to eliminate it.”

Few legal scholars have embraced Schmitt’s theory of emergencies with the enthusiasm and sophistication of Adrian Vermeule, the John H. Watson, Jr. Professor …

The Effect Of Legal Professionalization On Moral Reasoning: A Reply To Professor Vischer And Professor Wendel, Michael Hatfield

NULR Online

I am grateful to Professor Vischer and Professor Wendel for their responses to my essay, Professionalizing Moral Deference; I learned a great deal from each piece. I also appreciate their patience in enduring my finalization of the essay and am indebted to them both for their personal indulgence and intellectual stimulation.

The aim of my earlier essay was to open a new discussion of lawyers and morality through my reflections on the so-called “Torture Memo.” Specifically, my essay focuses on the effect of legal training and practice on lawyers’ moral reasoning. It explores the ways in which we, as …

Crossing Over: Why Attorneys (And Judges) Should Not Be Able To Cross-Examine Witnesses Regarding Their Immigration Statuses For Impeachment Purposes, Colin Miller

NULR Online

You are sitting in an empty bar (in a town you’ve never before visited), drinking a Bacardi with a soft-spoken acquaintance you barely know. After an hour, a third individual walks into the tavern and sits by himself, and you ask your acquaintance who the new man is. “Be careful of that guy,” you are told. “He is a man with a past.” A few minutes later, a fourth person enters the bar; he also sits alone. You ask your acquaintance who this new individual is. “Be careful of that guy, too,” he says. “He is a man with no …

Pleasant Grove City V. Summum: Monuments, Messages, And The Next Establishment Clause, Lisa Shaw Roy

NULR Online

The facts of Pleasant Grove City v. Summum are well known by now: Summum, a small religious group, argued that Pleasant Grove City violated the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment when it refused to display Summum’s monument in the city’s Pioneer Park, which already contained fifteen other monuments, including a Ten Commandments display. Summum’s unlikely claim won in the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, a request for rehearing was denied, and the case ultimately was heard before the U.S. Supreme Court. During the oral arguments, the Justices (along with commentators, Court watchers, and, of course, the litigants themselves) …

The Right To Exclude In The Shadow Of The Cathedral: A Response To Parchomovsky And Stein, Eric R. Claeys

NULR Online

Reconceptualizing Trespass, by Professors Gideon Parchomovsky and Alex Stein, falls in the genre of law and economics scholarship inspired by Guido Calabresi and A. Douglas Melamed’s classic article, One View of the Cathedral (“the Cathedral”). Reconceptualizing Trespass argues that, in property torts, scholarship under the Cathedral has focused too much on damage awards with the features of Cathedral liability rules, and too little on damage awards that have the features of Cathedral property rules. Ideally, the authors argue, property rule damages should award owners approximations of their subjective values over their property; as a second-best substitute, such damages …

Evolutionary Due Process, Louis J. Virelli Iii

NULR Online

The issue of evolution instruction in American public schools is becoming increasingly complex, both legally and politically. Until recently, the controversy over whether and how to teach evolution in public school science classes has been singularly focused on the constitutional limits of government support for religion under the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. Current measures in Louisiana and Texas, however, represent a shift toward a new “adjudicative model” for addressing questions of evolution instruction. This adjudicative model permits individual educators to treat evolution issues on a case-by-case basis, which, in turn, implicates a new constitutional issue in the evolution education debate: …

Short Selling In A Financial Crisis: The Regulation Of Short Sales In The United Kingdom And The United States, Katherine Mcgavin

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

In a well-regulated market with minimal risk of abuse, the liquidity and information efficiency benefits of short selling far outweigh its potential harm. Contrary to the recent hostility short sellers face from market regulators and the popular press, short sellers in aggregate are neither market villains nor agents of destruction. While a small minority of short sellers have exploited lax regulation and inattentive enforcement of anti-abuse rules to manipulate stock prices and earn substantial fees, these rare episodes suggest that the world's major capital markets need better enforcement of existing rules and not new rules per se. The failure of …

A Century Of Criminal Law And Criminology, Amy Deline, Adair Crosley

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

No abstract provided.

The Rise And Fall Of The American Institute Of Criminal Law And Criminology, Jennifer Devroye

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

No abstract provided.

The Undermining Influence Of The Federal Death Penalty On Capital Policymaking And Criminal Justice Administration In The States, Eileen M. Connor

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

No abstract provided.

A Century Of Criminal Law And Criminology, Amy Deline

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

No abstract provided.

Reforming The Law On Show-Up Identifications, Michael D. Cicchini, Joseph G. Easton

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

No abstract provided.

A Reason To Doubt: The Suppression Of Evidence And The Inference Of Innocence, Cynthia E. Jones

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

No abstract provided.

Can't Buy A Thrill: Substantive Due Process, Equal Protection, And Criminalizing Sex Toys, Richard Glover

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

No abstract provided.

Police Checkpoints: Lack Of Guidance From The Supreme Court Contributes To Disregard Of Civil Liberties In The District Of Columbia, Jason Fiebig

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

No abstract provided.

Centennial Symposium: A Century Of Criminal Justice - Foreword, Julia T. Rickert

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

No abstract provided.