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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Dead End Of Animus Doctrine, Dale Carpenter
The Dead End Of Animus Doctrine, Dale Carpenter
Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters
Hatred is as old as our civilization. So is the moral principle that one should not hate others and should not act on such hatred. Concerns that an angry or fearful majority might nevertheless treat people maliciously were present both at the beginning of our constitutional Republic and in its most divided epoch. The very structure of our government—dividing and separating powers—and our most hallowed egalitarian principle—Equal Protection of the Laws—were seen as safeguards against decisions driven by a “bare . . . desire to harm.” Such decisions are blasphemy in our legal heritage. Half a century ago, the Supreme …
The Disembodied First Amendment, Nathan Cortez, William M. Sage
The Disembodied First Amendment, Nathan Cortez, William M. Sage
Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters
First Amendment doctrine is becoming disembodied—increasingly detached from human speakers and listeners. Corporations claim that their speech rights limit government regulation of everything from product labeling to marketing to ordinary business licensing. Courts extend protections to commercial speech that ordinarily extended only to core political and religious speech. And now, we are told, automated information generated for cryptocurrencies, robocalling, and social media bots are also protected speech under the Constitution. Where does it end? It begins, no doubt, with corporate and commercial speech. We show, however, that heightened protection for corporate and commercial speech is built on several “artifices” - …
Originalism-By-Analogy And Second Amendment Adjudication, Joseph Blocher, Eric Ruben
Originalism-By-Analogy And Second Amendment Adjudication, Joseph Blocher, Eric Ruben
Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters
In New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, the Supreme Court held that the constitutionality of modern gun laws must be evaluated by direct analogy to history, unmediated by familiar doctrinal tests. Bruen’s novel approach to historical decision-making purported to constrain judicial discretion but instead enabled judicial subjectivity, obfuscation, and unpredictability. Those problems are painfully evident in courts’ faltering efforts to apply Bruen to laws regulating 3D-printed guns, assault weapons, large-capacity magazines, obliterated serial numbers, and the possession of guns on subways or by people subject to domestic-violence restraining orders. The Court’s recent grant of certiorari in United …
The Lessons Of 1919, Lackland H. Bloom
The Lessons Of 1919, Lackland H. Bloom
SMU Law Review
One hundred years ago, the Supreme Court embarked on its first serious consideration of the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech. In 1919, the Court upheld four federal criminal convictions over First Amendment defenses. Three of the majority opinions were written by Justice Holmes. In the fourth, he offered a classic dissent. Two of the cases, Frohwerk v. United States and Debs v. United States, are of middling significance. The other two, Schenck v. United States and Abrams v. United States, are iconic. From these cases have sprung an expansive and complex jurisprudence of free speech. The …
Energy And Eminent Domain, James W. Coleman, Alexandra B. Klass
Energy And Eminent Domain, James W. Coleman, Alexandra B. Klass
Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters
This Article examines the growing opposition to the use of eminent domain for energy transport projects such as oil pipelines, gas pipelines, and electric transmission lines. Such projects were protected from the state legislative reforms that restricted eminent domain following the Supreme Court’s controversial decision in Kelo v. City of New London in 2005 but are now under increased scrutiny. This Article evaluates why U.S. energy transport projects have become so controversial and suggests how states and the federal government should evaluate the need for eminent domain for these projects and enact appropriate reforms. We first detail the significant changes …
You Can Lead A Horse To Water: Heller And The Future Of Second Amendment Scholarship, Eric Ruben, Joseph Blocher
You Can Lead A Horse To Water: Heller And The Future Of Second Amendment Scholarship, Eric Ruben, Joseph Blocher
Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters
Ten years ago, there was reason to believe that Second Amendment doctrine would—following elements of District of Columbia v. Heller—become rigid and binary. Likewise, scholarship might have followed the same path; digging into the pre-Heller trenches and pitting "pro-gun" against "pro-regulation" views. In "From Theory to Doctrine: An Empirical Analysis of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms After Heller," we showed through empirical study that the doctrinal reality is far more nuanced and interesting. In this essay, we describe how Heller not only inaugurated a new era of constitutional doctrine, but it also helped create a burgeoning new field …
The Unreasonable Rise Of Reasonable Suspicion: Terrorist Watchlists And Terry V. Ohio, Jeffrey D. Kahn
The Unreasonable Rise Of Reasonable Suspicion: Terrorist Watchlists And Terry V. Ohio, Jeffrey D. Kahn
Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters
Terry v. Ohio's “reasonable suspicion” test was created in the context of domestic law enforcement, but it did not remain there. This Essay examines the effect of transplanting this test into a new context: the world of terrorist watchlists. In this new context, reasonable suspicion is the standard used to authorize the infringement on liberty that often results from being watchlisted. But nothing else from the case that created that standard remains the same. The government official changes from a local police officer to an anonymous member of the intelligence community. The purpose changes from crime prevention to counterterrorism. …
What Is Extraterritorial Jurisdiction?, Anthony J. Colangelo
What Is Extraterritorial Jurisdiction?, Anthony J. Colangelo
Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters
The phenomenon of extraterritorial jurisdiction, or the exercise of legal power beyond territorial borders, presents lawyers, courts, and scholars with analytical onions comprising layers of national and international legal issues; as each layer peels away, more issues are revealed. U.S. courts, including the Supreme Court, have increasingly been wrestling this conceptual and doctrinal Hydra. Any legal analysis of extraterritorial jurisdiction leans heavily on the answers to two key definitional questions: What do we mean by “extraterritorial”? And, what do we mean by “jurisdiction”? Because the answer to the first question is often conditional on the answer to the second, the …
Windsor Products: Equal Protection From Animus, Dale Carpenter
Windsor Products: Equal Protection From Animus, Dale Carpenter
Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters
The Supreme Court's opinion in United States v. Windsor has puzzled commentators, who have tended to overlook or dismiss its ultimate conclusion that the Defense of Marriage Act was unconstitutional because it arose from animus. What we have in Justice Kennedy’s opinion is Windsor Products — an outpouring of decades of constitutional development whose fountainhead is Carolene Products and whose tributaries are the gay-rights and federalism streams. This paper presents the constitutional anti-animus principle, including what constitutes animus, why it offends the Constitution, and how the Supreme Court determines it is present. The paper also discusses why the Court was …
The Unitary Executive In The Modern Era, 1945-2004, Anthony J. Colangelo, Christopher S. Yoo, Steven G. Calabresi
The Unitary Executive In The Modern Era, 1945-2004, Anthony J. Colangelo, Christopher S. Yoo, Steven G. Calabresi
Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters
Since the impeachment of President Clinton, there has been renewed debate over whether Congress can create institutions such as special counsels and independent agencies that restrict the president's control over the administration of the law. Initially, debate centered on whether the Constitution rejected the executive by committee used by the Articles of Confederation in favor of a unitary executive, in which all administrative authority is centralized in the president. More recently, the debate has focused on historical practices. Some scholars suggest that independent agencies and special counsels are such established features of the constitutional landscape that any argument in favor …
Long Live The Bill Of Rights! Long Live Akhil Reed Amar's The Bill Of Rights!, Lackland H. Bloom Jr.
Long Live The Bill Of Rights! Long Live Akhil Reed Amar's The Bill Of Rights!, Lackland H. Bloom Jr.
Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters
Akhil Reed Amar's volume, The Bill of Rights: Creation and Reconstruction ("The Bill of Rights"), deserves to sit on every constitutional scholar and lawyer's shelf along with such other contemporary classics as Alexander Bickel's The Least Dangerous Branch, Charles Black's Structure and Relationship in Constitutional Law, John Hart Ely's Democracy and Distrust, and Philip Bobbitt's Constitutional Fate. This book builds on two of the most breathtaking and important law review articles of the past decade-Professor Amar's The Bill of Rights as a Constitution, and The Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment. Professor Amar's contributions to constitutional scholarship are of …
Barnette And Johnson: A Tale Of Two Opinions, Lackland H. Bloom Jr.
Barnette And Johnson: A Tale Of Two Opinions, Lackland H. Bloom Jr.
Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters
Among other things, the final two years of the 1980s could well be remembered as a period of patriotic symbols, especially in the area of American constitutional law. During the summer of 1988, debate in the presidential campaign turned to the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag. George Bush criticized Michael Dukakis for vetoing a Massachusetts bill that would have required public school teachers to lead their students in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Dukakis defended his action by citing an advisory opinion he had requested from the Supreme Court of Massachusetts which concluded that the bill violated the first …