Law Commons^™

The Perfect Match: Solving The Due Process Problem Of Signature Matching With Federal Agency Regulation, Rachel Blumenstein

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Local election commissions in the United States disenfranchise Americans when they erroneously reject voters’ mail-in ballots for failed signature matches. Disenfranchisement is not only problematic because it is dangerous to the health of American democracy, but also because signature matching violates the procedural due process protections voters are entitled to when they exercise their right to vote. Furthermore, the practice of signature matching is one of many ballot access restrictions that disproportionately impact minority voters under the guise of voter fraud prevention. Expanding the Election Assistance Commission’s mandate to allow it to develop more accurate methods of ballot verification can …

Litigating Citizenship, Cassandra B. Robertson, Irina D. Manta

Vanderbilt Law Review

By what standard of proof-—and by what procedures—-can the U.S. government challenge citizenship status? That question has taken on greater urgency in recent years. News reports discuss cases of individuals whose passports were suddenly denied, even after the government had previously recognized their citizenship for years or even decades. The government has also stepped up efforts to reevaluate the naturalization files of other citizens and has asked for funding to litigate more than a thousand denaturalization cases. Likewise, citizens have gotten swept up in immigration enforcement actions, and thousands of citizens have been erroneously detained or removed from the United …

We Can Do Better: Anti-Homeless Ordinances As Violations Of State Substantive Due Process Law, Andrew J. Liese

Vanderbilt Law Review

In September of 2004, a group of local business owners and professionals in Nashville, Tennessee, together with the Nashville Downtown Partnership, a local downtown improvement organization, submitted a plan to the Metro Council that proposed making it illegal to panhandle in the busiest areas of the city. Advocates of the proposed legislation argued that panhandlers "harass tourists and customers and make the city less appealing." Opponents viewed the proposal as nothing more than an attempt to force the homeless out of the city. The Nashville plan is patterned after the measures that several major American cities-including Philadelphia, Denver, and Seattle-have …

The Ripple Effects Of Slaughter-House: A Critique Of A Negative Rights View Of The Constitution, Michael J. Gerhardt

Vanderbilt Law Review

Upon seeing Niagara Falls for the first time, Oscar Wilde reportedly remarked that it "would be more impressive if it flowed the other way." I have a similar reaction to a series of narrow Supreme Court interpretations of the fourteenth amendment, beginning with the Slaughter-House Cases, decided in 1872, and extending to the 1989 decisions in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services and DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services. In Slaughter-House the Court interpreted the privileges or immunities clause of the fourteenth amendment as merely protecting interests other federal laws already protected, while recently the Court interpreted the due …

Automatic And Indefinite Commitment Of Insanity Acquittees: A Procedural Straitjacket, John B. Scherling

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Recent Development suggests that the Court erroneously decided Jones. Part II examines the Supreme Court's constitutional analysis of commitment procedures and discusses postacquittal commitment in state and lower federal courts. Part III analyzes the Jones decision and the exception that it allows for the commitment of insanity acquittees. Part IV contends that prior to involuntary and indefinite commitment an insanity acquittee deserves the same standard of proof as a civil commitment candidate-proof of mental illness and dangerousness by clear and convincing evidence. Part IV also argues that absent proof by clear and convincing evidence of the acquittee's need for …

Recent Developments, Law Review Staff

Vanderbilt Law Review

The fourteenth amendment provides that "[n]o State shall . ..deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."' The amendment thus explicitly forbids the state to engage in certain conduct, but places no express restriction on the acts of private individuals. Although the Supreme Court has consistently held that state action is a necessary element of a fourteenth amendment violation, the concept of state action was expanded to cover activities arguably private in nature to the extent that by 1970 the Court …

Constitutional Law -- 1964 Tennessee Survey, James C. Kirby, Jr.

Vanderbilt Law Review

The prosecutions in McKinnie v. State, arose from "sit-in" demonstrations by which a group of Negroes attempted to obtain service at a privately operated cafeteria in Nashville. The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 has since been held by the United States Supreme Court to abate these particular prosecutions and the prospective application of its public accommodations provisions makes it unlikely that their facts will recur.

Constitutional Law -- 1963 Tennessee Survey, James C. Kirby, Jr.

Vanderbilt Law Review

A 1963 survey of Tennessee cases having to do with various issues of constitutional law, including legislative apportionment, desegregation, equal protection and due process.

Book Reviews, Marian D. Irish, Ralph Slovenko

Vanderbilt Law Review

The Quest for Equality By Robert J. Harris Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1960. Pp. xiv, 173. $4.00.

reviewer: Marian D. Irish

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Confidentiality and Privileged Communication in the Practice of Psychiatry, Report No. 45. New York: Publications Office, Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry, 1960. Pp. 32. $.50.

reviewer: Ralph Slovenko

Constitutionality Of The Proposed Regional Plan For Professional Education Of The Southern Negro, Clyde L. Ball

Vanderbilt Law Review

It is the purpose of this comment to consider the constitutional questions involved in current plans for establishing in the South regional schools where Negroes may obtain a professional education. Politically and socially the problem of Negro education is dynamic and dynamitic, and no attempt will be made here to discuss or argue the points involved from a sociological point of view. Rather the purpose here is to consider the question from its narrow legal aspect; social considerations will be noticed only insofar as may be necessary to the discussion of the legal problems.