Law Commons^™

Left With No Name: How Government Action In Intra-Church Trademark Disputes Violates The Free Exercise Clause Of The First Amendment, Mary Kate Nicholson

Washington and Lee Law Review

The United States was founded in part on the principle of freedom of religion, where citizens were free to practice any religion. The founding fathers felt so strongly about this principle that it was incorporated into the First Amendment. The Free Exercise Clause states that “Congress shall make no law . . . prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . . .” The Supreme Court later adopted the neutral principles approach to avoid Free Exercise violations resulting from courts deciding real property disputes. Without the application of the same neutral principles to intellectual property disputes between churches, however, there is …

This Land Is Your Land? Survey Delegation Laws As A Compensable Taking, Doug Chapman

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

While every state in the Union has a statute delegating in some form surveying authority to private entities, the practice has been especially visible and controversial due to pipeline construction in the Commonwealth of Virginia. A major point of contention in pipeline development has centered upon the ability of private companies to use delegated eminent domain powers to survey land for possible future development. While recent decisions by both a federal Virginia District Court and the state’s Supreme Court have upheld the state’s surveying delegation law from landowner challenges, the issue is far from resolved. Virginia therefore provides an ideal …

Virginia Industrialization Group, Lewis F. Powell Jr.

Powell Correspondence

No abstract provided.

Categorical Confusion In Personal Jurisdiction Law, Todd Peterson

Washington and Lee Law Review

In Part I, the Article discusses the history of the U.S. Supreme Court’s substantive due process limitations on personal jurisdiction and, in particular, the standards for corporate-activities-based jurisdiction before the Court’s recent cases on that issue. Part II discusses the Court’s failure to provide a convincing theoretical justification for imposing substantive due process limitations on personal jurisdiction. It also discusses the consequences of that failure in three doctrinal areas of personal jurisdiction law, the traditional basis of service on an individual in the forum state, specific jurisdiction and corporate-activities-based jurisdiction. Part III then analyzes in detail the four recent Supreme …

Masterpiece Of Misdirection?, Mark Strasser

Washington and Lee Law Review

In Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, the United States Supreme Court overruled a finding that a religious baker had violated a state antidiscrimination law when refusing to create a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. The decision might seem to have been a masterful resolution of an extremely difficult case because the Court issued a narrow opinion that seemed to affirm free exercise rights while at the same time affirming the right of same-sex couples to marry. Yet, the opinion, along with the accompanying concurrences and dissent, may well destabilize various settled areas of constitutional law …

The Future Of Physicians’ First Amendment Freedom: Professional Speech In An Era Of Radically Expanded Prenatal Genetic Testing, Wynter K. Miller, Benjamin E. Berkman

Washington and Lee Law Review

This Article explores the First Amendment questions prenatal whole genome sequencing (PWGS) is likely to raise. It argues that most of the foreseeable options for state intervention in conversations between physicians and prospective parents about genetic sequencing should trigger at least heightened scrutiny. Part I provides an overview of the most recent advances in genetic testing. It assesses the ongoing impact of non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) for providers and patients and charts the course from NIPT to PWGS. Part II establishes a foundational background for evaluating First Amendment claims. Part II.A describes the development of First Amendment jurisprudence, focusing on …

Individualized Sentencing, William W. Berry

Washington and Lee Law Review

In Woodson v. North Carolina, the Supreme Court proscribed the use of mandatory death sentences. One year later, in Lockett v. Ohio, the Court expanded this principle to hold that defendants in capital cases were entitled to “individualized sentencing determinations.” The Court’s reasoning in both cases centered on the seriousness of the death penalty. Because the death penalty is “different” in its seriousness and irrevocability, the Court required the sentencing court, whether judge or jury, to assess the individualized characteristics of the offender and the offense before imposing a sentence. In 2012, the Court expanded this Eighth Amendment concept …

God Save The United States And This Honorable County Board Of Commissioners: Lund, Bormuth, And The Fight Over Legislative Prayer, Mary Nobles Hancock

Washington and Lee Law Review

This Note addresses whether, and to what extent, the four factors proposed by the Fourth Circuit, and subsequently rejected by the Sixth Circuit, are an appropriate test of the constitutionality of a legislative prayer practice under United States Supreme Court jurisprudence. Part II explores the background of the Establishment Clause and legislative prayer. The Supreme Court has placed significant emphasis on the history of legislative prayer in evaluating modern prayer practices, as seen in its two cases Marsh v. Chambers and Town of Greece v. Galloway. Part III examines the first two circuit court decisions to consider challenges to local …

Christian Legislative Prayers And Christian Nationalism, Caroline Mala Corbin

Washington and Lee Law Review

This Response to Mary Nobles Hancock's Note explains Christian nationalism, and argues that government sponsored Christian prayers reflect and exacerbate Christian nationalism. It further contends that to help curb Christian nationalism and its ill effects, legislative prayers ought to cease entirely. Such a result is most in keeping with the Establishment Clause goal of avoiding a caste system based on religious belief.

Inappropriate For Establishment Clause Scrutiny: Reflections On Mary Nobles Hancock’S, God Save The United States And This Honorable County Board Of Commissioners: Lund, Bormuth, And The Fight Over Legislative Prayer, Samuel W. Calhoun

Washington and Lee Law Review

This Response to Mary Nobles Hancock’s Note, after noting the complexity of the issues she presents, briefly comments on Ms. Hancock’s analysis, which focuses on how current Supreme Court doctrine should be applied to legislative prayer. Part III ranges more broadly. The author's basic position is that the Supreme Court has long misconstrued the Establishment Clause. This misinterpretation in turn has led the Court mistakenly to interpose itself into the realm of legislative prayer, an incursion the Founders never intended.

If The Shoe Fits: Rethinking Minimum Contacts And The Fsia Commercial Activity Exception, Jacqueline M. Fitch

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

The question explored in this Note is whether, under the direct effect clause of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act commercial activities exception, a foreign sovereign must have minimum contacts with the United States in order for a U.S. court to assert personal jurisdiction over the entity. Examining personal jurisdiction over foreign states under the direct effect clause requires exploring the interaction between constitutional law and principles of international law. The minimum contacts analysis highlights the tension between applying constitutional due process protection to a foreign state, while simultaneously asserting jurisdiction over its commercial activities. Denying jurisdiction over a foreign sovereign …

Punishing Poverty: Robinson & The Criminal Cash Bond System, Lauren Bennett

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

The current cash bail system works in a way that punishes poverty. In Robinson v. California, the Supreme Court held that it is unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment to punish an individual for a status or condition. Poverty is a status. The cash bail system is unconstitutional under Robinson and the Eighth Amendment because it punishes the status of poverty. Similar to drug addiction, poverty “may be contracted innocently or involuntarily or it might even take hold from the moment of a person’s birth.” Kalief Browder had no control over his family’s financial position. Yet, this financial position kept him …

Dogs Of War Get A New Lease On Life: Why The Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act Violates The Eighth Amendment In Light Of United States V. Slatten, Michael D. Stinnett-Kassoff

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

The United States has relied on Private Military Firms (PMFs) extensively to carry out its numerous overseas military missions since the end of the Cold War. Civilians and contractors have always had a place in American wars, even during the American Revolution and beyond. But the recent American incursions into Afghanistan and Iraq brought an unprecedented number of private contractors into the forefront of these conflict zones, the discussions surrounding them, and the legal questions arising from their ashes. Particularly, private contractors in Iraq seemed to be operating in a legal grey area—they clearly were not soldiers, and they clearly …

Marriage Equality Comes To The Fourth Circuit, Carl Tobias

Washington and Lee Law Review

Marriage equality has come to America. Throughout 2014, several federal appellate courts and numerous district court judges across the United States invalidated state constitutional or statutory proscriptions on same-sex marriage. Therefore, it was not surprising that Eastern District of Virginia Judge Arenda Wright Allen held that Virginia’s bans were unconstitutional in February. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed her opinion that July. North Carolina, South Carolina, and West Virginia District Judges rejected these jurisdictions’ prohibitions during autumn, and the Supreme Court approved marriage equality the next year. Because marriage equality in the Fourth Circuit presents …

Facebook's Alternative Facts, Sarah C. Haan

Scholarly Articles

In this short essay, I argue that Facebook’s adoption of the alternative-facts frame potentially contributes to the divisiveness that has made social media misinformation a powerful digital tool. Facebook’s choice to present information as “facts” and “alternative facts” endorses a binary system in which all information can be divided between moral or tribal categories—“bad” versus “good” speech, as Sandberg put it in her testimony to Congress. As we will see, Facebook’s related-articles strategy adopts this binary construction, offering a both-sides News Feed that encourages users to view information as cleaving along natural moral or political divisions.

If Separation Of Church And State Doesn’T Demand Separating Religion From Politics, Does Christian Doctrine Require It?, Samuel W. Calhoun

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

This Essay responds to comments by Wayne Barnes, Ian Huyett, and David Smolin on my prior Article, Separation of Church and State: Jefferson, Lincoln, and the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., Show It Was Never Intended to Separate Religion From Politics. Part II, although noting a few disagreements with Huyett and Smolin, principally argues that they strengthen the case for the appropriateness of religious arguments in the public square. Part III evaluates Wayne Barnes’s contention that Christian doctrine requires separating religion from politics.

Privatizing Criminal Procedure, John D. King

Scholarly Articles

As the staggering costs of the criminal justice system continue to rise, states have begun to look for nontraditional ways to pay for criminal prosecutions and to shift these costs onto criminal defendants. Many states now impose a surcharge on defendants who exercise their constitutional rights to counsel, confrontation, and trial by jury. As these “user fees” proliferate, they have the potential to fundamentally change the nature of criminal prosecutions and the way we think of constitutional rights. The shift from government funding of criminal litigation to user funding constitutes a privatization of criminal procedure. This intrusion of market ideology …

What We Teach When We Teach German Constitutional Law: An Introduction To The Collection Memorializing Donald P. Kommers, Russell A. Miller

Scholarly Articles

The author posits that Americans’ interest in German constitutional law can be traced to a single source. Donald Kommers (1932-2018), the political scientist and legal scholar at Notre Dame, pioneered the field of comparative constitutional law and popularized German constitutional jurisprudence in the English speaking world with his groundbreaking study of the German Federal Constitutional Court, and his seminal, English-language treatise on German constitutional law that first published in 1989.

The Defamation Injunction Meets The Prior Restraint Doctrine, Doug Rendleman

Scholarly Articles

In Near v. Minnesota, the Supreme Court added the injunction to executive licensing as a prior restraint. Although the Near court circumscribed the injunction as a prior restraint, it approved criminal sanctions and damages judgments. The prior restraint label resembles a death sentence. This article maintains that such massive retaliation is overkill.

A judge’s injunction that forbids the defendant’s tort of defamation tests Near and prior restraint doctrine because defamation isn’t protected by the First Amendment. Arguing that the anti-defamation injunction has outgrown outright bans under the prior restraint rule and the equitable Maxim that “Equity will not enjoin defamation” …

The Post-Truth First Amendment, Sarah C. Haan

Scholarly Articles

Post-truthism is widely understood as a political problem. In this Article, I argue that post-truthism also presents a constitutional law problem—not a hypothetical concern, but a current influence on First Amendment law. Post-truthism, which teaches that evidence-based reasoning lacks value, offers a normative framework for regulating information. Although post-truthism has become a popular culture trope, I argue that we should take it seriously as a theory of decision making and information use, and as a basis for law.

This Article uses the example of compelled speech to explore how post-truth rhetoric and values are being integrated into law. When the …

Will The Supreme Court Rein In “Excessive Fines” And Forfeitures? Don’T Rely On Timbs V. Indiana, Nora V. Demleitner

Scholarly Articles

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Timbs v. Indiana buoyed the hopes of those who saw it as a powerful signal to states and municipalities to rein in excessive fines and forfeitures. One commentator deemed it “a blow to state and local governments, for whom fines and forfeitures have become an important source of funds.” That may have been an overstatement. The Court seems disinclined to fill the term proportionality with robust meaning or wrestle with Eighth Amendment challenges to fines and fees. Those steps would be required for the Excessive Fines Clause to function as an effective backstop against …