Law Commons^™

Evolving Contours Of Immigration Federalism: The Case Of Migrant Children, Elizabeth Keyes

Elizabeth Keyes

In a unique corner of immigration law, a significant reallocation of power over immigration has been occurring with little fanfare. States play a dramatic immigration gatekeeping role in the process for providing protection to immigrant youth, like many of the Central American children who sought entry to the United States in the 2014 border “surge.” This article closely examines the history of this Special Immigrant Juvenile Status provision, enacted in 1990, which authorized a vital state role in providing access to an immigration benefit. The article traces the series of shifts in allocation of power between the federal government and …

Ex Post Modernism: How The First Amendment Framed Nonrepresentational Art, Sonya G. Bonneau

Sonya G Bonneau

Nonrepresentational art repeatedly surfaces in legal discourse as an example of highly valued First Amendment speech. It is also systematically described in constitutionally valueless terms: nonlinguistic, noncognitive, and apolitical. Why does law talk about nonrepresentational art at all, much less treat it as a constitutional precept? What are the implications for conceptualizing artistic expression as free speech?

This article contends that the source of nonrepresentational art’s presumptive First Amendment value is the same source of its utter lack thereof: modernism. Specifically, a symbolic alliance between abstraction and freedom of expression was forged in the mid-twentieth century, informed by social and …

A “Modern” Interpretation Of The 3rd Amendment: Unconstitutional Militarized Police, Sarah York

Sarah York

This paper suggests that the 3^rd Amendment has not been properly analyzed by the Court to reflect its broad basis and the intent of the founding fathers concerning the limitations on the use of military force on the civilian population. The paper specifically examines the 1033 program that streamlines the process for domestic police forces to take possession of military surplus weapons, vehicles, and tactical gear. The Posse Comitatus and the documented discussions of the founding fathers are used to support the argument that the 3^rd Amendment was not meant to be limited to a strict interpretation of …

Demanding Individual Rights And Civil Liberties: An Iranian Approach, Zahra Takhshid

Zahra Takhshid

Iran has a long history of social movements and revolutions. The 1906 Constitutional Revolution led to the recognition of individual rights as part of Iran’s first Constitution. With the Islamic Revolution of 1979, a new constitution was enacted, which devoted one chapter to “the Rights of the Nation.”

The Constitution has introduced several methods to protect the recognized rights: the Guardian Council, the Tribunal of Administrative Justice, and the Commission of Article 90.

In addition to the institutions introduced in the Constitution, the Legislature and the Executive branch proposed new safeguarding procedures and adopted new statutes, which recognized broader range …

Constitutional Law In Social Choice Perspective, Maxwell Stearns

Maxwell L. Stearns

Constitutional scholars do not typically employ spatial reasoning in their work. And yet, constitutional jurisprudence implicitly rests on a set of assumptions that can best be cast in spatial terms. This includes assuming that debated positions respecting constitutional issues, along with the views of Supreme Court justices, rest along a common liberal-to-conservative ideological dimension. Political scientists who embrace the Attitudinal Model are more explicit in this framing, which is itself a premise of those who code the Supreme Court Database upon which much quantitative work in the field of Judicial Politics takes place.

The assumption of a single analytical dimension …