Law Commons^™

Constitutional Law -- Due Process Clause -- Third Circuit Holds That $50 Million Punitive Damages Award In Context Of A $48 Million Compensatory Award Is Unconstitutionally Excessive -- Inter Medical Supplies, Ltd. V. Ebi Medical Systems, Inc., 181 F.3d 446 (3d Cir. 1999)., A. Benjamin Spencer

Faculty Publications

In 1996, the Supreme Court, in BMW of North America, Inc. v. Gore, struck down a punitive damages award on the ground that it was "grossly excessive" in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment . Since BMW, many courts have faced the challenge of applying its principles to determine whether punitive damages awards surpass the constitutional limit. Last June, in Inter Medical Supplies, Ltd. v. EBI Medical Systems, Inc., the Third Circuit faced this difficulty when it considered whether a $50 million punitive damages award, granted in conjunction with a $48 million compensatory damages award, was …

Fidelity, Basic Liberties, And The Specter Of Lochner, James E. Fleming

Faculty Scholarship

I want to begin by frankly acknowledging that the group of scholars participating in the conference is more conservative than the crowd with whom I usually travel. Accordingly, at the outset, I want to say something ingratiating. Then, I will say something provocative. Here is the ingratiating part: economic liberties and property rights, like personal liberties, are fundamental rights secured by our Constitution. In fact, economic liberties and property rights are so fundamental in our constitutional scheme, and so sacred in our constitutional culture, that there is neither need nor good argument for aggressive judicial protection of them. Rather, such …

Travelers, Reasoned Textualism, And The New Jurisprudence Of Erisa Preemption, Edward A. Zelinsky

Articles

Upon the enactment of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 ("ERISA"), few would have predicted that, a generation later, ERISA's provisions preempting state law would be front page news, a central topic of national debate about health care and its regulation. Similarly, few foresaw at the time ERISA was adopted that the United States Supreme Court would have great difficulty construing ERISA's preemption provisions. By the same token, in 1974 the contemporary revival of interest in statutory textualism lay well into the future.

High Crimes And Misdemeanors: Defining The Constitutional Limits On Presidential Impeachment, Frank O. Bowman Iii, Stephen L. Sepinuck

Faculty Publications

This Article had its genesis in a statement by the authors submitted to the House Judiciary Committee during its proceedings regarding the impeachment of President Clinton. This final much expanded version appears after the conclusion of the Clinton impeachment proceedings in the Senate, and it is certainly informed by the course those proceedings took. Strictly speaking, however, this is not an article “about” the Clinton impeachment. Although this Article draws some conclusions from the treatment by the House and Senate of the fundamental allegations against President Clinton, it does not address in detail the specific facts underlying those allegations. The …

Section 4: Federalism, Institute Of Bill Of Rights Law At The William & Mary Law School

Supreme Court Preview

No abstract provided.

Supreme Court To Rule On Student Fees Case, Arthur S. Leonard

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

The U.S. Supreme Court announced March 29 that it will intervene in the "culture wars" raging in academia by considering whether public university students have a constitutional right to block use of their student activity fees by student organizations of which they disapprove. Lesbian and gay studies programs, such as CLAGS, are at the heart of these culture wars, as right-wing groups raise public controversies about the discussion of sexuality in the academy and question the very legitimacy of lesbian and gay studies as an academic discipline.

Liberty Interests In The Preventive State: Procedural Due Process And Sex Offender Community Notification Laws, Wayne A. Logan

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

Fourth Amendment Issues In Section 1983 Litigation, Kathryn R. Urbonya

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Delegation And The Constitution, Gary S. Lawson

Faculty Scholarship

In 1690, John Locke wrote that legislators “can have no power to transfer their authority of making laws and place it in other hands.” A century later, in 1789, the federal Constitution provided that “all legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States.” A little more than a hundred years later, in 1892, the Supreme Court declared in Field v. Clark: “That Congress cannot delegate legislative power to the President is a principle universally recognized as vital to the integrity and maintenance of the system of government ordained by the Constitution.”

In 1989, nearly …

Putting The Law Of Impeachment In Perspective, Michael J. Gerhardt

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Religion And Democracy, Steven H. Shiffrin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Should citizens armed with religious reasons for public policy outcomes present those reasons in the public forum or otherwise rely on them in making decisions? Those questions have produced a flurry of scholarship, both within and outside of the law. Moreover, as Kent Greenawalt's work richly demonstrates, these related questions raise many more questions still. Do the answers to those questions differ, for example, if the citizen is a judge, a legislator, a columnist, a religious leader, or a "mere" voter? Are some religious reasons acceptable for presentation in a public forum, but not others?

If one holds a constricted …

The Hazards Of Legal Fine Tuning: Confronting The Free Will Problem In Election Law Scholarship, Michael A. Fitts

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Carey Law

No abstract provided.

Create Your Own Constitutional Theory, Michael C. Dorf

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Islamic And American Constitutional Law: Borrowing Possibilities Or A History Of Borrowing?, Azizah Y. Al-Hibri

Law Faculty Publications

Islam is commonly viewed in the West as being incompatible with democracy. It is also viewed as an "Oriental" religion that has spawned violence and encouraged human rights violations. Because of the historical interaction between the West and Islam, the United States has recently been supporting efforts to export its democratic principles and human rights values to Muslim countries. In this context, the question of constitutional borrowing gains special significance. To assess the possibilities of constitutional borrowing between Islamic countries and the United States, it is important to first discuss the historical relation between the two, as well as between …

Should Progressives Support The Constitution?, Steven H. Shiffrin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In the closing pages of Constitutional Faith Sanford Levinson asks himself whether he would have signed the Constitution in Philadelphia, warts and all. He concludes that he would have joined the signers primarily because of a progressive faith that the evils of the Constitution would erode with time. So too, Levinson's frequent co-author J.M. Balkin, asks in the midst of a symposium on fidelity in constitutional theory, whether the present Constitution deserves our fidelity. Balkin does not deny the presence of sanctioned evil under our Constitution. He suggests, for example, that the Constitution fails to protect the poor. In so …

Roger Williams's Gift: Religious Freedom In America, Edward J. Eberle

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Why Constitutional Torts Deserve A Book Of Their Own, Michael Wells, Thomas A. Eaton, Sheldon H. Nahmod

Scholarly Works

Over thirty years ago, Marshall Shapo coined the term "constitutional tort" to denote a suit brought against an official, charging a constitutional violation and seeking damages. In the years since Shapo's pathbreaking article, the number of such suits has grown exponentially. The suits have generated a host of new substantive and remedial issues, yet conventional casebooks on constitutional law and federal courts give little attention to the area. That Professor Shapiro had four books to include in his review of "Civil Rights" casebooks in the Seattle University Law Review is some indication of a demand for teaching materials currently unmet …

The Consent Of The Governed: Recall Of United States Senators, Timothy Zick

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Is Progressive Constitutionalism Possible?, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Progressivism is in part a particular moral and political response to the sadness of lesser lives, lives unnecessarily diminished by economic, psychic and physical insecurity in the midst of a society or world that offers plenty. This insecurity is unjust and should end; the suffering should be alleviated, and those lives should be enriched. To do so must be one of the goals of a morally just or justifiable state. Not all suffering and not all lesser lives, of course, give rise to such a response. The suffering attendant to accident, disease, war and happenstance is neither entirely chargeable to …

Our Nonuniform Constitution: Geographical Variations Of Constitutional Requirements In The Aid Of Community, Mark D. Rosen

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article highlights an overlooked but integral aspect of American constitutional law: that some activities believed to be flatly unconstitutional are permissible in select locations. Contrary to what the Constitution has been construed to proscribe in most jurisdictions, for example, governments in some places in our country can ban political speeches by citizens, impose prior restraints with regard to petitions to government officials, and disallow defendants at risk of incarceration from having counsel.

The Article brings together the case law that creates nonuniformity across geographical locations. It first explains the mechanics by which this "geographical constitutional nonuniformity" is generated and …

Administrative Takings: A Realist Perspective On The Practice And Theory Of Regulatory Takings Cases, David A. Westbrook

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

The Nature Of The American Constitution: Is There A Constitutional Right To Vote And Be Represented?, Jeffrey Rosen, James A. Gardner, Gary Peller, Edward Still, Brenda Wright

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

The Remand That Made The Court Expand, Maxwell L. Stearns

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

State And Federal Constitutional Law Developments, Rosalie Levinson

Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

"High Crimes And Misdemeanors": Recovering The Intentions Of The Founders, Gary L. Mcdowell

Law Faculty Publications

Such serious charges by so many distinguished historians demand a careful consideration of what the Founders meant by "high Crimes and Misdemeanors": Were they only indictable crimes or did they include what one of the Framers called "political crimes and misdemeanors?" Were they offenses that a President would commit only in "the exercise of executive power" or did they also include a President's malfeasance committed in his private capacity? Were they subject to a reasonably fixed meaning or were they to be determined simply by the exercise of the "awful discretion" of those in Congress called upon to impeach and …

Two Movements Of A Constitutional Symphony: Akhil Amar’S The Bill Of Rights, Kurt T. Lash

Law Faculty Publications

A remarkable effort is afoot to justify American constitutional law at the end of the twentieth century. Ground zero in this effort is Yale Law School, and the principle architects are professors Akhil Reed Amar and Bruce Ackerman. Together, these scholars are calling for a reevaluation of commonly accepted doctrines with the goal of grounding judicial review and constitutional interpretation on the principles of popular sovereignty. What makes the effort remarkable is its emphasis on political morality, as opposed to the attainment of a particular doctrinal end. Take, for example, Amar's explanation of his purpose in writing The Bill of …

The Right To Die And The Ninth Amendment: Compassion And Dying After Glucksberg And Vacco, Robert M. Hardaway, Miranda K. Peterson, Cassandra Mann

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Part I reviews the historical development of physician assisted suicide, describes current medical practices and physicians' attitudes, and outlines the related legal debate over euthanasia. Part II explains the statutory and case law precedent of physician-assisted suicide. This Part also examines the factual and procedural history of the Supreme Court's decisions in Glucksberg and Vacco. Part III explores the Ninth Amendment issues which the Court failed to address in Glucksberg and Vacco, and argues that a right to die exists under existing Ninth Amendment precedent. This part also provides recommendations for a model Dignity in Dying statute that would comply …

Be Careful What You Wish For, Michael C. Dorf

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Antidiscrimination Laws & Artistic Expression, Steven H. Shiffrin, Gregory R. Smith

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Forfeiture Procedure In Federal Court: An Overview, David Pimentel

Articles

No abstract provided.