Law Commons^™

Absolute Publishing Power And Bulletproof Immunity: How Section 230 Shields Internet Service Providers From Liability And Makes It Impossible To Protect Your Reputation Online, Victoria Anderson

Seattle University Law Review SUpra

No abstract provided.

No, Joe Biden And The Dems Are Not Collapsing, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

October 13, 2021: The Case For Joe Biden, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “The Case for Joe Biden“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

October 8, 2021: Tune In To The Grimes Lecture I Delivered Yesterday At Bethany College, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Tune in to the Grimes Lecture I Delivered Yesterday at Bethany College“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

October 3, 2021: A Response To My Column Criticizing The National Vote Compact--What Ledewitz Missed, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “A Response to My Column Criticizing the National Vote Compact--What Ledewitz Missed“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Unmasking The Nineteenth Amendment Centennial Through The Pandemic Lenses Of Liberty, Loss, Masculinity, And Leadership [Comments], Jamie Abrams

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Celebrating the Centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment in this political, economic, and social moment was a tale of two extremes. On the one hand, the Centennial occurred contemporaneously with the election of Kamala Harris as the nation's first woman Vice President offering a tremendous celebratory bookend of political success. On the other hand, we celebrated the Centennial amid a global pandemic that has taken over 740,000 American lives2 and in a crescendo of searingly painful calls for racial justice. In reflecting on the Centennial in this political, social, and economic moment, this article unmasks the lenses of loss, liberty, masculinity, …

The Era Brief October 2021, Center For Gender And Sexuality Law

Center for Gender & Sexuality Law

We are excited to return to campus and rejoin the vibrant law school community. Our work at the ERA Project has taken on a renewed sense of urgency as we seek to advance sex equality in a time when the right to bodily autonomy is under threat from restrictions on reproductive and transgender rights.

The Equal Rights Amendment And The Equality Act: Talking Points, Center For Gender And Sexuality Law

Center for Gender & Sexuality Law

The Equal Rights Amendment, first proposed nearly 100 years ago, is still needed today.

• The ERA is a constitutional amendment that would protect against discrimination on the basis of sex—including on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression.
• The ERA would also usher in advancements in sex equality in all three branches of government, empower advocates, and encourage recognition of related forms of discrimination such as pregnancy discrimination.
• By including the ERA in our Constitution, the United States would catch up with the more than 100 other countries with constitutional protections against sex-based discrimination.

The Equal Rights Amendment And The Equality Act: Two Equality Measures Explained, Center For Gender And Sexuality Law

Center for Gender & Sexuality Law

When the United States Constitution was written in 1787, its defining phrase “We the people” did not include women, LGBTQ+ people, people of color, or immigrants. In 2021, these groups, among others, still lack fundamental equality under the law. Two pieces of legislation are pending in Congress that would strengthen legal protections against discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity: the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) and the Equality Act.

Federalism, Free Competition, And Sherman Act Preemption Of State Restraints, Alan J. Meese

Faculty Publications

The Sherman Act establishes free competition as the rule governing interstate trade. Banning private restraints cannot ensure that competitive markets allocate the nation's resources. State laws can pose identical threats to free markets, posing an obstacle to achieving Congress's goal to protect free competition.

The Sherman Act would thus override anticompetitive state laws under ordinary preemption standards. Nonetheless, the Supreme Court rejected such preemption in Parker v. Brown, creating the "state action doctrine." Parker and its progeny hold that state-imposed restraints are immune from Sherman Act preemption, even if they impose significant harm on out-of-state consumers. Parker's progeny …

The Modest Impact Of The Modern Confrontation Clause, Jeffrey Bellin, Diana Bibb

Faculty Publications

The Sixth Amendment's Confrontation Clause grants criminal defendants the right "to be confronted with the witnesses against" them. A strict reading of this text would transform the criminal justice landscape by prohibiting the prosecution's use of hearsay at trial. But until recently, the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Clause was closer to the opposite. By tying the confrontation right to traditional hearsay exceptions, the Court's longstanding precedents granted prosecutors broad freedom to use out-of-court statements to convict criminal defendants.

The Supreme Court's 2004 decision in Crawford v. Washington was supposed to change all that. By severing the link between the …

How Chevron Deference Fits Into Article Iii, Kent H. Barnett

Scholarly Works

U.S. Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, along with Professor Philip Hamburger, assert that Chevron deference-under which courts defer to reasonable agency statutory interpretations-violates Article III. Chevron does so because, they argue, it either permits agencies, not courts, "to say what the law is" or requires judges to forgo independent judgment by favoring the government's position. If they are correct, Congress could not require courts to accept reasonable agency statutory interpretations under any circumstances. This Article does what these critics, perhaps surprisingly, do not do-situates challenges to Chevron within the broad landscape of the Court's current Article III …

The Place Of The Presidency In Historical Time, Robert L. Tsai

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay arises from a symposium based on Jack Balkin’s book, The Cycles of Constitutional Time, which argues that America’s constitutional development is marked by patterns of decline and renewal. I contend that the presidency today has become endowed with outsized expectations borne of popular frustrations with a centuries-old document that is desperately in need of updating. As a result, Presidents enjoy imbalanced and dangerous power to initiate legal reform or stymie it. Going forward, three dynamics are worth watching. First, noisy signals coming from performative transformation can obscure the true source and scope of legal changes initiated by a …

Civic Education In Circumstances Of Constitutional Rot And Strong Polarization Rot, Linda C. Mcclain, James E. Fleming

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay argues that civic education is crucial to remedying what Jack Balkin, in The Cycles of Constitutional Time, diagnoses as “constitutional rot” in the United States. A twenty-first century civic education must meet challenges of polarization and growing diversity and inequality and equip people for forms of democratic participation necessary to the health of constitutional democracy. Some commentators have called the insurrection on January 6, 2021, a “Sputnik moment for teaching civics”—seeing a link between the whitesupremacist/conspiracy-theory mob’s actions and the failure to instill civic virtue in “We the People.” To be capable of spurring national reconciliation and renewal, …

The Free Speech Record Of The Roberts Court, William D. Araiza

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Law Of License Plates And Other Inevitabilities Of Free Speech Context Sensitivity, William D. Araiza

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Equal Justice Under Law: Navigating The Delicate Balance Between Religious Liberty And Marriage Equality, Meg Penrose

Faculty Scholarship

This Article discusses the current state of the law and offers thoughts on its future. Part Il provides a brief overview of the legal landscape involved in the clash between religious liberty and same-sex marriage From Justice Scalia's seminal religious liberty test to the evolution of same- sex marriage, Part Il describes the current law. Part III introduces the reader to public accommodations laws. After providing this brief history, Part Ill discusses three Supreme Court cases that could have resolved the religious liberty versus marriage equality question. Part IV looks ahead and draws analogies to the 1960s religious liberty objections …

What Is "United" About The United States?, Gary S. Lawson

Faculty Scholarship

Jack Balkin’s The Cycles of Constitutional Time aims, among other things, to preserve and promote what Jack regards as “democracy and republicanism,” understood as “a joint enterprise by citizens and their representatives to pursue and promote the public good.” My question is whether and how this normative project is possible in a world full of perceptions of social, political, and moral phenomena akin to the white dress/blue dress internet controversy of 2015. Even if Madison had the better of Montesquieu in 1788 (and that is questionable), the United States has grown dramatically since the founding era, in a patchwork, and …

Long Overdue: Fifth Amendment Protection For Corporate Officers, Tracey Maclin

Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court has extended to corporations many of the same constitutional rights that were originally intended to protect people.One notable exception, however, is the Fifth Amendment’s prohibition on compulsory self-incrimination.

“Corporations may not take the Fifth.” There is a long line of cases dating back to the start of the twentieth century stating—but never directly holding— that corporations are not protected by the Self-Incrimination Clause.

But the fact that a corporation cannot invoke the Fifth Amendment does not explain why a person who works for a corporation cannot. As a matter of text, the Fifth Amendment draws no distinction …

The 2021 Race For Pa. Supreme Court: The Questions The Candidates Have To Answer, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

September 28, 2021: The Pennsylvania Supreme Court Race--I Don't Trust The Democrats And I Am Afraid Of The Republicans, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “The Pennsylvania Supreme Court Race--I don't trust the Democrats and I am afraid of the Republicans“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Equal Protection And Abortion: Brief Of Equal Protection Constitutional Law Scholars Serena Mayeri, Melissa Murray, And Reva Siegel As Amici Curiae In Support Of Respondents In Dobbs V. Jackson Women's Health Organization, Reva Siegel, Melissa Murray, Serena Mayeri

All Faculty Scholarship

Equal Protection changes the questions we ask about abortion restrictions. In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, an amicus brief filed on our behalf demonstrated that Mississippi’s ban on abortions after 15 weeks violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. The brief continues a tradition of equality arguments that preceded Roe v. Wade and will continue, in new forms, after Dobbs. Our brief shows how the canonical equal protection cases United States v. Virginia and Department of Human Resources v. Hibbs extend to the regulation of pregnancy, hence provide an independent constitutional basis for abortion rights.

Under equal …

September 20, 2021: Two Recent Columns--The Texas Anti-Abortion Statute And Justice Wecht And The Death Of God, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Two Recent Columns--the Texas Anti-Abortion statute and Justice Wecht and the Death of God“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

September 2, 2021: The Steal In The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “The steal in the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

September 16, 2021: Forgiveness, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Forgiveness“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Did Pa. Supreme Court Justice David Wecht Herald The Death Of God?, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

I Am Resigning From The Pro-Life Movement, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

Published scholarship collected from academic journals, law reviews, newspaper publications & online periodicals

September 11, 2021: Twenty Years Later, 9/11 Is Finally Over, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Twenty Years Later, 9/11 is finally over“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

September 10, 2021: Secular Repentence, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Secular Repentence“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

The Steal In The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, Explained, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.