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Full-Text Articles in Law
And A Public Defender For All, Sara Mayeux
And A Public Defender For All, Sara Mayeux
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
The Senate confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court last week means that she is soon to be the first Supreme Court justice with prior experience as a federal public defender. This is historic in its own right, though it is not quite as surprising on closer inspection, since the institution of the federal public defender — in its currently prevailing organizational particulars, anyway — dates back only to the 1970s. Still, given that several of the justices previously worked as federal prosecutors, Jackson’s confirmation injects a welcome measure of professional balance to the lineup. Moreover, Jackson can …
In Their Own Image: The Reframing Of The Due Process Clause By The United States Supreme Court, J. Ralph Beaird
In Their Own Image: The Reframing Of The Due Process Clause By The United States Supreme Court, J. Ralph Beaird
Scholarly Works
A distinguished constitutional scholar recently pointed out that "many of the important decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States are not based on law in the popular sense of that term." It is true, he noted, that "the court endeavors to identify Constitutional clauses upon which to hang its pronouncements." "[S]ome key words and phrases in the Constitution," however, "are so highly indeterminate that they cannot really qualify as law in any usual sense." Rather, he said, "they are semantic blanks--verbal vacuums that may be filled readily with any one of many possible meanings." Thus, it is not …