Law Commons^™

The Constitutionalization Of Fatherhood, Dara Purvis

Journal Articles

Beginning in the 1970s, the Supreme Court heard a series of challenges to family law statutes brought by unwed biological fathers, questioning the constitutionality of laws that treated unwed fathers differently than unwed mothers. The Court’s opinions created a starkly different constitutional status for unwed fathers than for unwed mothers, demanding additional actions and relationships before an unwed father was considered a constitutional father. Although state parentage statutes have progressed beyond their 1970s incarnations, the doctrine created in those family law cases continues to have impact far beyond family law. Transmission of citizenship in the context of immigration law and …

State Action Doctrine And The Logic Of Constitutional Containment, Jud Mathews

Journal Articles

Deriding the state action doctrine is one of the great pastimes of American constitutional law. It has been described as a shamble and "incoherent." On its face, the core concept seems straightforward enough constitutional rights are rights against the government. But what counts as the "state action" that triggers the protection of rights seems to shift, maddeningly, from case to case in the Supreme Court's state action jurisprudence.

In this article, I aim to help make some sense of why the state action doctrine has developed as it has by setting it in a comparative and historical frame. It can …

All Things In Proportion - American Rights Review And The Problem Of Balancing, Jud Mathews, Alec Stone Sweet

Journal Articles

This paper describes and evaluates the evolution of rights doctrines in the United States, focusing on the problem of balancing as a mode of rights adjudication. In the current Supreme Court, deep conflict over whether, when, and how courts balance is omnipresent. Elsewhere, we find that the world’s most powerful constitutional courts have embraced a stable, analytical procedure for balancing, known as proportionality. Today, proportionality analysis (PA) constitutes the defining doctrinal core of a transnational, rights-based constitutionalism. This Article critically examines alleged American exceptionalism, from the standpoint of comparative constitutional law and practice. Part II provides an overview of how …

Proportionality Balancing And Global Constitutionalism, Jud Mathews, Alec Stone Sweet

Journal Articles

Over the past fifty years, proportionality balancing – an analytical procedure akin to strict scrutiny in the United States – has become a dominant technique of rights adjudication in the world. From German origins, proportionality analysis spread across Europe, into Commonwealth systems (Canada, New Zealand, South Africa), and Israel; it has also migrated to treaty-based regimes, including the European Union, the European Convention on Human Rights, and the World Trade Organization. Part II proposes a theory of why judges are attracted to the procedure, an account that blends strategic and normative elements. Parts III and IV provide a genealogy of …

The Right To Contract: Use Of Domestic Partnership As A Strategic Alternative To The Right To Marry Same-Sex Partners, Dara Purvis

Journal Articles

Shortly after the Civil War, a series of cases argued that the Civil Rights Act of 1866 gave black Americans the right to make contracts, including a marriage contract, with whomever they chose. While the cases were almost uniformly unsuccessful at that time, this paper argues that claims based on private contracts replicating some of marriage’s benefits, stripped of the social and religious freight of marriage, are more compelling. State constitutional amendments banning not only marriage, but any legal recognition of a marriage-like relationship, demonstrate that animus underlies the prohibitions and that the amendments violate the Equal Protection Clause even …

An Other Christian Perspective On Lawrence V. Texas, Victor C. Romero

Journal Articles

The so-called Religious Right's reaction to Lawrence v. Texas has been both powerful and negative, characterizing the case as an assault on the traditional conception of marriage and family life. This essay is an attempt to present a different Christian view. Modeled on the life and teachings of Jesus, this perspective celebrates the Lawrence case as consistent with God's call to social justice for the oppressed. It also outlines a Christian sexual ethic that lifts up genuine, monogamous, committed love between two individuals, whether of the same or opposite sex.

The Buck Does Not Stop Here: Supervisory Liability In Section 1983 Cases, Kit Kinports

Journal Articles

The appropriate standard for supervisory liability in Section 1983 cases has been a source of considerable disagreement among federal courts of appeals. In the absence of established Supreme Court authority on the subject, courts have rejected vicarious and negligence liability in favor of a higher culpability requirement, but they have not agreed on precisely what form this higher standard should take. In this article, the Author addresses the need for a uniform standard consistent with the statute's twin goals of compensating the victims of constitutional violations and deterring constitutional infractions.

The author notes at the outset that lower courts have …