Law Commons^™

Red-Flag Laws, Civilian Firearms Ownership And Measures Of Freedom, Royce De R. Barondes

Faculty Publications

This essay provides context for an assessment of a part of the recently-enacted Bipartisan Safer Communities Act--federal legislation funding state red-flag procedures, which allow for seizures of firearms from persons who have not committed crimes.

First, it assesses Maryland’s experience during the first year of implementing these procedures. The essay details computations, extrapolating from Maryland’s first-year experience, showing that adoption of these statutes causes blameless persons to be subject to being killed by the government at a rate comparable to or in excess of the murder rate.

Second, the essay identifies an overlooked impact of this federal legislation. The legislation’s …

State Rejection Of Federal Law, Thomas B. Bennett

Faculty Publications

Sometimes the United States Supreme Court speaks, and states do not follow. For example, in 2003, the Arizona Supreme Court agreed to "reject" a decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, because no "sound reasons justif[ied] following" it. Similarly, in 2006, Michigan voters approved a ballot initiative that, according to the legislature that drafted it, sought "at the very least to freeze' the state's ... law to prevent" state courts from following a ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court. Surprising though this language may be, there is nothing nefarious about these cases. Cooper v. Aaron this is not. Unlike more notorious …

Clouded Precedent: Tandon V. Newsom And Its Implications For The Shadow Docket, Alexander Gouzoules

Faculty Publications

The Supreme Court’s “shadow docket”—the decisions issued outside its procedures for deciding cases on the merits—has drawn increasing attention and criticism from scholars, commentators, and elected representatives. Shadow docket decisions have been criticized on the grounds that they are made without the benefit of full briefing and argument, and because their abbreviated, per curiam opinions can be difficult for lower courts to interpret.

A spate of shadow docket decisions in the context of free-exercise challenges to COVID-19 public health orders culminated in Tandon v. Newsom, a potentially groundbreaking decision that may upend longstanding doctrines governing claims brought under the Free …

The Establishment Clause: Its Original Public Meaning And What We Can Learn From The Plain Text, Carl H. Esbeck

Faculty Publications

Modern times in church-state relations began in 1947 with the Supreme Court’s decision in Everson v. Board of Education. The justices in both the majority and dissent said they were interpreting the Establishment Clause based on the intent of the founding generation. However, rather than looking to Congress’s lawmaking in the summer of 1789 that led to the First Amendment, the justices relied on the Virginia disestablishment from four years prior, as well as the efforts of just two statesmen, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson.

For the next half century, the High Court’s search was for events and prominent …

After Espinoza: What's Left Of The Establishment Clause?, Carl H. Esbeck

Faculty Publications

Consistent with the Establishment Clause, the Supreme Court had permitted the government to fund public and private K-12 schools, so long as any direct aid was not diverted to an explicitly religious purpose. In Espinoza v. Montana Dept. of Rev., the Court held that when there is a government program with a secular purpose, such as education, the Free Exercise Clause requires that the program be available without regard to religion. Clearly the Religion Clauses have undergone a major transformation since the days of no parochial school aid whatsoever in the 1970s and 80s. So, it bears asking: What …

British Impeachments (1376-1787) And The Preservation Of The American Constitutional Order, Frank O. Bowman Iii

Faculty Publications

Impeachment is a British invention, employed by Parliament beginning in 1376 to resist the general tendency of the monarchy to absolutism and to counter particularly obnoxious royal policies by removing the ministers who implemented them. The invention crossed the Atlantic with the British colonists who would one day rebel against their mother country and create an independent United States of America. During the Constitutional Convention of 1787, the delegates decided that presidents and other federal officers could be impeached, but they recoiled from the severe and occasionally fatal punishments imposed by Parliament, and they wrestled over what conduct should be …

The Diverging Right(S) To Bear Arms: Private Armament And The Second And Fourteenth Amendments In Historical Context, Alexander Gouzoules

Faculty Publications

This article compares the historical evolution of the social understanding of private armament with contemporary legal doctrine on the right to bear arms. The District of Columbia v. Heller decision, which held that the Second Amendment protects a personal right to self-defense, and the McDonald v. City of Chicago decision, which held the Second Amendment to be incorporated by the Fourteenth Amendment, both turned on extensive historical analysis. But by reading a broad “individual right to self-defense” into both the Second and Fourteenth Amendments, the Court assumed continuity between the social understandings at the time of these amendments’ respective ratifications. …

Contumacious Responses To Firearms Legislation (Leosa) Balancing Federalism Concerns, Royce De R. Barondes

Faculty Publications

The Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act (LEOSA) is one of the handful of federal statutes that preempt state firearms regulation. It allows covered individuals (certain current and retired qualified law enforcement personnel) to possess firearms notwithstanding assorted state restrictions-to protect themselves and to supplement local law enforcement efforts.

The act reflects a careful legislative balancing of federalism concerns. Although it relies on states and localities to issue the authorizing credentials, it does not mandate states create a licensing regime out of whole cloth. The act ultimately presents issues requiring a nuanced assessment of the doctrine proscribing federal commandeering of the …

Automatic Authorization Of Frisks In Terry Stops For Suspicion Of Firearms Possession, Royce De R. Barondes

Faculty Publications

The recognition in Heller of an individual right to bear arms has required courts to grapple with the interaction between exercise of this right in public and Terry stops. Core questions are (i) whether reasonable suspicion a person is armed is by itself sufficient to initiate a Terry stop and (ii), if so, whether such a stop inherently authorizes an accompanying frisk. The former issue is examined in a separate forthcoming article, Royce de R. Barondes, Conditioning Exercise of Firearms Rights on Unlimited Terry Stops, 54 Idaho L. Rev. 297.

This article focuses on the second issue. Most fundamentally, insofar …

Federalism Implications Of Non-Recognition Of Licensure Reciprocity Under The Gun-Free School Zones Act, Royce De R. Barondes

Faculty Publications

The Gun-Free School Zones Act (GFSZA) criminalizes firearms possession within 1000 feet of an elementary or secondary school in a State unless the possessor "is licensed to do so by the State in which the school zone is located" (or one of a few other exceptions applies). The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has in correspondence opined licensure through reciprocity does not make one so licensed by the State.

School zones covered by the act are ubiquitous. Were the ATF's interpretation adopted, large swaths of many States' non-rural areas would be prohibited zones for non-residents who carry …

Of Reasonable Readers And Unreasonable Speakers: Libel Law In A Networked World, Lyrissa Lidsky, Ronnell Anderson Jones

Faculty Publications

Social-media libel cases require courts to map existing defamation doctrines onto social-media fact patterns in ways that create adequate breathing space for expression without lincensing character assassination. This Article explores these challenges by investigating developments involving two important constitutional doctrines - the so-called opinion privlege, which protects statements that are unverifiable or cannot be regarded as stating actual facts about a person, and the actual malice rule, which requires defamation plaintiff's who are public officials or public figures to prove that the defendant made a defamatory statement with knowledge of or reckless disregard for, its falsity. Given the critical role …

Religious Rights In Historical, Theoretical And International Context: Hobby Lobby As A Jurisprudential Anomaly, S. I. Strong

Faculty Publications

The United States has a long and complicated history concerning religious rights, and the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., has done little to clear up the jurisprudence in this field. Although the decision will doubtless generate a great deal of commentary as a matter of constitutional and statutory law, the better approach is to consider whether and to what extent the majority and dissenting opinions reflect the fundamental principles of religious liberty. Only in that context can the merits of such a novel decision be evaluated free from political and other biases.

This …

Veil-Piercing's Procedure, Sam F. Halabi

Faculty Publications

With the lines between shareholders and corporations blurring over constitutional rights like free exercise of religion and political speech, questions as to how and under what circumstances the law respects or disregards the separation between shareholders and their corporations have never been more urgent. In the corporate law literature, these inquiries have overwhelmingly focused on the doctrine of piercing the corporate veil, a judicial mechanism normally applied to hold shareholders responsible for the obligations of corporations. The last twenty years of veil-piercing scholarship has been largely devoted to empirical analyses of veil-piercing cases collected from Lexis and Westlaw searches. Since …

Intellectual Origins Of (Modern) Substantive Due Process, The, Joshua D. Hawley

Faculty Publications

Almost fifty years after the Supreme Court revived the doctrine, substantive due process remains a puzzle. Detractors insist it is nothing more than judicial policy making. Defenders say it accords with the deepest values of the Constitution. But on all sides, the present scholarly debate suffers from an impoverished understanding of modern substantive due process's intellectual history, which has led to an impoverished understanding of the doctrine's core normative content. It is time for a revisionist turn. This Article supplies that turn by excavating the intellectual origins of modern substantive due process and relating that history to the doctrine's development. …

The Transformative Twelfth Amendment, Joshua D. Hawley

Faculty Publications

This paper argues that the Twelfth Amendment represents far more than a mechanical adjustment of the electoral college. Rather, it is the constitutional text that gives us the political presidency that we know today. The Twelfth Amendment worked a major structural change in the relationship between the legislative and executive branches and for that reason bears directly on the debate over the unitary executive and the meaning of “executive power.” Specifically, presidential removal power is best justified not by the original Article II, but by the constitutional structure the Twelfth Amendment created. And the scope and definition of executive power …

Constitutional Conundrums In Arbitration: Book Review Of Arbitration And The Constitution, S. I. Strong

Faculty Publications

The combination of arbitration and constitutional law is the topic of Professor Peter Rutledge's new book, and the focus of this review essay, which will consider, among other things, whether these two subjects are compatible.

Beyond The Self-Execution Analysis: Rationalizing Constitutional, Treaty And Statutory Interpretation In International Commercial Arbitration, S. I. Strong

Faculty Publications

International commercial arbitration has long been considered one of the paradigmatic forms of private international law and has achieved a degree of legitimacy that is virtually unparalleled in the international realm. However, significant questions have recently begun to arise about the device’s public international attributes, stemming largely from a circuit split regarding the nature of the New York Convention, the leading treaty in the field, and Chapter 2 of the Federal Arbitration Act, which helps give effect to the Convention in the United States. Efforts have been made to place the debate about the New York Convention within the context …

Constitutional Borrowing As Jurisprudential And Political Doctrine In Shri Dk Basu V. State Of West Bengal, Sam F. Halabi

Faculty Publications

Under prevailing theories of comparative constitutional law, courts use foreign precedent in one of three ways: to identify “universal” principles of law applicable across jurisdictions; to sharpen understanding of domestic law through contrasting foreign judgments; and, in the case of legal systems with shared origins, to consider alternative jurisprudential paths. While the terminology differs, the concepts broadly hold across current theoretical treatments. Methodologically, these theories are built by analyzing certain foreign decisions, while scholars devote less effort in trying to test prevailing theories by applying theory to a court judgments outside those used to build their theories. In building a …

Defining Religion Down: Hasanna-Tabor, Martinez, And The U.S. Supreme Court, Carl H. Esbeck

Faculty Publications

While two recent Supreme Court cases on religious freedom appear sharply at odds, in one material respect they harmonize around an understanding that religion is fully protected only when exercised in private. CLS v. Martinez involved Hastings College of Law. Hastings' regulation of extracurricular organizations was unusual in requiring that any student can join an organization. This all-comers rule had a discriminatory impact on organizations with exclusionary memberships, such as the Christian Legal Society (CLS) which required subscribing to a statement of faith and conduct. The Court acknowledged the discriminatory effect, but said that the Free Speech Clause protects speech …

Contextualizing Disclosure's Effects: Wikileaks, Balancing And The First Amendment, Christina E. Wells

Faculty Publications

This essay responds to Professor Fenster’s article in the Iowa Law Review, Disclosure’s Effects: WikiLeaks and Transparency, assessing the effects of the recent WikiLeaks disclosures. The essay agrees with many of Professor Fenster’s conclusions regarding the promise and peril of those disclosures, especially his concern regarding the problematic balancing approaches used to assess the likely impact when confidential information is revealed. It specifically elaborates on courts’ current application of the Espionage Act, a criminal law likely to be applied to the WikiLeaks disclosures, and the implications of that deferential application for WikiLeaks, Julian Assange and journalists in general.

Lochner V. New York (1905) And Kennedy V. Louisiana (2008): Judicial Reliance On Adversary Argument, Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist called Lochner v. New York (1905) “one of the most ill-starred decisions that [the Supreme Court ever rendered.” The Justices’ deliberations preceding the 5-4 decision demonstrate the courts’ reliance on advocacy in the adversary system of civil and criminal justice. The stark imbalance between the state’s “incredibly sketchy” brief and Joseph Lochner’s sterling submission may have determined Lochner’s outcome, and thus may have changed the course of constitutional history, by leading two Justices to join the majority on the central question of whether New York’s maximum-hours law for bakery workers was a reasonable public health …

Uses And Abuses Of Textualism And Originalism In Establishment Clause Interpretation, Carl H. Esbeck

Faculty Publications

This article takes up the curious tale as to why the text and drafting record in the House and Senate were ignored by the Court in Everson, as well as what the text and debate can tell us about contemporary theories making the rounds. One theory of conservatives is that the Establishment Clause was not intended to prohibit support for religion so long as no religion is preferred.

Government Sponsored Social Media And Public Forum Doctrine Under The First Amendment: Perils And Pitfalls, Lyrissa Lidsky

Faculty Publications

Between the extremes of no interactivity and complete interactivity, it is difficult to predict whether courts will label a government sponsored social media site a public forum or not. But it is precisely "in between" where government actors are likely to wish to engage citizens and where citizens are most likely to benefit from government social media initiatives. The goal of this article, therefore, is to provide guidance to lawyers trying to navigate the morass that is the U.S. Supreme Court's public forum jurisprudence in order to advise government actors wishing to establish social media forums.

Incendiary Speech And Social Media, Lyrissa Lidsky

Faculty Publications

Incidents illustrating the incendiary capacity of social media have rekindled concerns about the "mismatch" between existing doctrinal categories and new types of dangerous speech. This Essay examines two such incidents, one in which an offensive tweet and YouTube video led a hostile audience to riot and murder, and the other in which a blogger urged his nameless, faceless audience to murder federal judges. One incident resulted in liability for the speaker even though no violence occurred; the other did not lead to liability for the speaker even though at least thirty people died as a result of his words. An …

Lies, Honor, And The Government’S Good Name: Seditious Libel And The Stolen Valor Act, Christina E. Wells

Faculty Publications

Although the Supreme Court declared the crime of seditious libel inconsistent with the First Amendment long ago, the Stolen Valor Act, which punishes anyone who falsely represents themselves to have been awarded certain military medals, revives something very like that crime. the connection between the two crimes is not immediately obvious, but the government's underlying reasoning is nearly identical in both. Officials justified seditious libel prosecutions by claiming, without proof, that criticism of the government undermined its authority and reduced the public's respect for it, ultimately threatening national security. Contemporary government officials also argue, without proof, that the Act is …

Religious Freedom, Church-State Separation, & The Ministerial Exception, Carl H. Esbeck, Thomas C. Berg, Kimberlee Wood Colby, Richard W. Garnett

Faculty Publications

The Hosanna-Tabor case concerns the separation of church and state, an arrangement that is often misunderstood but is nevertheless a critical dimension of the freedom of religion protected by the First Amendment to our Constitution. For nearly a thousand years, the tradition of Western constitutionalism - the project of protecting political freedom by marking boundaries to the power of government - has been assisted by the principled commitment to religious liberty and to church-state separation, correctly understood. A community that respects - as ours does - both the importance of, and the distinction between, the spheres of political and religious …

Taxpayer Standing From Flast To Hein, Carl H. Esbeck

Faculty Publications

This essay plays off a critique by Professor Maya Manian of an article where I discussed the decision in Hein v. Freedom From Religion Foundation, Inc., 551 U.S. 587 (2007) (plurality opinion). While Professor Manian was concerned about how the result in Hein would lead to under enforcement of church-state separation, my article had utilized Hein, and more generally the law of taxpayer standing beginning with Flast v. Cohen (1968), to look beyond the question of aid to religion. Rather, I began by showing that the only cases in which the Court had announced a “generalized grievance” and thereby denied …

Nobody's Fools: The Rational Audience As First Amendment Ideal, Lyrissa Lidsky

Faculty Publications

Assumptions about audiences shape the outcomes of First Amendment cases. Yet the Supreme Court rarely specifies what its assumptions about audiences are, much less attempts to justify them. Drawing on literary theory, this Article identifies and defends two critical assumptions that emerge from First Amendment cases involving so-called "core" speech. The first is that audiences are capable of rationally assessing the truth, quality, and credibility of core speech. The second is that more speech is generally preferable to less. These assumptions, which I refer to collectively as the rational audience model, lie at the heart of the "marketplace of ideas" …

Protestant Dissent And The Virginia Disestablishment, 1776-1786, Carl H. Esbeck

Faculty Publications

In Everson v. Board of Education (1947), the Supreme Court elevated the events surrounding the disestablishment of the Anglican Church in Virginia during and soon after the American Revolution as a principal guide for the meaning of the Establishment Clause. The rule to come out of the Virginia experience is that support for religion should be voluntary thus, no active support by the government. An in-depth examination of James Madison's Memorial and Remonstrance opposing Patrick Henry's Assessment Bill is undertaken here not only because of its role in the Virginia disestablishment, but because it is the most important document on …

What The Hein Decision Can Tell Us About The Roberts Court And The Establishment Clause, Carl H. Esbeck

Faculty Publications

This extended essay plays off the Supreme Court's recent decision in Hein v. Freedom From Religion Foundation, Inc., 127 S. Ct. 2553 (2007) (plurality opinion), rejecting taxpayer standing where the claim on the merits challenges discretionary actions by officials in the executive branch said to violate the establishment clause. While the matter directly at hand is the scope of taxpayer standing first permitted in Flast v. Cohen (1968), the essay uses the "injury in fact" requirement for standing to delve into the manner by which the four opinions in Hein give us insight into how the Roberts Court will approach …