Law Commons^™

Hollow Hopes And Exaggerated Fears: The Canon/Anticanon In Context, Mark A. Graber

Faculty Scholarship

Students of American constitutionalism should add constitutional decisions made by elected officials to the constitutional canon and the constitutional anticanon. Neither the canonical nor the anticanonical constitutional decisions by the Supreme Court have produced the wonderful results or horrible evils sometimes attributed to them. In many cases, elected officials made contemporaneous constitutional decisions that had as much influence as the celebrated or condemned judicial rulings. More often than not, judicial rulings matter more as a result of changing the political dynamics than by directly changing public policy. Law students and others interested in constitutional change, for these reasons, need to …

Notes On Borrowing And Convergence, Robert L. Tsai, Nelson Tebbe

Faculty Scholarship

This is a response to Jennifer E. Laurin, "Trawling for Herring: Lessons in Doctrinal Borrowing and Convergence," 111 Colum. L. Rev. 670 (2011), which analyzes the Supreme Court's resort to tort-based concepts to limit the reach of the Fourth Amendment's exclusionary rule. We press three points. First, there are differences between a general and specific critique of constitutional borrowing. Second, the idea of convergence as a distinct phenomenon from borrowing has explanatory potential and should be further explored. Third, to the extent convergence occurs, it matters whether concerns of judicial administration or political reconstruction are driving doctrinal changes.

Religious Documents And The Establishment Clause, Brian Sites

Faculty Scholarship

A priest, a rabbi, and an imam walk into a contract lawyer's office. Fortunately, this is not the opening of a lawyer joke, but it might well be the prelude to a complicated constitutional question about the interaction of the First Amendment and contract law. Pastors, priests, rabbis, imams, religious schools, churches, religious businesses, and a wealth of faith-based groups all enter into contractual agreements. Not surprisingly, these agreements often contain religious language, and sometimes they even hinge on provisions invoking expressly religious concepts. Religious documents come in a variety of forms, including marriage contracts, disposition of property documents, agreements …

Covenants For The Sword, Alice Ristroph

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Bad News For Professor Koppelman: The Incidental Unconstitutionality Of The Individual Mandate, Gary S. Lawson, David Kopel

Faculty Scholarship

In "Bad News for Mail Robbers: The Obvious Constitutionality of Health Care Reform," Professor Andrew Koppelman concludes that the individual mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) is constitutionally authorized as a law "necessary and proper for carrying into Execution" other aspects of the PPACA. However, the Necessary and Proper Clause rather plainly does not authorize the individual mandate.

The Necessary and Proper Clause incorporates basic norms drawn from eighteenth-century agency law, administrative law, and corporate law. From agency law, the clause embodies the venerable doctrine of principals and incidents: a law enacted under the clause must …

Playing Well With Others -- But Still Winning: Chief Justice Roberts, Precedent, And The Possibilities Of A Multi Member Court, William D. Araiza

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Optimal Specificity In The Law Of Separation Of Powers: The Numerous Clauses Principle, Gary S. Lawson

Faculty Scholarship

In this response to Professor John Manning’s Separation of Powers as Ordinary Interpretation, Professor Gary Lawson agrees with Manning’s argument that there is no overarching constitutional principle of “optimal specificity.” Lawson argues, however, that there are other overarching principles that are fairly derivable from the text, such as a principle of “decisional independence.” Moreover, Lawson suggests a bigger potential problem with Manning’s argument: when judges apply functionalist or formalist reasoning to decide cases, they may be engaging in a qualitatively different activity than Manning assumes, and his careful interpretative analysis may therefore be largely beside the point.

Framing The Fourth, Tracey Maclin

Faculty Scholarship

History is again an important element of the Supreme Court’s Fourth Amendment analysis. In Wyoming v. Houghton, Justice Scalia’s opinion for the Court announced that a historical inquiry is the starting point for every Fourth Amendment case. William Cuddihy’s book on the origins and original meaning of the Fourth Amendment will undoubtedly assist the Justices (and everyone else) in understanding the history of search and seizure law.

Cuddihy’s historical analysis is unprecedented. As Justice O’Connor has described it, Cuddihy’s work is “one of the most exhaustive analyses of the original meaning of the Fourth Amendment ever undertaken.” Cuddihy reviewed thousands …

The Anatomy Of A Search: Intrusiveness And The Fourth Amendment, Renée Mcdonald Hutchins

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Proposed Exactions, Timothy M. Mulvaney

Faculty Scholarship

In the abstract, the site-specific ability to issue conditional approvals offers local governments the flexible option of permitting a development proposal while simultaneously requiring the applicant to offset the project’s external impacts. However, the U.S. Supreme Court curtailed the exercise of this option in Nollan and Dolan by establishing a constitutional takings framework unique to exaction disputes. This exaction takings construct has challenged legal scholars on several fronts for the better part of the past two decades. For one, Nollan and Dolan place a far greater burden on the government in justifying exactions it attaches to a development approval than …

Citizens United, Stevens And Humanitarian Law Project: First Amendment Rules And Standards In Three Acts, William D. Araiza

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

State Constitutionalism: State-Court Deference Or Dissonance?, Arthur Leavens

Faculty Scholarship

This Article focuses on the debate concerning state constitutional expansion of criminal-procedure protections. It examines two such rights: (1) the protection against unreasonable searches and seizures; and (2) the right to the assistance of counsel in defending a criminal case. Each of these rights is embodied in both the federal and most, if not all, state constitutions. Each right is thus doubly applicable to the states, first, through the federal version by virtue of its incorporation into the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process protection and, second, through the state constitution’s version of the cognate right. So focused, the question is, what …

No Virtue In Passivity: The Supreme Court And Ali Al-Marri, Bruce K. Miller

Faculty Scholarship

This Article discusses the case of Al-Marri v. Spagone, which the U.S. Supreme Court unjustifiably dismissed as moot on March 6, 2009. By dismissing this appeal, the Court ignored its duty to determine whether the military detention of a non-citizen residing lawfully in the United States was authorized by law. And that failure has in turn contributed significantly, and unnecessarily, to the cloud of legal uncertainty which now hovers over the preventive detention measures adopted and proposed by the Obama Administration.

Justice Stevens And Constitutional Adjudication: The Law Beyond The Rules., William D. Araiza

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Nonbelievers, Nelson Tebbe

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Apoplectic About Hyperlexis, William Araiza

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Prophylactic Rules And State Constitutionalism, Arthur Leavens

Faculty Scholarship

When the post-Warren Supreme Court began trimming back individual rights, some state courts responded by interpreting analogous or cognate state constitutional provisions to find broader protections, prompting a vigorous debate concerning the legitimacy and interpretive methodology of such state constitutionalism. How can two constitutional provisions, sharing the same language and history, mean different things? This Article looks at that question in the context of so-called prophylactic rules—those specific constitutional rules meant to guide the implementation of broader federal constitutional principles. Miranda ’s warning-and-waiver construct is probably the best known prophylactic rule, but such rules abound, particularly in criminal procedure.

This …

The Fifth Freedom: The Constitutional Duty To Provide Public Education, Areto Imoukhuede

Faculty Scholarship

“The fifth freedom is freedom from ignorance. It means that every[one], everywhere, should be free to develop his [or her] talents to their full potential – unhampered by arbitrary barriers of race or birth or income.” Lyndon B. Johnson This article argues that education is a fundamental human right that the U.S. Supreme Court has failed to recognize because of the Court’s bias towards negative, rather than positive rights. Viewed from the limited perspective of rights as liberties, the concern with declaring a fundamental right to education is that education legislation would be strictly scrutinized, thus causing the undesired result …

Money Talks But It Isn't Speech, Deborah Hellman

Faculty Scholarship

This Article challenges the central premise of our campaign finance law, namely that restrictions on giving and spending money constitute restrictions on speech and thus can only be justified by compelling governmental interests. This claim has become so embedded in constitutional doctrine that in the most recent Supreme Court case in this area, Citizens United v. FEC, the majority asserts it without discussion or argument. This claim is often defended on the grounds that money is important or necessary for speech. While money surely facilitates speech, money also facilitates the exercise of many other constitutional rights. By looking at these …

Money And Rights, Deborah Hellman

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter looks at when constitutionally protected rights are interpreted by courts to include a concomitant right to spend money to effectuate the underlying right and when they are not. It concludes that there are two strands in our constitutional law: the Integral Strand, in which a right includes the right to spend money and the Blocked Strand, in which it does not.

Who's In Charge? Does The President Have Directive Authority Over Agency Regulatory Decisions?, Robert V. Percival

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

From Racial Discrimination To Separate But Equal: The Common Law Impact Of The Thirteenth Amendment, David S. Bogen

Faculty Scholarship

Many forces produced the shift in the United States from the acceptance of slavery and racial inequality to the doctrine of separate but equal. The 13th Amendment abolished slavery and authorized legislation to enforce that abolition, but these well-known direct effects are only part of the story. This paper examines the Amendment’s indirect impact on racial discrimination – furthering a standard of equality in public relationships without threatening the existing racial separation. The Amendment is evidence of a change in values that justified overturning prior decisions, and abolition created a new context for legislation and common law decisions. It reinforced …

Original Habeas Redux, Lee B. Kovarsky

Faculty Scholarship

This article explores what is perhaps the Supreme Court’s most exotic appellate power— its authority to issue (inaptly-named) “original” writs of habeas corpus. Although I have been working on Original Habeas Redux for some time, the Troy Davis case has recently thrust this topic into the national spotlight. In Davis (2009), the Supreme Court exercised, for the first time in over forty years, its power to transfer an original habeas petition to a district court for merits adjudication. Having collected and tabulated two decades of new data, I argue that Davis is not a blip in an otherwise constant state …

Prosecution Without Representation, Douglas L. Colbert

Faculty Scholarship

Nearly 50 years after the Supreme Court's landmark ruling in Gideon v. Wainwright established indigent defendants' constitutional right to counsel, poor people throughout the country still remain without a lawyer when first appearing before a judicial officer who determines pretrial liberty or bail. Absent counsel, low-income defendants unable to afford bail remain in jail for periods ranging from 3-70 days until assigned counsel appears in-court. Examining Walter Rothgery's wrongful prosecution, the article includes a national survey that informs readers about the limited right to counsel at the initial appearance and the extent of delay in each of the 50 states. …

Money And Rights, Deborah Hellman

Faculty Scholarship

This article looks at when constitutionally protected rights are interpreted by courts to include a concomitant right to spend money to effectuate the underlying right and when they are not. It concludes that there are two strands in our constitutional law: the Integral Strand, in which a right includes the right to spend money and the Blocked Strand, in which it does not.

Constitutional Democracy, Human Dignity, And Entrenched Evil, Mark A. Graber

Faculty Scholarship

The following essay pays tribute to Sandy Levinson's thoughts on constitutional compromises by paying tribute to the thoughts on constitutional compromises by our common mentor, Walter Murphy. Rather than directly engage in a dialogue with Compromise and Constitutionalism, the analysis below joins the preexisting dalogue between Professors Levinson and Murphy on how to construct a decent polity among people who have deep disputes over what constitutes political decency. Walter Murphy is unfortunately largely known to legal audiences only through the work of such outstanding mentees as Sandy Levinson, Jim Fleming, Christopher Eisgruber, Andrew Koppelman, Jennifer Nedelsky, and Robert George. Walter …

Plus Or Minus One: The Thirteenth And Fourteenth Amendments, Mark A. Graber

Faculty Scholarship

The consensus that the Fourteenth Amendment incorporates the Thirteenth Amendment has come under sharp criticism in recent years. Several new works suggest that the Thirteenth Amendment, properly interpreted, protects some substantive rights not protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. Some of this scholarship is undoubtedly motivated by an effort to avoid hostile Supreme Court precedents. Nevertheless, more seems to be going on than mere litigation strategy. Scholars detected different rights and regime principles in the Thirteenth Amendment than they find in the Fourteenth Amendment. The 2011 Maryland Constitutional Law Schoomze, to which this is an introduction, provided an opportunity for law …

Habeas Verité, Lee B. Kovarsky

Faculty Scholarship

Three recent books from varied academic disciplines demonstrate that habeas is as much about power as it is about liberty - the power of some judges over other magistrates, the power of the judiciary over coordinagte governing institutions, and the power of dominant political coalitions ovefr the opposition.

Forum, Federalism, And Free Markets: An Empirical Study Of Judicial Behavior Under The Dormant Commerce Clause Doctrine, Mehmet K. Konar-Steenberg, Anne F. Peterson

Faculty Scholarship

This study examines judicial behavior under the dormant Commerce Clause doctrine by drawing on an original database of 459 state and Federal appellate cases decided between 1970 and 2009. The authors use logit regression to show that state judges are more likely to uphold state and local laws against dormant Commerce Clause attack than their Federal judicial counterparts, a result that is consistent with the interstate rivalry issues animating the doctrine. The study also finds that Republican-dominated judicial panels at the state level are more likely to side with tax challengers invoking the dormant Commerce Clause doctrine than are Democratic …

What State Constitutional Law Can Tell Us About The Federal Constitution, Joseph Blocher

Faculty Scholarship

Courts and scholars have long sought to illuminate the relationship between state and federal constitutional law. Yet their attention, like the relationship itself, has largely been one-sided: State courts have consistently adopted federal constitutional law as their own, and scholars have attempted to illuminate why this is, and why it should or should not be so. By contrast, federal courts tend not to look to state constitutional law, even for persuasive authority. Nor have scholars argued at any length that federal courts can or should look to state constitutional law for guidance in answering the many constitutional questions common to …