Law Commons^™

Section 7: Individual Rights, Institute Of Bill Of Rights Law, William & Mary Law School

Supreme Court Preview

No abstract provided.

Balanced Budget Amendment Is Dangerous Gimmick, Not Solution, Nathan B. Oman

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

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

Journal Articles

For more than two months beginning in late December of 2005, police officers in New York State continuously monitored the location and movements of Scott Weaver's van using a surreptitiously attached global positioning system ("GPS") device, known as a "Qball."' The reason Weaver was targeted for police surveillance has never been disclosed. 2 In addition, law enforcement made no attempt to justify the heightened scrutiny of Weaver by seeking the pre-authorization of a warrant from a neutral magistrate.3 Rather, for sixty-five days, the police subjected Weaver to intense surveillance without oversight, interruption, or explanation. 4 More than a year after …

Constitutional Torts, Over-Deterrence And Supervisory Liability After Iqbal (2010) (Symposium), Sheldon Nahmod

All Faculty Scholarship

My forthcoming Article is divided into the following parts. In Part I, I survey relevant aspects of the law of § 1983 and Bivens. Painting with a broad brush and for the most part descriptively, I maintain that the Court’s concern with over-deterrence has increasingly dominated constitutional torts. In Part II, I address the relevance of that concern for supervisory liability, set out what the Court said about supervisory liability in Iqbal and very briefly summarize the pre-Iqbal circuit consensus on supervisory liability. In Part III, I delve more deeply into the nature of supervisory liability and conclude that the …

The Children's Rights Amendment And Family Law, Fergus Ryan

Other resources

This blog entry is part of a carnival blog posted to http://humanrightsinireland.wordpress.com/ It addresses the provisions of the proposed constitutional amendment on children's rights, as formulated by the Joint Oireachtas Committee on the Constitutional Amendment on Children, published in February 2010. This brief comment analyses the proposal, with particular reference to its potential impact on children in non-traditional family units.

Poll/Contest: What Shape Is The Constitution?, Aaron-Andrew P. Bruhl

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

To Be Or Not To Be? Citizens United And The Corporate Form, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Law & Economics Working Papers

In Citizens United vs. FEC, the Supreme Court struck down a Federal ban on direct corporate expenditures on political campaigns. The decision has been widely criticized and praised as a matter of First Amendment law. But it is also interesting as another step in the evolution of our legal views of the corporation. The thesis of this Article is that by viewing Citizens United through the prism of theories about the corporate form, it is possible to understand why both the majority and the dissent departed from previous Supreme Court cases on the First Amendment rights of corporations, and to …

Why The Assertion Of A "Nationalist" Presidency Does Not Support Claims For Expansive Presidential Power, William P. Marshall

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Construction And Departmentalism: A Case Study Of The Demise Of The Whig Presidency, Michael J. Gerhardt

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Is The Filibuster Constitutional?, Josh Chafetz, Michael J. Gerhardt

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Forced Labor, Revisited: The Thirteenth Amendment And Abortion, Andrew Koppelman

Faculty Working Papers

Many recent works on the Thirteenth Amendment break new ground, deploying the amendment in new and creative ways. This is not one of them. I here restate an argument I made twenty years ago, defending abortion rights on the basis of the amendment. I then consider how the work was received, offer some amendments to the argument, and conclude with some reflections on how, perhaps, it can have more influence in the future.

The End Of Originalism, Jeffrey Shaman

College of Law Faculty

This essay maintains that originalism—the idea that the Constitution should be interpreted according to its original meaning--is nearing its demise. Ironically, the beginning of the end of originalism may have been prompted by the Supreme Court’s decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, marking the first time that a majority of the Court signed onto an opinion emphatically taking an originalist slant. Heller may represent the apogee of originalism and, because it exposes the fundamental flaws of originalism, may also mark the beginning of its decline.

Originalism is a radical departure from the Supreme Court’s well-established jurisprudence of a living …

Plural Vision: International Law Seen Through The Varied Lenses Of Domestic Implementation, D. A. Jeremy Telman

Law Faculty Publications

This Essay introduces a collection of essays that have evolved from papers presented at a conference on “International Law in the Domestic Context.” The conference was a response to the questions raised by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Medellín v. Texas and also a product of our collective curiosity about how other states address tensions between international obligations and overlapping regimes of national law.

Our constitutional tradition speaks with many voices on the subject of the relationship between domestic and international law. In order to gain a broader perspective on that relationship, we invited experts on foreign law to …

Justice Souter On Government Speech, Sheldon Nahmod

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Foreword: Somebody’S Watching Me: Surveillance And Privacy In An Age Of National Insecurity, Robert N. Strassfeld, Cheryl Ough

Faculty Publications

Forward to the Institute for Global Security Law and Policy at Case Western Reserve University symposium Somebody's Watching Me: Surveillance and Privacy in an Age of National Insecurity, Cleveland, OH, October 22-23, 2009

Mcdonald V. Chicago, The Fourteenth Amendment, The Right To Bear Arms And The Right Of Self-Defense, Richard L. Aynes

Akron Law Faculty Publications

The Supreme Court of the United States has granted certiorari in the case of McDonald v. City of Chicago to consider this question:

"Whether the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is incorporated as against the States by the Fourteenth Amendment’s Privileges or Immunities or Due Process Clauses."

This case follows and seeks to build upon District of Columbia v. Heller which held that the Second Amendment protects both the right to self-defense and what has been termed an individual right to bear arms. Of course, Heller’s application is limited to the federal government and has no direct …

Enforcing The Bill Of Rights Against The States: The History And The Future, Richard Aynes

Akron Law Faculty Publications

This article traces, in broad strokes, the history of the disputes about whether or not the Bill of Rights can be enforced against the states.

It begins with pre-Fourteenth Amendment claims and recounts the actions of the 39th Congress: The Freedman’s Bureau, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and the Fourteenth Amendment. Several speeches on the Amendment from the Congressional elections of 1866 are utilized, including those of Section 1 author John Bingham, Congressmen Columbus Delano, Rutherford B. Hayes, James Wilson, James Garfield, and Senator John Sherman, as well as Democrats who participated in what has been termed the most …

Voter Deception, Gilda R. Daniels

All Faculty Scholarship

In our recent electoral history, deceptive practices have been utilized to suppress votes in an attempt to affect election results. In most major elections, citizens endure warnings of arrest, deportation, and even violence if they attempt to vote. In many instances, these warnings are part of a larger scheme to suppress particular voters, whom I call “unwanted voters,” from exercising the franchise. Recent advancements in technology provide additional opportunities for persons to deceive voters, such as calls alerting citizens that Republicans (Whites) vote on Tuesday and Democrats vote (Blacks) on Wednesday. In spite of this resurgence of deception, the statutes …

Quasi-Preemption: Nervous Breakdown In Our Constitutional System, Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Introduction: Reproductive Rights, Human Rights, And The Human Right To Health, B. Jessie Hill

Faculty Publications

Introduction - Case Western Reserve University Law Review Symposium 2010: Reproductive Rights, Human Rights, and the Human Right to Health

Dangerous Terrain: Mapping The Female Body In Gonzales V. Carhart, B. Jessie Hill

Faculty Publications

The body occupies an ambiguous position within the law. It is, in one sense, the quintessential object of state regulatory and police power, the object that the state acts both upon and for. At the same time, the body is often constructed in legal discourse as the site of personhood - our most intimate, sacred, and inviolate possession. The inherent tension between these two concepts of the body permeates the law, but it is perhaps nowhere more prominent than in the constitutional doctrine pertaining to abortion. Abortion is one of the most heavily regulated medical procedures in the United States, …

Zoya's Standing Problem, Or, When Should The Constitution Follow The Flag?, Jeffrey D. Kahn

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Some federal courts have devised a new test of prudential standing that they use to dismiss suits filed by foreign plaintiffs alleging unlawful conduct by American officials abroad, even when these cases involve matters that may have nothing to do with foreign affairs, national security, or terrorism. Rather than decide the case on its merits or dismiss it on any number of legitimate grounds, the complaint is dismissed because the plaintiff lacks a “prior substantial connection” to the United States.

I identify and critique this strange but proliferating test of standing. First, it is inconsistent with any theoretical view of …

Race, Sex, And Rulemaking: Administrative Constitutionalism And The Workplace, 1960 To The Present, Sophia Z. Lee

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article uses the history of equal employment rulemaking at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Federal Power Commission (FPC) to document and analyze, for the first time, how administrative agencies interpret the Constitution. Although it is widely recognized that administrators must implement policy with an eye on the Constitution, neither constitutional nor administrative law scholarship has examined how administrators approach constitutional interpretation. Indeed, there is limited understanding of agencies’ core task of interpreting statutes, let alone of their constitutional practice. During the 1960s and 1970s, officials at the FCC relied on a strikingly broad and affirmative interpretation of …

The Political Economy Of Youngstown, Edward T. Swaine

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The time is ripe for a non-doctrinal assessment of Justice Jackson’s famous three-category framework for challenges to presidential action, elaborated in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer (also known as the Steel Seizure Case). Recent national security controversies have given the Youngstown framework a whole new lease on life, and its relevance for courts, Congress, and executive branch officials has never been higher. During the same period, empirical and analytical studies of presidential policymaking have advanced beyond personality-driven accounts of particular administrations. Together, these developments offer a terrific opportunity to assess how well the Youngstown framework fulfills its objective …

Fourth Amendment Remedial Equilibration: A Comment On Herring V. United States And Pearson V. Callahan, David B. Owens

Articles

In two recent decisions, the Supreme Court addressed remedies under the Fourth Amendment by assuming that this remedial construction did not alter the value of the underlying right meant to be protected by the Constitution. First, in Herring v. United States, the court broadened exceptions to the exclusionary rule and implied that suppression may not be required for "negligent" errors generally. Then, in Pearson v. Callahan, the Court abandoned it's "battle-of-order" rule - which required courts to consider the right before inquiring whether that right was "clearly established" at the time of the violation - when considering qualified …

Privacy Is The Problem, Raymond Shih Ray Ku

Faculty Publications

A local school district remotely activates laptop web cameras that allegedly record the activities of students, even in their bedrooms.1 The President authorizes the National Security Agency (NSA) to monitor the telephone calls and electronic communications of individuals within the United States on an unprecedented scale in the interest of national security.2 Even a cursory examination of the news suggests that the activities and communications of Americans are increasingly subject to government surveillance from every level of government. Whatever we may think about the necessity for this surveillance, we should question how such programs come into being; in other words, …

Unlimited Power: Why The President’S (Warrantless) Surveillance Program Is Unconstitutional, Raymond Shih Ray Ku

Faculty Publications

In this essay, Professor Ku explores the constitutionality of the President's Surveillance Program (PSP), and critiques the Bush Administration's legal explanations supporting warrantless surveillance. Defenders of the program have relied upon the President's inherent executive authority, the Congressional Authorization for Use of Military Force, the FISA Amendment Act of 2008, and ultimately that under any of these sources of authority the warrantless surveillance authorized is consistent with the right of privacy protected Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. As such, Professor Ku uses the PSP to illustrate the how and why current constitutional analysis both ignores and subverts “the right …

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

UF Law 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 …

Contingent Equal Protection: Reaching For Equality After Ricci And Pics, Jennifer S. Hendricks

College of Law Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court’s decision in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District #1 has been extensively analyzed as the latest step in the Court’s long struggle with the desegregation of public schools. This Article examines the decision’s implications for the full range of equal protection doctrine dealing with benign or remedial race and sex classifications. Parents Involved revealed a sharp division on the Court over whether government may consciously try to promote substantive equality. In the past, such efforts have been subject to an equal protection analysis that allows race-conscious or sex-conscious state action, contingent on existing, de …

Pluralism In Marbury And Van Gend, Daniel Halberstam

Book Chapters

‘Great cases, like hard cases, make bad law’, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr, famously remarked in his first Supreme Court dissent. For Holmes, ‘great cases are called great, not by reason of their real importance in shaping the law of the future, but because of some accident of immediate overwhelming interest which appeals to the feelings and distorts the judgment’. On this account neither Marbury v Madison70 nor Van Gend en Loos would qualify. Van Gend was a case of great principle without greatly interesting facts. And Marbury was a great political battle that nevertheless produced a case of great principle.