Law Commons^™

Manipulated Doctrines, Improper Distinctions, And The Law Of Racial Vote Dilution, Avram D. Frey

Avram D Frey

This paper is about the law of racial vote dilution. Racial vote dilution is both a constitutional and statutory harm, however, because race doctrine requires specific intent, the statutory arm under the Voting Rights Act is dominant in this field. In my paper, I attempt to decipher an underlying theory to unite the doctrine in this context. I then critique the theory which I conclude best fits the doctrine on normative grounds.

Constitutional Responses To Paradigmatic Shifts In Technology, Noel Cox

Noel Cox

The technological revolution affecting the global economy has profound implications not merely for society, but also for global and national legal systems. This paper considers the nature of the constitutional responses to paradigmatic shifts in technology. It considers the nature of constitutions and of their relationship with technology. It then proceeds to briefly examine several seminal technological changes in the past, in order to identify common elements in relation to constitutions and technology. It then looks at several contemporary technological revolutions, with a similar purpose. Finally, it seeks to draw some common themes from these examples, with the intention of …

Interpreting The Fourteenth Amendment: Two Don'ts And Three Dos, Garrett Epps

All Faculty Scholarship

A sophisticated reading of the legislative record of the framing of the Fourteenth Amendment can provide courts and scholars with some general interpretive principles to guide their application of the Amendment to current legal problems. The author argues that two common legal conceptions about the Amendment are, in fact, misconceptions. The first is that the Amendment was chiefly concerned with the immediate situation of freed slaves in the former slave states. Instead, he argues, the legislative record suggests that the framers were broadly concerned with the rights not only of freed slaves but also of foreign-born immigrants in the North …

Presidential Powers Revisited: An Analysis Of The Constitutional Powers Of The Executive And Legislative Branches Over The Reorganization And Conduct Of The Executive Branch, Alexandra R. Harrington

Alexandra R. Harrington

Abstract: Presidential Powers Revisited: An Analysis of the Constitutional Powers of the Executive and Legislative Branches Over the Reorganization and Conduct of the Executive Branch.

Alexandra R. Harrington, Esq.

Two hundred eighteen years after George Washington was elected to serve as the first President of the United States, the Constitutional Framers would likely be heartened to know that over a dozen people are vying for the right to run as their party’s presidential candidate in the upcoming 2008 presidential election. However, these same Framers would likely be severely disheartened to learn that the powers and responsibilities assigned to the executive …

Executive Parity: How The Structure Of Executive Branches At The City, State, And Federal Level Impacts Presidents And Presidential Candidates., Alexandra R. Harrington

Alexandra R. Harrington

Abstract: Executive Parity: How the Structure of Executive Branches at the City, State, and Federal Level Impacts Presidents and Presidential Candidates.

Alexandra R. Harrington, Esq.

With the specter of the 2008 presidential election already upon the electorate and daily reminders of its importance and the multitude of candidates seeking office broadcast through the media, there is perhaps no better time to examine the types of institutional structures which give presidential candidates the greatest exposure to and experience in the powers, obligations, and identity of an executive in our three branch system of government. Without examining personalities or specific issues that …

Preconstitutional Federal Power, Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

In two fields of constitutional law, the Supreme Court has acknowledged that the federal government may possess preconstitutional power, or national authority derived not from the Constitution but from the very fact of sovereignty. This Article analyzes the two areas of law – the Foreign Affairs Power and the Indian Affairs Power – and assesses their viability in future cases. The case recognizing a preconstitutional Foreign Affairs Power resting with the Executive branch, United States v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corp., suffers from poor historical reasoning and has little precedential weight in modern foreign affairs cases, but has never been overruled. The …

Making War, John C. Yoo, Robert Delahunty

John C Yoo

We respond here to Unleashing the Dogs of War by Sai Prakash, which represents the latest originalist argument that war cannot be started by the executive without congressional authorization. First, we argue that Prakash's interpretive approach imposes an unexplained burden of proof that places little to no importance on the starting point for constitutional interpretation: the text. The best reading of the text rejects Prakash's claim about Congress's power to declare war. We supplement our textualist reading by exploring constitutional structure, which should not tolerate the redundancies created by Prakash's approach. The key point here is that the constitutional structure …

Neutral Principles, Jesse R. Merriam

Jesse R Merriam

No abstract provided.

State Habeas Relief For Federal Extrajudicial Detainees, Todd E. Pettys

Todd E. Pettys

I argue that the Court’s nineteenth-century rulings in Ableman v. Booth and Tarble’s Case marked a little-known but sharp break with state courts’ decades-long practice of granting habeas relief to federal extrajudicial detainees. I contend that the Court’s reasoning in those cases is unpersuasive, and that modern efforts to rationalize those cases’ outcomes fare no better. I also argue that the Suspension Clause bars Congress from stripping state courts of their power to grant habeas relief to persons being extrajudicially detained by federal authorities.

A Comprehensive Analysis Of The National Security Agency’S Wiretapping Program And Its Correlation With The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Michael Fraggetta

Michael Fraggetta

ABSTRACT This paper is an analysis of the unitary executive theory as ascribed to by the Bush/Cheney administration. The central focus of the paper analyzes the NSA wiretapping program, which was made public in 2005 and the correlation and support found for the program in the unitary executive theory. The paper proceeds with a brief history of the warrantless surveillance in the United States and the evolution of electronic surveillance jurisprudence culminating with the passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in 1978. The paper then explores the NSA program and analyzes, in depth, the legal arguments set forth by …

Symbolic Speech: A Message From Mind To Mind, James Mcgoldrick

James M McGoldrick Jr.

Some expressive conduct is treated as speech, and some as just conduct, but there is no clear way to tell them apart. A gesture of a middle finger thrust into the air, directed from one driver to another driver, seems to be speech at its purest form without either noise or tangible remains. The message moves effortlessly from enclosed metal and glass across lanes of traffic into the enclosed space of another, all with little difficulty, yet with great force and often psychic injury. Still, no one would think that all of the symptoms of road rage–tailgating, aggressive lane changes, …

Constraints On The President's Power To Interpret Common Article Three Of The Geneva Conventions, Heather Sensibaugh

Heather Sensibaugh

This paper explores whether the President has authority to violate customary international law norms prohibiting outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment by his own interpretation in the form of an executive order pursuant to the Military Commissions Act of 2006. This article argues that, in interpreting the MCA, the President is bound to comply with definitions provided by Congress and where no definitions are specified. The President’s interpretive authority is constrained by customary meanings of Common article 3 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions.

Suspension And The Extrajudicial Constitution, Trevor W. Morrison

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

What happens when Congress suspends the writ of habeas corpus? Everyone agrees that suspending habeas makes that particular - and particularly important - judicial remedy unavailable for those detained by the government. But does suspension also affect the underlying legality of the detention? That is, in addition to making the habeas remedy unavailable, does suspension convert an otherwise unlawful detention into a lawful one? Some, including Justice Scalia in the 2004 case Hamdi v. Rumsfeld and Professor David Shapiro in an important recent article, answer yes.

This Article answers no. I previously offered that same answer in a symposium essay; …

Mississippi River Stories: Lessons From A Century Of Floods And Hurricanes, Sandra Zellmer, Christine Klein

Sandi Zellmer

n the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the nation pondered how a relatively weak Category 3 storm could have destroyed an entire region. Few appreciated the extent to which a flawed federal water development policy transformed this apparently natural disaster into a “manmade” disaster; fewer still appreciated how the disaster was the predictable, and indeed predicted, sequel to almost a century of similar disasters. This article focuses upon three such stories: the Great Flood of 1927, the Midwest Flood of 1993, and Hurricanes Katrina and Rita of 2005. Taken together, the stories reveal important lessons, including the inadequacy of engineered flood …

Market Triumphalism, Electoral Pathologies, And The Abiding Wisdom Of First Amendment Access Rights, Gregory P. Magarian

Working Paper Series

Forty years ago, Professor Jerome Barron made the classic case that the First Amendment requires not merely protection of speech against government interference but provision of access to the means of mass communication. The Supreme Court in the ensuing decades has largely rejected Barron’s approach. In this article, Professor Magarian defends Barron’s case for access rights against the two theoretical critiques that have underwritten its doctrinal rejection. The libertarian critique attacks the normative underpinnings of access rights, maintaining that the First Amendment insulates market-driven distributions of expressive opportunities. Professor Magarian demonstrates that politically progressive and conservative libertarian critics of access …

Where Are Your Papers? Photo Identification As A Prerequisite To Voting, Michael J. Kasper

Michael J. Kasper

ABSTRACT WHERE ARE YOUR PAPERS? Photo Identification as a Prerequisite to Voting Remember the old war movies? Richard Attenborough or William Holden is slowly walking down misty, Parisian streets, the collar of his trench turned up, the brim of the fedora pulled low. A black sedan screeches around the corner and screams to a stop in front of him, before he has time to react. Soldiers bound from the car, pistols draw, and bark “Vhere are your papers?” When did America become this movie? The U.S. Supreme Court will take up this question this term. This article explores five recent …

Fallibility + Unchecked Power = Trouble, C. Peter Erlinder

C. Peter Erlinder

No abstract provided.

Of Exigent Circumstances And Constitutional Authority: Congress, The President, And Domestic Electronic Surveillance, Lawrence Friedman, Victor Hansen

Lawrence Friedman

In this article, we argue that the constitutional structures and doctrines that functioned well before September 11 have not become liabilities since then. In particular, the relative powers the Constitution allocates between the Congress and the President in matters of national security have, in the light of experience, served the nation well and are likely to continue to do so, for the careful balance the framers struck between legislative and executive authority has the virtue of adaptability to a changing—and dangerous—world. Further, experience has demonstrated that the Constitution’s default lawmaking scheme, which centers on bicameral legislative enactment, presentment, and all …

Be It Resolved . . ., Timothy Zick

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Does Australia Have A Constitution? Part I -- The Powers Constitution, Howard Schweber, Ken Mayer

Howard Schweber

The conventional wisdom about the Australian Constitution is that it neither says what it means, nor means what it says. The gap between language and meaning is starkest in the sections on executive power, in which the explicit language vesting all executive power in the Governor-General is supplanted by the conventions of Responsible Government, according to a universally accepted view of what the constitutional framers intended to create. One consequence of this divergence between language and practice is that constitutional interpretation normally requires a series of finesses, in which much of the text is read out of the document entirely. …

Does Australia Have A Constitution? Part Ii -- The Rights Constitution, Howard Schweber, Ken Mayer

Howard Schweber

In this article, we visit the question of whether Australia has a “genuine” constitution with respect to guarantees of individual rights. The Australian constitutional text lacks explicit rights guarantees, but various types of rights protections have been derived from the text through judicial construction. To test the Australian model, we compare three other cases -- the United States, the U.K., and Israel -- with respect to the relationship between text, convention, and constitutional ethos. Australia does not fit cleanly into any of these three models, although it displays elements of each. More importantly, the High Court’s extrapolation of rights from …

Crawford’S Aftershock: Aligning The Regulation Of Non-Testimonial Hearsay With The History And Purposes Of The Confrontation Clause, Fred O. Smith

Fred O. Smith Jr.

This Article explores what the purposes, history and text of the Confrontation Clause have to say about the admission of non-testimonial hearsay statements. Part I examines historical sources such as the common law near the Founding, as well as the text of the clause, and concludes that non-testimonial hearsay was one of the ills that the Confrontation Clause was designed to protect. Part I additionally proposes a two-tiered approach to interpreting the Confrontation Clause, in which testimonial statements receive the most vigorous form of constitutional scrutiny, but non-testimonial statements receive meaningful scrutiny as well. The United States Constitution is no …

Outsiders Looking In: The American Legal Discourse Of Exclusion, Luis E. Chiesa

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In the first part of the article it is pointed out that during the last two hundred years our government has frequently enacted measures that unfairly burden certain social groups during times of crisis. The historical analysis set forth in Part II of this article reveals that adoption of such measures is usually justified by an appeal to national security. Thus, we have been told that we need to exclude some groups from the full protection of our laws in order to guarantee the safety of the rest of the populace. The rest of the article is dedicated to explaining …

October 3, 2007: Hallowed Secularism And The Wall Of Separation, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Hallowed Secularism and the Wall of Separation

The Glass Half Full: Envisioning The Future Of Race Preference Policies, Leslie Yalof Garfield

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Justice Breyer's concern that the Court's June 2007 ruling in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District. No. 1 "is a decision the Court and nation will come to regret" is not well founded. Far from limiting the constitutionally permissible use of race in education from its present restriction to higher education, the case may allow governmental entities to consider race as a factor to achieve diversity in grades K-12. In Parents Involved, which the Court decided with its companion case, McFarland v. Jefferson County Public Schools four justices concluded that school boards may never consider race when …

Background Principles And The Rule Of Law: Fifteen Years After Lucas, James L. Huffman

James L. Huffman

The Supreme Court’s 1992 decision in Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council was welcomed by property right advocates. Justice Scalia’s opinion for the Court established a categorical taking where all economic value is lost as a result of regulation. Not surprisingly, advocates of unconstrained environmental and land use regulation were dismayed, although many were quick to suggest (hopefully) that Lucas’s impacts would be minimal since most regulations do not destroy all economic value.

Fifteen years later some who saw only dark clouds on the regulatory horizon as a consequence of Lucas now see a rainbow with a pot of gold …

Challenging Political Boundaries In Post-Conflict States, Angela M. Banks

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Envisioning The Constitution, Thomas P. Crocker

Faculty Publications

If one of the more persistent problems of constitutional interpretation, particularly of the Bill of Rights, is that we lack a clear view of it, then it would appear that how we see the Constitution is as important as how we read it. What clauses we see as connected in order to form comprehensive values, such as federalism or rights protections, are not so much products of constitutional interpretation as constitutional vision. To obtain a view of the Constitution, we have to do more than derive semantic meaning from diverse articles and clauses. To have a vision of the Constitution …

The Admiralty Jurisdiction Of Torts And Crimes And The Failed Search For Its Purposes, Graydon S. Staring

Graydon S. Staring

This article views the jurisdiction, or power, of the Admiral in its historic setting as that of a governor, a ruler, of the offshore waters claimed by the kings. He had military, legislative (regulatory), police and judicial powers, the recognition of which became customary for maritime nations. The judicial jurisdiction comprised the legal questions that arose from his other functions. Like the rest of his powers, it was territorial rather than defined by other subject matter. This was the situation when the Constitution was adopted, when admiralty in its broadest form known to us was found in the colonies and …

Envisioning The Constitution , Thomas P. Crocker

American University Law Review

If one of the more persistent problems of constitutional interpretation, particularly of the Bill of Rights, is that we lack a clear view of it, then it would appear that how we see the Constitution is as important as how we read it. What clauses we see as connected in order to form comprehensive values, such as federalism or rights protections, are not so much products of constitutional interpretation as constitutional vision. To obtain a view of the Constitution, we have to do more than derive semantic meaning from diverse articles and clauses. To have a vision of the Constitution …