Law Commons^™

The Land That Democratic Theory Forgot, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer

Indiana Law Journal

The island of Puerto Rico is officially designated as an unincorporated United States territory. Acquired by the United States in the aftermath of the Spanish- American war, the status of the island offers innumerable lessons and puzzles for students of the law of democracy and constitutional law. Begin with the fact that citizens ofPuerto Rico-U.S. citizens at birth-cannot vote in federal elections but are subject to the plenary powers of Congress. How do we justify this condition under American constitutional values and basic tenets of democratic theory? Looking to the moment of acquisition, how may we reconcile the acquisition of …

Torture, With Apologies, Thomas P. Crocker

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Misinterpreting "Sounds Of Silence": Why Courts Should Not "Imply" Congressional Preclusion Of § 1983 Constitutional Claims, Rosalie Berger Levinson

Law Faculty Publications

Despite the clear text of 42 U.S.C. § 1983, its promise to protect constitutional rights has been obfuscated by the theory that Congress, by enacting civil rights laws, has “impliedly” foreclosed the historic use of § 1983 to vindicate constitutional wrongdoing. Increasingly, plaintiffs are being denied their right to vindicate constitutional wrongdoing, either because the new “preempting” federal statute does not trigger individual liability or because it makes institutional liability more difficult to establish.

It is counterintuitive to believe that Congress, in an attempt to expand equality or due process, intended to cut off existing remedies for constitutional violations. Nonetheless, …

The 'High Crime Area' Question: Requiring Verifiable And Quantifiable Evidence For Fourth Amendment Reasonable Suspicion Analysis, Andrew Ferguson, Damien Bernache

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This article proposes a legal framework to analyze the "high crime area" concept in Fourth Amendment reasonable suspicion challenges.Under existing Supreme Court precedent, reviewing courts are allowed to consider that an area is a "high crime area" as a factor to evaluate the reasonableness of a Fourth Amendment stop. See Illinois v. Wardlow, 528 U.S. 119 (2000). However, the Supreme Court has never defined a "high crime area" and lower courts have not reached consensus on a definition. There is no agreement on what a "high-crime area" is, whether it has geographic boundaries, whether it changes over time, whether it …