Law Commons^™

Belonging And Empowerment: A New "Civil Rights" Paradigm Based On Lessons Of The Past, Rebecca E. Zietlow

Rebecca E Zietlow

ABSTRACT: Despite the advances that African Americans have made in our country as a result of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, poverty stubbornly persists in communities of color throughout our country. Our current civil rights paradigm, which is rooted in the Equal Protection Clause, and prohibits intentional state discrimination on the basis of immutable characteristics, simply is not working. This article suggests an alternative approach, one based not solely in equality norms but in facilitating the belonging of outsiders in our society. The subordination of people of color in our society has never been just about race. Rather, …

Desperately Ducking Slavery: Dred Scott And Contemporary Constitutional Theory, Mark A. Graber

Mark Graber

No abstract provided.

The Odyssey Of Cass Sunstein, James E. Fleming

Faculty Scholarship

I am delighted to participate in this symposium honoring and criticizing the scholarship of Cass Sunstein. Let me begin by stating something so obvious that we typically don't say it: Cass is the most remarkably thoughtful, constructive, and productive scholar of his (and my) generation, the generation of scholars born around the time that Brown v. Board of Education1 was decided. No one has addressed a wider range of important subjects or made a more substantial contribution to our understanding of law. I have been fruitfully engaging with his scholarship from my first article 2 to my two recent books.3 …

Of Inkblots And Originalism: Historical Ambiguity And The Case Of The Ninth Amendment, Kurt T. Lash

Law Faculty Publications

Ever since Justice Goldberg's concurring opinion in Griswold v. Connecticut, the Ninth Amendment has been a flashpoint in debates over the merits of originalism as an interpretive theory. Judge Bork's comparison of interpreting the Ninth Amendment to reading a text obscured by an inkblot has been particularly subjected to intense criticism. The metaphor has been attacked as erasing the Ninth Amendment from the Constitution, and as representing the inevitably selective and inconsistent use of

text and history by so-called originalists.

It turns out, however, that not only was Judge Bork right to reject Justice Goldberg's reading of the Ninth Amendment, …

Does Australia Have A Constitution? Part Ii - The Rights Constitution, Howard Schweber, Kenneth R. Mayer

Kenneth R Mayer

Forthcoming in UCLA Pacific Basin Law Journal

The New Doctrinalism In Constitutional Scholarship And Heller V. District Of Columbia, Brannon P. Denning

Brannon P. Denning

This brief essay examines an apparent new trend in constitutional scholarship that focuses less on the fixing of constitutional meaning--the usual focus of constitutional theory--and more on the rules courts develop to implement constitutional commands. This new doctrinalism offers a way forward from the stalemated debates of constitutional theory, and perhaps can bridge the oft remarked upon divide between academics on the one hand, and judges and practitioners on the other. While the New Doctrinalism has already attracted critics who question whether interpretation and doctrine can meaningfully be separated, the essay concludes that its emergence is a welcome one in …

Three Myths Of The Ninth Amendment, Kurt T. Lash

Law Faculty Publications

The breathtakingly broad language of the Ninth Amendment is both a blessing and a curse. It is a blessing for those seeking support for expansive theories of individual rights. Indeed, it is hard to conceive of a theory of individual liberty that cannot find at least rhetorical support in the Ninth Amendment's declaration of retained rights. It is not surprising, therefore, to find the Ninth Amendment invoked in support of everything from Dial-a-Porn to prostitution to organ selling. Once one decides that the Ninth Amendment refers to "other" unnamed individual liberties, there is literally no textual reason to exclude any …

The Inescapable Federalism Of The Ninth Amendment, Kurt T. Lash

Law Faculty Publications

Over the past two decades, the most influential work on the Ninth Amendment has been that of libertarian scholar Randy Barnett. Over a series of articles and books, Barnett has presented the Ninth as a provision originally intended to preserve individual natural rights. Recently uncovered historical evidence, however, suggests that the Ninth originally limited federal power in order to preserve the right to local self-government. I presented this evidence in two articles published by the Texas Law Review, the first dealing with the original meaning of the Ninth Amendment, and the second dealing with a heretofore lost jurisprudence of the …

Constitutional Possibilities, Lawrence B. Solum

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

What are our constitutional possibilities? The importance of this question is illustrated by the striking breadth of recent discussions, ranging from the interpretation of the United States Constitution as a guarantee of fundamental economic equality and proposals to restore the lost constitution to arguments for the virtual abandonment of structural provisions of the Constitution of 1789. Such proposals are conventionally understood as placing constitutional options on the table as real options for constitutional change. Normative constitutional theory asks the question whether these options are desirable--whether political actors (citizens, legislators, executives, or judges) should take action to bring about their plans …

Incorporation And Originalist Theory, Lawrence B. Solum

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Does the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution incorporate the Bill of Rights contained in the first eight amendments? And how should an originalist answer that question? This paper focuses on the latter question--the issues of originalist theory that are raised by judicial and scholarly debates over what is called "incorporation."

The inquiry proceeds in six parts. Part I answers the questions: "What is incorporation?" and "What is originalism?" Part II examines the theoretical framework for an investigation of incorporation that operates within the narrow confines of interpretation of the linguistic meaning text based on the assumption that the …

Do Churches Matter - Towards An Institutional Understanding Of The Religion Clauses, Richard W. Garnett

Villanova Law Review

No abstract provided.