Law Commons^™

Transformative Properties Of Fdr's Court-Packing Plan And The Significance Of Symbol, Laura A. Cisneros

Publications

In this Article, I begin by laying a basic theoretical foundation for understanding how language choice provides contextual cues to direct interpretation. Next, I analyze cases that use the "Court-Packing Plan" language. I argue that these references are intended to trigger a response in the reader that is sympathetic to judicial independence and, in some instances, to judicial incursions into policymaking. I then analyze references to the "switch in time" language, extracting the arguments about constitutional methodology and judicial activism embedded in that phrase. Here, I argue that the phrase "switch in time" is deployed to remind the reader of …

Youngston Sheet To Boumediene: A Story Of Judicial Ethos And The (Un)Fastidious Use Of Language, Laura A. Cisneros

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My goal in this Article is not to provide a comprehensive survey of the Court's separation of powers cases from 1952 to the present. Rather, I want to present a modest-sized account of this shift from humility to arrogance and to do so not by the direct method of scrupulous narration, but through a combination of stealth and selectivity, with the idea that less could be more. With this model in mind, I have focused on the language of a few representative opinions: Jackson and Frankfurters concurrences in Youngstown, Chief Justice Rehnquist's majority opinion in Dames & Moore v. Regan, …

Necessary Suffering?: Weighing Government And Prisoner Interests In Determining What Is Cruel And Unusual, Brittany Glidden

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Part I of this Article gives background on the origins of the Eighth Amendment doctrine concerning prison conditions and identifies persistent conflicts regarding the theoretical underpinnings for the doctrine. This history then provides context for Part II's description of the problems plaguing the current two-prong Eighth Amendment test. Part III includes a brief examination of the theoretical basis underlying other areas of Eighth Amendment jurisprudence, including those challenging criminal sentences, fines, and method of execution cases. This review demonstrates that nearly all of these doctrines rely on a determination of the "excessiveness" of a given punishment, a proportionality analysis that …

Requiring The State To Justify Supermax Confinement For Mentally Ill Prisoners: A Disability Discrimination Approach, Brittany Glidden, Laura Rovner

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The Eighth Amendment has long served as the traditional legal vehicle for challenging prison conditions, including long-term isolation or "supermax" confinement. As described by Hafemeister and George in their article, The Ninth Circle of Hell: An Eighth Amendment Analysis of Imposing Prolonged Supermax Solitary Confinement on Inmates with a Mental Illness, some prisoners with mental illness have prevailed in Eighth Amendment challenges to prolonged isolation. Yet an equal or greater number of these claims have been unsuccessful. This Essay considers why some of these cases fail, and suggests that one reason is that Eighth Amendment jurisprudence does not contain a …

Incitement To Riot In The Age Of Flash Mobs, Margot E. Kaminski

Publications

As people increasingly use social media to organize both protests and robberies, government will try to regulate these calls to action. With an eye to this intensifying dynamic, this Article reviews First Amendment jurisprudence on incitement and applies it to existing statutes on incitement to riot at a common law, state, and federal level. The article suggests that First Amendment jurisprudence has a particularly tortuous relationship with regulating speech directed to crowds. It examines current crowd psychology to suggest which crowd behavior, if any, should as a matter of policy be subject to regulation. It concludes that many existing incitement-to-riot …

Government Speech In Transition, Helen Norton

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This symposium essay explores the legacy of the Supreme Court’s decision in Johanns v. Livestock Mktg. Ass’n. There the Court offered its clearest articulation to date of its emerging government speech doctrine. After characterizing contested expression as the government’s, the Court then held such government speech to be exempt from free speech clause scrutiny. In so doing, the Court solved at least one substantial problem, but created others that remain unresolved today. On one hand, Johanns marked the Court’s long overdue recognition of the ubiquity and importance of government speech, appropriately exempting the government’s own expressive choices from free …

Lies And The Constitution, Helen Norton

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Although the Supreme Court declared almost forty years ago that “there is no constitutional value in false statements of fact,” the Court in United States v Alvarez ruled that the First Amendment protects at least some -- and perhaps many -- intentional lies from government prohibition. In Alvarez, a divided Court struck down the Stolen Valor Act, a federal statute that made it a crime for any person to state falsely that he or she had received a military decoration or medal. In three separate opinions, all of the Justices agreed that the First Amendment permits the government to …

The Market As A Legal Concept, Justin Desautels-Stein

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In the wake of the recent financial crisis of 2008, and in the run-up to what some are calling a perfect fiscal storm, there is no shortage of commentary on the need for fundamental market reform. Though there are certainly disagreements about where the real problems are and what to do, almost all the commentary remains wedded to an old and entirely false image of “free competition.” Of course, there is hardly consensus about whether markets require the heavy hand of regulative control, or are better left to regulate themselves, but a belief in the distinction between these two images …

Inextricably Political: Race, Membership, And Tribal Sovereignty, Sarah Krakoff

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Courts address equal protection questions about the distinct legal treatment of American Indian tribes in the following dichotomous way: are classifications concerning American Indians "racial or political?" If the classification is political (i.e., based on federally recognized tribal status or membership in a federally recognized tribe) then courts will not subject it to heightened scrutiny. If the classification is racial rather than political, then courts may apply heightened scrutiny. This Article challenges the dichotomy itself. The legal categories "tribe" and "tribal member" are themselves political, and reflect the ways in which tribes and tribal members have been racialized by U.S. …

Secrets, Lies, And Disclosure, Helen Norton

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This symposium essay suggests that we can sometimes understand those who resist campaign disclosure or disclaimer requirements as interested in keeping a secret and occasionally even in telling a sort of lie about the source or intensity of support for a particular candidate or cause. Such secrets and lies threaten listeners’ autonomy interests when the speaker seeks to keep such secrets (and sometimes seeks to tell such lies) to enhance her ability to influence her listeners’ decisions. For these reasons, I suggest greater attention to the reasons speakers seek to keep secrets (or occasionally tell such lies) in assessing the …

Tenth Amendment Challenges After Bond V. United States, Scott G. Thompson, Christopher Klimmek

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In its recent decision in Bond v. United States, the Supreme Court explained that because the Tenth Amendment "secures the freedom of the individual," private parties who otherwise satisfy Article III's standing requirements and other prudential requirements may challenge federal laws as violating the Tenth Amendment. In so doing, the Court reversed the majority of circuit courts that have addressed the issue and removed a significant categorical bar to individual Tenth Amendment challenges. This Article explains Bond's holding and explores its implications for future Tenth Amendment challenges by private parties.

Although Bond contains some expansive language regarding the role …

Bridging The Great Divide--A Response To Linda Greenhouse And Reva B. Siegel's Before (And After) Roe V. Wade: New Questions About Backlash, Lolita Buckner Inniss

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This essay discusses the history of Roe v. Wade as recently addressed by Linda Greenhouse and Reva B. Siegel. Going beyond their assertions, I suggest that an additional, more encompassing inquiry focuses on what factors are implicated in the politics of abortion and how these factors relate to larger social, political, and cultural conflicts both before and after Roe. By naming party politics and the Catholic Church, Greenhouse and Siegel posit two crucial elements that shaped the abortion debate. I assert, however, that what is not discussed in their Article is the way numerous other factors have figured into …

Partiality And Disclosure In Supreme Court Opinions, Robert F. Nagel

Publications

This Essay begins by identifying the various kinds of partiality the Justices of the Supreme Court can have in the cases they decide. Although there is widespread recognition of the influence these biases might have, for the most part the Justices continue to write opinions as if they (and other judges) were entirely disinterested. This practice is often thought to be justified as a source of judicial legitimacy, but there are a number of reasons to doubt that a pretense of impersonality is actually important for maintaining respect for the Court. Consequently, the possibility has to be considered that the …