Law Commons^™

“Reasoning-Lite” In The Violent Video Game Case, Alan Garfield

Alan E Garfield

One might have expected that the Supreme Court’s recent decision in the violent video game case, Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Ass’n, would have been a thoughtful balancing of society’s competing interests in protecting freedom of speech and protecting children from harm. After all, the Supreme Court had held decades earlier that the government could deny minors access to soft-porn, or what the Court called “girlie magazines.” So one could have assumed the Court would seriously consider California’s claim that minors also needed sheltering from the grittier world of violent video game rapes, beheadings, and ethnic cleansings. Yet, as Justice Scalia’s …

Marbury Versus Madison: Documents And Commentary, Mark Graber, Michael Perhac

Mark Graber

Marbury versus Madison combines documents and analytical essays timed for the bicentennial year (2003) of one of the most important Supreme Court cases. This timely collection will explain: the constitutional, political, philosophical background to judicial review the historical record leading to this landmark case the impact of the decision since 1803 its impact on the world stage, especially for new and emerging democratic nations. Also includes a listing of all the Supreme Court cases citing Marbury an an annotated Marbury v. Madison.

Rethinking Abortion: Equal Choice, The Constitution, And Reproductive Politics, Mark Graber

Mark Graber

Mark Graber looks at the history of abortion law in action to argue that the only defensible, constitutional approach to the issue is to afford all women equal choice--abortion should remain legal or bans should be strictly enforced. Steering away from metaphysical critiques of privacy, Graber compares the philosophical, constitutional, and democratic merits of the two systems of abortion regulation witnessed in the twentieth century: pre-Roe v. Wade statutory prohibitions on abortion and Roe's ban on significant state interference with the market for safe abortion services. He demonstrates that before Roe, pro-life measures were selectively and erratically administered, thereby …

Dred Scott And The Problem Of Constitutional Evil, Mark Graber

Mark Graber

Dred Scott and the Problem of Constitutional Evil concerns what is entailed by pledging allegiance to a constitutional text and tradition saturated with concessions to evil. The Constitution of the United States was originally understood as an effort to mediate controversies between persons who disputed fundamental values, and did not offer a vision of the good society. In order to form a "more perfect union" with slaveholders, late-eighteenth-century citizens fashioned a constitution that plainly compelled some injustices and was silent or ambiguous on other questions of fundamental right. This constitutional relationship could survive only as long as a bisectional consensus …

Fighting For The Debtor's Soul: Regulating Religious Commercial Conduct, Michael A. Helfand

Michael A Helfand

Although courts often think of religion in terms of faith, prayer, and conscience, many religious groups are increasingly looking to religion as a source of law, commerce, and contract. As a result, courts are being called upon to regulate conduct that is simultaneously religious and commercial. In addressing such cases, some courts minimize the religious features of the case and simply focus on its secular elements while others over-exaggerate the religious features of the case and thereby refuse to adjudicate the dispute on Establishment Clause grounds. As an example of this dynamic, I explore the constitutionality of imposing sanctions for …

Encyclopedia Of The Supreme Court Of The United States, David Tanenhaus, Kay Kindred, Felice Batlan, Alfred Brophy, Mark Graber

Mark Graber

This 5-volume set focuses on the substance of American law, the processes that produce its legal principles, and the history of the Supreme Court, from its creation to the present. One of the encyclopedia's distinguishing themes is the examination of case law, the essential texts that form the backbone of legal and pre-legal study in the United States. Overview essays address the history of such topics as citizenship, due process, Native Americans, racism, and contraception, emphasizing the social context of each and the social and political pressures that shaped interpretation. This approach plays directly into the cutting-edge field known as …

Constitutional Democracy, Human Dignity, And Entrenched Evil, Mark Graber

Mark Graber

The following essay pays tribute to Sandy Levinson's thoughts on constitutional compromises by paying tribute to the thoughts on constitutional compromises by our common mentor, Walter Murphy. Rather than directly engage in a dialogue with Compromise and Constitutionalism, the analysis below joins the preexisting dalogue between Professors Levinson and Murphy on how to construct a decent polity among people who have deep disputes over what constitutes political decency. Walter Murphy is unfortunately largely known to legal audiences only through the work of such outstanding mentees as Sandy Levinson, Jim Fleming, Christopher Eisgruber, Andrew Koppelman, Jennifer Nedelsky, and Robert George. Walter …

Commerce Games And The Individual Mandate, Leslie Henry, Maxwell Stearns

Maxwell L. Stearns

While the Supreme Court declined an early invitation to resolve challenges to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“PPACA”), a recent split between the United States Courts of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit (sustaining the PPACA’s “individual mandate”) and the Eleventh Circuit (striking it down) virtually ensures that the Court will decide the fate of this centerpiece of the Obama Administration’s regulatory agenda. Whatever the Court’s decision, it will likely affect Commerce Clause doctrine- and related doctrines - for years or even decades to come.

Litigants, judges, and academic commentators have focused on whether the Court’s “economic activity” tests, …

Constitutional Environmental Rights Worldwide, James May, Erin Daly

Erin Daly

No abstract provided.

The Disappearing Opt-Out Right In Punitive Damages Class Actions, Richard Frankel

Richard H. Frankel

One of the most pressing issues in punitive damages law today is how to protect defendants from multiple punitive damages awards for a single course of conduct, while still ensuring that wronged plaintiffs can recover punitive damages. Numerous commentators have proposed non-opt-out class actions for punitive damages as the best solution to the multiple punishment problem because they subject defendants to a single collective punitive damages award that can be distributed equitably across all injured plaintiffs. This Article takes a contrary view. It argues that mandatory classes improperly deprive class plaintiffs of their right to opt out and pursue their …

Best Brief -- Intervenor, Pace National Environmental Law Moot Court Competition 2011, Jennifer Hammitt

Jennifer Hammitt

No abstract provided.

The Modern History Of Probable Cause, Wesley Oliver

Wesley M Oliver

It is frequently assumed that probable cause, roughly as we understand it today, has, since time immemorial, been the standard allowing an officer to search or arrest. The reality is that probable cause has change a lot since the Bill of Rights was drafted. In the mid-nineteenth century, probable cause was no more than a pleading requirement in criminal cases -- and never has been more than a pleading requirement in criminal cases. Victims of crimes alone were able to seek arrest or search warrants by swearing that they had suffered an injury and that they had probable cause to …

Changing The People: Legal Regulation And American Democracy, Tabatha Abu El-Haj

Tabatha Abu El-Haj

The world in which we live, a world in which law pervades the practice of democratic politics – from advance regulation of public assemblies to detailed rules governing elections – is the product of a particular period of American history. Between 1880 and 1930, states and municipalities increased governmental controls over the full range of nineteenth-century avenues for democratic participation. Prior to this legal transformation, the practice of democratic politics in the United States was less structured by law and more autonomous from formal state institutions than it is today. Exposing this history challenges two core assumptions driving the work …

Material Witness Detentions After Al-Kidd, Wesley M. Oliver

Wesley M Oliver

The Supreme Court’s decision in Ashcroft v. al-Kidd was a tempest in a teapot. The Court concluded only that a witness was no less susceptible to arrest under the Federal Material Witness Statute if the government was interested in prosecuting the witness himself. Unremarkably under the holding, it is no more difficult to detain an al-Qaeda member who witnessed a crime than it is to detain an innocent bystander who witnessed a crime. The fact that a criminal suspect can be held, however, raises concerns beyond the scope of the narrow question before the Court. If the government’s real interest …

Thurgood Marshall: The Writer, Anna P. Hemingway, Starla J. Williams, Jennifer M. Lear, Ann E. Fruth

Anna P. Hemingway