Law Commons^™

Surprise Symphony: The Supreme Court’S Major Criminal Law Rulings Of The 2002 Term, William E. Hellerstein

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Roper V. Simmons - Supreme Court's Reliance On International Law In Constitutional Decision-Making, Jessica Mishali

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Courts Cap The "Trade": Regulation Of Competitive Markets When Courts Overturn State And Federal Cap-And-Trade Regulation, Steven Ferrey

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Stuck Between A Lump Of Coal And A Hard Place: The Mine Safety And Health Administration's Struggle With Due Process And America's Coal Industry, Patrick R. Baker

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Passive Takings: State Inaction And The Duty To Protect Property, Christopher Serkin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

As conventionally understood, regulatory takings doctrine protects property owners from the most significant costs of legal transitions. Legal change has therefore always been central to regulatory takings claims. This Article argues that it does not need to be, and that governments can violate the Takings Clause by failing to act in the face of a changing world. This is much more than a minor refinement of takings law because government liability for failing to act means that, in at least some circumstances, the Takings Clause imposes an affirmative obligation on the government to protect property. This liability runs counter to …

Gender Diversity And Same-Sex Marriage, Ian Farrell, Nancy Leong

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Opponents of same-sex marriage have recently adopted a curious new argument. The argument goes something like this. The Supreme Court has held that diversity is a compelling state interest in institutions of higher education. Opposite-sex marriage includes gender diversity, while same-sex marriage does not. Therefore, states may allow same-sex marriage while banning opposite-sex marriage — even if the ban triggers heightened scrutiny under equal protection or due process — because opposite-sex marriage furthers gender diversity, while same-sex marriage does not.

The gender diversity argument against same-sex marriage has made its way into a number of briefs during the recent increase …

Paradoxes Of Court Centered-Legal History: Some Values Of Historical Understanding For A Practical Legal Education, Edward A. Purcell Jr.

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Strange Bedfellows: The Federal Constitution, Out-Of-State Nongrantor Accumulation Trusts, And The Complete Avoidance Of State Income Taxation, Jeffrey Schoenblum

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

With the maximum rate of federal income tax at 39.6 percent, the Medicare surtax on investment income of 3.8 percent, and some state income tax rates exceeding 9 percent, taxpayers in the highest brackets have been seeking to develop strategies to lessen the tax burden. One strategy that has been receiving increased attention is the use of a highly specialized trust known as the NING, a Nevada incomplete gift nongrantor trust, which eliminates state income taxation of investment income altogether without generating additional federal income or transfer taxes. A major obstacle standing in the way of accomplishing this objective, however, …

Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around: The Supreme Court Is Harming People With Its Inscrutable Gay Marriage Actions, Sonja R. West, Dahlia Lithwick

Popular Media

The Supreme Court’s decision Monday (Oct. 5, 2014) to decline the appeals of decisions striking down same-sex marriage bans in five states was, to most court-watchers, a huge surprise. It was also a deeply strange move given the magnitude of the constitutional issue and the general confusion about what a non-decision actually means. While Monday’s denial of certiorari was not technically a decision on the merits, most supporters of same-sex marriage celebrated the move as part of the justices’ inexorable crawl toward marriage equality. And in Virginia, Oklahoma, Colorado, and other affected states, gay couples who have waited—in many cases …

Mining For Gold: The Constitutional Court Of South Africa's Experience With Comparative Constitutional Law, Ursula Bentele

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Beyond The Schoolhouse Gates: The Unprecedented Expansion Of School Surveillance Authority Under Cyberbulling Laws, Emily Suski

Faculty Publications

For several years, states have grappled with the problem of cyberbullying and its sometimes devastating effects. Because cyberbullying often occurs between students, most states have understandably looked to schools to help address the problem. To that end, schools in forty-six states have the authority to intervene when students engage in cyberbullying. This solution seems all to the good unless a close examination of the cyberbullying laws and their implications is made. This Article explores some of the problematic implications of the cyberbullying laws. More specifically, it focuses on how the cyberbullying laws allow schools unprecedented surveillance authority over students. This …

Sacred Cows, Holy Wars: Exploring The Limits Of Law In The Regulation Of Raw Milk And Kosher Meat, Kenneth Lasson

All Faculty Scholarship

In a free society law and religion seldom coincide comfortably, tending instead to reflect the inherent tension that often resides between the two. This is nowhere more apparent than in America, where the underlying principle upon which the first freedom enunciated by the Constitution's Bill of Rights is based ‒ the separation of church and state – is conceptually at odds with the pragmatic compromises that may be reached. But our adherence to the primacy of individual rights and civil liberties ‒ that any activity must be permitted if it is not imposed upon others without their consent, and if …

Answering The Serious Constitutional Question: Ensuing Meaningful Review Of All Constitutional Claims, George Bach

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Conservative-Libertarian Turn In First Amendment Jurisprudence, Steven J. Heyman

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Prohibition Of Moonshine: A Consumer Protection Analysis Of Raw Milk In Interstate Commerce, Whitney R. Morgan

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Failure Of Fault Under 1983: Municipal Liability For State Law Enforcement , Mark R. Brown

Cornell Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Hercules Of Helena: Justice James C. Nelson And The Jurisprudence Of Principle, Anthony Johnstone

Montana Law Review

The Hercules of Helena: Justice James C. Nelson and the Jurisprudence of Principle

Public Law At The Cathedral: Enjoining The Government, Michael T. Morley

Scholarly Publications

Conventional wisdom provides that injunctive relief in public law cases is generally unnecessary, because a declaratory judgment and the threat of damages are enough to induce the government to comply with a court’s ruling (except, perhaps, in the institutional reform context). Consistent with this prevailing understanding, most scholars to apply Calabresi and Melamed’s Cathedral framework to public law have concluded that nearly all constitutional rights are protected by property rules, regardless of whether a rightholder actually is protected by an injunction, or instead merely has a substantial likelihood of obtaining one if she goes to court.

This Article challenges this …

Book Review Of Simpler: The Future Of Government, By Cass Sunstein, Bernard W. Bell

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

The Commerce Power And Congressional Mandates, Dan T. Coenen

Scholarly Works

In National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, a five-Justice majority concluded that the commerce power did not support enactment of the so-called “individual mandate,” which imposes a penalty on many persons who fail to buy health insurance. That ruling is sure to spark challenges to other federal laws on the theory that they likewise mandate individuals or entities to take certain actions. Federal laws founded on the commerce power, for example, require mine operators to provide workers with safety helmets and (at least as a practical matter) require mine workers to wear them. Some analysts will say that laws …

Quick Change Justice, Sonja R. West, Dahlia Lithwick

Popular Media

The architecture of the U.S. Supreme Court Building is rife with turtles. There are turtles holding up the lampposts in the courtyard and turtles engraved in the stone decor. You can buy turtle coffee mugs at the gift shop. The turtle is said to represent the slow and deliberate pace of justice. This is an institution, the turtle tells us, that moves slowly, deliberately, and removed from the knee-jerk pace of the political branches.

Yet moments before they adjourned for their summer recess, the justices proved they can act quite quickly and recklessly when it comes to violating the terms …

A Common Law Constitutionalism For The Right To Education, Scott R. Bauries

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This Article makes two claims, one descriptive and the other normative. The descriptive claim is that individual rights to education have not been realized under state constitutions because the currently dominant structure of education reform litigation prevents such realization. In state constitutional education clause claims, both pleadings and adjudication generally focus on the equality or adequacy of the system as a whole, rather than on any particular student's educational resources or attainment. The Article traces the roots of the currently dominant systemic approach, and finds these roots in federal institutional reform litigation. This systemic focus leads to a systemic, rather …

The Common Law Foundations Of The Takings Clause: The Disconnect Between Public And Private Law, Richard A. Epstein

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Limitations On Sovereignty, 2014 Edition, Garrett Power

Book Gallery

This is an “open content” casebook intended for classroom use in courses in Constitutional Law, Land Use Control, and Environmental Law. It consists of 130 odd judicial opinions (most rendered by the U.S. Supreme Court) carefully selected from the two hundred years of American constitutional history which address the clash between public sovereignty and private property. The text considers both the personal right to liberty and the personal right in property.

The readings provide an historical context, and an up-to-date focus on many of the constitutional issues facing today’s Supreme Court: imperium versus dominium; the public trust, inverse condemnation, the …

Polymorphous Public Law Litigation:The Forgotten History Of Nineteenth Century Public Law Litigation, David Sloss

Washington and Lee Law Review

Recent debates about popular constitutionalism and judicial supremacy have focused on the question of who interprets the Constitution. This Article reframes the debate by asking what legal sources courts apply to protect individual rights from government infringement. Throughout the nineteenth century, federal courts applied a mix of international law, statutory, and common law to protect fundamental rights and restrain government action. This Article uncovers the forgotten history of nineteenth century public law litigation. Professors Post and Siegel have advocated “policentric constitutional interpretation,” wherein the Supreme Court shares authority for constitutional interpretation with other actors. By analogy, this Article introduces the …

Press Exceptionalism, Sonja R. West

Scholarly Works

Thanks to advances in mass communication technology, it is now easier and cheaper for all of us to share information with each other. This new ability allows us to act in ways that often seem “press-like.” We might, for example, tweet a warning to our friends about a traffic jam or blog about an upcoming election. Armed with nothing more than a smart phone or a laptop, each of us can share information about matters of public interest to a potentially broad audience in a timely manner — thus engaging in the very activities that were once considered the exclusive …

Criminal Court, Kings County, People V. Artusa, Jessica Miller

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Resolving The Alj Quandary, Kent Barnett

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

Three competing constitutional and practical concerns surround federal administrative law judges (“ALJs”), who preside over all formal adjudications within the executive branch. First, if ALJs are “inferior Officers” (not mere employees), as five current Supreme Court Justices have suggested, the current method of selecting many ALJs likely violates the Appointments Clause. Second, a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision reserved the question whether the statutory protections that prevent ALJs from being fired at will impermissibly impinge upon the President’s supervisory power under Article II. Third, these same protections from removal may, on the other hand, be too limited to satisfy impartiality …

Final Decision Authority And The Central Panel Alj, Larry J. Craddock

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

No abstract provided.

Vol. 5 No. 2, Spring 2014; Pay-For-Delay And Interstate Commerce: Why Congress Or The Supreme Court Must Take Action Opposing Reverse Payment Settlements, Corey Hickman

Northern Illinois Law Review Supplement

A pay-for-delay drug settlement, also called a reverse payment settlement, occurs when a brand name pharmaceutical company agrees to pay the maker of a similar generic drug to delay the release of the generic drug into the stream of commerce, thereby allowing the brand name pharmaceutical company to eliminate competition for an extended period of time. These agreements allow both the brand name manufacturer and the generic manufacturer to profit immensely. These settlements cost the American public an estimated $3.5 billion per year. Further, reverse payment settlements on average prevent generic drugs from entering the stream of commerce for an …