Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 15 of 15
Full-Text Articles in Law
The Perfect Match: Solving The Due Process Problem Of Signature Matching With Federal Agency Regulation, Rachel Blumenstein
The Perfect Match: Solving The Due Process Problem Of Signature Matching With Federal Agency Regulation, Rachel Blumenstein
Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law
Local election commissions in the United States disenfranchise Americans when they erroneously reject voters’ mail-in ballots for failed signature matches. Disenfranchisement is not only problematic because it is dangerous to the health of American democracy, but also because signature matching violates the procedural due process protections voters are entitled to when they exercise their right to vote. Furthermore, the practice of signature matching is one of many ballot access restrictions that disproportionately impact minority voters under the guise of voter fraud prevention. Expanding the Election Assistance Commission’s mandate to allow it to develop more accurate methods of ballot verification can …
Litigating Citizenship, Cassandra B. Robertson, Irina D. Manta
Litigating Citizenship, Cassandra B. Robertson, Irina D. Manta
Vanderbilt Law Review
By what standard of proof-—and by what procedures—-can the U.S. government challenge citizenship status? That question has taken on greater urgency in recent years. News reports discuss cases of individuals whose passports were suddenly denied, even after the government had previously recognized their citizenship for years or even decades. The government has also stepped up efforts to reevaluate the naturalization files of other citizens and has asked for funding to litigate more than a thousand denaturalization cases. Likewise, citizens have gotten swept up in immigration enforcement actions, and thousands of citizens have been erroneously detained or removed from the United …
Wealth-Based Penal Disenfranchisement, Beth A. Colgan
Wealth-Based Penal Disenfranchisement, Beth A. Colgan
Vanderbilt Law Review
This Article offers the first comprehensive examination of the way in which the inability to pay economic sanctions-fines, fees, surcharges, and restitution-may prevent people of limited means from voting. The Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of penal disenfranchisement upon conviction, and all but two states revoke the right to vote for at least some offenses. The remaining jurisdictions allow for reenfranchisement for most or all offenses under certain conditions. One often overlooked condition is payment of economic sanctions regardless of whether the would-be voter has the ability to pay before an election registration deadline. The scope of wealth-based penal …
Prisoners And Habeas Privileges Under The Fourteenth Amendment, Lee Kovarsky
Prisoners And Habeas Privileges Under The Fourteenth Amendment, Lee Kovarsky
Vanderbilt Law Review
The U.S. Reports contain no answer to a million-dollar question: are state prisoners constitutionally entitled to a federal habeas forum? The Supreme Court has consistently ducked the basic constitutional issue, and academic work on the question idles on familiar themes. The strongest existing argument that state prisoners are constitutionally entitled to a federal habeas forum involves a theory of incorporation under the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause. I provide a new and different account: specifically, that the Fourteenth Amendment's Privileges and Immunities Clause ("PI Clause") guarantees a habeas privilege as a feature of national citizenship, and that the corresponding habeas …
The Search For Due Process In Civil Commitment Hearings: How Procedural Realities Have Altered Substantive Standards, Christyne E. Ferris
The Search For Due Process In Civil Commitment Hearings: How Procedural Realities Have Altered Substantive Standards, Christyne E. Ferris
Vanderbilt Law Review
The civil commitment of mentally ill individuals presents the legal system with an intractable question: When should the law deprive someone of the fundamental right to liberty based on a prediction of future dangerousness? Advocates of both increased and decreased levels of civil commitment offer compelling case studies to help resolve the question. The former point to high profile events like the Virginia Tech shooting, in which mandatory incapacitation of the perpetrator at the first sign of mental illness could have prevented a senseless tragedy. The latter highlight the lives of individuals like Kenneth Donaldson, whose father had him committed …
Certifying Mandatory Punitive Damages Classes In A Post-Ortiz And State Farm World, Aileen L. Nagy
Certifying Mandatory Punitive Damages Classes In A Post-Ortiz And State Farm World, Aileen L. Nagy
Vanderbilt Law Review
Punitive damages are a civil penalty "aimed at deterrence and retribution" that further the state's interest in punishing unlawful conduct.' They are meant to "sting" and should be imposed proportionally according to the "egregiousness of the harm and the wealth of the transgressor." While compensatory damages are intended to compensate plaintiffs for their concrete losses, punitive damages use the plaintiff as an instrument for "visiting [] punishment upon [the] extreme tortious misdeeds" of defendants. As such, it is well settled that no individual plaintiff is entitled to punitive damages; however, "it is equally true that no transgressor is entitled to …
The Ripple Effects Of Slaughter-House: A Critique Of A Negative Rights View Of The Constitution, Michael J. Gerhardt
The Ripple Effects Of Slaughter-House: A Critique Of A Negative Rights View Of The Constitution, Michael J. Gerhardt
Vanderbilt Law Review
Upon seeing Niagara Falls for the first time, Oscar Wilde reportedly remarked that it "would be more impressive if it flowed the other way." I have a similar reaction to a series of narrow Supreme Court interpretations of the fourteenth amendment, beginning with the Slaughter-House Cases, decided in 1872, and extending to the 1989 decisions in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services and DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services. In Slaughter-House the Court interpreted the privileges or immunities clause of the fourteenth amendment as merely protecting interests other federal laws already protected, while recently the Court interpreted the due …
State Motor Vehicle Franchise Legislation: A Survey And Due Process Challenge To Board Composition, Gary M. Brown
State Motor Vehicle Franchise Legislation: A Survey And Due Process Challenge To Board Composition, Gary M. Brown
Vanderbilt Law Review
This Note briefly traces the rise of the franchise as the primary automobile distribution device, the problems that confronted early dealers, and their subsequent inability to secure judicial relief. After examining dealers' efforts in the legislatures and the resulting statutes this Note points out several infirmities that exist regarding state automobile franchise regulation. The Note then focuses upon a particular constitutional challenge to state automobile franchise legislation. Finally, the Note concludes that such legislation is either genuinely ineffective or leads to the anomalous result that dealers assume more powerful positions with respect to their manufacturers through unconstitutional means. Based upon …
Police Use Of Trickery As An Interrogation Technique, James G. Thomas
Police Use Of Trickery As An Interrogation Technique, James G. Thomas
Vanderbilt Law Review
This Note maintains that trickery can be effectively curtailed despite the failure of Miranda to do so. This Note argues that trickery in the interrogation room is a violation of fourteenth amendment substantive due process. The Supreme Court has recently stated, in very unambiguous terms, that due process requirements exist independently of the fifth amendment Miranda requirements in the interrogation context." This Note therefore proposes an objective due process standard that would prohibit trickery. The violation of this due process standard would require the exclusion at trial of confessions induced by trickery. Because the exclusionary rule is not a sufficient …
Emerging Standards In Supreme Court Double Jeopardy Analysis, Clifford R. Ennico
Emerging Standards In Supreme Court Double Jeopardy Analysis, Clifford R. Ennico
Vanderbilt Law Review
The purposes of this Recent Development are as follows: to identify and evaluate recent modifications in the Court's double jeopardy analysis, to propose that the Court's 1977 Term double jeopardy standards dilute the double jeopardy protection previously afforded to criminal defendants, and to suggest that the Court should permit a broader scope of appellate review in double jeopardy cases.
Recent Developments, James D. Holland
Recent Developments, James D. Holland
Vanderbilt Law Review
The power to parole prisoners derives from the legislative power to define crimes and set penalties for offenses, and has been delegated by Congress and state legislatures to the federal and state parole boards.' Recent litigation of inmates' post-conviction rights in federal and state correctional systems has focused increasingly on the broad discretionary power that parole boards exercise by performing their statutory mandate... The recent development of a flexible concept of due process,' however, has permitted a finer balancing of governmental and individual interests than the prior requirement of a "full panoply" of procedural safeguards, or none at all, and …
The Monkey Laws And The Public Schools: A Second Consumption?, Frederic S. Le Clercq
The Monkey Laws And The Public Schools: A Second Consumption?, Frederic S. Le Clercq
Vanderbilt Law Review
Recent events suggest that the creationist movement is both potent and truly national. in scope. In California, the science curriculum guidelines for public schools were modified by a sympathetic state board of education to accommodate the creationist position.' Science textbooks for use in the public schools of California are being edited to dilute passages on evolution, and creationists almost achieved express recognition of their beliefs in the science texts. In Tennessee, a law has been passed that requires inclusion of the Biblical account of creation in biology textbooks used in the public schools." Similar legislation to require treatment of creationist …
Recent Developments, Law Review Staff
Recent Developments, Law Review Staff
Vanderbilt Law Review
The fourteenth amendment provides that "[n]o State shall . ..deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."' The amendment thus explicitly forbids the state to engage in certain conduct, but places no express restriction on the acts of private individuals. Although the Supreme Court has consistently held that state action is a necessary element of a fourteenth amendment violation, the concept of state action was expanded to cover activities arguably private in nature to the extent that by 1970 the Court …
Recent Development, Law Review Staff
Recent Development, Law Review Staff
Vanderbilt Law Review
Prisons in the United States house approximately 220,000 felons,'95 percent of whom will eventually return to society Most state legislatures have delegated to prison administrative bodies the power both to establish regulations prescribing proper prison conduct and to impose sanctions for their violation. Prison administrators thus have been granted wide latitude in establishing the procedures by which prisoners are determined to be guilty of disciplinary infractions and punished. Frequently, prisoners who allegedly have violated prison standards are not afforded notice of their offenses, are judged by their accusers, and are awarded disproportionately severe punishment, such as solitary confinement or loss …
Federal Double Jeopardy Policy, Jay A. Sigler
Federal Double Jeopardy Policy, Jay A. Sigler
Vanderbilt Law Review
The fifth amendment provision against double jeopardy is one of the basic protections afforded defendants by the United States Constitution. Its roots are found in early common law,' and the policies which it represents have been gradually defined by federal courts to meet various situations of inequality in the position of a criminal defendant confronted by federal prosecuting attorneys. Presently the double jeopardy provision is not incorporated by the fourteenth amendment as a restriction upon state action, but this condition may not prevail much longer. Should double jeopardy become incorporated into the "due process" clause of the fourteenth amendment, states …