Constitutional Law Commons^™

Why Student Religious Speech Is Speech, John E. Taylor

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Religious Freedom Restoration Act And Smith: Dueling Levels Of Constitutional Scrutiny, Whitney Travis

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Litigated Learning, Law's Limits, And Urban School Reform Challenges, Michael Heise

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This Article assesses the likely efficacy of litigation efforts seeking to enhance equal educational opportunity by improving student academic achievement in the nation's urban public schools. Past education reform litigation efforts focusing on school desegregation and finance met with mixed success. Current litigation efforts seeking to improve student academic achievement promise to be even less successful because student academic achievement involves variables and activities located further from the reach of litigation than such variables as a school's racial composition and per pupil spending levels. Moreover, efforts to improve student achievement in the nation's urban public schools--especially high poverty schools--face additional …

Adding Colors To The Chameleon: Why The Supreme Court Should Adopt A New Compelling Governmental Interest Test For Race-Preference Student Assignment Plans, Leslie Yalof Garfield

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

When the Supreme Court ordered the City of Birmingham to desegregate its schools in 1954, it failed to consider the long range implications of its mandate. School districts across the country responded to the Court’s order by adopting race-preference school assignment plans, created to designate the particular public elementary or secondary school a student should attend. Now that these plans have successfully achieved their goals of desegregating classrooms, the question has become whether the continuation of the very programs that helped achieve those goals remain legal? In other words, as Justice Ginsburg recently said in arguments before the Supreme Court, …

After 150 Years, Worst Supreme Court Decision Ever Continues To Haunt, F. Michael Higginbotham

All Faculty Scholarship

In 1857, the Supreme Court rendered a decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, declaring that it had no jurisdiction to hear Dred Scott's claim to freedom because he was black and, therefore, not a citizen of the United States. This article argues that not only was the decision morally reprehensible, it was also based on an erroneous interpretation of the Constitution.

Black, White, Brown, Green, And Fordice: The Flavor Of Higher Education In Louisiana And Mississippi, Alfreda S. Diamond

ExpressO

"Black, White, Brown, Green, and Fordice: The Flavor of Higher Education in Louisiana and Mississippi" chronicles the higher education desegregation sagas in Louisiana and Mississippi. The Article specifically compares the histories of the higher education desegregation lawsuits in the two states and their subsequent experiences and progress under Settlement Agreements. The statistical populations of many universities in both states are still largely identifiable as “white” or “black,” and so the Article will pose questions not only respecting the implementation of United States v. Fordice in both states, but also respecting the value, desirability, or possibility of the “integrative ideal” converting …

Interrogation Of Detainees: Extending A Hand Or A Boot?, Amos N. Guiora

ExpressO

The so called “war on terror” provides the Bush administration with a unique opportunity to both establish clear guidelines for the interrogation of detainees and to make a forceful statement about American values. How the government chooses to act can promote either an ethical commitment to the norms of civil society, or an attitude analogous to Toby Keith’s “American Way,” where Keith sings that “you’ll be sorry that you messed with the USofA, ‘Cuz we’ll put a boot in your ass, It’s the American Way.”

No aspect of the “war on terrorism” more clearly addresses this balance than coercive interrogation. …

Love V. Virginia: The Constitutionality Of The Marshall/Newman Amendment, Pavitra Mohan Ram

ExpressO

My comment explores the constitutionality of a recent amendment in Virginia, the Marshall/Newman Amendment, which bans gay marriage and civil unions between unmarried people, and precludes Virginia from recognizing such arrangements formed in other states. The analysis is particularly timely, because even though the Democrats have regained a majority in Congress, and a traditionally Republican Virginian constituency just elected a Democratic senator, a majority of Virginians adopted this Amendment, indicating conservative values still reign.

The comment argues that the Amendment is demonstrably inconsistent with the mandates of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Federal Constitution. The first provision seeks to ban …

The American Tradition Of Racial Profiling, Jean Phan

ExpressO

The enemy has always been easily recognizable in American life: He has been the savage Native American known for scalping people; the black slave bent on ravaging white women; the Asian worker unfairly competing against the white man; the Mexican immigrant who does nothing but leech off the system; the Arab who dreams up terrorist plots, and carries them out. These enemies have always been visible in American society, and yet, they don’t exist in reality. They exist only in the minds of those too afraid to consider that these strange individuals who seem so different, could be just like …

The Solomon Amendment, Expressive Associations, And Public Employment, Paul Secunda

ExpressO

Rumsfeld v. FAIR apparently concedes that public employers, in the guise of public law school members of the FAIR association, have expressive association rights. This state of affairs could now mean that public employers could gain constitutional rights at the expense of pubic employees. Thus, to the extent that public employers are considered expressive associations, public employees may see their free speech and other constitutional rights diminished (even more so than they recently have been by the Garcetti v. Ceballos decision).

Thankfully, I cannot imagine that the Court, if faced with the question directly, would find that public employers have …

Surfing Past The Pall Of Orthodoxy: Why The First Amendment Virtually Guarantees Online Law School Graduates Will Breach The Aba Accreditation Barrier, Nicholas C. Dranias

ExpressO

The impact of the constitutional dilemma created by the ABA’s aversion to Internet schooling is widespread. Currently, 18 states and 2 U.S. territories restrict bar exam eligibility to graduates of ABA-accredited law schools. Additionally, 29 states and 1 U.S. territory restrict admission to practice on motion to graduates of ABA-accredited law schools.

Although numerous lawsuits have been filed in ultimately failed efforts to strike down bar admission rules that restrict eligibility to graduates of ABA-accredited law schools, none has challenged the ABA-accreditation requirement based on the First Amendment’s prohibition on media discrimination. This Article makes that case.

Despite accelerating technological …

Put That In Your Thurible And Smoke It: Religious Gerrymandering Of Sacramental Intoxication, Mark A. Levine

ExpressO

In February 2006, the Supreme Court ruled on the case Gonzales v. O Centro Beneficente Uniao do Vegetal, granting an injunction permitting the use of ayahuasca, a plant containing the Schedule I substance Dimethyltryptamine, for sacramental intoxication purposes. The unanimous Court justified this injunction by comparing the Uniao do Vegetal's use of the illegal substance with the Native American Church's use of peyote, which contains another Schedule I substance, mescaline. This ruling is incomptabile with lower court rulings rejecting the Ethiopian Zion Coptic Church use of marijuana, consistently stating that the Native American Church has rights beyond those of other …

The "How" Of Enforcing The Fourteenth Amendment: How The Rehnquist Court's Treatment Of Implementation, Not Interpretation, Is The True Post-Boerne Failing, Rebecca L. Goldberg

ExpressO

This article argues that the severe limits the Rehnquist Court imposed on Congress’ power to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment did not stem primarily from the Court’s treatment of Congress’ interpretive powers in City of Boerne v. Flores, as most commentators have assumed, but rather from the Court’s treatment of Congress’ assessments regarding implementation in the cases that followed Boerne (Kimel, Garrett, Hibbs, and Lane). The article provides a new framework for assessing Congress’ power to pass a law under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment – a framework that adheres, in the main, to the Court’s 14§5 doctrine in Boerne …

Toward A Limited-Government Theory Of Extraterritorial Detention, Robert Knowles, Marc D. Falkoff

Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Tied Up In Knotts? Gps Technology And The Fourth Amendment, Renée Mcdonald Hutchins

Faculty Scholarship

Judicial and scholarly assessment of emerging technology seems poised to drive the Fourth Amendment down one of three paths. The first would simply relegate the amendment to a footnote in history books by limiting its reach to harms that the framers specifically envisioned. A modified version of this first approach would dispense with expansive constitutional notions of privacy and replace them with legislative fixes. A third path offers the amendment continued vitality but requires the U.S. Supreme Court to overhaul its Fourth Amendment analysis. Fortunately, a fourth alternative is available to cabin emerging technologies within the existing doctrinal framework. Analysis …

The Foundations Of Section 1983 Jurisprudence: A Look From The Concept Of Law, Timothy I. Oppelt

Florida A & M University Law Review

This article uses the theories of H.L.A. Hart to provide an interpretive framework for a vital civil rights statute, 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983. Any interpretation of Sec. 1983 requires some sense of the fundamental nature of law and the ability to identify legal rules. Specifically, this article examines the "under color of" language of Sec. 1983 and the statute's application to municipalities. It is possible that these areas remain partially in flux or undeveloped because the Court lacks an interpretation of the statute that accounts for how rules can confer power, create artificial persons, delegate the ability to act with …

Special Purpose Credit Programs: A Well-Intentioned Idea Gone Bad, Luke Reynolds

The Modern American

No abstract provided.

Legislative Updates, Dan Raposa

The Modern American

No abstract provided.

The Irrationality Of A Rational Basis: Denying Benefits To The Children Of Same-Sex Couples , Sam Castic

The Modern American

No abstract provided.

Pencil Me In: The Use Of Title Ix And S.1983 To Obtain Equal Treatment In High School Athletics Scheduling , Leigh E. Ferrin

The Modern American

No abstract provided.

Equal Marriage Rights For Transgendered Individuals , Parker Thoeni

The Modern American

No abstract provided.

Is Chicago's Plan For Transformation Promoting Integration Or Reinforcing Segregation?, 41 J. Marshall L. Rev. 249 (2007), Joe O'Brien

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Stunning Trends In Shocking Crimes: A Comprehensive Analysis Of Taser Weapons, Shaun H. Kedir

Journal of Law and Health

In 2001, Westminster, Colorado police officers were dispatched to the home of a suicidal thirteen year-old girl who had barricaded herself in a bathroom. The young girl was mutilating her wrist with two butcher knives. When police officers forced their way into the bathroom, the emotionally disturbed girl charged at them with the two butcher knives while screaming, "Kill me! Kill me!." One of the officers deployed a Taser M26, a hand held conductive energy weapon, which fires two barbed darts up to a distance of thirty-five feet that then deliver an electric shock of 50,000 volts. The officer's Taser …

Why Do Landlords Still Discriminate (And What Can Be Done About It)?, 40 J. Marshall L. Rev. 455 (2007), Robert G. Schwemm

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

In Sickness, Health And Cyberspace: Protecting The Security Of Electronic Private Health Information, Sharona Hoffman, Andy Podgurski

Faculty Publications

The electronic processing of health information provides considerable benefits to patients and health care providers at the same time that it creates serious risks to the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the data. The Internet provides a conduit for rapid and uncontrolled dispersion and trafficking of illicitly-obtained private health information, with far-reaching consequences to the unsuspecting victims. In order to address such threats to electronic private health information, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services enacted the HIPAA Security Rule, which thus far has received little attention in the legal literature. This article presents a critique of the Security …

No Right To Respect: Dred Scott And The Southern Honor Culture, 42 New Eng. L. Rev. 79 (2007), Cecil J. Hunt Ii

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

This Article reflects on the infamous decision in Dred Scott v. Sanford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1857), in which the Supreme Court of the United States upheld the constitutionality of slavery. This Article considers this infamous case and the distance the nation has come since it was decided as well as its continuing legacy on the contemporary American struggle for racial equality. In Dred Scott the Court held that slavery was constitutional because it was consistent with the intent of the Framers and because black people were "a subordinate and inferior class of beings who... whether emancipated or not.., …

Vertical Flip, 13 Tex. Wesleyan L. Rev. 729 (2007), Allen R. Kamp

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Loving Indian Style: Maintaining Racial Caste And Tribal Sovereignty Through Sexual Assimilation, Carla Pratt

Faculty Articles

Scholars have generally characterized Loving v. Virginia as a case about the line separating whites from blacks. But within the subtext of Loving there is an additional narrative about the line separating blacks from Indians. State laws governing miscegenation had a profound impact on tribal law and the practices of tribal people by indirectly regulating interracial relations between certain nonwhite groups of people and rendering blacks as undesirable partners for marriage.

Same-Sex Loving:Subverting White Supremacy Through Same-Sex Marriage, Adele M. Morrison

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article marks the 40th anniversary of Loving v. Virginia- the landmark decision that responded to the question of the constitutionality of anti-miscegenation laws by firmly stating that the fundamental right to marry could not be restricted by race-by taking up the issue of the case's applicability in the context of same-sex marriage. The invocation of Loving has generally been in a manner that invites comparisons between interracial and same-sex marriage. Pro same-sex marriage arguments that utilize this comparison-which has come to be known as the "Loving Analogy"-- include the decision's freedom of choice and antidiscrimination elements, but rarely …

Civil Rights And Related Decisions, Eileen Kaufman

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.