Constitutional Law Commons^™

On Brown V. Board Of Education's 50th Anniversary: To Integrate Or Separate Is Not The Question, Thomas Kleven

ExpressO

By ending official apartheid, Brown represented a great victory in the struggle for racial justice in the United States. Following more than a decade of inaction as a result of its “all deliberate speed” formulation, and in response to the then prevailing sentiment among the proponents of Brown, the Supreme Court began to push for the integration of school districts that engaged in segregation by law or practice. This integrationist push lasted from the late 1960s to the late 1970s. Beginning in the mid-1970s the Court began to limit the remedies for segregation by law or practice, and beginning in …

Affirmative Action: More Efficient Than Color Blindness, Abraham L. Wickelgren

ExpressO

One of the most compelling reasons against affirmative action is the principle of color blindness, that is, the idea that race is an irrelevant characteristic that should not affect higher education admissions or hiring decisions. Despite its intuitive appeal, this paper shows that adherence to this principle impedes economic efficiency when there has been past discrimination based on color. Past discrimination creates inefficiencies in the economy that persist across generations. Because of this persistence, race is not an irrelevant characteristic for firms and universities looking to hire or admit the best candidates. Affirmative action, not color-blindness, is necessary to reduce …

The Alley Behind First Street, Northeast: Criminal Abortion In The Nation's Capital 1873-1973, Douglas R. Miller

ExpressO

The thirtieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade found our country no less divided over abortion than it was during the era of its prohibition. As the bitter struggle over judicial nominations throughout the present administration suggests, abortion’s future remains at the forefront of American political debate.

In their push for increased limitations, abortion opponents generally overlook the historical consequences of prohibition. Abortion rights proponents often invoke history in their opposition to new restrictions, but tend to do so superficially, and only in a manner that supports their position.

This article attempts a more complex study of criminal abortion’s legal and …

The Logic And Experience Of Law: Lawrence V. Texas And The Politics Of Privacy, Danaya C. Wright

UF Law Faculty Publications

The U.S. Supreme Court's June 2003 decision in Lawrence v. Texas may prove to be one of the most important civil rights cases of the twenty-first century. It may do for gay and lesbian people what Brown v. Board of Education did for African-Americans and Roe v. Wade did for women. While I certainly hope so, my enthusiasm is tempered by the fact that discrimination on the basis of race or gender has not disappeared. Will Lawrence signal meaningful change, or will its revolutionary possibilities be stifled by endless cycles of excuse and redefinition? The case is important, but I …

“Which One Of You Did It?” Criminal Liability For “Causing Or Allowing” The Death Of A Child, Lissa Griffin

ExpressO

No abstract provided.

Human Agency, Negated Subjectivity, And White Structural Oppression: An Analysis Of Critical Race Practive/Praxis, Reginald Leamon Robinson

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Networking Economic Effects Of Whiteness, Brant T. Lee

American University Law Review

Network economic analysis provides an important and intuitive explanation of racial inequality. In short, Whiteness is Microsoft's Windows operating system, or the QWERTY keyboard, or the standard (non-metric) measurement system, and difficult to dislodge for many of the same reasons. Network effects explain how the establishment of a dominant market standard 1) can be contingent on historical context, 2) does not necessarily derive from superior intrinsic merit, and 3) exhibits strong self-reinforcing characteristics that can maintain the dominance of the standard in perpetuity, even in the absence of any explicit or conscious determination to maintain it. All of these factors …

Re-Mapping Equal Protection Jurisprudence: A Legal Geography Of Race And Affirmative Action, Reginald Oh

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Fifteen Famous Supreme Court Cases From Georgia, Dan T. Coenen

Scholarly Works

John Inscoe, UGA professor of history and editor of the New Georgia Encyclopedia, invited Hosch Professor Dan T. Coenen to contribute a series of essays on the most significant U.S. Supreme Court cases that originated in the state of Georgia. This article, which proposes an unranked top 15 list, is built on this work.

The Right To Family Life And Civil Marriage Under International Law And Its Implementation In The State Of Israel, Yuval Merin

ExpressO

The article deals with the protection of the right to family life under international law and its implementation in the State of Israel on three levels: protection of the family cell as a single unit; protection of the individuals comprising the family unit; and protection of the family in special circumstances (e.g., immigration rights).

The article begins by analyzing the characteristics of the right to family life and examining various definitions of the “family” under international and Israeli law. It also examines what it is that the right to family life encompasses and how it should be classified within the …

Aiding Terrorists: Hearing Before The S. Comm. On The Judiciary, 108th Cong., May 5, 2004 (Statement Of David D. Cole, Geo. U. L. Center), David Cole

Testimony Before Congress

No abstract provided.

The Banality Of Evil And The First Amendment, W. Bradley Wendel

Michigan Law Review

In the late spring and early summer of 1994, hundreds of thousands of people in Rwanda - an estimated ten percent of the population - were brutally murdered by their fellow citizens, generally for the "crime" of belonging to the socially and economically dominant, but numerically minority Tutsi ethnic group. The slaughter followed a systematic propaganda campaign coordinated by the Rwandan government, dominated by members of the Hutu ethnic group, who had long harbored grievances against Tutsis. The campaign demonized Tutsis as "devils," stirred up fear among the largely rural and poor Hutu population by propagating false information about a …

Writing Their Faith Into The Law Of The Land: Jehovah's Witnesses, The Supreme Court And The Battle For The Meaning Of The Free Exercise Clause, 1939-1945, Patrick J. Flynn

ExpressO

The article traces the development of free exercise jurisprudence through the battles of Jehovah's Witnesses before the Court, and the battles on the Court between Justices Black, Douglas and Frankfurter to establish their constitutional faiths as the law of the land during a brief period in the early 1940's when these issues came before the Court in a flurry of decisions, then disappeared.

Rights At United States Borders, Jon Adams

ExpressO

This article explores protections available under the Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the United States Constitution. Contrary to opinions in popular culture, and perhaps even among Customs officials, powers to search, seize, and interrogate at United States border crossings are not unlimited. In the current world climate of security and threat, a discussion regarding the level of intrusiveness available to a zealous Customs agent appears particularly relevant. The article addresses the requirements for search, seizure, and interrogation, as well as the lawful conditions and limits upon each activity.

International Child Abductions: The Challenges Facing America , Charles F. Hall

ExpressO

International child abductors often escape domestic law enforcement and disappear without consequence or resolution. International child abductions occur too frequently; in the United States alone, the number of children abducted abroad every year has risen to over 1,000. Currently, 11,000 American children live abroad with their abductors. These abductions occur despite international treaties and the Congressional resolutions that have significantly stiffened the penalties for those caught. Effectively combating international child abductions requires drafting resolutions that are acceptable across the diverse societies and cultures of the international community. Without such resolutions to fill the gaps of current treaties this problem will …

Equality Without Tiers, Suzanne Goldberg

Rutgers Law School (Newark) Faculty Papers

No abstract provided.

The Cocaine Vaccine, Dru Stevenson

ExpressO

The controversial new cocaine vaccine (TA-CD) has the potential to be an extremely effective treatment tool for recovering addicts, but it also presents opportunities for non-therapeutic uses, such as preventing cocaine use in the first place. It is foreseeable that the cocaine vaccine could become a condition of parole or probation, or receiving welfare payments, or for employment in certain occupations. Universal vaccination is also a possibility but less likely for political reasons. This article investigates each of these areas of potential use. Any setting where mandatory drug testing is currently in place could become a venue for the vaccination. …

Brown'S Legacy Then And Now: Race And Law School Admissions Debates Continue After Nearly 70 Years, Lauren M. Collins

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Next month marks the 50th anniversary of the landmark desegregation case Brown v. Board of Education. Although this case represents a major victory in the battle for civil rights, the struggle against racism in education began some 20 years prior to Brown. During the 1930s and 1940s, at least seven African-American law school candidates aggressively challenged the unequal treatment of minority applicants in state courts, some eventually reaching the U.S. Supreme Court. Early successes in these cases lead to the more sweeping Brown decision, which then contributed to further law school admission policy reform. Discussion about the role of …

Brown Et Al. V. Board Of Education Of Topeka Et Al., 347 U.S. 483 (1954), Supreme Court Of The United States

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

Another Of Roger William's Gifts: Women's Right To Liberty Of Conscience: Joshua Verin V. Providence Plantations, Edward J. Eberle

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Lawrence V. Texas: Evolution Of Constitutional Doctrine, Diana Hassel

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

What's Really Wrong With Compelled Association?, Seana V. Shiffrin

ExpressO

What's Really Wrong With Compelled Association?

The article presents an original account of the value of freedom of association, one more intimately tied to freedom of speech values than the models of association implicit in much commentary and in such U.S. Supreme Court cases as Boy Scouts v. Dale and Roberts v. U.S. Jaycees. Standard models view the relationship between associations and free speech as instrumental. On these accounts, voluntary associations serve as sites for individuals with a defined point of view to congregate together and make their communication louder and more effective. While voluntary associations may sometimes serve this …

Gay And Lesbian Rights To Procreate And Access To Assisted Reproductive Technology, John A. Robertson

ExpressO

No abstract provided.

The Needle And The Damage Done: How Hoffman Plastics Promotes Sweatshops And Illegal Immigration And What To Do About It , Jennifer S. Berman

ExpressO

This paper examines the intersection of immigration and labor law as developed in federal law, culminating in the recent Supreme Court case, Hoffman Plastics. Arguing that Hoffman was wrongly decided, the paper further demonstrates that stronger penalties are necessary under the NLRA to deter employer wrongdoing, protect workers’ rights, and slow the proliferation of sweatshops.

Citizens Of An Enemy Land: Enemy Combatants, Aliens, And The Constitutional Rights Of The Pseudo-Citizen, Juliet P. Stumpf

ExpressO

No abstract provided.

Beyond Reparations: An American Indian Theory Of Justice, William C. Bradford

ExpressO

The number of states, corporations, and religious groups formally disowning past records of egregious human injustice is mushrooming. Although the Age of Apology is a global phenomenon, the question of reparations—a tort-based mode of redress whereby a wrongdoing group accepts legal responsibility and compensates victims for the damage it inflicted upon them—likely consumes more energy, emotion, and resources in the U.S. than in any other jurisdiction. Since the final year of the Cold War, the U.S. and its political subdivisions have apologized or paid compensation to Japanese-American internees, native Hawaiians, civilians killed in the Korean War, and African American victims …

Boy Scouts & Burning Crosses: Bringing Balance To The Court’S Lopsided Approach To The Intersection Of Equality And Speech, Russell K. Robinson

ExpressO

This article identifies a previously-ignored pattern of Supreme Court decisions that privilege one competing constitutional value, either speech or equality, and subordinate the other—with little or no reasoning explaining its choice. In adjudicating such cases, including two cases decided last term, the Supreme Court has steadfastly treated these disputes as either a basic equality case or a simple speech case. This dichotomy is a problem because once the Court places a case within either a speech or equality paradigm, it is constrained by certain rigid analytical presumptions. These presumptions threaten to stunt the analysis and to deprive the Court of …

When Equality Leaves Everyone Worse Off: The Problem Of Leveling Down In Equality Law, Deborah L. Brake

ExpressO

Existing case law and legal scholarship assume that inequality may be remedied in one of two ways: improving the lot of the disfavored group to match that of the most favored group, or lowering the level of treatment for the favored group until their members fare as badly as the persons complaining of inequality. The term “leveling down” refers to the latter response. The 1971 case of Palmer v. Thompson provides the classic example of the typical judicial response to leveling down: the Supreme Court accepted the decision of Jackson, Mississippi, to close its swimming pools, rather than operate them …

Constitutional Interpretation And Coercive Interrogation After Chavez V. Martinez, John T. Parry

ExpressO

Using the Supreme Court's decision last Term in Chavez v. Martinez as a launching pad, this article reveals and addresses fundamental tensions in constitutional interpretation, the law of interrogation, and civil rights litigation. First, this article highlights the importance of remedies to the definition of constitutional rights, which compels us to jettison the idea of prophylactic rules and accept Congress's role in constitutional interpretation. Armed with these insights, the article next considers the law of coercive interrogation. I explain why the privilege against self-incrimination is more than a trial right, and I redefine the central holding of Miranda to take …

Connecting The Dots: Grutter, School Desegregation, And Federalism, Wendy Parker

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.