Constitutional Law Commons^™

Behind The Screen: Examining The Human Consequences And Constitutional Ramifications Of The Virtual Criminal Defendant, Mallory Kostroff

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

Defendants are waiting behind a screen to learn their fate in their criminal proceedings. This Note sounds the alarm that having incarcerated defendants appear virtually for their criminal proceedings will lead the criminal justice system further down a path of mass incarceration and destruction. This Note demonstrates and argues that there are no benefits for having an incarcerated defendant appear virtually because there are no real benefits to the defendant themselves. Courts further try to argue that video appearances are efficient as they save time and money but as this Note shows those arguments are misleading and miss the point …

Asymmetries, Norm Matching, And The Pursuit Of Equity Between The Police And The Public, Eang Ngov

Faculty Articles

Concerns about police abuse and overcriminalization are on the forefront of public conscientiousness. In spite of the Black Lives Matter movement and calls for police reform, law enforcement officials enjoy a variety of criminal procedure loopholes and double standards, which the United States Supreme Court has ratified through its creation of the open fields, mistake of law, and third party doctrines, as well as its acceptance of deceptive police practices. This Article analyzes the asymmetries between permissible civilian conduct and permissible police conduct to make a broader, systemic critique of the double standards and loopholes that pervade constitutional criminal procedure. …

The Human Environment: Awakening To The Indomitable Cuban Spirit--Government, Culture, And People, Berta Hernández-Truyol

FIU Law Review

My thoughts are to write about The Human Environment. I will address the recent events concerning the increased silencing of dissent and the criminal law reforms that prohibit peaceful gatherings.

Universal Forms Of Influence: Support For Women On Boards, Cindy A. Schipani, Paula J. Caproni

Seattle University Law Review

There are various efforts underway to increase gender diversity on corporate boards, including legislation in California, a recent SEC approved comply or explain rule for companies listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange, and efforts by institutional investors such as State Street and BlackRock to recognize the value diversity brings to corporate decisionmaking. Although some of these efforts are being contested in the courts, many companies have begun to comply with these initiatives.

This Article is organized as follows. Part I provides an overview of several efforts to increase gender diversity on boards along with numerous research studies showcasing the benefits …

“Statistics Are Human Beings With The Tears Wiped Away”: Utilizing Data To Develop Strategies To Reduce The Number Of Native Americans Who Go Missing, Lori Mcpherson, Sarah Blazucki

Seattle University Law Review

On New Year’s Eve night, 2019, sixteen-year-old Selena Shelley Faye Not Afraid attended a party in Billings, Montana, about fifty miles west of her home in Hardin, Montana, near the Crow Reservation. A junior at the local high school, she was active in her community. The party carried over until the next day, and she caught a ride back toward home with friends in a van the following afternoon. When the van stopped at an interstate rest stop, Selena got out but never made it back to the van. The friends reported her missing to the police and indicated they …

Defining Disparate Treatment: A Research Agenda For Our Times, Deborah Hellman

Indiana Law Journal

Both statutory and constitutional laws prohibiting discrimination forbid actions taken on the basis of certain traits. But rarely are those traits specifically defined. As a result, courts fill in these definitions and do so with consequential results. The boundaries they draw often determine whether or not a law, policy, or action constitutes disparate treatment on the basis of a legally protected trait. As disparate treatment calls for a significantly heavier burden of justification than does disparate impact, the key move putting laws, policies, and the acts of individuals into one category or the other happens in this definitional step.

Defining …

Dobbs, Democracy, And Dysfunction, David Landau, Rosalind Dixon

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

To Prohibit Free Exercise: A Proposal For Judging Substantial Burdens On Religion, Eric H. Wang

Emory Law Journal

In Employment Division v. Smith, the Supreme Court famously held that the First Amendment Free Exercise Clause permits neutral laws of general applicability to incidentally burden religion without offering religious exemptions. Today, many people—including Justice Alito in his concurrence in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia—are calling for Smith to be replaced by a jurisprudence that applies strict scrutiny to neutral, generally applicable laws that place a substantial burden on religion.

Yet, both before and after Smith, what exactly has constituted a “substantial burden” on religion has been far from clear. While some courts indicate that burdens on …

First Amendment Protections For "Good Trouble", Dawn C. Nunziato

Emory Law Journal

In the classical era of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, activists and protestors sought to march, demonstrate, stage sit-ins, speak up, and denounce the system of racial oppression in our country. This was met not just by counterspeech—the preferred response within our constitutional framework—but also by efforts by the dominant power structure to censor and shut down those forms of public rebuke of our nation’s racist practices. Fast forward seventy years, and the tactics of the dominant power structure have essentially remained the same in response to today’s civil rights activists who seek to protest …

“Known Adversary”: The Targeting Of The Immigrants’ Rights Movement In The Post-Trump Era, Azadeh Shahshahani, Chiraayu Gosrani

Emory Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Decolonizing Equal Sovereignty, Rosa Hayes

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

In Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529 (2013), the Supreme Court announced that a tradition of equal sovereignty among the states prohibits unwarranted federal intrusions into state sovereignty and invoked this newly created doctrine to strike down Section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act. Scholarly critiques in Shelby County’s immediate aftermath debated the constitutional validity of the Court’s equal sovereignty reasoning and warned of the dire threat the VRA’s effacement posed to voting rights—concerns that recent litigation have vindicated.

But other recent litigation suggests that, abstracted from its problematic and consequential origins, equal sovereignty may be deployed …

Nestlé V. Doe: A Death Knell To Corporate Human Rights Accountability?, Phillip Ayers

Seattle University Law Review

The Supreme Court in Nestlé v. Doe held that foreign plaintiffs who claimed to be victims of overseas tortious conduct by corporate defendants had no jurisdiction to sue in federal courts using the Alien Tort Statute. This Comment looks at the history of the Alien Tort Statute, from its inspiration, long dormancy, and recent reinvigoration beginning in the 1980s. The Comment then explores the background of Nestlé and its issues with child slavery in its cocoa supply chain. From there, the Comment analyzes the Nestlé v. Doe decision, and posits an alternative outcome. Finally, this Comment looks for a new …

Law And Redemption: Expounding And Expanding Robert Cover’S Nomos And Narrative, Samuel J. Levine

Scholarly Works

This Article explores two interrelated themes that distinguish much of Robert Cover's scholarship: reliance on Jewish sources and the redemption of American constitutionalism. Two pieces of Cover's, Nomos and Narrative and Bringing the Messiah Through the Law: A Case Study, explore these themes, providing complementary views on the potential and limitations of the redemptive power of law. In Nomos and Narrative, Cover develops a metaphor of the law as a bridge, linking the actual to the potential. Bringing the Messiah Through the Law: A Case Study extends the metaphor through the lens of Jewish legal history. Building on Cover's foundation, …

Codifying Antisemitism, Mark Goldfeder

Scholarly Works

Antisemitic harassment and discrimination are unlawful in many contexts, but without a standard definition of what 'antisemitism' includes, that idea is almost meaningless. This has led to an equal protection problem for members of the Jewish community, which is why states across the country have started to pass laws adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance ("IHRA") Definition of antisemitism for use in clarifying the application of existing legal protections for Jewish people from crime and discrimination. Thus far, the bills that have passed have for the most part been overwhelmingly bipartisan, but there have been minor pockets of pushback in …

Transcript - Civil Liberties: The Next 100 Years, Susan Herman, Erwin Chemerinsky, Ellis Cose, Anthony Romero, Nadine Strossen

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Voting Justice: Why The Attack On Voting Rights Is Best Understood As A "Justice" Issue, Yalda Nia

University of San Francisco Law Review

No abstract provided.

Corporate Governance And Gender Equality: A Study Of Comply-Or-Explain Disclosure Regulation, Aaron A. Dhir, Sarah Kaplan, Maria Arabella Robles

Seattle University Law Review

In 2020, the Nasdaq Stock Market filed a proposal with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission seeking permission to adopt a board diversity-related disclosure requirement for its listed companies. In 2021, the SEC approved the proposal, thus entrenching Nasdaq’s position as the most significant stock exchange to date to mandate listing rules that reflect the intention of diversifying corporate boardrooms. Nasdaq’s movement into the diversity space is not the first attempt to address homogeneous boards in the U.S. In 2009, the SEC adopted a rule requiring publicly traded firms to report on whether they consider diversity in identifying director nominees. …

Judicial Ethics And The Eradication Of Racism, Dontay Proctor-Mills

Seattle University Law Review

In 2020, the Washington Supreme Court entrusted the legal community with working to eradicate racism from its legal system. Soon after, Washington’s Commission on Judicial Conduct (hereinafter the Commission) received a complaint about a bus ad for North Seattle College featuring King County Superior Court Judge David Keenan. Along with a photo of Judge Keenan’s face, the ad included the following language: “A Superior Court Judge, David Keenan got into law in part to advocate for marginalized communities. David’s changing the world. He started at North.” The Commission admonished Judge Keenan for violating the Code of Judicial Conduct, in part …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Why Corporate Boards Should Include Lgbtq+ People, Jeremy Mcclane, Darren Rosenblum

Seattle University Law Review

Corporate boardrooms sit at the heart of most of society’s most consequential decisions but fall far short of the diversity of our society. The current movement toward board diversification aims to remedy the underrepresentation of marginalized groups on corporate boards. More recently, some efforts have included LGBTQ+ people, even though the basis for their inclusion on corporate boards remains largely unstated. This Article examines both the normative and instrumental bases for LGBTQ+ inclusion in board diversity initiatives, articulating unspoken assumptions and linking LGBTQ+ people to the broader inclusion effort. In so doing, it begins to surface the unique issues LGBTQ+ …

Foreword: Looking Back To Move Forward: Exploring The Legacy Of U.S. Slavery, Suzette Malveaux

University of Colorado Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Color(Blind) Conundrum In Colorado Property Law, Tom I. Romero Ii

University of Colorado Law Review

No abstract provided.

Roundtable: The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre; The Quest For Accountability, Robert Turner

University of Colorado Law Review

No abstract provided.

How To Get Away With Discrimination: The Use Of Algorithms To Discriminate In The Internet Entertainment Industry, Sumra Wahid

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

In July 2021, Ziggi Tyler posted a video on TikTok, a popular video sharing platform, where he expressed his frustration with being a Black content creator on TikTok. The video showed Ziggi typing phrases such as “Black Lives Matter” or “Black success” into his Marketplace creator bio, which the app would immediately flag as inappropriate content. However, when Ziggi replaced those words with “white supremacy” or “white success,” no inappropriateness warning appeared. Although a TikTok spokesperson responded to the video clarifying that the app had mistakenly flagged phrases without considering word order, Ziggi refused to let an algorithm absolve TikTok …

The Perils Of Asian-American Erasure, Matthew P. Shaw

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Affirmative action, particularly its most well-known variant, race-conscious college admissions practices, has long occupied a precarious position in constitutional jurisprudence of equal protection and statutory antidiscrimination law. As a policy matter, affirmative action practices are necessary to reduce the impact of durable structural barriers to opportunity that have been imposed on members of identifiable racial groups because of their race. Legally, they’re on far less secure footing.

As a constitutional matter, these measures have been summarily divorced from any reparative purpose since the “diversity rationale” emerged from Regents of the University of California v. Bakke as the only compelling interest …

Out Of Bounds?: Abortion, Choice Of Law, And A Modest Role For Congress, Susan Frelich Appleton

Scholarship@WashULaw

This invited contribution to a symposium on the multiple intersections of family law and constitutional law grapples with the emerging problems of jurisdictional competition and choice of law in interstate abortion situations in the wake of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization—as abortion-hostile states seek to impose restrictions beyond their borders and welcoming states seek to become havens for abortion patients, regardless of their domicile. Grounded in a conflict-of-laws perspective, the essay lays out the interstate abortion chaos invited by Dobbs and the threat to our federal system that it presents, given Congress’s failure to codify a national right to …

The Unabridged Fifteenth Amendment, Travis Crum

Scholarship@WashULaw

In the legal histories of Reconstruction, the Fifteenth Amendment’s drafting and ratification is an afterthought compared to the Fourteenth Amendment. This oversight is perplexing given that the Fifteenth Amendment ushered in a brief period of multi-racial democracy and laid the constitutional foundation for the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This Article helps to complete the historical record and provides a thorough accounting of the Fifteenth Amendment’s text, history, and purpose.

This Article situates the Fifteenth Amendment within the broad array of constitutional provisions, federal statutes, fundamental conditions, and state laws that enfranchised—and disenfranchised—Black men during Reconstruction. This Article then performs …

Constructing The Supreme Court: How Race, Ethnicity, And Gender Have Affected Presidential Selection And Senate Confirmation Hearings, Christina L. Boyd, Paul M. Collins Jr., Lori A. Ringhand, Karson A. Pennington

Scholarship@WashULaw

In February 2022, President Joseph Biden announced his nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson to serve as an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. In doing so, he said this: “For too long, our government, our courts haven’t looked like America. And I believe it’s time that we have a Court that reflects the full talents and greatness of our nation with a nominee of extraordinary qualifications and that we inspire all young people to believe that they can one day serve their country at the highest level.” In the following days, Jackson’s nomination was discussed with enthusiasm, much like …

Zab V. R.I. Dep’T Of Corrs., 269 A.3d 741 (R.I. 2022)., Michaela A. Conley

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Alito Versus Roe V. Wade: Dobbs As A Means Of Circumvention, Avoidance, Attenuation And Betrayal Of The Constitution, Antony Hilton

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

There can be no argument that Justice Alito is a learned justice of great knowledge and reason, and has a superb grasp of the law. As such, despite any opposition to or disagreement with his legal opinions, he is deserving of respect for his intellectual prowess, in general and as it relates to the Constitution. Notwithstanding all the aforementioned, wrong is wrong.