Constitutional Law Commons^™

States Escape Liability For Copyright Infringement?, Michelle V. Francis

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Juror Journalism: Are Profit Motives Replacing Civic Duty?, Brent K. Ashby

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Restraints On The Doctrine Of Punitive Damages, Theodore B. Olson, Theodore J. Boutrous Jr.

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Constitutionality Of The Federal Sentencing Reform Act After Mistretta V. United States, Charles R. Eskridge Iii

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Unlocking The Eighth Amendment's Power To Make Innocence A Constitutional Claim: The 'Objective' Views Of State Legislators, David Niven

Barry Law Review

No abstract provided.

Using The Language Of Turner V. Rogers To Advocate For A Right To Counsel In Immigration Removal Proceedings, 46 J. Marshall L. Rev. 893 (2013), Shane T. Devins

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Equality Arguments For Abortion Rights, Neil S. Siegel, Reva B. Siegel

Faculty Scholarship

Roe v. Wade grounds constitutional protections for women’s decision wheth­er to end a pregnancy in the Due Process Clauses. But in the four decades since Roe, the U.S. Supreme Court has come to recognize the abortion right as an equality right as well as a liberty right. In this Essay, we describe some distinctive features of equality arguments for abortion rights. We then show how, over time, the Court and individual Justices have begun to employ equal­ity arguments in analyzing the constitutionality of abortion restrictions. These arguments first appear inside of substantive due process case law, and then as claims …

The New Textualism, Progressive Constitutionalism, And Abortion Rights: A Reply To Jeffrey Rosen, Neil S. Siegel

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A General Defense Of Erie Railroad Co. V. Tompkins, Ernest A. Young

Faculty Scholarship

Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins was the most important federalism decision of the Twentieth Century. Justice Brandeis’s opinion for the Court stated unequivocally that “[e]xcept in matters governed by the Federal Constitution or by acts of Congress, the law to be applied in any case is the law of the state. . . . There is no federal general common law.” Seventy-five years later, however, Erie finds itself under siege. Critics have claimed that it is “bereft of serious intellectual or constitutional support” (Michael Greve), based on a “myth” that must be “repressed” (Craig Green), and even “the worst decision …

Exhuming The “Diversity Explanation” Of The Eleventh Amendment, Thomas D. Rowe Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

This essay, in a symposium honoring the scholarship of Ninth Circuit Judge William A. Fletcher, explores the “diversity explanation” of the Eleventh Amendment that he had advanced in articles while he was a UC-Berkeley law professor. That explanation, contrary to existing Supreme Court doctrine that heavily constitutionalizes state sovereign immunity from suits by private parties and foreign countries, would view the Eleventh Amendment as having solely to do with federal courts’ constitutional jurisdiction and nothing to do with states’ sovereign immunity. The essay notes the cleanness of interpretation provided by the diversity explanation, in contrast with the convoluted nature of …

Second Amendment Challenges To Student Housing Firearms Bans: The Strength Of The Home Analogy, Michael L. Smith

Faculty Articles

Public colleges and universities or state governments often ban the possession of firearms on public university or college property. These bans typically extend to student housing. While much has been written about campus bans on the carrying of concealed firearms, the topic of gun bans in the student housing context has been largely unaddressed in Second Amendment literature. This Comment seeks to fill that gap by evaluating potential student challenges to firearms bans in the student housing context in light of potential standards of review courts may apply and in light of the U.S. Supreme Court's decisions in District of …

Supreme Court Leaks And Recusals: A Response To Professor Steven Lubet’S Scotus Ethics In The Wake Of Nfib V. Sebelius, 47 Val. U. L. Rev. 925 (2013), Kevin Hopkins

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

As Professor Steven Lubet notes in his article, Stonewalling, Leaks, and Counter-Leaks: SCOTUS Ethics in the Wake of NFIB v. Sebelius, the ethical conduct of Supreme Court Justices has once again gained national attention. This time, however, the context for public outcry is due to actions of an in-house source who released confidential information to a member of the press concerning the voting behavior and the overall sentiments of members of the Court's minority in one of the most significant and controversial rulings of the year: NFIB v. Sebelius (the "Affordable Care Act"). Professor Lubet uses this leaking of significant …

Waiving Goodbye To A Fundamental Right: Allocation Of Authority Between Attorneys And Clients And The Right To A Public Trial, 38 J. Legal Prof. 1 (2013), Alberto Bernabe

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Safe Haven No Longer: The Role Of Georgia Courts And Private Probation Companies In Sustaining A De Facto Debtors' Prison System, Sarah D. Bellacicco

Georgia Law Review

Georgia was specifically established as a colony for debtors-a haven where they could be safe from imprisonment. It is a haven no longer. Georgia courts are regularly imprisoning people for failing to pay debts, often through probation revocation of probationers who have failed to pay a fine or fee imposed as a condition of probation. Some of these probationers are on probation solely because they could not pay a fine on the day of sentencing, a practice which greatly increases the amount they owe due to the additional probation fees imposed. In Bearden v. Georgia, the Supreme Court held that …

Giving Consumers A Leg To Stand On: Finding Plaintiffs A Legislative Solution To The Barrier From Federal Courts In Data Security Breach Suits, Patricia Cave

Catholic University Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Right To Plea Bargain With Competent Counsel After Cooper And Frye: Is The Supreme Court Making The Ordinary Criminal Process Too Long, Too Expensive, And Unpredictable In Pursuit Of Perfect Justice, Bruce A. Green

Faculty Scholarship

In Lafler v. Cooper and Missouri v. Frye, the Supreme Court recently ruled in favor of criminal defendants who were deprived of a favorable plea offer because of their lawyers’ professional lapses. In dissent, Justice Scalia complained that “[t]he ordinary criminal process has become too long, too expensive, and unpredictable,” because of the Court’s criminal procedure jurisprudence; that plea bargaining is “the alternative in which...defendants have sought relief,” and that the two new decisions on the Sixth Amendment right to effective representation in plea bargaining would add to the burden on the criminal process. This essay examines several aspects of …

Of Civil Wrongs And Rights: Kiyemba V. Obama And The Meaning Of Freedom, Separation Of Powers, And The Rule Of Law Ten Years After 9/11, Katherine L. Vaughns, Heather L. Williams

Faculty Scholarship

This article is about the rise and fall of continued adherence to the rule of law, proper application of the separation of powers doctrine, and the meaning of freedom for a group of seventeen Uighurs—a Turkic Muslim ethnic minority whose members reside in the Xinjiang province of China—who had been held at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base since 2002. Most scholars regard the trilogy of Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, and Boumediene v. Bush as demonstrating the Supreme Court’s willingness to uphold the rule of law during the war on terror. The recent experience of the Uighurs …

Inkblot: The Ninth Amendment As Textual Justification For Judicial Enforcement Of The Right To Privacy, Kurt T. Lash

Law Faculty Publications

One of the more indelible moments in late twentieth century legal discourse occurred when Judge Robert Bork described the proper response of a judge confronted with the Ninth Amendment. Nominated to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell, Judge Bork appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee and declared that courts had no business enforcing the mysterious clause at all. Given the scarcity of historical evidence regarding the original meaning of the amendment, using the Ninth Amendment to strike down a law would say more about the predilections of the judge than the requirements of the text. Here is the famous …

State Law, The Westfall Act, And The Nature Of The Bivens Question, Carlos Manuel Vázquez, Stephen I. Vladeck

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In a number of recent cases touching to varying degrees on national security, different courts of appeals have applied a strong presumption against recognition of a Bivens cause of action. In each of these cases, the courts’ approach was based on the belief that the creation of a cause of action is a legislative function and that the courts would be usurping Congress’s role if they recognized a Bivens action without legislative authorization. Thus, faced with a scenario where they believed that the remedial possibilities were either "Bivens or nothing," these courts of appeals chose nothing.

The concerns that …

The Wages Of Crying Judicial Restraint, Randy E. Barnett

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Five Justices voted to affirm the proposition that the Constitution creates a government of limited and enumerated powers and that the courts will enforce those limits. To understand why this victory was possible, it is important to understand that there are not just two versions of federalism, pre‐New Deal and post‐New Deal. There is also a third version. The failure to recognize the third version goes a long way to explain why most of my academic colleagues predicted that the right would have no chance to prevail in our constitutional challenge to the individual insurance mandate.

The first version of …

Asking The First Question: Reframing Bivens After Minneci, Alexander A. Reinert, Lumen N. Mulligan

Faculty Works

In Minneci v. Pollard, decided in January 2012, the Supreme Court refused to recognize a Bivens v. Six Unknown Federal Narcotics Agents suit against employees of a privately run federal prison because state tort law provided an alternative remedy, thereby adding a federalism twist to what had been strictly a separation-of-powers debate. In this Article, we show why this new state-law focus is misguided. We first trace the Court’s prior alternative-remedies-to-Bivens holdings, illustrating that this history is one narrowly focused on separation of powers at the federal level. Minneci’s break with this tradition raises several concerns. On a doctrinal level, …

Interagency Litigation And Article Iii, Joseph W. Mead

Georgia Law Review

Agencies of the United States often find themselves on
opposite sides of the "v. " in disputes ranging from alleged
unfair labor practices in federal agencies, to competing
statutory interpretations, to run-of-the mill squabbles over
money. Yet Article III's case-or-controversy requirement

includes--at a minimum-adverse parties and standing.
Courts have disagreed with one another over the extent to
which litigation between the sovereign and itself meets
Article III standards. Despite the volume of scholarship
on Article III standing, relatively little attention has been
paid to Article III's requirement of adverse parties in
general, or the justiciability of intrabranch litigation in
particular. …

Is Adjudication A Public Good? "Overcrowded Courts" And The Private Sector Alternative Of Arbitration, Stephen J. Ware

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

Courts are underfunded, dockets are crowded, and litigation is slow. These observations lead many lawyers and judges to call for increased court funding. While I would like to see a significantly higher percentage of government spending go to courts, I do not believe that is likely to happen. So I suggest we think about "underfunded" courts differently.

Court-Packing And Compromise, Barry Cushman

Journal Articles

President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1937 Court-packing bill would have permitted him to appoint six additional justices to the Supreme Court, thereby expanding its membership to fifteen immediately. Throughout the ultimately unsuccessful campaign to enact the measure, Roosevelt was presented with numerous opportunities to compromise for a measure authorizing the appointment of fewer additional justices. The President rejected each of these proposals, and his refusal to compromise often has been attributed to stubbornness, overconfidence, or hubris. Yet an examination of the papers of Attorney General Homer S. Cummings reveals why FDR and his advisors believed that he required no fewer than …

Provisional Arrest And Incarceration In The International Criminal Tribunals, Melinda Taylor, Charles C. Jalloh

Articles

This article examines the widely ignored but important issue regarding the provisional arrest and detention of persons suspected of having committed international crimes by international or internationalized courts. The paper examines the pioneer case law and practice of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, and the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, as well as the emerging practice of the permanent International Criminal Court, to evaluate how these courts have generally addressed the rights of these individuals to due process and freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention before …

Protecting The Innocent - The Need To Adapt Federal Asset Forfeiture Laws To Protect The Interests Of Third Parties In Digital Asset Seizures, Elizabeth Friedler

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Symmetry For Symmetry’S Sake: Why Bose Does Not Require Independent Review Of A Trial Court’S First-Amendment-Favorable Findings Of Fact, Joshua Wurtzel

Cardozo Law Review de•novo

This Note argues that Bose does not support the symmetrical application of independent review of facts by appellate courts in First Amendment cases, regardless of whether the First Amendment claimant won or lost below. While symmetrical procedures and results may be desirable in most parts of the law, symmetry is not required where that symmetry will inhibit a greater constitutional interest. In the independent review context, symmetrical application of Bose results in the reversal of First Amendment wins that would otherwise be upheld under clear error review. This result is clearly antithetical to Bose’s purpose of enhancing First Amendment protections.

The Charter's Influence Around The World, Mark Tushnet

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

Over the past several decades, the influence of the United States Constitution and Supreme Court around the world has waned while that of the Canadian Charter and Supreme Court has increased. This article examines several reasons for these changes, including: the relative ages of the constitutions; the US Supreme Court’s recent conservatism; the Canadian Supreme Court’s role in developing the doctrine of proportionality; the US Supreme Court’s interest in originalism; differing structures of constitutional review and judicial supremacy; and the two Courts’ relative openness to transnational influences.

The Pastor, The Burning House, And The Double Jeopardy Clause: The True Story Behind Evans V. Michigan, David A. Moran

Articles

The true story behind Evans v. Michigan is that a man who was probably innocent, and who would almost certainly have been acquitted by the jury, had his trial shortened after it became obvious to the judge that the police had picked up a man who had nothing to do with the fire. In other words, the facts set forth by the Michigan Supreme Court, and repeated by Alito, were grossly misleading. And because I, like Alito, believed the Michigan Supreme Court’s version of the facts, I made a silly mistake when I agreed to take the case. That silly …

Effective Trial Counsel After Martinez V. Ryan: Focusing On The Adequacy Of State Procedures, Eve Brensike Primus

Articles

Everyone knows that excessive caseloads, poor funding, and a lack of training plague indigent defense delivery systems throughout the states, such that the promise of Gideon v. Wainwright is largely unfulfilled. Commentators have disagreed about how best to breathe life into Gideon . Many disclaim any possibility that federal habeas corpus review of state criminal cases could catalyze reform give n the many procedural obstacle s that currently prevent state prisoners from getting into federal court. But the Supreme Court has recently taken a renewed interest in using federal habeas review to address the problem of ineffective attorneys in state …