Constitutional Law Commons^™

Racecraft And Identity In The Emergence Of Islam As A Race, Cyra Akila Choudhury

University of Cincinnati Law Review

Can a religion, over time and through its social and legal resignification, come to be a race? Drawing on Critical Race Theory (“CRT”), Critical Discourse Theory, the work of Karen E. and Barbara J. Fields and Cedric Robinson, this article argues that Islam has emerged as a race and Muslims as a racial group. To support the claim, Part I examines the theoretical basis for the argument. Applying the concept of “racecraft,” the article theorizes that racism produces both the racial group and race. As many have already argued, race is not based in biology; it is not a fact …

Blocking Nature's Vulnerable Calls For Help: The Tenth Circuit Dials Into The Telecommunications Act's Federal Environmental Preemption Clause In Santa Fe Alliance V. City Of Santa Fe, Samantha Speiss

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

Cle Working Paper No. 3/2022--What Is The Test For Interlocutory Injunctions Affecting Homeless Encampments? A Critique Of Vancouver Fraser Port Authority V Brett And Associated Case Law, Stepan Wood

Centre for Law and the Environment

Vancouver Fraser Port Authority v Brett (VFPA v Brett), decided in 2020, marked a new low in judicial responses to the intersecting crises of housing, homelessness, poverty, toxic drugs, mental health, racism and colonialism. By dropping to the ground the already low bar for granting interlocutory injunctions to evict homeless encampments from publicly owned land i n BC, this decision invites a critical assessment of BC courts’ approach to homeless encampment injunctions. In this paper I present the first comprehensive survey of 21st century BC homeless encampment interlocutory injunction applications, which shows that they have an extremely high …

Law Library Blog (October 2022): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

The Supreme Court Decisions On Guns And Abortion Relied Heavily On History. But Whose History?, Allison Orr Larsen

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Legislating Against Liberties: Congress And The Constitution In The Aftermath Of War, Harry Blain

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

How far can a democracy go to protect itself without jeopardizing the liberties upon which democracy depends? This dissertation examines why wartime restrictions on civil liberties outlive their original justifications. Through a comparative historical analysis of five major American wars, it illustrates the decisive role of the U.S. Congress in preserving these restrictions during peacetime. This argument challenges the prevailing consensus in the literature, which identifies wartime executive power as the main threat to postwar freedoms. It also reveals broader narratives of American constitutional development, including the rise and fall of intrusive congressional investigations, the decline of sedition legislation since …

Book Review: The Mighty Roe Has Fallen (Probably): A Call To Action As An Antidote To Despair, Loreen Peritz

Journal of Law and Policy

Reviewing CONTROLLING WOMEN: WHAT WE MUST DO NOW TO SAVE REPRODUCTIVE FREEDOM. By Kathryn Kolbert & Julie Kay. New York, NY: Hachette Books, 2021. 304 pp., $29.00

Slaying The Serpents: Why Alternative Intervention Is Necessary To Protect Those In Mental Health Crisis From The State-Created Danger “Snake Pit”, Kathleen Giunta

Journal of Law and Policy

The Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 and ongoing reports of police brutality around the United States sparked extensive debate over qualified immunity and the legal protections that prevent police accountability. Individuals experiencing mental health crises are especially vulnerable to police violence, since police officers lack the requisite skills and knowledge to provide effective crisis support during mental health emergencies. Although the state-created danger doctrine was created by the courts as an exception to qualified immunity, it is so rarely applied that individuals harmed or even killed by police are left without legal remedy. This Note explores qualified immunity and …

Appointing And Training Judges In Egypt And Comparative Systems, Moataz Muhammad Al-Saghir Aidaros

Theses and Dissertations

The topic of the paper is very important, as it comes up at a time when the Egyptians have come to a point that reforming Egypt’s justice system is a hopeless case. This is due to the outdated and inefficient way of thinking and performing in the judiciary. Thus the goal of this paper is to make an intellectual contribution to a sustainable reform program of the Egyptian judiciary and namely the systems of judicial appointment and judicial training using their roles as agents of progress and development. This aspiring research argues that the Higher Council of Judicial Entities and …

Standing For Democracy: Is Democracy A Procedural Right In Vacuo? A Democratic Perspective On Procedural Violations As A Basis For Article Iii Standing, Helen Hershkoff, Stephen Loffredo

Buffalo Law Review

Many commentators express concern that democracy in the United States is under threat, whether from the pressure of concentrated wealth and structural racism, government secrecy and authoritarian tendencies, an outdated constitutional structure and old-fashioned corruption, or perhaps a combination of them all. Against this background, this Article argues that the Supreme Court’s treatment of procedural rights for determining standing—the key that opens the door to federal court—is an overlooked factor in contributing to democratic erosion. According to the Court, violation of a congressionally conferred procedural right that does not safeguard some separate, non-procedural, concrete interest of plaintiff—a “procedural right in …

Diversity’S Distractions Revisited: The Case Of Latinx In Higher Education, Rachel F. Moran

Faculty Scholarship

As the United States Supreme Court considers the future of affirmative action in higher education, this Article reflects on a 2003 essay by Professor Derrick Bell, which provocatively argued that diversity is a distraction from other pressing problems of access to a bachelor’s degree. The Article evaluates his claims with a focus on Latinx students, a rapidly growing segment of the college-going population. Bell believed that diversity is a less compelling justification for the use of race in admissions than corrective justice is. As a result, he predicted persistent litigation over the constitutionality of affirmative action programs. That prediction certainly …

Protecting A Woman’S Right To Abortion During A Public Health Crisis, San Juanita Gonzalez

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

As COVID-19 infected our nation, states were quick to issue executive orders restricting various aspects of daily life under the pretense of public safety. It was clear at the outset that certain civil liberties were going to be tested. Among them, the constitutional right to an abortion.

This comment explores Texas’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the limitations it imposed on abortion access. It will attempt to address the legitimacy of the “public health concerns” listed in executive orders issued throughout numerous states and will discuss the pertinent legal framework and judicial scrutiny to apply.

According to the Fifth …

The Declaration Of Independence, Constitution, And Slavery, Johnny B. Davis

Helm's School of Government Conference - 2021-2024

The paper address the nature of the principles of the Declaration and the Declaration's relationship to the Constitution and how these related to slavery. The argument is that the Declaration did stand for universal equality of the individual before God and the law and therefore its principles condemned slavery. The Constitution did not embrace slavery even though it failed to ban slavery but did set the foundation for the end of slavery.

The Local Community Standard: Modernizing The Supreme Court's Obscenity Jurisprudence, Jacob S. Gordon

Helm's School of Government Conference - 2021-2024

Paper presentation on the Supreme Court's outdated case law on obscenity and how it needs to be modernized to in order to combat the dissemination of inappropriate materials in the age of decentralized digital media.

The Dilemma Of Banned Books: Questioning The Ethics Of Censoring Literature In Schools, Kyle King

Augustana Center for the Study of Ethics Essay Contest

Literature, specifically in the form of novels, has been a vital organ of the public education system within the United States. Not only does reading such works transform us into better close readers and strengthen our vocabulary, but the texts at hand can be very essential to analyze specific contexts or issues that might have existed either throughout history or even in the present day. In today’s country, the issue of banning certain books from school curricula has become as prevalent as ever, where mostly Southern Republican officials are calling for lists of books to be restricted from teaching due …

Truth And Reconciliation: The Ku Klux Klan Hearings Of 1871 And The Genesis Of Section 1983, Tiffany R. Wright, Ciarra N. Carr, Jade W.P. Gasek

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Over the course of seven months in 1871, Congress did something extraordinary for the time: It listened to Black people. At hearings in Washington, D.C. and throughout the former Confederate states, Black women and men—who just six years earlier were enslaved and barred from testifying in Southern courts—appeared before Congress to tell their stories. The stories were heartbreaking. After experiencing the joy of Emancipation and the initial hope of Reconstruction, they had been subjected to unspeakable horror at the hands of white terrorists. They had been raped and sexually humiliated. Their children and spouses murdered. They had been savagely beaten …

Hostile Shores: Racial Exclusion Laws And The West Coast, Brendan Williams

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The article examines the historical and ongoing racial exclusion laws on the West Coast, focusing on California, Oregon, and Washington. It argues that despite their progressive reputation, these states have a legacy of discriminatory laws targeting Chinese, Black, and Japanese populations, which has led to enduring racial inequities that persist today.

The False Allure Of The Anti-Accumulation Principle, Michael E. Herz, Kevin M. Stack

Articles

Today the executive branch is generally seen as the most dangerous branch. Many worry that the executive branch now defies or subsumes the separation of powers. In response, several Supreme Court Justices and prominent scholars assert that the very separation-of-powers principles that determine the structure of the federal government as a whole apply with full force within the executive branch. In particular, they argue that constitutional law prohibits the accumulation of more than one type of power—legislative, executive, and judicial—in the same executive official or government entity. We refer to this as the anti-accumulation principle. The consequences of this principle, …

Hip Hop And The Law : Presented By Intellectual Property Law Association 03/31/2022, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Overview Of Bicameral Legislatures’ Potential Impact On The Executive Selection Process, Kyle Kopchak

Indiana Journal of Constitutional Design

Bicameral legislature is a common constitutional design model, with bicameral legislatures making up roughly 41 percent of all legislatures worldwide. As of April 2014, 79 bicameral and 113 unicameral systems were recorded in the database of the Inter-Parliamentary Union. In general, “bicameralism is more common in federal, large, and presidential states, while unicameralism is more common in unitary, small, parliamentary ones”. Bicameral systems operate two legislative chambers, both of which play a role in drafting and passing national legislation. However, each house often fulfills a unique role in the legislative process and is usually elected by different methods. Proponents of …

Enforcing Interstate Compacts In Federal Systems, Michael Osborn

Indiana Journal of Constitutional Design

The central goal of a federal system is for local government units to retain degrees of independence, specifically over matters of importance to that local unit. A logical corollary to that independence is the ability for local units to negotiate and contract with other local units on matters of importance. Therefore, it is not surprising that almost every federal system allows, either implicitly or explicitly, member states to form binding compacts with other states, the union government, or municipalities.1 Some federal democracies even allow member states to compact with foreign governments. Furthermore, almost every federal constitution includes a provision outlining …

Endnotes

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Climate Migration Beyond The Refugee Framework: Creating Bridges Between Human Rights And International Climate Law, Mara Elisa Andrade

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Accounting For Climate Change In United States Regional Ocean Planning: Comparing The Obama And Trump National Ocean Policies To A Climate-Forward Approach, Taylor Goelz

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Swallowing The Rule: Why Ferc’S “Immediate Need Exemption” Frustrates Competitive And Climate-Smart Electricity Sector Transmission Planning Under Order No. 1000, Philip Killeen

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

“At What Cost?’: The Future Of Securities Enforcement In Climate Change Litigation, Angela Washington

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

About Sdlp

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

The Sustainable Development Law & Policy Brief (ISSN 1552-3721) is a student-run initiative at American University Washington College of Law that is published twice each academic year. The Brief embraces an interdisciplinary focus to provide a broad view of current legal, political, and social developments. It was founded to provide a forum for those interested in promoting sustainable economic development, conservation, environmental justice, and biodiversity throughout the world.

Because our publication focuses on reconciling the tensions found within our ecosystem, it spans a broad range of environmental issues such as sustainable development; trade; renewable energy; environmental justice; air, water, and …

Editor's Note, Keanu Bader, Alexis Bauman

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Endnotes

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

Endnotes

Risk Regulation And Management Against Illegal Wildlife Trade: Europe And America, Olonyi Bosire

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

Introduction

The source or initial crime in the illegal wildlife trade chain is mostly committed beyond the shores of North America and Europe. However, the two regions continue to be massive destination markets and key transit hubs for illegal wildlife products. Illegal trade networks are shadowy and therefore problematic to study. This helps explain the wide valuation of illegal wildlife trade currently estimated by the Global Environment Facility (“GEF”) as ranging between 7 and 23 billion dollars per annum.

Policies and strategies to pre-empt or respond to illegal wildlife trade keep evolving as appreciation grows for the previously underestimated complexities, …