Constitutional Law Commons^™

The Most Dangerous Justice Rides Again: Revisiting The Power Pageant Of The Justices, Paul H. Edelman, Jim Chen

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Who is the most powerful Supreme Court Justice? In 1996 we measured voting power on the Court according to each Justice's ability to form five-member coalitions. From the set of all coalitions formed by the Court during its 1994 and 1995 Terms, we developed a generalized Banzhaf index of the Justices' relative strength. Generally speaking, participating in a greater number of unique coalitions translates into greater judicial voting power. To supplement the small number of decisions then available, we derived hypothetical five-Justice coalitions from the intersections of actually observed coalitions involving more than five members. Professor Lynn Baker contested our …

Tales Out Of School--Spillover Confessions And Against-Interest Statements Naming Others, Christopher B. Mueller

Publications

No abstract provided.

Beyond Indian Law: The Rehnquist Court’S Pursuit Of States’ Rights, Color-Blind Justice And Mainstream Values, David H. Getches

Publications

No abstract provided.

Congress As Culprit: How Lawmakers Spurred On The Court's Anti-Congress Crusade, Neal Devins

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Terry Firma: Background Democracy And Constitutional Foundations, Frank I. Michelman

Michigan Law Review

Ages ago, I had the excellent luck to fall into a collaboration with Terrance Sandalow to produce a casebook now long forgotten. There could have been no more bracing or beneficial learning experience for a fledgling legal scholar (meaning me). What brought us together indeed was luck from my standpoint, but it was enterprise, too - the brokerage of an alert West Publishing Company editor picking up on a casual remark of mine as he made one of his regular sweeps through Harvard Law School. A novice law professor, I mentioned to him how much I admired a new essay …

Miranda And Some Puzzles Of 'Prophylactic' Rules, Evan H. Caminker

Articles

Constitutional law scholars have long observed that many doctrinal rules established by courts to protect constitutional rights seem to "overprotect" those rights, in the sense that they give greater protection to individuals than those rights, as abstractly understood, seem to require.' Such doctrinal rules are typically called "prophylactic" rules.2 Perhaps the most famous, or infamous, example of such a rule is Miranda v. Arizona,' in which the Supreme Court implemented the Fifth Amendment's privilege against self-incrimination4 with a detailed set of directions for law enforcement officers conducting custodial interrogations, colloquially called the Miranda warnings. 5

Proactive Legislation And The First Amendment, Stuart Minor Benjamin

Michigan Law Review

It is a commonplace that the world is changing rapidly, with whole sectors of the economy being transformed. New forms of communication, like the World Wide Web, e-mail, and satellite television, have risen from obscurity to ubiquity in less than a decade. The speed of these changes has led some to express concern about the ability of governments to respond. The fear is that governments cannot keep up with developments as they occur and thus get hopelessly behind. The solution, according to some, is for the government to act proactively - before a harm has arisen, so that the government …

The Racial Origins Of Modern Criminal Procedure, Michael J. Klarman

Michigan Law Review

The constitutional law of state criminal procedure was born between the First and Second World Wars. Prior to 1920, the Supreme Court had upset the results of the state criminal justice system in just a handful of cases, all involving race discrimination in jury selection. By 1940, however, the Court had interpreted the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to invalidate state criminal convictions in a wide variety of settings: mob-dominated trials, violation of the right to counsel, coerced confessions, financially-biased judges, and knowingly perjured testimony by prosecution witnesses. In addition, the Court had broadened its earlier decisions forbidding …

Just Compensation, Incentives, And Social Meanings, Hanoch Dagan

Michigan Law Review

In Takings and Distributive Justice, I proposed a progressive interpretation of the Compensation Clause. In his response, published in this issue, Professor Lunney challenges the plausibility and the desirability of my interpretation and proposes an alternative. This Essay compares our approaches. It concludes that Professor Lunney's careful examination of the public choice analysis of takings does refine my theory. Contrary to Professor Lunney's claims, however, these refinements reinforce - rather than undermine - the viability of a progressive takings doctrine. Parts I and II set the stage by summarizing the principal claims made, respectively, in my original Article and in …

Establishing Inevitability Without Active Pursuit: Defining The Inevitable Discovery Exception To The Fourth Amendment Exclusionary Rule, Stephen E. Hessler

Michigan Law Review

Few doctrines of constitutional criminal procedure generate as much controversy as the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule. Beyond the basic mandate of the rule - that evidence obtained in violation of an individual's right to be secure against unreasonable search and seizure is inadmissible in a criminal proceeding - little else is agreed upon. The precise date of the exclusionary rule's inception is uncertain, but it has been applied by the judiciary for over eight decades. While the Supreme Court has emphasized that the rule is a "judicially created remedy," and not a "personal constitutional right," this characterization provokes argument as …

Does The Solicitor General Advantage Thwart The Rule Of Law In The Administrative State?, Jim A. Rossi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Linda Cohen and Matthew Spitzer's study, "The Government Litigant Advantage," sheds important light on how the Solicitor General's litigation behavior may impact the Supreme Court's decision making agenda and outcomes for regulatory and administrative law cases. By emphasizing how the Solicitor General affects cases that the Supreme Court decides, Cohen and Spitzer's findings confirm that administrative law's emphasis on lower appellate court decisions is not misplaced. Some say that D.C. Circuit cases carry equal-if not more-precedential weight than Supreme Court decisions in resolving administrative law issues. Cohen and Spitzer use positive political theory to provide a novel explanation for some …

Takings, Efficiency, And Distributive Justice: A Response To Professor Dagan, Glynn S. Lunney Jr.

Michigan Law Review

In A Critical Reexamination of the Takings Jurisprudence, I addressed an efficiency problem that arises when the government attempts to change property rights in a manner that burdens a very few for the benefit of the very many. Specifically, in the absence of compensation, the collective action advantage of the few in organizing to oppose the proposed measure will often give them a decided edge against the many. As a result of that advantage, the few will too often be able to persuade the legislature not to act, even when an objective evaluation of the proposal's costs and benefits would …

The Treaty Power And American Federalism, Part Ii, Curtis A. Bradley

Michigan Law Review

In an article published in this Review two years ago, I described and critiqued what I called the "nationalist view" of the treaty power. Under this view, the national government has the constitutional power to enter into treaties, and thereby create binding national law by virtue of the Supremacy Clause, without regard to either subject matter or federalism limitations. This view is reflected in the writings of a number of prominent foreign affairs law scholars, as well as in the American Law Institute's Restatement (Third) of Foreign Relations Law of the United States. In my article, I argued that this …

Assessing The New Judicial Minimalism, Christopher J. Peters

All Faculty Scholarship

In this article, which has been published in slightly revised form at 100 Colum. L. Rev. 1454 (2000), I critique some recently prominent arguments for "judicial minimalism" in constitutional decisionmaking. Current minimalist arguments, I contend, are primarily "policentric," that is, focused on the role the judiciary can play in bolstering the accountability and deliberativeness of the political branches. Drawing in part on a previous article, I offer an alternative approach to minimalism that is "juricentric" - focused on the inherent democratic legitimacy of the adjudicative process and the unique competence of that process to produce decisions about individual rights. I …

Section 7: Federalism, Institute Of Bill Of Rights Law, William & Mary Law School

Supreme Court Preview

No abstract provided.

Peaches, Speech, And Clarence Thomas: Yes, California, There Is A Justice Who Understands The Ramifications Of Controlling Commercial Speech, Jennifer R. Franklin

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Choosing Justices: A Political Appointments Process And The Wages Of Judicial Supremacy, John C. Yoo

Michigan Law Review

William H. Rehnquist is not going to be Chief Justice forever - much to the chagrin of Republicans, no doubt. In the last century, Supreme Court Justices have retired, on average, at the age of seventy-one after approximately fourteen years on the bench. By the end of the term of the President we elect this November, Chief Justice Rehnquist will have served on the Supreme Court for thirty-two years and reached the age of eighty. The law of averages suggests that Chief Justice Rehnquist is likely to retire in the next presidential term. In addition to replacing Chief Justice Rehnquist, …

Healing The Blind Goddess: Race And Criminal Justice, Mark D. Rosenbaum, Daniel P. Tokaji

Michigan Law Review

Once again, issues of race, ethnicity, and class within our criminal justice system have been thrust into the public spotlight. On both sides of the country, in our nation's two largest cities, police are being called to account for acts of violence directed toward poor people of color. In New York City, a West African immigrant named Amadou Diallo was killed by four white police officers, who fired forty-one bullets at the unarmed man as he stood in the vestibule of his apartment building in a poor section of the Bronx. Did race influence the officers' decisions to fire the …

Miranda'S Fall?, Kenji Yoshino

Michigan Law Review

If one wishes to revisit a classic, Albert Crunus's The Fall is a riskier choice than Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, which Steven Lubet eloquently discussed last year in these pages. It is not only that Camus's work will be less familiar to legal audiences than Lee's, despite the fact that The Fall is becoming recognized through critical "revisitation" as perhaps Crunus's greatest novel. It is also that the legal protagonist of The Fall, Jean-Baptiste Clamence, does not have Atticus Finch's immediate appeal. Finch is idealistic, Clamence is existential; Finch is pious, Clamence is debauched; Finch is hopeful, Clamence …

Losing Faith: America Without Judicial Review?, Erwin Chemerinsky

Michigan Law Review

In the last decade, it has become increasingly trendy to question whether the Supreme Court and constitutional judicial review really can make a difference. Gerald Rosenberg, for example, in The Hollow Hope, expressly questions whether judicial review achieves effective social change. Similarly, Michael Klarman explores whether the Supreme Court's desegregation decisions were effective, except insofar as they produced a right-wing backlash that induced action to desegregate. In Taking the Constitution Away from the Courts, Mark Tushnet approvingly invokes these arguments (pp. 137, 145), but he goes much further. Professor Tushnet contends that, on balance, constitutional judicial review is harmful. He …

Supreme Court's 1998-1999 Term: Fourth Amendment Decisions, Kathryn R. Urbonya

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Treaty-Making And The Nation: The Historical Foundations Of The Nationalist Conception Of The Treaty Power, David M. Golove

Michigan Law Review

Characteristic of the most enduring constitutional controversies is a clash between fundamental but ultimately irreconcilable principles. Unable to synthesize opposing precepts, we visit and revisit certain issues in an endless cycle. Each generation marches forward heedless, and sometimes only dimly aware, of how many times the battle has already been fought. Even the peace of exhaustion achieves only a temporary respite. The abiding controversy over the relationship between the treaty power of the national government and the legislative powers of the states is paradigmatic in this respect. Beginning as early as in the first debate over ratification of the Articles …

Chief Justice John Marshall And The Course Of American Constitutional History, 33 J. Marshall L. Rev. 743 (2000), Samuel R. Olken

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Origins And Application Of The Military Deference Doctrine, John F. O'Connor

Georgia Law Review

Although the military deference doctrine is often thought to have originated in Supreme Court decisions in the nineteenth century, the doctrine actually is of fairly recent vintage, being traceable to four decisions issued by the Burger Court between 1974 and 1976. The military deference doctrine is (and should be) limited to constitutional issues where courts weigh the extent of the government's interest in determining the constitutionality of the practice at issue. In addition,although the doctrine is oft- criticized by legal scholars,it remains a viable and robust part of the Supreme Court's constitutional jurisprudence

A Right To Confrontation Or Insinuation? The Supreme Court's Holding In Portuondo V. Agard, J. Fielding Douthat Jr.

University of Richmond Law Review

Imagine that you are charged with a crime that you did not commit. Forced to attend your own trial, you choose to testify on your own behalf. The prosecutor conducts his best spin to discredit you, but his attempts are largely unsuccessful. Not only is your story consistent with that of other witnesses, but it is a plausible accounting of the disputed facts. The reason: your story is the truth. Nevertheless, in summation, the prosecutor attacks your credibility. His argument, however, addresses no inconsistencies, no physical evidence, and no concrete reason to cast doubt on your story. Instead, he argues …

On The Meaning And Impact Of The Physician-Assisted Suicide Cases, Yale Kamisar

Book Chapters

I read every newspaper article I could find on the meaning and impact of the U.S. Supreme Court's June 1997 decisions in Washington v Glucksberg and Vacco v Quill. I came away with the impression that some proponents of physician-assisted suicide (PAS) were unable or unwilling publicly to recognize the magnitude of the setback they suffered when the Court handed down its rulings in the PAS cases.

Does The Constitution Permit Federal Prosecution For The Arson Of A Private Residence?, Richard W. Garnett

Journal Articles

From the Issue

The federal arson statute, 18 U.S.C. § 844(i), makes it a crime to "maliciously damage[I ... by means of fire or an explosive, any building ... used in interstate or foreign commerce or in any activity affecting interstate or foreign commerce[.]" The question in Jones is whether this statute and Congress' enumerated powers permit the "federalization" of the arson of a private residence. See Joint Appendix ("J.A.") 45. More particularly, is a private residence "used" in an "activity affecting interstate commerce," within the meaning of the statute, when it, for example, receives natural gas from out-of- state …

Private Remedies For Public Wrongs Under Section 5 (Symposium: New Directions In Federalism), Evan H. Caminker

Articles

The Supreme Court has ushered in the new millennium with a renewed emphasis on federalism-based limits to Congress's regulatory authority in general, and Congress's Section 5 power to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment in particular. In a recent string of cases, the Court has refined and narrowed Section 5's enforcement power in two significant ways.1 First, the Court made clear that Congress lacks the authority to interpret the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment's substantive provisions themselves, and may only "enforce" the judiciary's definition of Fourteenth Amendment violations. 2 Second, the Court embraced a relatively stringent requirement concerning the relationship between means …

The Majority Opinion As The Social Constuction Of Reality: The Supreme Court And Prison Rules, James E. Robertson

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Federalism, Individual Liberty, And The Securities Litigation Uniform Standards Act Of 1998, Adam C. Pritchard

Articles

This Article proceeds in four parts. Part I provides background on the historical development of constitutional federalism, the Supreme Court's decisions in this area, and the apparent demise of constitutional limits on federal power. Part II then reviews the Court's revival of constitutional federalism over the last decade. Based on this review, I argue that the Supreme Court's current federalism doctrine can be understood as a "constrained libertarianism" that attempts to use constitutional structure as a check on government interference with individual liberty. In this model, states are respected in our constitutional system because of the counterbalance that they provide …