Constitutional Law Commons^™

Article Iii And The Cause Of Action, Anthony J. Bellia Jr.

Journal Articles

This Article undertakes a systematic exploration of the concept of the "cause of action" as it is used by courts and scholars in making arguments about the scope of the federal judicial power. The concept of the cause of action figures prominently in debates about such fundamental questions as what kinds of cases Congress may empower federal courts to adjudicate (jurisdiction), who may initiate a case in federal court (standing), and when a federal court may afford a plaintiff a private remedy for the violation of a federal regulatory scheme (implied rights of action). Federal courts have answered these questions, …

Assimilation, Toleration, And The State's Interest In The Development Of Religious Doctrine, Richard W. Garnett

Journal Articles

Thirty-five years ago, in the context of a church-property dispute, Justice William Brennan observed that government interpretation of religious doctrine and judicial intervention in religious disputes are undesirable, because when civil courts undertake to resolve [doctrinal] controversies..., the hazards are ever present of inhibiting the free development of religious doctrine and of implicating secular interests in matters of purely ecclesiastical concern. This statement, at first, seems wise and fittingly cautious, even unremarkable and obvious. On examination, though, it turns out to be intriguing, elusive, and misleading. Indeed, Justice Brennan's warning presents hazards of its own, and its premises - if …

Misusing International Sources To Interpret The Constituion, Roger P. Alford

Journal Articles

This article addresses the trend toward using international sources to interpret the Constitution. While recognizing that international sources may be appropriately used as persuasive authority in certain types of constitutional analysis, this article argues that such reliance is inappropriate if done improperly. There are four misuses of international sources that serve as the focus of the article.

The first misuse of international sources - particularly evident in death penalty litigation - occurs when the global opinions of humankind are ascribed constitutional value to thwart the domestic opinions of Americans. The article suggests that international norms cannot be internalized within our …

The Supreme Court Encounters The New Deal, Barry Cushman

Journal Articles

The legislative triumphs of the New Deal did not occur without controversy or judicial review. In this article Barry Cushman explores how the Supreme Court responded to a variety of New Deal initiatives and assesses some of the resulting changes in constitutional doctrine. Adapted from Encyclopedia of the Great Depression, 1st. Edition, by Barry Cushman, ©2004, Macmillan Reference USA. Reprinted by permission of The Gale Group.

Against Same-Sex Marriage, Gerard V. Bradley

Journal Articles

The question of the day is, Why should the law limit marriage to heterosexual couples? That is the question posed by the coming debate over the FMA.

No answer fits neatly into our cultural practices. Marriage is already in a very confused state. The way that many married couples live is, in fact scarcely distinguishable from the way some homosexual partners do. Where marriage means to so many heterosexuals: share a bed, share a checkbook and maybe, some day, share parental duties, why exactly is it that two men may not marry? Saying that two men cannot marry appears, from …

Family Research Council And Roe V. Wade, Gerard V. Bradley

Journal Articles

Thirty years ago in Roe v. Wade the Supreme Court launched what it hoped would be a cultural revolution. Here are the inaugural words: "The right of privacy...is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate a pregnancy".

The revolution has progressed rapidly. The counter-strategies tried so far have been ineffective: we are no closer to overruling Roe than in 1973; the abortion liberty occupies an organizing place in our culture and politics; the number of abortions annually has remained remarkably steady over three decades.

Stare Decisis And Due Process, Amy Coney Barrett

Journal Articles

In this Article, I argue that the preclusive effect of precedent raises due-process concerns, and, on occasion, slides into unconstitutionality. The Due Process Clause requires that a court give a person notice and an opportunity for a hearing before depriving her of life, liberty or property. Because of this requirement, courts have held in the context of issue preclusion that as a general rule, judicial determinations can bind only parties. The preclusion literature asserts that this parties only requirement does not apply to stare decisis because stare decisis, in contrast to issue preclusion, is a flexible doctrine. Yet stare decisis …

The New Federalism, The Spending Power, And Federal Criminal Law, Richard W. Garnett

Journal Articles

It is difficult in constitutional-law circles to avoid the observation that we are living through a revival of federalism. Certainly, the Rehnquist Court has brought back to the public-law table the notion that the Constitution is a charter for a government of limited and enumerated powers, one that is constrained both by that charter's text and by the structure of the government it creates. This allegedly revolutionary Court seems little inclined, however, to revise or revisit its Spending Power doctrine, and it remains settled law that Congress may disburse funds in pursuit of ends not authorized explicitly in Article I …

The Lame Ducks Of Marbury, John Copeland Nagle

Journal Articles

The election of 1800 was one of the most contested - and important - in American history. After it became clear that neither President John Adams nor a Federalist majority in Congress had been reelected, they acted during the lame-duck period to preserve their influences far into the future. They did so by appointing John Marshall as Chief Justice, ratifying the Treaty with France, creating numerous new federal judicial positions, and filling many of those positions with friends, family, and Federalists (including William Marbury). Not surprisingly, Jefferson and his supporters protested these actions as contrary to the will of the …

Incentives To Create Under A "Lifetime-Plus-Years" Copyright Duration: Lessons From A Behavioral Economic Analysis For Eldred V. Ashcroft, Avishalom Tor, Dotan Oliar

Journal Articles

In this Article, we highlight for the first time some of the significant but hitherto unrecognized behavioral effects of copyright law on individuals' incentives to create and then examine the implications of our findings for the constitutional analysis of Eldred v. Ashcroft. We show that behavioral biases - namely, individuals' optimistic bias regarding their future longevity and their sub-additive judgments in circumstances resembling the extant rule of copyright duration - explain the otherwise puzzling lifetime-plus-years basis for copyright protection given to individual authors, and reveal how this regime provides superior incentives to create. Thus, insofar as the provision of increased …

An Introduction To The Federal Constitutional Court, Donald P. Kommers

Journal Articles

This essay introduces the Federal Constitutional Court, briefly surveying the Court’s legal heritage, the history of its founding, its jurisdiction, and its structure.

The Rehnquist Court And Criminal Procedure, Stephen F. Smith

Journal Articles

Much of recent discussions of conservative judicial activism has concerned the revival of federalism-based limits on Congress during the Rehnquist Court. The allure of federalism as a topic for discussion is understandable, yet I argue that constitutional criminal procedure provides a better context within which to test the Rehnquist Court's commitment to judicial restraint. In this Essay, I examine the topic at hand against the background of the many important developments that have taken place in criminal procedure on Rehnquist's watch. The results of this examination are surprising because they suggest that activism is not necessarily the antithesis of restraint. …

Lochner, Liquor, And Longshoremen: A Puzzle In Progressive Era Federalism, Barry Cushman

Journal Articles

In 1890, the Supreme Court shocked and thrilled the civilized world with the announcement that dry states could not prohibit the sale of liquor shipped in from outside the state. So long as the out-of-state goods remained in their "original packages," the Court held they retained their character as interstate commerce subject only to federal regulation. The consequences for the cause of local sobriety were, predictably, catastrophic. The proliferation in temperance territory of "original package saloons," at which one could purchase liquor free from the superintendence of local liquor authorities, was appalling to dry eyes. Members of Congress immediately proposed …

Avoiding Constitutional Questions As A Three-Branch Problem, William K. Kelley

Journal Articles

This article criticizes the cardinal rule of statutory construction known as the avoidance canon - that statutes must be interpreted to avoid raising serious constitutional questions - as failing to respect the proper constitutional roles of both Congress and the Executive. It argues that the avoidance canon in practice cannot be grounded in legislative supremacy, which is the common justification for it offered by the Supreme Court, because it assumes without foundation that Congress would always prefer not to come close to the constitutional line in enacting statutes. Instead, the avoidance canon creates pressure for courts to adopt statutory meanings …

Federal Regulation Of State Court Procedures, Anthony J. Bellia Jr.

Journal Articles

May Congress regulate the procedures by which state courts adjudicate claims arising under state law? Recently, Congress not only has considered several bills that would do so, but has enacted a few of them. This Article concludes that such laws exceed Congress's constitutional authority. There are serious questions as to whether a regulation of court procedures qualifies as a regulation of interstate commerce under the Commerce Clause. Even assuming, however, that it does qualify as such, the Tenth Amendment reserves the power to regulate court procedures to the states. Members of the Founding generation used conflict-of-laws language to describe a …

Virtue And The Constitution Of The United States, John M. Finnis

Journal Articles

In this Article, Finnis reflects on the following five questions: (1) Does the Constitution require or presuppose, or thwart or even forbid, a formative project of government inculcating in citizens the civic virtue necessary to promote and sustain a good society?; (2) To what extent can the institutions of civil society support or even supplant government in inculcating civic virtue?; (3) What is the content of the civic virtue that should be inculcated in circumstances of moral disagreement, and how does it relate to traditional moral virtue?; (4) Does it include respect for and appreciation of diversity?; (5) Should a …

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 …

A Comparative Constitutional Law Canon, Donald P. Kommers, John E. Finn

Journal Articles

The article discusses what types of legal cases constitute a “canon” on American constitutional theory and comparative constitutional law, examples of case law that illustrate important developments in the two subjects. It describes the process taken by the article's authors to select a small sampling of 90 “canon” cases for their course book on American constitutional law, which is designed for the academic community and for undergraduate students enrolled in a traditional liberal arts curriculum.

Formalism And Realism In Commerce Clause Jurisprudence, Barry Cushman

Journal Articles

This Article attempts a reconceptualization of developments in Commerce Clause jurisprudence between the Civil War and World War II by identifying ways in which that jurisprudence was structurally related to and accordingly deeply influenced by the categories of substantive due process and dormant Commerce Clause doctrine. Antecedent dormant Commerce Clause jurisprudence set the terms within which Commerce Clause doctrine was worked out; coordinate developments in substantive due process doctrine set limits upon the scope of Commerce Clause formulations and thus played a critical and underappreciated role in maintaining the federal equilibrium. The subsequent erosion of those due process limitations vastly …

Seduced By Science: How American Religion Has Lost Its Way, Jay Tidmarsh

Journal Articles

For a Whiteheadian such as me, Steven Goldberg's Seduced by Science: How American Religion Has Lost Its Way starts with some correct and some incorrect premises and ends, not surprisingly, with some apposite and some inapposite conclusions. The burden of Goldberg's book is to argue that American religion, rather than making the distinctive contribution to American political and social life that it can and should, has instead been derailed into addressing questions on the terms of and with the language or methods of modern science. His argument proceeds in three parts. First, he describes three circumstances in which religion has …

A Dialogic Defense Of Alden, Jay Tidmarsh

Journal Articles

The opening paragraphs of the essay:

I find myself in the odd position of arguing that Alden v. Maine' is right, or at least not wrong. Do not misunderstand-I do not like the result in Alden any more than the next guy. But to not like the result and to argue that Alden is wrong as a matter of constitutional principle are two different matters. I am willing to argue that Alden is consistent with, albeit not compelled by, constitutional principle.

Implicit in the last sentence is the assumption that, had Alden been decided in accordance with Justice Souter's rather …

Francis Bacon Takes On The Ghouls: The "First Principles" Of Religious Freedom, Richard W. Garnett

Journal Articles

John Witte, Jr.
Religion and the American Constitutional Experiment:
Essential Rights and Liberties
Westview Press 2000

From the Review

This is a great time for students of the First Amendment's Religion Clauses and of what Professor John Witte calls the American "experiment" with religious freedom. We've been blessed these past few years with an in-print seminar - an upper-division offering, team-taught by faculty heavyweights - on this experiment, its products and prospects, and the values that have shaped it. Our teachers and texts have included, to name just a few, Professor Steven Smith's Foreordained Failure: The Constitutional Quest for a …

Legal Beagle: Ece's Best Friend May Be The Civil Law, Gerard V. Bradley

Journal Articles

The Everson no-aid principle is still the law, though barely so. We are within sight, meaning that we are within a single vote on the Supreme Court, of return to the tradition described by the bishops. Consummation of this development must loom large in any plan for legal action in light of ECE. Short of the tradition's second coming, the only potential civil law cost of implementing ECE is this: if a Catholic college is deemed to be "pervasively sectarian" then, but only then, "direct" public aid to the institution will be constitutionally suspect. But no court is likely to …

Lost Fidelities, Barry Cushman

Journal Articles

Owen Roberts was accused of a variety of things in 1937, but “fidelity” was not among them. Justice Harlan Fiske Stone and Professor Felix Frankfurter were among many who accused Roberts of performing, as Frankfurter put it, a jurisprudential “somersault” “incapable of being attributed to a single factor relevant to the professed judicial process.” To Frankfurter, it was “all painful beyond words,” and gave him “a sickening feeling which is aroused when moral standards are adulterated in a convent.” Yet when Roberts announced his retirement from the Court eight years later, Chief Justice Stone, along with now-Justices Frankfurter and Robert …

Brief On Appeal Of Defendant-Appellant The Board Of Education Of The Kiryas Joel Union Free School District, George Shebitz, Julia R. Cohen, Nahal Motamed, Nathan Lewin, Richard W. Garnett, Anthony J. Bellia Jr.

Court Briefs

No. 81319
Louis Grumet v. George Pataki

From the Introduction

Chapter 390 is tainted only by its history. On its face, it is a neutral law that raises no serious constitutional doubt. Its objective, as described by the Appellate Division -- "to create a constitutionally valid educational program which meets the special education needs of the disabled students residing in the Village of Kiryas Joel, Orange County" -- is unquestionably legitimate. All the statutory criteria it specifies were ratified by this Court in its Kiryas Joel II opinion as "related to legitimate educational concerns." 90 N.Y. 2d at 72. What …

The Constitutionalism Of Mary Ann Glendon, Donald P. Kommers

Journal Articles

Mary Ann Glendon is an accomplished legal scholar whose books and essays in the field of marriage and family law have received universal acclaim among her peers in the legal academy. More recently, and particularly in the last decade, she has emerged as a notable public intellectual. In this capacity, she has focused her careful reflections on topics such as abortion, religious liberty, social welfare legislation, the changing nature of the legal profession, and the condition of political discourse in America. One of the things that makes her recent work, as well as her earlier publications on family law, so …

Inculcating Constitutional Values, William K. Kelley

Journal Articles

CONSTITUTIONAL LAW. By Gerald Gunther & Kathleen M. Sullivan. Westbury, New York: Foundation Press. 13th edition, 1997. Pp. xciii, 1553. Cloth, $55.95.

CONSTITUTIONAL LAW. By Geoffrey R. Stone, Louis M. Seidman, Cass R. Sunstein, & Mark V. Tushnet. Boston: Aspen Law and Business Education. 3d Edition, 1996. Pp. ciii, 1814. Cloth, $60.00.

The two leading casebooks on Constitutional Law - one an acknowledged classic and the other fast on its way to becoming one - were recently released in new editions at a time when the challenges facing casebook authors seem greater than ever. Despite the Supreme Court's …

Review Essay / Criminal Procedure As Constitutional Law, Gerard V. Bradley

Journal Articles

Book review and essay of The Constitution and Criminal Procedure: First Principles by Akhil Reed Amar.

Scalia Slugs It Out, Gerard V. Bradley

Journal Articles

A Matter of Interpretation
Antonin Scalia, Princeton University Press, 1997, 159 pages, $20

Antonin Scalia, associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, has done more to combat judicial activism than any other living person. Since taking his seat on the High Court in 1986, he has defended and applied a mode of constitutional interpretation - most often called "originalism," sometimes "textualism" - the precise aim of which is to reduce, if not eliminate, judicial lawmaking. Scalia maintains that judges, even Supreme Court Justices, must distinguish what they think law ought to be from what the rule of law in …

The Pluralist Game: Francis Canavan On Law, Public Morality, And Pluralism In Contemporary America, Gerard V. Bradley

Journal Articles

You may have heard Hadley Arkes's charge — always made in good-natured friendship — that Father Richard John Neuhaus owes him royalties for the title of Neuhaus's wonderful monthly, First Things. After all, Arkes's book of the same name came out first. Father Neuhaus read it and liked it, and, voila, shortly thereafter the magazine appeared. Arkes has a good circumstantial case.

You probably know that one of Father Neuhaus's books is called The Catholic Moment. His thesis is that late twentieth century Americans are living through a "crisis of unbelief." The Roman Catholic Church, Neuhaus argues, can and should …