Constitutional Law Commons^™

Symposium: 50 Years With The 25th Amendment: Interpreting The Twenty-Fifth Amendment: Major Controversies, Harold Hongju Koh

ConLawNOW

In recent months, probably no constitutional provision has been more discussed, but less well understood, than Section Four of the Twenty-fifth Amendment. In its fifty-year history, the provision has never been triggered. But were that to happen, that constitutional provision could lead to the permanent separation of an American President from his powers and duties within less than one month. The Amendment's text raises numerous interpretive questions. This lecture functions as a reader's guide to Yale Law School Rule of Law Clinic's Reader's Guide to the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which seeks to answer those questions. The …

Symposium: 50 Years With The 25th Amendment: The Role Of The White House Counsel In The Twenty-Fifth Amendment: Advising On Presidential Disability, Nancy Kassop

ConLawNOW

This article examines the role of the White House Counsel in counseling and advising the President and administration about the provisions of the Twenty-fifth Amendment providing for removal of the President when the President is unable to perform the duties of office. Throughout the amendment's history, presidents and their advisors have been reluctant to formally invoke it, fearing that a public admission of "disability" will weaken a president's political influence. The White House Counsel must often navigate between the legal and constitutional requirements of the amendment, on the one hand, and considerations of a President's continued political viability, on the …

Symposium: Erie At Eighty: Choice Of Law Across The Disciplines: Erie, Remedies, And Trade Secrets, Camilla A. Hrdy

ConLawNOW

At “Erie at Eighty: Choice of Law Across the Disciplines,” I learned a lot from my colleagues on the intellectual property law panel. I also learned a lot from remedies expert Professor Michael Morley. Professor Morley argued quite vociferously that federal courts have wrongly been applying federal rules in deciding whether to grant injunctions for state law claims in diversity cases. In other words, federal courts regularly violate the Erie doctrine.

This has some fascinating implications for trade secret law. Prior to federalization, when plaintiffs could only bring state civil trade secret claims, federal courts in diversity cases naturally …

Symposium: Erie At Eighty: Choice Of Law Across The Disciplines: Erie Doctrine, State Law, And Civil Rights Litigation, Alexander A. Reinert

ConLawNOW

How should state law questions and claims be resolved when they arise in federal civil rights litigation? In prior work, I have criticized the given wisdom that the Erie doctrine, while originating in diversity cases, applies in all cases whatever the basis for federal jurisdiction. In that work, I proposed a framework, “Erie Step Zero,” to place Erie questions in their jurisdictional context. As I have argued, the concern with forum shopping and unequal treatment that prompted Erie have less salience in federal question cases. Different concerns emerge when one focuses on the presence of state law issues in …

Symposium: Erie At Eighty: Choice Of Law Across The Disciplines: An Erie Approach To Privilege Doctrine, Megan M. La Belle

ConLawNOW

Privilege rules, which determine whether information is discoverable in a particular litigation, often vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Consequently, the Erie doctrine and other choice-of-law principles play an important role in shaping privilege law. This essay, written for the Sixth Annual Constitutional Law Conference at the University of Akron School of Law, considers two recent privilege cases—HannStar Display Corp. v. Sony Electronics, Inc. and In re Silver—which involved the California mediation privilege and the federal patent-agent privilege, respectively. While the HannStar court ignored well-established choice-of-law principles, the Silver decision shows that, when applied and interpreted appropriately, doctrines …

Symposium: Erie At Eighty: Choice Of Law Across The Disciplines: Erie'S Intellectual History, Craig Green

ConLawNOW

Erie R.R. v. Tompkins is an iconic case in American law, and it has held that status for a very long time. One byproduct of such longevity is that the decision’s meaning and context have changed dramatically through the ages. Indeed, the sheer variability of Erie’s interpretations helps to explain why the decision has remained such an important, controversial, and influential feature of American legal thought for eighty years. This essay offers a brief and schematic account of Erie’s intellectual history, while also offering cautionary signals about Erie’s most recent group of interpreters. Even for observers who might endorse Erie’s …

Symposium: Erie At Eighty: Choice Of Law Across The Disciplines: Erie As A Way Of Life, Ernest A. Young

ConLawNOW

This essay—presented as the keynote address to the University of Akron School of Law’s conference on “Erie at 80”—considers the impact of the Supreme Court’s decision in Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins on the broader landscape of American law. I begin with Erie’s contribution to our modern, positivist understanding of the nature of law. That understanding, however, is under threat from pervasive tendencies, on both the political Left and Right, to collapse the distinction between law as a set of positivist choices adopted by government and law as the principles that we think are just, right, and true. …

Symposium: 50 Years With The 25th Amendment: The Twenty-Fifth Amendment: Its Crafting And Drafting Process, John D. Feerick

ConLawNOW

The Twenty-fifth Amendment’s development occurred over a period of ten years, from 1955 to 1965. This historic effort addressed questions raised but not answered at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 as to what constitutes “presidential inability” and who is authorized to determine its existence. This article is a response to the enormous interest in the amendment that has emerged between 2017 and 2019. Many accounts of what the amendment provided for and what was intended by its language appeared in the media and writings during this period. The article takes the reader through the step by step development of the …

Symposium: 50 Years With The 25th Amendment: Celebrating The Presidential Inability Provisions Of The Twenty-Fifth Amendment, Joel K. Goldstein

ConLawNOW

The presidential inability provisions of the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution represent an important contribution to ensuring presidential continuity. The framers of the Amendment responded in a thoughtful and effective way to a series of problems which history had disclosed which had made past officials reluctant to transfer presidential powers even from clearly disabled presidents. Adoption of the Amendment represented an impressive legislative accomplishment. The presidential inability provisions provide clear, workable and reasonable procedures which allow government officials to handle a range of scenarios involving presidential incapacity.

Lockett Symposium: For Sandra Lockett, Anthony G. Amsterdam

ConLawNOW

Tony Amsterdam, lead counsel for Sandra Lockett in the U.S. Supreme Court case Lockett v. Ohio, offers his reflections on the case.

Lockett Symposium: Lockett V. Ohio And Its Subsequent Jurisprudence: Between Law And Politics, Cynthia Boyer

ConLawNOW

The death penalty raises serious questions regarding the unequal and arbitrary application of the law since the death penalty exceeds the threshold of law and relates to arguments beyond it, among which there are several fundamental political elements. The advent of the neoliberal revival of the 1970s, first as a new ideology emphasizing the value of free market competition and then as a policy model and practice of government, has had a significant impact on the consideration of individuals within society. The Lockett v. Ohio rulingis part of this particular context, setting the stage for the societal mutation toward a …

The End Of Miller's Time: How Sensitivity Can Categorize Third-Party Data After Carpenter, Michael Gentithes

Con Law Center Articles and Publications

For over 40 years, the Supreme Court has permitted government investigators to warrantlessly collect information that citizens disclose to third-party service providers. That third-party doctrine is under significant strain in the modern, networked world. Yet scholarly responses typically fall into unhelpfully extreme camps, either championing an absolute version of the doctrine or calling for its abolition. In Carpenter v. United States, the Court suggested a middle road, holding that some categories of data—such as digital location information collected from cell phones—do not neatly fall into the third-party doctrine’s dichotomy between unprotected, disclosed information and protected, undisclosed information. But the majority …

Leveling Down Gender Equality, Tracy Thomas

Con Law Center Articles and Publications

The U.S. Supreme Court recently revived its jurisprudence of “leveling down,” that is, curing an equal protection violation of gender discrimination by denying the requested benefit to all rather than extending the benefit to the excluded class. This article challenges the continuation of the conventional acceptance of leveling down as an equally legitimate remedial option for gender discrimination. Instead, it argues for the adoption of an alternative remedial calculus of a strong presumption of leveling up remedies, overcome only by limited equitable considerations. Such a presumption better effectuates the substantive right of gender equality, as well as the correlative due …

Leveling Down Gender Equality, Tracy A. Thomas

Akron Law Faculty Publications

The U.S. Supreme Court recently revived its jurisprudence of “leveling down,” that is, curing an equal protection violation of gender discrimination by denying the requested benefit to all rather than extending the benefit to the excluded class. This article challenges the continuation of the conventional acceptance of leveling down as an equally legitimate remedial option for gender discrimination. Instead, it argues for the adoption of an alternative remedial calculus of a strong presumption of leveling up remedies, overcome only by limited equitable considerations. Such a presumption better effectuates the substantive right of gender equality, as well as the correlative due …

Book Review: Dershowitz On Presidential Impeachment: An Analysis Of The Case Against Impeaching Trump, Michael Conklin

ConLawNOW

This is a review of Alan Dershowitz’s 2018 book, The Case Against Impeaching Trump. Because the Constitution provides little guidance on presidential impeachment, the issue is often interpreted based on political party affiliation. Dershowitz, a strong Hillary Clinton supporter, provides a neutral examination of the issue. This review contains analysis of the current state of impeachment efforts, Dershowitz’s arguments against impeachment, and a critique of his proposed “shoe on the other foot” test.

Lockett Symposium: Recollections On The Lockett Case In The U.S. Supreme Court, Joel Berger

ConLawNOW

Recollections of an NAACP Legal Defense Fund attorney who worked with Professor Amsterdam on the Lockett case.

Lockett Symposium: Lockett As It Was, Is Now, And Ever Shall Should Be, Karen A. Steele

ConLawNOW

Lockett made clear what was constitutionally unacceptable in capital sentencing statutes (limiting the range of mitigating factors to be considered) while affirmatively heralding the significance and breadth of mitigating factors unique to the defendant that must be affirmatively and independently considered by jurors, courts and counsel; the inverse correlation between mitigating factors and disproportionate sentencing; and the interrelationship between mitigating factors and narrowing—all in an effort to provide a “meaningful basis for distinguishing the few cases in which the death penalty is imposed from the many cases in which it is not.” The threatened and actual use of “double-edged” aspects …

Introduction To The "Lockett V. Ohio At 40 Symposium": Rethinking The Death Penalty 40 Years After The U.S. Supreme Court Decision, Margery B. Koosed

ConLawNOW

Professor Koosed provides an introduction to the symposium on the fortieth anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Lockett v. Ohio, which discusses the backstory and import of the case. The decision in Lockett laid the framework for narrowing application of the death penalty by overturning Ohio’s 1974 era death penalty law, and heralding the significance and breadth of mitigating factors that must be considered by jurors and judges making the life or death decision in the penalty phase of capital cases, and tapped in to issues of disproportionate sentencing (those decided and yet to be).

Lockett Symposium: Is The Supreme Court's Command On Mitigating Circumstances A Spoonful Of Sugar With A Poison Pill For The Death Penalty?, Jeffrey L. Kirchmeier

ConLawNOW

This Article addresses how Lockett v. Ohio and the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence on mitigating factors in capital cases established a more humane death penalty while at the same time undermining the death penalty system. The Court’s emphasis on the constitutional importance of individualized sentencing has, in effect, helped return the U.S. death penalty system to an unconstitutional arbitrary and discriminatory system.

After the U.S. Supreme Court effectively struck down the existing death penalty statutes in 1972, state legislatures responded with new statutes designed to try to make a fairer and less arbitrary death penalty. When the Supreme Court reviewed these …

Lockett Symposium: Lockett V. Ohio And The Rise Of Mitigation Specialists, Russell Stetler

ConLawNOW

This article discusses the impact of Lockett in terms of the rise of mitigation specialists—the capital defense team members from a variety of multidisciplinary backgrounds whose dedicated function is to investigate the social history of the client in order to facilitate an outcome that avoids execution. In Part I, the article discusses how Lockett ended the confusion that resulted from the Supreme Court’s prior death penalty decisions in the 1970s. In Part II, the article examines the emergence of mitigation investigation as a central obligation of capital defense in response to Lockett, and the diverse career paths that led …

Lockett Symposium: Justice White's Lockett Concurrence And The Evolving Standards For A Capital Defendant's Mens Rea, Jordan Berman

ConLawNOW

In Lockett v. Ohio, Justice Byron White authored a separate concurring opinion specifically to assert that capital punishment violates the Eighth Amendment when imposed absent “a finding that the defendant possessed a purpose to cause the death of the victim.” This view was largely vindicated when Justice White authored the opinions in Enmund v. Florida and Cabana v. Bullock, in which the Court held that the death sentence could not constitutionally be imposed on one who did not kill or attempt to kill or have any intention of participating in or facilitating a killing. Nonetheless, just one year …

Lockett Symposium: Reflections On The Sandra Lockett Case, Peggy Cooper Davis

ConLawNOW

Professor Davis, who was one of the lawyers handling Sandra Lockett’s Supreme Court case, describes Ms. Lockett's courage under threat of execution and explains why principles of respect for human dignity should have forbidden placing her in that horrifying position.

Lockett Symposium: The Other Lockett, Dennis Balske

ConLawNOW

Sandra’s case was perfect for the New York Times. James’s makes for choice tabloid reading.

Few people realize that two Locketts were involved in the famous Lockett case–Sandra and her brother, James. Sandra is famous because she is the Lockett in the United States Supreme Court decision. James is unknown because the Ohio Supreme Court remanded his case to Akron for a new trial.

Sandra lost her direct appeal in the Ohio Supreme Court. Eventually the United States Supreme Court granted review and reached its all-important decision striking down Ohio’s death penalty statute and mandating that capital defendants be permitted …

Suppression Of Free Tweets: How Packingham Impacts The New Era Of Government Social Media And The First Amendment, Elise Berry

ConLawNOW

As social media popularity grows, so too does the constitutional conflicts between the First Amendment’s public forum doctrine and a public official’s social media. More and more claims of viewpoint discrimination are arising from the district courts, stemming from a public official’s use of his or her social media to delete comments or ban users from their official social media pages. Similarly, President Donald Trump’s use of his Twitter has also instigated a law suit against him for viewpoint discrimination under the public forum doctrine. While the Supreme Court has been silent on the issue, its decision in Packingham v. …

Remedies Symposium: Contempt Fines And The Eleventh Amendment, John Sanchez

ConLawNOW

The Eleventh Amendment permits plaintiffs to recover prospective relief, for example, injunctive or declaratory relief, against a state. By contrast, the Eleventh Amendment bars recovery of retrospective relief against a state. The classic legal remedy of money damages is not recoverable. There are three types of contempts: civil compensatory and coercive contempt and criminal contempt. Civil compensatory contempt fines and criminal contempt fines are clearly retrospective in nature and so are not recoverable against a state. At the same time, civil coercive contempt fines are prospective and so should be recoverable against a state despite the Eleventh Amendment. Problems arise, …

Surprising Originalism: The Regula Lecture, Lawrence B. Solum

ConLawNOW

This article takes the reader on a guided tour of contemporary originalist constitutional theory. Most Americans believe that they already know everything they need to know about constitutional originalism. But in many cases, they are mistaken. Contemporary originalists do not believe that we should ask, "What would James Madison do?" Instead, the mainstream of contemporary originalism aims to recover the original public meaning of the constitutional text. Conservatives and libertarians are sure that originalism is a necessary corrective to the liberal excesses of the Warren Court. Progressives have an almost unshakeable belief that originalism is a right-wing ideology that seeks …

Access To Justice: Impact Of Twombly & Iqbal On State Court Systems, Danielle Lusardo Schantz

Akron Law Review

Approximately a decade ago, the Supreme Court of the United States unexpectedly changed the pleading standard for federal cases with the Twombly and Iqbal decisions. Plausibility pleading replaced the more liberal notice pleading standard endorsed by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Since then, state courts have been faced with a choice to either mirror this change in pleading standards or maintain their commitment to notice pleading. Plausibility pleading has begun to creep into the state court system. Several states have formally changed their pleading standards, while others have declared their commitment to notice pleading. This Article considers the impact …

The Icing On The Cake: How Background Factors Affect Law Faculty Predictions In Masterpiece Cakeshop, Michael Conklin

ConLawNOW

In this research, I explore law school faculty perceptions and predictions of the highly publicized Masterpiece Cakeshop case. I created a survey to assess how law faculty members’ prediction of the case may be affected by their area of instruction, background in business, religious involvement, political affiliation, same-sex union celebration participation, exposure to the case, and personal desired outcome for the case. I contacted over 800 law school faculty members, inviting them to participate in the research. The ninety-three completed responses provide insight into how law school faculty demographics may be indicators of their Supreme Court case predictions. Furthermore, different …

Remedies Symposium: Upstairs Downstairs: Morales-Santana And The Right To A Remedy In Comparative Law, Jerfi Uzman

ConLawNOW

The Supreme Court’s ruling in Sessions v. Morales-Santana has refueled a classic debate about constitutional remedies in equal protection cases. The ways in which courts should respond to underinclusive legislation is a question that is fundamental to the idea of constitutional rights. Not just in the United States but throughout the Western world, courts struggle with the dilemma raised in Morales-Santana. In this article, I seek to broaden the debate by putting Morales-Santana in a comparative perspective. Drawing from the case law of the U.S. Supreme Court, the Court of Justice of the European Union, the Supreme Court of …

Remedies Symposium: Statutory Damages And Standing After Spokeo V. Robins, Richard L. Heppner Jr.

ConLawNOW

In Spokeo v. Robins, the U.S. Supreme Court held that courts may no longer infer the existence of an injury in fact—and thus constitutional standing—from a statute’s use of a particular remedy, such as a statutory or liquidated damages provision. But Spokeo also directed courts to consider whether Congress intended to identify an intangible harm and elevate it to the status of a “concrete” injury in fact when deciding standing questions. This article argues that courts can and should continue to pay close attention to the structure and language of statutory remedial provisions in making that assessment. The article proposes …