Constitutional Law Commons^™

Article Ii And The Florida Election Case: A Public Choice Perspective, Michael L. Wells, Jeffry M. Netter

Scholarly Works

This Article puts aside the equal protection rationale on which the majority relied in Bush v. Gore. We share Richard Epstein's view that "[a]ny equal protection challenge to the Florida recount procedure quickly runs into insurmountable difficulties." In our view there is a more compelling argument to support the ruling. It begins with Chief Justice Rehnquist's concurring opinion, which focused on Article II, Section 1, Clause 2, of the United States Constitution. Clause 2 provides that "[e]ach State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct" electors for President and Vice President. The critical issue in Bush …

The New Jurisprudence Of The Necessary And Proper Clause, J. Randy Beck

Scholarly Works

Several recent Supreme Court decisions evidence reinvigorated principles of federalism and an increased willingness to strike down legislation as beyond the power of Congress. In this article, Professor Beck considers this trend in light of the persistent debate surrounding the implied powers of Congress under the Necessary and Proper Clause. Because the Necessary and Proper Clause represents the outer boundary of congressional authority, consideration of this provision necessarily illuminates discussions of state sovereignty and reserved powers.

The article begins with an historical overview of the Framers' understanding of the Necessary and Proper Clause, leading up to the Supreme Court's decision …

No. 1 - Legal Systems In Transition, Ivana Janu, Josef Bejcek, Gabriel M. Wilner

Occasional Papers Series

A January 24-28, 2000 visit by Justice Ivana Janu, Dean Josef Bejcek, and some of the Czech colleagues to the Dean Rusk Center and the University of Georgia provided an occasion for the exchange of ideas concerning transition in the legal structure and content in the former Socialist states of central and eastern Europe. Justice Janu and Dean Bejcek prepared papers and agreed to their publication. The availability of these two important papers, one on constitutional courts and the other on transitions in commercial law, rendered to the Rusk Center the necessary impetus for the creation of the Occasional Papers …

The Power Of Congress "Without Limitation": The Property Clause And Federal Regulation Of Private Property, Peter A. Appel

Scholarly Works

Congress has overlooked a powerful tool for regulating within state jurisdictions: the Property Clause of the United States Constitution. The United States Government owns land in every state and approximately thirty percent of the total land in the United States. The federal government's authority to regulate its property within states derives from the Property Clause and has been described by the Supreme Court as "without limitation."

Professor Appel traces the historical development of the Constitution's Property Clause, from its pre-constitutional origins through modern Supreme Court decisions and academic conceptions. Professor Appel compares the narrow view of Property Clause scholarship - …

Race To The Stars: A Federalism Argument For Leaving The Right Of Publicity In The Hands Of The States, Usha Rodrigues

Scholarly Works

This Note will argue that, given the variation in the right of publicity from state to state, and the relative newness of this property right, Congress should refrain from passing a law to federalize it. Although there are sound arguments for adopting this right, there are also reasons to hesitate. Given that only half of the states have adopted it, federalization seems premature. This Note will only obliquely address the main objection usually leveled at a robust right of publicity, namely that it stifles creativity and implicates First Amendment concerns. The focus instead will be on the right of individual …

Were There Adequate State Grounds In Bush V. Gore?, Michael L. Wells

Scholarly Works

Few Supreme Court decisions provoke the immediate and intensely negative verdict that law professors passed on Bush v. Gore. Some of the criticism is deserved. Others have questioned whether the ruling rests on any general principle at all, given the care the Court took to limit its reasoning to the extraordinary circumstances of the Florida presidential election.

It is all too easy to leap from this well-founded critique of the Court's reasoning to the conclusion that the majority – all of whom were appointed by Republican presidents – were bent on installing George W. Bush in the White House by …

A Constitution Of Collaboration: Protecting Fundamental Values With Second-Look Rules Of Interbranch Dialogue, Dan T. Coenen

Scholarly Works

Often the Supreme Court directly engages nonjudicial officials in a shared elaboration of constitutional rights. It does so through the use of doctrines that focus on whether nonjudicial actors have taken an appropriately close and sensitive look at policy judgments that threaten important constitutional values. In many of these cases, the Court in effect "remands" constitutionally controversial programs to the political branches--inviting a more studied consideration of the program than attended its initial adoption, and leaving open the possibility that the readopted program will be upheld against constitutional attack.

The Court's structural doctrines range from the familiar vagueness rule to …

Structural Review, Pseudo-Second-Look Decision Making, And The Risk Of Diluting Constitutional Liberty, Dan T. Coenen

Scholarly Works

In this Essay, I will pause to note some reasons why the "sham decision" critique of structural review is, for me, unpersuasive. I also will offer a few comments on the proper relationship between structural and substantive review. I note, in particular, that an endorsement of "activist" structural review need not lead to a "nonactivist" approach to substantive review, far less to its total abandonment. I also suggest that a vigorous embrace of structural rules may well lead to more, rather than less, overall judicial protection of fundamental rights.

Corrective Justice And Constitutional Torts, Bernard P. Dauenhauer, Michael L. Wells

Scholarly Works

Tort liability in the private realm may be understood as "an instrument aimed...at deterrence...[and] a way of achieving corrective justice between the parties." Following the common law model, the Supreme Court has borrowed this normative framework for constitutional torts, ruling that the aims of liability for damages are to vindicate constitutional rights and to deter constitutional violations. A recent article by Daryl Levinson takes issue with this approach. Levinson argues that the superficial similarities between public torts and private torts conceal real differences, to which neither the Court nor scholars have paid adequate attention. The main point of his article, …

Foreword: Symposium Re-Examining First Principles: Deterrence And Corrective Justice In Constitutional Torts, Thomas A. Eaton

Scholarly Works

This Symposium provides a forum for a careful and thoughtful consideration of whether constitutional tort law can deter wrongdoing and is consistent with principles of corrective justice.

Section 1983, The First Amendment, And Public Employee Speech: Shaping The Right To Fit The Remedy (And Vice Versa), Michael Wells

Scholarly Works

This Article is not about theories of free speech and how they bear on the public employment context, nor does it contribute to the academic debate over what the aims of public employee speech law ought to be. I take the Court at its word when it says that its aim is to give substantial weight to both the value of speech and the government's interest as an employer. Unlike Massaro and Ingber, I take it as a given that the government may insist on hierarchy and obedience to authority in the workplace. Unlike Rosenthal, I begin from the Court's …

Foreword, Thomas A. Eaton

Georgia Law Review

It has long been accepted that deterrence and vindication are two of the primary purposes of the body of law we know as "constitutional torts." Justices of every ideological stripe have acknowledged deterrence and vindication as the legitimate objectives of suits against governments and government officials who violate a person's constitutional rights. Justices with philosophies as divergent as Brennan's and Scalia's agree that civil rights actions serve an essential vindicatory function.' Justices Breyer, O'Connor, Blackmun, White, Marshall, and Powell have authored opinions that embrace the deterrent effect of such actions. The acceptance of deterrence and vindication as the twin goals …

Section 1983, The First Amendment, And Public Employee Speech: Shaping The Right To Fit The Remedy (And Vice Versa), Michael L. Wells

Georgia Law Review

Constitutional rights have little value in the absence of effective remedies for their violation, includingsuitsfor damages to redress past constitutional wrongs and for injunctive relief to prevent continuing and future violations. Recognizing this, the Supreme Court has, especially over the past forty years, constructed an elaborate body of remedial doctrine. The Court has often acted on the premise that the remedial law should be more or less the same across the whole range of constitutional rights. The problem with this approach is that, from a remedial perspective, there are differences among the real world contexts in which constitutional violations occur. …

Turning Section 1983'S Protection Of Civil Rights Into An Attractive Nuisance: Extra-Textual Barriers To Municipal Liability Under Monell, Brian J. Serr

Georgia Law Review

This essay addresses the problem of "Making Government Pay" from a different perspective than Professor Levinson's article.1 Instead of focusing on social and economic barriers to deterrence and corrective justice, this essay will focus on the arbitrary legal barriers that the Supreme Court has placed between a constitutionally injured citizen and the municipal treasury. These legal barriers are more fairly attributable to the Supreme Court than to Congress because the barriers to establishing municipal liability under the Court's § 1983 jurisprudence are hardly self-evident from the statutory text of § 1983, nor are those barriers readily inferrable from that text. …

Afterword, Marshall S. Shapo

Georgia Law Review

It is a great pleasure to comment on these papers on a subject that has fascinated me since the beginning of my teaching career. My observations will no doubt reflect the roots of my thinking in an article I wrote on the subject in 1965' and other early publications, and, doubtless, my relative ignorance of the immense amount of case law that has flowed from courts since the mid-sixties. However, informed by a little independent study and refreshed by the commentaries, I venture a few somewhat angular thoughts. They do not" in any way pretend to be exhaustive with respect …

Corrective Justice And Constitutional Torts, Bernard P. Dauenhauer, Michael L. Wells

Georgia Law Review

Tort liability in the private realm may be understood both as "an instrument aimed... at deterrence... [and] a way of achieving corrective justice between the parties."' Following the common law model, the Supreme Court has borrowed this normative framework for constitutional torts, ruling that the aims of liability for damages are to vindicate constitutional rights and to deter constitutional violations. A recent article by Daryl Levinson takes issue vith this approach. Levinson argues that the superficial similarities between public torts and private torts conceal real differences, to which neither the Court nor scholars have paid adequate attention. The main point …

Institutional Arrangements And Individual Rights: A Comment On Professor Tribe's Critique Of The Modern Court's Treatment Of Constitutional Liberty, Dan T. Coenen

Scholarly Works

Professor Coenen analyzes Professor Tribe's contention that the present day Supreme Court's constitutional work is marked by an unjustified two-track approach. Professor Tribe has built this claim on an elaborate assessment of Saenz v. Roe, in which the Court -- to the surprise of many prognosticators -- invalidated a state statute that imposed temporary limitations on welfare benefits for new residents. He contends that the Court employed the open-stanced constitutional methodology of “structural inference” in deciding Saenz only because that case involved institutional arrangements. According to Professor Tribe, the modern Court has carefully (and unjustifiably) confined its use of structural …

"Available State Remedies" And The Fourteenth Amendment: Comments On Florida Prepaid V. College Savings Bank, Michael L. Wells

Scholarly Works

In Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Education Expense Board v. College Savings Bank, decided during the Supreme Court's October 1998 Term, the specific point at issue was the scope of Congress's authority under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment to impose liability for damages on state governments. In the Patent Remedy Act, Congress had abrogated the states' sovereign immunity from claims of patent infringement. College Savings Bank argued for the validity of the statute on the grounds that patents are property; that patent infringements are deprivations of property; and that the statute simply and appropriately provides a remedy for deprivations of …

Suing States For Money: Constitutional Remedies After Alden And Florida Prepaid, Michael Wells

Scholarly Works

On June 23, 1999, the Supreme Court handed down three noteworthy decisions bearing on the law of constitutional remedies. Alden v. Maine struck down an attempt by Congress, acting under its Article I powers, to subject states to suits in state court on federal statutory grounds. Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Education Expense Board v. College Savings Bank curbed Congress' power under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment to authorize suits against state governments on constitutional grounds, reasoning that a case cannot be made for the federal cause of action unless state law remedies are inadequate. A companion case, College Savings Bank …

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

Implied Limits On The Legislative Power: The Intellectual Property Clause As An Absolute Constraint On Congress, Paul J. Heald, Suzanna Sherry

Scholarly Works

Professors Heald and Sherry argue that the language of Article I, Section 8, Clause 8, the Intellectual Property Clause, absolutely constrains Congress's legislative power under certain circumstances. Their analysis begins by looking at other limits on the legislative power that the Court has found in the Bankruptcy Clause, the Eleventh Amendment, the Tenth Amendment, and Article III. Then by examining the history and structure of the Intellectual Property Clause and relevant precedent, they distill four principles of constitutional weight--the Suspect Grant Principle, the Quid Pro Quo Principle, the Authorship Principle, and the Public Domain Principle. These principles inform the Court's …

Three Arguments Against Mt. Healthy: Tort Theory, Constitutional Torts, And Freedom Of Speech, Michael L. Wells

Scholarly Works

Mt. Healthy City School District Board of Education v. Doyle is among the most important, and least discussed, cases in constitutional tort law. It stands for the abstract principle that the "but-for" rule of causation, which is the usual test in common-law torts, applies in constitutional torts as well. Doyle, a nontenured school teacher, quarreled with another teacher, with school employees, and with students. Two specific incidents deserve mention. First, on one occasion he "made an obscene gesture to two girls in connection with their failure to obey commands made in his capacity as cafeteria supervisor." Second, after the principal …

Why Constitutional Torts Deserve A Book Of Their Own, Michael Wells, Thomas A. Eaton, Sheldon H. Nahmod

Scholarly Works

Over thirty years ago, Marshall Shapo coined the term "constitutional tort" to denote a suit brought against an official, charging a constitutional violation and seeking damages. In the years since Shapo's pathbreaking article, the number of such suits has grown exponentially. The suits have generated a host of new substantive and remedial issues, yet conventional casebooks on constitutional law and federal courts give little attention to the area. That Professor Shapiro had four books to include in his review of "Civil Rights" casebooks in the Seattle University Law Review is some indication of a demand for teaching materials currently unmet …

Local Government Land Use Restrictions And Selected First Amendment Issues, Barbara Jo Nelson

LLM Theses and Essays

A local government's power to enact zoning regulations falls within the general power to provide for the health, safety, and welfare of its citizenry. This thesis addresses a few selected First Amendment issues as they apply to zoning and land use restrictions in Georgia. Free speech review of zoning ordinances applies to zoning for adult sex businesses, such as adult book stores and cinemas. The First Amendment balancing test that is applicable to adult entertainment ordinances is discussed in Chapter One. The free speech impact of restrictions on signs and billboards is discussed in Chapter Two. Finally, in Chapter Three, …

Challenging Defamatory Opinions As An Alternative To Media Self-Regulation, James F. Ponsoldt

Scholarly Works

This Essay analyzes defamation law as it applies to the media. Part I summarizes the state of defamation law prior to the 1990 Supreme Court decision in Milkovich v. Lorain Journal Co., when opinion was presumed immune from liability. Part II examines the holding in Milkovich, which suggests the potential liability for recklessly defamatory statements couched as or in the context of opinion. Part III reviews post-Milkovich decisions during the 1990's. This Essay concludes that the predictions of Milkovich were accurate in many jurisdictions and could apply to televised allegations during the coverage of the Clinton affair. …

Constitutional Remedies, Section 1983 And The Common Law, Michael L. Wells

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Constitutional tort law marries the substantive rights granted by the Constitution to the remedial mechanism of tort law. The sweeping language of 42 U.S.C. 1983 provides that "[e]very person who, under color of any [state law] subjects, or causes to be subjected, any [person] to the deprivation of any [constitutional rights] shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress." Constitutional tort suits raise, in a new context, many tort-like remedial questions relating to causation, immunity, and damages--and therein lies a problem. The usual source of answers to …

Remedies For The Misappropriation Of Intellectual Property By State And Municipal Governments Before And After Seminole Tribe: The Eleventh Amendment And Immunity Doctrines, Paul J. Heald, Michael L. Wells

Scholarly Works

Part I of this Article addresses relief available to intellectual property owners under the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. Before Congress's express abrogation of state sovereign immunity in 1992, federal, state, and local governments were nonetheless potentially liable for misappropriations of intellectual property that constituted takings without just compensation. This examination of the Supreme Court's Fifth Amendment jurisprudence is also key to answering the critical question of whether federal patent, copyright, and trademark laws establish rights in “property” for the purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment, for only under section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment may Congress abrogate a state's …

Business Subsidies And The Dormant Commerce Clause, Dan T. Coenen

Scholarly Works

In this Article, I seek to respond to the Court's overture with a treatment of of subsidies under the dormant Commerce Clause that moves progressively from the general to the specific. Part I examines key Supreme Court cases to show that the basic question of whether state business subsidies are constitutional remains open and important. Part II then turns to how that question should be resolved, focusing on whether subsidies are fairly distinguishable from ostensibly equivalent, and concededly unlawful, discriminatory tax relief. The thrust of Part II is that both precedent and policy support the traditional, pre-West Lynn Creamer" view …

Commerce Clause Restraints On State Tax Incentives, Walter Hellerstein

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The states' provision of tax incentives designed to encourage economic development within their borders has long been a feature of the American legislative landscape. Today every state provides tax incentives as an inducement to local industrial location and expansion. Indeed, scarcely a day goes by without some state offering yet another tax incentive to spur economic development, often in an effort to attract a particular enterprise to the state.

The debate over the efficacy and wisdom of state tax and other business incentives is intense and important, as other articles in this Symposium plainly reveal. My purpose here, however, is …

"Possessing With Intent To Distribute" Under The Schoolyard Statute, Sonja R. West

Scholarly Works

This Comment proposes that courts should explicitly rather than implicitly distinguish the different types of defendants accused of possession with intent to distribute controlled substances within a school zone. Part I reviews the current state of the law on this issue and presents the legislative history and textual arguments involved in the debate over the mens rea requirement. Part II examines the factual circumstances at issue in the relevant cases and concludes that these factual circumstances, rather than competing statutory interpretations, lead to *1401 the different results. Finally, Part III emphasizes the need to recognize these implicit categories of offenses …