Constitutional Law Commons^™

Wielding The Ax Of Neutrality: The Constitutional Status Of Charitable Choice In The Wake Of Mitchell V. Helms, David J. Freedman

University of Richmond Law Review

During the past decade, the Supreme Court loosened restraints that it had previously imposed upon government aid to religious institutions. In 1996, Congress and the President seized upon this phenomenon and implemented a controversial provision in the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996-also known as the Welfare Reform Act of 1996. Included among the various revolutionary provisions of this legislation is something known as Charitable Choice. This program authorizes states to contract with religious institutions to provide social welfare services on behalf ofthe states.

The Fate Of The Native Hawaiians: The Special Relationship Doctrine, The Problem Of Strict Scrutiny, And Other Issues Raised By Rice V. Cayetano, William E. Spruill

University of Richmond Law Review

Harold "Freddy" Rice is a Native Hawaiian in the sense that he was born in the Hawaiian Islands and can "trace[ ] his ancestry to two members of the legislature of the Kingdom of Hawaii, prior to the Revolution of 1893. " He is a taxpayer and a qualified elector of the United States, the State of Hawaii, and the County of Hawaii. When Rice applied to vote in the 1996 election for the trustees of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs ("OHA"), however, his application was denied. Why? Because, according to a state statute, he was not Hawaiian enough.

The Constitutional Convention Of 1937: The Original Meaning Of The New Jurisprudential Deal, Kurt T. Lash

Law Faculty Publications

The paper traces the dramatic jurisprudential innovations of the New Deal Revolution, including the articulation of incorporation theory, the abandonment of judicial construction of state common law, and the ascension of textual originalism as the Court's method of constitutional interpretation. I argue that the New Deal Court transcended the political goals of the Roosevelt administration and attempted to restructure the nature of legitimate judicial review in a post-Lochner world. Acting, in effect, as a constitutional convention, the Court not only changed the nature of judicial review, it altered the shape of the Constitution in ways that cut across modern political …

University Of Richmond Law Review

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Against Constitutional Law (Populist Or Otherwise), Michael Mandel

University of Richmond Law Review

Mark Tushnet has written a great critique of constitutional judicial review. With his sure grasp of the scholarship, his commit- ment to the issues and the real people behind them, and his methodical, flawless reasoning, he has effectively blasted the theoretical foundations of judicial constitutional law to smithereens. As such, he has made a valuable contribution to legal scholarship that will remain so for a long time to come.

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 …

Market Power And Antitrust Issues In The Restructuring Of The Electric Industry, David L. Cruthirds

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

Dynegy is one of the country's leading energy merchants - formerly NGC Corporation and Natural Gas Clearinghouse.

Reanimator: Mark Tushnet And The Second Coming Of The Imperial Presidency, Neal Devins

University of Richmond Law Review

A world without judicial review? Not that long ago-when the Left fought tooth and nail to defend the legacy ofthe Warren and (much of the) Burger Courts-the thought of taking the Constitution away from the courts would have been horrific. Witness, for example, Edward Kennedy's depiction of "Robert Bork's America!' as "a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, [and] rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids." Bork's sin, of course, was embracing a kind of populist constitutional discourse, that is, the notion that the founders "banked …

Populist Natural Law (Reflections On Tushnet's "Thin Constitution"), Frank I. Michelman

University of Richmond Law Review

Constitutional review is the activity of measuring action choices of governments against a pre-existing set of publicly known or ascertainable, "higher" norms for the conduct of government. Anyone can do it: chief executives pondering vetoes or preparing state messages; legislators contemplating legal change; police chiefs reviewing department manuals; school board members debating curriculum guides; city planners routing highway expansions; citizens lobbying and pundits castigating any or all of the above; dinner partners talking politics; candidates running for office; voters turning out rascals. "American-style judicial review," let us say, is constitutional review conducted by a nonpopular, unelected, life-tenured body, whose decisions, …

Looking Sideways, Looking Backwards, Looking Forwards: Judicial Review Vs. Democracy In Comparative Perspective, Ran Hirschl

University of Richmond Law Review

For the [past] two centuries, the Constitution [has been] as central to American political culture as the New Testament was to medieval Europe. Just as Milton believed that "all wisdom is enfolded" within the pages of the Bible, all good Americans, from the National Rifle Association to the ACLU, have believed no less of this singular document.

Comparing Alternative Approaches About Congress's Role In Constitutional Law, Charles Tiefer

University of Richmond Law Review

Mark Tushnet's Taking the ConstitutionAway from the Courts presents many aspects of the theme expressed in its title. I find most interesting the aspect concerning Congress's role in constitutional law. I like this aspect because I spent almost two decades working on constitutional law in Congress, principally as the House of Representatives' Solicitor and Deputy General Counsel representing the House of Representatives in countless constitutional controversies, and I have written a good deal about it. Tushnet provides us with an alternative perspective from which we can view Congress both during that time and since. Tushnet's book is kind enough to …

Herbert Wechsler's Complaint And The Revival Of Grand Constitutional Theory, Keith E. Whittington

University of Richmond Law Review

In 1988, Mark Tushnet noted the "revival of grand theory in constitutional law." Tushnet was somewhat unusual in specifying the object of contemporary constitutional theory so precisely. As he noted, what had been revived in the late twentieth century was an "interest in comprehensive normative theories of constitutional law." There was relatively little broad concern with constitutionalism in this revival, but quite a lot of concern with justifying and elaborating the preferred constitutional decisions of the Supreme Court in specific cases. Having "just published a book on constitutional theory that I unsurprisingly but undoubtedly erroneously regard as the last word …

Response: Politics, National Identify, And The Thin Constitution, Mark Tushnet

University of Richmond Law Review

Any author would be pleased at having his or her work taken as seriously as mine has been by the contributors to this Symposium. As I wrote in Taking the ConstitutionAway from the Courts, my aim was not so much to place on the table a serious policy proposal-elimination of judicial review-but rather was to broaden a discussion about constitutionalism and judicial review that has been far too narrow. For a decade or more, constitutional theory and theorists have been overly concerned with questions about constitutional interpretation that are the legacy of controversies over the Warren Court's liberal activism. The …

Commerce Clause, Enforcement Clause, Or Neither? The Constitutionality Of The Violence Against Women Act In Brzonkala V. Morrison, Christine M. Devey

University of Richmond Law Review

On September 21, 1994, two men raped Christy Brzonkala in her dormitory room at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State Univer- sity("VirginiaTech"). Unfortunately,this kind of event is not a rare occurrence in the United States. "According to the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics ("BJS"), women are the victims of more than 4.5 million violent crimes each year. This alarming figure includes approximately 500,000 rapes or other sexual assaults." In light of these statistics, and "after four years of hearings, Congress enacted [the Violence Against Women Act of 1994 ("VAWA" or "the Act")], a comprehensive federal statute designed to …

Students Under Siege? Constitutional Considerations For Public Schools Concerned With School Safety, Jennifer L. Barnes

University of Richmond Law Review

Imagine the following scenario: The principal at River City High School receives a telephone call from an anonymous informant, notifying her that he had observed a knife in "Jimmy's" backpack, and indicated that he might also have access to a gun. The principal recalls that Jimmy is the student who has dyed his hair blue and who wanders the halls wearing a black trench coat and a T-shirt that reads "School Sucks," in violation of the school district's dress code. She checks Jimmy's file and discovers that he has been absent on numerous occasions during the school year and has …

Islamic And American Constitutional Law: Borrowing Possibilities Or A History Of Borrowing?, Azizah Y. Al-Hibri

Law Faculty Publications

Islam is commonly viewed in the West as being incompatible with democracy. It is also viewed as an "Oriental" religion that has spawned violence and encouraged human rights violations. Because of the historical interaction between the West and Islam, the United States has recently been supporting efforts to export its democratic principles and human rights values to Muslim countries. In this context, the question of constitutional borrowing gains special significance. To assess the possibilities of constitutional borrowing between Islamic countries and the United States, it is important to first discuss the historical relation between the two, as well as between …

Aggressive Newsgathering And The First Amendment, Erwin Chemerinsky, Robert Nagel, Robert O'Neil, Diane Zimmerman

University of Richmond Law Review Symposium

The University of Richmond School of Law sponsored the "Aggressive Newsgathering and the First Amendment." The symposium covered such topics as surreptitious newsgathering techniques, the constitutionality of recent proposed legislation regarding paparazzi, and the question of the appropriate dividing line, if any, between public and private life. The symposium featured a mix of scholars, journalist, lawyers, judges, and public figures, who discussed these issues in three sessions. Scholarly papers generated by the symposium were published in 33 U. Rich. L. Rev. 1143 (1999). The authors of those papers also participated in the symposium proceedings and they were:

Professor Erin Chemerinsky, …

The Government Of The Living-The Legacy Of The Dead, Jon C. Blue

University of Richmond Law Review

Akhil Amar has written a stunning book about what he calls "the high temple of our constitutional order"-the Bill of Rights. The temple metaphor is revealing, for it is evident throughout his book that Professor Amar views the Constitution as a sanctified structure, the use of which is to be determined by a holistic study of the original blueprints and the surviving comments of the long-dead architects. This characterization is complicated but not fundamentally changed by the fact that Amar's story is, as the subtitle of the book proclaims, one of "creation and reconstruction." The creation is that of the …

The Constitution As A Whole: A Partial Political Science Perspective, Mark A. Graber

University of Richmond Law Review

The Bill of Rights: Creationand Reconstruction ("The Bill of Rights")' is a professionally rewarding and disturbing masterpiece. The work is professionally rewarding because Professor Akhil Amar develops a meticulously detailed, historically sophisticated, and largely persuasive account of how the liberties set out in the Bill of Rights were originally understood and the original relationship between the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment. This is state of the art legal scholarship that will no doubt influence the way the next generation of constitutional lawyers and historians study fundamental constitutional rights. Professor Amar's book is professionally disturbing in part because, having …

The Concept Of Incorporation, Earl M. Maltz

University of Richmond Law Review

Akhil Amar's new book is by any standard a major contribution to the literature on the Bill of Rights. Amar skillfully combines historical research and legal analysis to give the reader a variety of fresh, important insights into the role that the first ten amendments have played in the evolution of the American constitutional system. Among the many innovative concepts in the book is Amar's treatment of the question of whether the Fourteenth Amendment was originally understood to incorporate the Bill of Rights. Rejecting the traditional dogmas of both incorporation and anti-incorporation theorists, he proposes a new theory-"refined incorporationism"-which focuses, …

Response: Continuing The Conversation, Akhil Reed Amar

University of Richmond Law Review

In The Bill of Rights: Creation and Reconstruction, I aimed to start a conversation, not end one. I am thus grateful for the generosity of the many fine scholars who in the preceding pages have graciously accepted the invitation to converse. And I am especially grateful for the extraordinary hospitality of the University of Richmond Law Review, which has kindly given a home to this conversation.

Two Movements Of A Constitutional Symphony: Akhil Amar’S The Bill Of Rights, Kurt T. Lash

Law Faculty Publications

A remarkable effort is afoot to justify American constitutional law at the end of the twentieth century. Ground zero in this effort is Yale Law School, and the principle architects are professors Akhil Reed Amar and Bruce Ackerman. Together, these scholars are calling for a reevaluation of commonly accepted doctrines with the goal of grounding judicial review and constitutional interpretation on the principles of popular sovereignty. What makes the effort remarkable is its emphasis on political morality, as opposed to the attainment of a particular doctrinal end. Take, for example, Amar's explanation of his purpose in writing The Bill of …

"High Crimes And Misdemeanors": Recovering The Intentions Of The Founders, Gary L. Mcdowell

Law Faculty Publications

Such serious charges by so many distinguished historians demand a careful consideration of what the Founders meant by "high Crimes and Misdemeanors": Were they only indictable crimes or did they include what one of the Framers called "political crimes and misdemeanors?" Were they offenses that a President would commit only in "the exercise of executive power" or did they also include a President's malfeasance committed in his private capacity? Were they subject to a reasonably fixed meaning or were they to be determined simply by the exercise of the "awful discretion" of those in Congress called upon to impeach and …

University Of Richmond Law Review

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Refined Incorporation And The Fourteenth Amendment, Richard L. Aynes

University of Richmond Law Review

In Professor Akhil Reed Amar's The Bill of Rights: Creation and Reconstruction, the voices of Founders, Federalists, Anti-Federalists, promoters of the Bill of Rights, contrarians of Barron v. Mayor of Baltimore, abolitionists, antislavery advocates, Fourteenth Amendment Republican Framers, ratifiers, and twentieth-century U.S. Supreme Court justices, all have their role. If they do not sing the same tune, at least their voices, under Amar's skillful direction, whether melody or harmony, alto or soprano, all harmonize to produce a clear song.

Akhil Amar And The Establishment Clause, Andrew Koppelman

University of Richmond Law Review

Does Akhil Amar's The Bill of Rights: Creation and Reconstruction ("The Bill of Rights") say anything about what the law should be today? The answer is not clear. The book is a study of the original meaning of the Bill of Rights and the transformation of that meaning by the Fourteenth Amendment. Its project is archaeological rather than prescriptive. It focuses on what the Constitution meant in 1791 and in 1866, not what it means now. Amar acknowledges that he has "merely set the scene" for an investigation into what impact twentieth-century (textual and other) developments have had on Constitutional …

Establishing A Pattern: An Analysis Of The Supreme Court's Establishment Clause Jurisprudence, Lisa Langendorfer

University of Richmond Law Review

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution reads in part, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." These two phrases are known as the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause, respectively, and each plays a distinct part in determining the role and status of religion in American society. The Free Exercise Clause guarantees freedom of religious expression to the individual, while the Establishment Clause prohibits the government from involving itself in religious affairs and prevents religious officials from exerting improper influence over the government.

Preface, John P. Cunningham

University of Richmond Law Review

The University of Richmond Law Review is extremely pleased to present this special issue dedicated to Professor Akhil Reed Amar's The Bill of Rights: Creation and Reconstruction. The purpose of the issue is to celebrate the groundbreaking nature of Professor Amar's contemporary text by providing a collection of eleven scholarly commentaries in which some of the finest constitutional jurists in the United States react to the book. The commentators each offer a unique perspective on the dynamic text, utilizing legal, judicial, historical, philosophical, and even esoteric influences to analyze its contents. In an eloquent response to his academic peers, Continuing …

Two Movements Of A Constitutional Symphony: Akhil Reed Amar's The Bill Of Rights, Kurt T. Lash

University of Richmond Law Review

A remarkable effort is afoot to justify American constitutional law at the end of the twentieth century. Ground zero in this effort is Yale Law School, and the principle architects are professors Akhil Reed Amar and Bruce Ackerman. Together, these scholars are calling for a reevaluation of commonly accepted doctrines with the goal of grounding judicial review and constitutional interpretation on the principles of popular sovereignty. What makes the effort remarkable is its emphasis on political morality, as opposed to the attainment of a particular doctrinal end. Take, for example, Amar's explanation of his purpose in writing The Bill of …

The Original Understanding Of The Seventh Amendment Right To Jury Trial, Stanton D. Krauss

University of Richmond Law Review

I ought to be very angry with my friend Akhil Amar. His new book, The Bill of Rights: Creation and Reconstruction, strengthens, develops, and popularizes his strikingly original claim that the meaning of our Bill of Rights must be sought in the understanding of the people who enacted the Fourteenth Amendment, rather than that of James Madison and his contemporaries. If Akhil carries the day on this question-and I find his arguments quite powerful, my ongoing research into the original meaning of the Bill will be of interest only to antiquarians.