Constitutional Law Commons^™

We Some Of The People: Akhil Reed Amor And The Original Intent Of The Bill Of Rights, Wythe Holt

University of Richmond Law Review

The Leninist model of working-class consciousness and that of the Commons/Perlman progressive school of labor economists have much in common. Both regard the intellectual as playing a crucial role in changing the workers' consciousness.

"No Word Is An Island": Textualism And Aesthetics In Akhil Reed Amar's The Bill Of Rights, Robert Spoo

University of Richmond Law Review

Akhil Reed Amar's The Bill of Rights: Creation and Reconstruction ("The Bill of Rights") probes three defining moments of American constitutional history-two of them in the contested past and one in the restless present. The first two are the performative acts of framing, in 1789 and 1868, respectively, of the initial ten amendments and of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. For Amar, history is too multivalent, and the Framers' text too loftily open-textured, for simple answers to the vexed question of incorporation. The Bill of Rights is, in one of Amar's controlling metaphors, an "alloy" of majoritarian …

The Bill Of Rights As An Exclamation Point, Gary Lawson

University of Richmond Law Review

Akhil Amar's The Bill of Rights: Creation and Reconstruction ("The Bill of Rights") is one of the best law books of the twentieth century. That is not surprising, as it grows out of two of the best law review articles of the twentieth century and was written by one of the century's premier legal scholars. I have been an unabashed Akhil Amar fan ever since our overlapping law school days more than fifteen years ago, and I am thrilled to have my perspicacity and good judgment vindicated by the publication of this remarkable work.

The Constitutionality Of Censure, Michael J. Gerhardt

University of Richmond Law Review

It has become commonplace for commentators to suggest that, in the aftermath of the Senate's acquittal of President William Jefferson Clinton, there have been only losers and no real winners. Whether this is true generally is a difficult question to which I will not hazard an answer. It is beyond question, however, that one device that lost ground as a result of the storm of impeachment was censure. That censure has taken a severe beating is unfortunate because so much of the beating was based on misguided interpretations of, or arguments about, the Constitution.

"The Federal Courts": Constituting And Changing The Topic, Judith Resnik

University of Richmond Law Review

I am honored to write the foreword to this issue of the University of Richmond Law Review dedicated to "The Federal Courts." The editors have asked me to address the question of the role of the federal judiciary today. No issue is more pressing within federal judicial circles. The Congress has, in the last few years, enacted several jurisdictional statutes, some that expand' and others that limit the authority of the federal courts, thereby raising questions about congressional powers over federal jurisdiction. The shape of the appellate structure of the federal courts is now under review pursuant to the congressionally-chartered …

The Declaration Of Independence In Constitutional Interpretation: A Selective History And Analysis, Charles H. Cosgrove

University of Richmond Law Review

In 1845, antislavery constitutionalist Lysander Spooner argued that the Declaration of Independence was originally a legal constitution with a direct bearing on how one ought to interpret the status of slavery under the Constitution of 1787. In 1889, the congressional act establishing the states of North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Washington required that their state constitutions "not be repugnant to the Constitution of the United States and the Declaration of Independence," as if the two documents were of a piece. In 1995, attorney Christopher Darden argued to the jury in the O.J. Simpson criminal trial that slain victims Nicole …

Annual Survey Of Virginia Law: Constitutional Law, Mark J. Yeager

University of Richmond Law Review

On February 27, 1998, the Supreme Court of Virginia rendered its decision in Town of Madison v. Ford. The court invalidated a town zoning ordinance which had been enacted in 1972. This extreme result was due to an insufficiency in the town council's minutes at the meeting when the ordinance in question was enacted. The minutes did not state the names of all the members present nor how they voted. The court, therefore, found that the ordinance was enacted in derogation of the provisions of article VII, section 7 of the Constitution of Virginia ("section 7").

University Of Richmond Law Review

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Power And The Subject Of Religion, Kurt T. Lash

Law Faculty Publications

Under the First Amendment, "Congress shall make no laws respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Nevertheless, congressional actors have on occasion enacted laws that expressly make religion the subject of legislation. Many scholars justify these laws on the grounds that Congress at the time of the Founding had an implied power to legislate on religion if necessary and proper to an enumerated end.

Professor Lash argues that the "implied power" theory cannot withstand historical scrutiny. Whatever "implied power" arguments may have emanated from the original Constitution, those arguments were foreclosed by the adoption of the …

The Status Of Constitutional Religious Liberty At The End Of The Millennium, Kurt T. Lash

Law Faculty Publications

I have the privilege of introducing the 1998 Bums Lecture Symposium- Religious Liberty in the Next Millennium: Should We Amend the Religion Clauses of the United States Constitution? My role in this Symposium is to acquaint you with the religion clauses of the Constitution- where they came from- where they've been- and where they seem to be today. Our Symposium contributors, Professors Kent Greenawalt and Robert George will discuss just where they think the religion clauses should go in the future.

What Have You Done For Me Lately? Constitutional Limitations On State Taxation Of Trusts, Bradley E.S. Fogel

University of Richmond Law Review

Suppose a resident of New Jersey creates an irrevocable inter vivos trust. The settlor subsequently dies while a resident of New Jersey. Pursuant to the terms of her will, which is probated in New Jersey, her entire estate is paid to the trust. After a few years, one of the two trustees is a New York resident, the other is a resident of Connecticut. The trust's assets, intangibles such as stock in Delaware corporations, are held by the New York trustee in New York. All of the income beneficiaries of the trust reside in New York or Connecticut.

Civilizing Religion, Kurt T. Lash

Law Faculty Publications

Is it appropriate to restrict abortion at any stage in pregnancy on the ground that human life is sacred? Should the public square be open to biblical arguments against homosexuality? Or, to frame the issue in a more scholarly fashion: What role may religious arguments play, if any, either in public debate about what political choices to make or as the private basis of a political choice? In his recent book, Religion in Politics: Constitutional and Moral Perspectives, Michael Perry addresses these questions as a matter of constitutional law and political morality. Perry has been down this road before, most …

Foreign Policy: Can The President Act Alone?Gaps And Conflicts In The Constitutional Grants Of Power, Dana C. Makielski

Richmond Journal of Law and the Public Interest

The Framers did not intend the Constitution to be an all-inclusive "bill of lading," for we cannot forget John Marshall's famous admonition "that it is a constitution we are expounding."' Nonetheless, there are many large gaps and conflicts in the allocation of power among the three branches, most in the area of foreign relations, that have caused serious problems for our nation's leaders and constitutional scholars over the past two centuries. How have our presidents reacted? Certainly the President can and has acted on his own in negotiating, enacting, and implementing foreign policy, despite the lack of any express executive …

Foreign Policy: Can The President Act Alone?Gaps And Conflicts In The Constitutional Grants Of Power, Dana C. Makielski

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

The Framers did not intend the Constitution to be an all-inclusive "bill of lading," for we cannot forget John Marshall's famous admonition "that it is a constitution we are expounding."' Nonetheless, there are many large gaps and conflicts in the allocation of power among the three branches, most in the area of foreign relations, that have caused serious problems for our nation's leaders and constitutional scholars over the past two centuries. How have our presidents reacted? Certainly the President can and has acted on his own in negotiating, enacting, and implementing foreign policy, despite the lack of any express executive …

Getting It Right: Uncertainty And Error In The New Disparate Treatment Paradigm, Henry L. Chambers, Jr.

Law Faculty Publications

This Article will explore whether the Court is getting it right or merely getting it done in the disparate treatment context. Part II of this Article will present the contradictory forces underlying getting it done and getting it right in the civil justice system in general, and in employment discrimination litigation in particular. Part III will explore the orthodoxy of disparate treatment law as it stands after Hicks. Part IV will examine the effect of abandoning the paradigm that proof of falsity is proof of intentional discrimination. Part V will offer suggestions on what the Court can do to make …

Separation Of Powers And The 1995-1996 Budget Impasse, Henry L. Chambers, Jr.

Law Faculty Publications

Separation of powers doctrine will have implications for any budget regime which contemplates explicit power sharing. This Article examines the possible separation of power pitfalls which threaten to undermine the emergence of a relatively healthy new budget regime and the creative mechanisms necessary to make that regime work. The Constitution does not provide many explicit instructions regarding the federal budgeting process. Thus, whether a particular budget arrangement is a good one requires a largely political analysis. Whether a particular budget arrangement is constitutional must be answered by the Supreme Court. On what basis the Court should make such a decision, …

Takings In The Court Of Federal Claims: Does The Court Make Takings Policy In Hage?, Danielle M. Stager

University of Richmond Law Review

In the eleven western states, almost half of the land is federally owned and a large percentage of that federal land is used for grazing privately-owned domestic livestock. The Department of the Interior estimates that permitted grazing occurs on thirty-six percent of federal land, but this percentage is much higher in the areas containing more federal rangeland. In 1990, the eleven western states had approximately seventeen million beef cattle and 102,800 beef producers. Roughly eighteen percent of those beef producers had federal grazing permits, but in some states that percentage was much higher. For example, eighty-eight percent of the cattle …

The Second Adoption Of The Establishment Clause: The Rise Of The Non-Establishment Principle, Kurt T. Lash

Law Faculty Publications

In the 70 years since Gitlow first incorporated the First Amendment protections of speech and press against the states, the Establishment Clause has been a boon to incorporation's enemies and an embarrassment to its friends. Scholars who make the historical case for general incorporation either ignore, or carefully distinguish, the case of the Establishment Clause. Anti-incorporationists, on the other hand, use the case against incorporation of the Establishment Clause as their cause celebre. In fact, so wonderfully ambiguous is the history surrounding this opening line of the Bill of Rights that originalists use it to attack incorporation, and nonoriginalists use …

United States V. National Treasury Employees Union And The Constitutionality Of The Honoraria Ban: Protecting The First Amendment Rights Of Public Employees, Judy M. Lin

University of Richmond Law Review

During the 1980s, government ethics were brought into the spotlight as the public's confidence in the integrity of government officials eroded. In an attempt to curb actual and perceived improprieties by government employees, and to reinforce the standards of integrity within the federal government, President Bush signed into law the Ethics Reform Act of 1989.

Rejecting Conventional Wisdom: Federalist Ambivalence In The Framing And Implementation Of Article V, Kurt T. Lash

Law Faculty Publications

In 1787, the idea of placing an amending provision in a constitution was uncontroversial. Popular sovereignty was an assumed doctrine in the colonies; the people retained the unalienable right "to alter or abolish" their system of government whenever they so pleased. How this unquestionable right was to be incorporated into the new federal Constitution, however, was another matter. The delegates who faced each other at Philadelphia had very different views about which body should be entrusted with the power to propose amendments, when that power should be used, and how that power should be defined.

Article V, like the rest …

The Second Adoption Of The Free Exercise Clause: Religious Exemptions Under The Fourteenth Amendment, Kurt T. Lash

Law Faculty Publications

This Article explores the proposition that the Free Exercise Clause was adopted a second time through its incorporation into the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and that the scope of the new Free Exercise Clause was intended to include protections un-anticipated at the Founding. Contrary to Jeffersonian notions of separate spheres, the nation by the time of Reconstruction had experienced decades of clashes resulting from the overlapping concerns of religion and government. In particular, the suppression of slave religion called into question the government's power to interfere, even indirectly, with legitimate religious exercise. Accordingly, the Privileges or …

The Right To Religion-Based Exemptions In Early America: The Case Of Conscientious Objectors To Conscription, Ellis M. West

Political Science Faculty Publications

One of the more controversial decisions handed down by the Supreme Court in recent years was its decision in the case of Employment Division, Oregon v. Smith, which raised the basic issue of whether the free exercise clause of the First Amendment guarantees a right to religion-based exemptions, i.e., whether it gives persons and groups a prima facie right to be exempt from having to obey valid laws when they have religious reasons for noncompliance. More specifically, in Smith, two Native Americans claimed that their prosecution for using an illegal drug, peyote, was precluded by the free exercise …

The Tribunal In Albania, John Paul Jones

Law Faculty Publications

Professor Jones explains and critiques "The Organization of Justice and the Constitutional Court," the1992 amendments to Albania's provisional constitution that established the nation's post-revolution judicial system.

Due Process In Death Penalty Commutations: Life, Liberty, And The Pursuit Of Clemency, Daniel T. Kobil

University of Richmond Law Review

The idea of the last-minute reprieve granted by a distant, unknowable dispenser of mercy to a man condemned to death has a powerful hold on our imaginations. Fyodor Dostoevsky's eleventh hour pardon by the czar in many ways shaped his literary career. The scene of the haunted Death Row prisoner who awaits word from the governor as a ticking clock punctuates his final hours is a stock vignette of Hollywood crime films. Anyone who has ever seized on the slimmest hope, whose fate has been committed to the hands of another - virtually all of us - can identify with …

The Role Of State Constitutions In An Era Of Big Government, Stanley Mosk

University of Richmond Law Review

This is a speech delivered by The Honorable Stanley Mosk, Justice of the Supreme Court of California,at the T.C. Williams School of Law's eighth annual Emroch Lecture. Among his many achievements, Justice Mosk has authored some of California's most constructive legislative proposals in the crime and law enforcement fields, including the measure creating the Commission on Peace Officers Standards and Training.

Montana Fight Over Women's Rights, Carl W. Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

Report of abortion protests that took place in various locations around Montana.

Understanding "Rights" And Bills Of Rights, Albert P. Blaustein, Carol Tenney

University of Richmond Law Review

Scholars hold that there are forty to fifty distinct human rights. History teaches that they should be constitutionally enshrined. In this modern era when constitution-making is multiplying, drafters of bills of rights must now determine questions of formulation and location. How should these forty to fifty distinct human rights be classified; where in these constitutions should these rights be recited?

The Threat Of A Second Constitutional Convention: Patrick Henry's Lasting Legacy, Jeffery K. Mitchell

University of Richmond Law Review

The Bill of Rights secured the individual freedoms that constitute the mainstay of American liberty. The Framers of the Constitution did not include these vital rights in the original version of the document. In fact, the first ten amendments were proposed by Congress to secure ratification of the Constitution and, more importantly, to prevent a second constitutional convention.

Virginia And The Ratification Of The Bill Of Rights, 1789-1791, J. Gordon Hylton

University of Richmond Law Review

Historians and constitutional scholars have paid scant attention to the process by which the states ratified the Bill of Rights. The states' ratifying conventions of 1787 and 1788 have been examined in great detail, as have the debates of the first Congress which led to the presentation of the Bill of Rights to the states. Scholars, however, have treated the ratification of the first ten amendments as little more than an historical formality. Why more than two full years passed between the Congressional adoption of the proposed amendments and the approval by the requisite number of states has never been …

Reasonable Articulable Suspicion - The Demise Of Terry V. Ohio And Individualized Suspicion, Esther Jeanette Windmueller

University of Richmond Law Review

The plethora of law review articles and cases on search and seizure demonstrates the confusion and frustration in fourth amendment stop-and-frisk jurisprudence. The fourth amendment to the Constitution guarantees that persons will be free of "unreasonable searches and seizures . . . and no Warrants shall issue but upon probable cause." A "stop-and-frisk" is a warrantless detention and search of a person by a police officer to investigate for unlawfulness. Although the United States Supreme Court has issued many investigative stop decisions, the Court has failed to promulgate a coherent and practical stop-and-frisk procedure for law enforcement personnel to follow. …