Constitutional Law Commons^™

Shelby County And The Illusion Of Minimalism, Richard L. Hasen

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

The Failure Of Originalism In Preserving Constitutional Rights To Civil Jury Trial, Renée Lettow Lerner

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

The Federal Bill of Rights and state constitutions rely heavily on procedural protections, especially jury rights. Supporters of these rights at the founding praised the jury in extravagant terms, and many members of the legal profession continue to do so today. Yet civil and criminal jury trials are vanishing in the United States. The disappearance of the civil jury presents a puzzle because the Seventh Amendment and state constitutional rights require that civil jury trial be “preserved” or “remain inviolate.”

Scholarship on the history of constitutional rights to civil jury trial has tended to focus exclusively on the Seventh Amendment, …

Marriage Equality In State And Nation, Anthony Michael Kreis

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

Binary Searches And The Central Meaning Of The Fourth Amendment, Lawrence Rosenthal

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

Professional Licenses And Substantive Due Process: Can States Compel Physicians To Provide Their Services, Carolyn R. Cody

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

The Jury As A Political Institution: An Internal Perspective, Robert P. Burns

William & Mary Law Review

In this Essay, I will briefly describe some of the more obvious ways in which the jury has been considered a political institution. I will then discuss the senses in which we can understand the term “political” in the context of the American jury trial. I will describe the senses in which Hannah Arendt, perhaps the most important political philosopher of the twentieth century, tried to distinguish between “the political” and the “the legal” and the limitations of any such distinction. I will then turn to the heart of this Essay, a description of the ways in which the American …

Blackstone's Curse: The Fall Of The Criminal, Civil, And Grand Juries And The Rise Of The Executive, The Legislature, The Judiciary, And The States, Suja A. Thomas

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Juries As Regulators Of Last Resort, Stephan Landsman

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Embedded Experts On Real Juries: A Delicate Balance, Shari Seidman Diamond, Mary R. Rose, Beth Murphy

William & Mary Law Review

“Experts” appear in the modern American courtroom on the jury as well as in the witness box, posing a dilemma for the legal system by offering a potentially valuable resource and an uncontrolled source of influence. Courts give ambiguous guidance to jurors on how they should handle their expertise in the deliberation room. On the one hand, jurors are told that they should “decide what the facts are from the evidence presented here in court.” By direct implication, then, jurors should not use outside information to evaluate the evidence. Jurors are also told, however, that they should “consider all of …

Opening Remarks, Akhil Reed Amar

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Jury Ignorance And Political Ignorance, Ilya Somin

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Second-Order Diversity Revisited, Jeffrey Abramson

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Restoring The Civil Jury's Role In The Structure Of Our Government, Sheldon Whitehouse

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Political Decision Making By Informed Juries, William E. Nelson

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Introduction: The Civil Jury As A Political Institution, Jason M. Solomon, Paula Hannaford-Agor

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Diversity And The Civil Jury, Christina S. Carbone, Victoria C. Plaut

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Fiduciary Principles And The Jury, Ethan J. Leib, Michael Serota, David L. Ponet

William & Mary Law Review

This Essay argues that because jurors exercise state authority with wide discretion over the legal and practical interests of other citizens, and because citizens repose trust and remain vulnerable to jury and juror decisions, juries and jurors share important similarities with traditional fiduciary actors such as doctors, lawyers, and corporate directors and boards. The paradigmatic fiduciary duties—those of loyalty and care—therefore provide useful benchmarks for evaluating and guiding jurors in their decisionmaking role. A sui generis public fiduciary duty of deliberative engagement also has applications in considering the obligations of jurors. This framework confirms much of what we know about …

Congress's (Limited) Power To Represent Itself In Court, Tara Leigh Grove, Neal Devins

Faculty Publications

Scholars and jurists have long assumed that, when the executive branch declines to defend a federal statute, Congress may intervene in federal court to defend the law. When invalidating the Defense of Marriage Act, for example, no Supreme Court Justice challenged the authority of the House of Representatives to defend federal laws in at least some circumstances. At the same time, in recent litigation over the Fast and Furious gun-running case, the Department of Justice asserted that the House could not go to court to enforce a subpoena against the executive. In this Article, we seek to challenge both claims. …

The Conflict Of Visions In Nfib V. Sebelius, Jonathan H. Adler

Faculty Publications

In 2010, few anticipated the fate of healthcare reform would rest with the Supreme Court. Yet National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius [hereinafter NFIB] emerged as a watershed case that could remake the constitutional landscape. NFIB presented a conflict between two constitutional visions of federal power and the role of the courts in policing such limits--an unconstrained vision, under which limits on federal power are enforced primarily through the political process, and a constrained vision, under which constitutional limits on federal power are enforced by the courts. The contrasting views of the constitutionality of the individual mandate and …

On Candor, Free Enterprise Fund, And The Theory Of The Unitary Executive, Michael J. Gerhardt

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

Calming Unsettled Waters: A Proposal For Navigating The Tenuous Power Divide Between The Federal Courts And The Uspto Under The American Invents Act, William Rose

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

Reproductive Injustice In The New Millennium, Sybil Shainwald

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

A reexamination of the history of abortion law in the United States is essential to an understanding of recent changes. Part I of this Article will provide a synopsis of the early Anglo-American view of abortion at common law, the early anti-abortion statutes, and the state of abortion during the early twentieth century. Part II will discuss the liberalization of abortion laws, as well as the ways in which the law pertaining to a woman’s right to choose has evolved since 1973. Finally, Part III will analyze the constitutionality of the current wave of restrictions.

The Resilience Of Property, Lynda L. Butler

Faculty Publications

Resilience is essential to the ability of property to face transforming social and environmental change. For centuries, property has responded to such change through a dialectical process that identifies emerging disciplinary perspectives and debates conflicting values and norms. This dialectic promotes the resilience of property, allowing it to adapt to changing conditions and needs. Today the mainstream economic theory dominating common law property is progressively being intertwined with constitutionally protected property, undermining its long-term resilience. The coupling of the economic vision of ordinary property with constitutional property embeds the assumptions, choices, and values of the economic theory into both realms …

Factual Precedents, Allison Orr Larsen

Faculty Publications

Lawyers and judges speak to each other in a language of precedents—decisions from cases that have come before. The most persuasive precedent to cite, of course, is an on-point decision of the U.S. Supreme Court. But Supreme Court opinions are changing. They contain more factual claims about the world than ever before, and those claims are now rich with empirical data. This Supreme Court factfinding is also highly accessible; fast digital research leads directly to factual language in old cases that is perfect for arguments in new ones. An unacknowledged consequence of all this is the rise of what I …

What Matters More: A Day In Jail Or A Criminal Conviction?, John P. Gross

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

The Eighth Amendment As A Warrant Against Undeserved Punishment, Scott W. Howe

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

Should the Eighth Amendment prohibit all undeserved criminal convictions and punishments? There are grounds to argue that it must. Correlation between the level of deserts of the accused and the severity of the sanction imposed represents the very idea of justice to most of us. We want to believe that those branded as criminals deserve blame for their conduct and that they deserve all of the punishment they receive. A deserts limitation is also key to explaining the decisions in which the Supreme Court has rejected convictions or punishments as disproportional, including several major rulings in the new millennium. Yet, …

Power And Responsibility: Fourth Amendment Limits On The Use Of Molecular Scanners, Paul Wolfgramm Jr.

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

The Non-Redelegation Doctrine, F. Andrew Hesisck, Carissa Byrne Hessick

William & Mary Law Review

In United States v. Booker, the Court remedied a constitutional defect in the federal sentencing scheme by rendering advisory the then-binding sentencing guidelines promulgated by the U.S. Sentencing Commission. One important but overlooked consequence of this decision is that it redelegated the power to set sentencing policy from the Sentencing Commission to federal judges. District courts now may sentence based on their own policy views instead of being bound by the policy determinations rendered by the Commission.

This Article argues that, when faced with a decision that implicates an unambiguous delegation, the courts should not redelegate unless authorized by Congress …

Statutory Interpretation As Constestatory Democracy, Glen Staszewski

William & Mary Law Review

This Article provides a novel solution to the countermajoritarian difficulty in statutory interpretation by applying recent insights from civic republican theory to the adjudication of statutory disputes in the modern regulatory state. From a republican perspective, freedom consists of the absence of the potential for arbitrary domination, and democracy should therefore include both electoral and contestatory dimensions. The Article argues that statutory interpretation in the modern regulatory state is best understood as a mechanism of contestatory democracy. It develops this conception of statutory interpretation by considering the distinct roles of legislatures, administrative agencies, and courts in making and implementing the …

The Federal Medical Loss Ratio: A Permissible Federal Regulation Or An Encroachment On State Power?, Meghan S. Stubblebine

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.