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BYU Law Review

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Articles 31 - 60 of 358

Full-Text Articles in Constitutional Law

The Federalist And The Fourteenth Amendment — Publius In Antebellum Public Debate 1788–1860, Kurt T. Lash Jan 2023

The Federalist And The Fourteenth Amendment — Publius In Antebellum Public Debate 1788–1860, Kurt T. Lash

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.


Publius’S Protectors Of Liberty: A Still Important Role For States, Adam Reed Moore Jan 2023

Publius’S Protectors Of Liberty: A Still Important Role For States, Adam Reed Moore

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.


The Constitutional Model Of Mootness, Tyler B. Lindley Jan 2023

The Constitutional Model Of Mootness, Tyler B. Lindley

BYU Law Review

Article III limits the federal courts to deciding cases and controversies, and this limitation has given rise to the black-letter law of standing, ripeness, and mootness. But the law of mootness presents a puzzle: Over time, the Court has recognized various "exceptions" to ordinary mootness rules, allowing federal courts to hear arguably moot cases. On one hand, the Court consistently asserts that mootness doctrine, including its exceptions, is compelled by the original understanding of Article III. On the other hand, the scholarly consensus is that these exceptions are logically inconsistent with the Court s claims about Article III and that …


Rights Without A Remedy: Detained Immigrants And Unlawful Conditions Of Confinement, Brandon Galli-Graves Jan 2023

Rights Without A Remedy: Detained Immigrants And Unlawful Conditions Of Confinement, Brandon Galli-Graves

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.


Frederick Douglass And The Original Originalists, Bradley Rebeiro Jan 2023

Frederick Douglass And The Original Originalists, Bradley Rebeiro

BYU Law Review

Constitutional scholars incessantly grapple over the significance of the Constitution’s original meaning. More specifically, they are preoccupied with, on the one hand, what that meaning is (if such meaning exists) and, on the other hand, the exact nature of that meaning’s authority (if any) over the Constitution and its interpreters. But this debate is hardly novel. In fact, one of the most compelling voices in U.S. history was immersed in similar debates and, out of the constitutional sparring of his time, forged an arresting theory of constitutional interpretation. Frederick Douglass, once a fierce opponent of the U.S. Constitution, evolved into …


The Congruent Constitution (Part Two): Reverse Incorporation, Jay S. Bybee Dec 2022

The Congruent Constitution (Part Two): Reverse Incorporation, Jay S. Bybee

BYU Law Review

In Bolling v. Sharpe (1954), a companion case to Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court thought it “unthinkable” that the Equal Protection Clause would not apply to the federal government as well as the states and declared it “reverse incorporated” through the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. The Equal Protection Clause is the most familiar example of reverse incorporation, but it is neither the first nor the only provision of the Constitution that, by its terms, applies to the states alone, but which the Supreme Court has made applicable to the federal government through the Due …


The Congruent Constitution (Part One): Incorporation, Jay S. Bybee Nov 2022

The Congruent Constitution (Part One): Incorporation, Jay S. Bybee

BYU Law Review

In Barron v. Mayor of Baltimore (1833), the Supreme Court held that the Bill of Rights applied to the federal government alone. Following the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, the Supreme Court reconsidered the rule of Barron. The Court first reaffirmed the rule of Barron and held that neither the Privileges or Immunities Clause nor the Due Process Clause made the Bill of Rights applicable to the states. It then entered a period of “absorption,” where the Court held that the Due Process Clause guaranteed some minimal rights found in the Bill of Rights, but not necessarily the …


The Realities Of Takings Litigation, Dave Owen Oct 2022

The Realities Of Takings Litigation, Dave Owen

BYU Law Review

This Article presents an empirical study of takings litigation against the United States. It reviews the cohort of takings cases filed against the federal government between 2000 and 2014, tracing each case from filing through final disposition. The result is a picture of takings litigation that is at odds with much of the conventional wisdom of the field. That conventional wisdom suggests that most takings cases will involve alleged regulatory takings; that the most intellectually challenging issues will arise within the field of regulatory takings; and, more broadly, that takings litigation will play an important role in the United States' …


Why The President Should Remain Commander In Chief Of The D.C. National Guard, Christopher F. Melling Oct 2022

Why The President Should Remain Commander In Chief Of The D.C. National Guard, Christopher F. Melling

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.


Supreme Court Legitimacy: A Turn To Constitutional Practice, Thomas G. Donnelly Jun 2022

Supreme Court Legitimacy: A Turn To Constitutional Practice, Thomas G. Donnelly

BYU Law Review

Commentators offer the Justices consistent—if unsolicited—advice: tend to the Supreme Court’s institutional legitimacy. However, to say this—without saying more—is to say very little. Of course, constitutional theorists already wrestle with the meaning of legitimacy—its contours, its complexity, and its influence on the Justices. Political scientists debate the relationship between institutional concerns and judicial behavior. At the same time, previous scholars largely ignore issues of constitutional practice. This is a mistake. In this Article, I take up this neglected topic. To that end, I detail how the individual Justice might work to bolster the Court’s legitimacy in concrete cases. Part of …


Separated At Baptism: What The Mortara Case Can Teach Us About The Rejection Of Natural Justice By Integralists And Progressives, Francis J. Beckwith Jun 2022

Separated At Baptism: What The Mortara Case Can Teach Us About The Rejection Of Natural Justice By Integralists And Progressives, Francis J. Beckwith

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.


Praying For America: The Anti-Theocracy And Equal Status Principles Of The Free Exercise, Equal Protection And Establishment Clauses, Corey Brettschneider Jun 2022

Praying For America: The Anti-Theocracy And Equal Status Principles Of The Free Exercise, Equal Protection And Establishment Clauses, Corey Brettschneider

BYU Law Review

In this essay I argue that the Constitution’s Equal Protection, Establishment, and Free Exercise Clauses share common principled limits on the role that religion can play in public life. Specifically, drawing on the free-exercise case of Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. City of Hialeah, the equal protection case of Romer v. Evans, and the establishment clause case of Town of Greece v. Galloway, I propose two principles to describe the proper place of religious justification as a basis for law. The first requirement is that in addition to any religious reasons for laws, the state must have …


Political Partisanship And Sincere Religious Conviction, Mark Satta Jun 2022

Political Partisanship And Sincere Religious Conviction, Mark Satta

BYU Law Review

In order for a religious conviction to receive protection under the First Amendment or the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), it must be a sincere religious conviction. Some critics of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby have suggested that the plaintiffs in that case and in related cases were motivated more by political ideology than by sincere religious conviction. The remedy, they argue, is for courts to be quicker to scrutinize claims of religious sincerity. In this Article, I consider another possibility—namely, that current sociopolitical partisanship in the United States has eroded a clear distinction between political …


Back To The Sources? What’S Clear And Not So Clear About The Original Intent Of The First Amendment, John Witte Jr. Jun 2022

Back To The Sources? What’S Clear And Not So Clear About The Original Intent Of The First Amendment, John Witte Jr.

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.


Redefining The Boundary Between Appropriation And Regulation, Jessica L. Asbridge May 2022

Redefining The Boundary Between Appropriation And Regulation, Jessica L. Asbridge

BYU Law Review

The U.S. Supreme Court distinguishes between appropriations and regulations of property rights when interpreting the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause. While appropriations of any kind require just compensation to survive constitutional scrutiny, whether non-appropriative laws regulating property rights require compensation is determined on an ad hoc basis, guided by concerns of fairness and justness. In Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, the Court reaffirmed its prior precedent establishing the physical takings doctrine, providing that an appropriation is any government action that results in a physical invasion of an owner’s real property and a taking of the owner’s right to exclude. The Court …


Linguistic Estoppel: A Custodial Interrogation Subject’S Reliance On Traditional Language Customs When Facing Unknown Expectations For Legally Efficacious Speech, Taylor J. Smith Aug 2021

Linguistic Estoppel: A Custodial Interrogation Subject’S Reliance On Traditional Language Customs When Facing Unknown Expectations For Legally Efficacious Speech, Taylor J. Smith

BYU Law Review

For various reasons, speakers often communicate indirectly, hiding their words’ true meaning beneath an apparent surface meaning. For example, a woman trying to brush off her co-worker’s date invitation might respond, “I have to prepare for a presentation tomorrow.” While the words’ surface meaning doesn’t relate to the date invitation, the hearer usually understands the underlying message—that is to say, the words’ function differs from their form. However, because the law’s language ideology requires directness and surface-level meaning, lay-speaking interrogation subjects often have difficulty effectively invoking their Miranda rights. Because the legal system’s search for determinacy often results in reliance …


Christian Accounts Of Religious Liberty: Two Views Of Conscience, Joel Harrison Jun 2021

Christian Accounts Of Religious Liberty: Two Views Of Conscience, Joel Harrison

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.


Catholicism, Liberalism, And Populism, Andrea Pin, Luca P. Vanoni Jun 2021

Catholicism, Liberalism, And Populism, Andrea Pin, Luca P. Vanoni

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.


Dignity And Discrimination, Frederick Mark Gedicks Apr 2021

Dignity And Discrimination, Frederick Mark Gedicks

BYU Law Review

Delivered as the Dignity in Law Symposium keynote address, this essay surveys uses of dignity in U.S. constitutional law, with a focus on conflicts between the dignities attached to citizenship and religious conscience. Parts I and II discuss dignity as state sovereignty and hierarchical status. Part III examines the collision of dignities in the Masterpiece Cakeshop decision. Part IV argues that attention to the public or private nature of the site where religious accommodation is demanded clarifies when accommodation is appropriate, using a house of worship and a government office as illustration s. Part V lists other sites of accommodation …


Compelling Suspects To Unlock Their Phones: Recommendations For Prosecutors And Law Enforcement, Carissa A. Uresk Mar 2021

Compelling Suspects To Unlock Their Phones: Recommendations For Prosecutors And Law Enforcement, Carissa A. Uresk

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.


False Positivism: The Failure Of The Newest Originalism, Guha Krishnamurthi Mar 2021

False Positivism: The Failure Of The Newest Originalism, Guha Krishnamurthi

BYU Law Review

Originalism is a juggernaut. It pervades our constitutional discourse and it has become a fort and font of constitutional legitimacy. A number of our most prominent jurists and legal thinkers are self-described originalists and, in myriad constitutional cases, originalist argumentation demands our serious attention. Notwithstanding, originalists have struggled to forge any meaningful consensus on the most foundational issues. Among the serious problems, originalist theories have each struggled to navigate between preserving core features and fixed stars of our law and remaining a distinctive theory with fidelity to "original meaning."The newest effort in this struggle is the so called "positive" turn …


State Enforcement In A Polycentric World, David A. Hyman, William E. Kovacic Sep 2020

State Enforcement In A Polycentric World, David A. Hyman, William E. Kovacic

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.


Corpus Linguistics And Gun Control: Why Heller Is Wrong, Kyra Babcock Woods Aug 2020

Corpus Linguistics And Gun Control: Why Heller Is Wrong, Kyra Babcock Woods

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.


It’S Whose Party? Accurately Defining Political Parties In First Amendment Cases, Makade Claypool Aug 2020

It’S Whose Party? Accurately Defining Political Parties In First Amendment Cases, Makade Claypool

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.


Invasion Of The Content-Neutrality Rule, William D. Araiza Aug 2020

Invasion Of The Content-Neutrality Rule, William D. Araiza

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.


The Case Of The Exemption Claimants: Religion, Conscience, And Identity, Steven D. Smith Sep 2019

The Case Of The Exemption Claimants: Religion, Conscience, And Identity, Steven D. Smith

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.


Semantic Originalism, Moral Kinds, And The Meaning Of The Constitution, Ash Mcmurray Dec 2018

Semantic Originalism, Moral Kinds, And The Meaning Of The Constitution, Ash Mcmurray

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.


Evidence-Based Jurisprudence Meets Legal Linguistics—Unlikely Blends Made In Germany, Hanjo Hamann, Friedemann Vogel Aug 2017

Evidence-Based Jurisprudence Meets Legal Linguistics—Unlikely Blends Made In Germany, Hanjo Hamann, Friedemann Vogel

BYU Law Review

German legal thinking is renowned for its hair-splittingly sophisticated dogmatism. Yet, some of its other contributions to research are frequently overlooked, both at home and abroad. Two such secondary streams recently coalesced into a new corpus-based research approach to legal practice: Empirical legal research (which had already developed in Germany by 1913) and research on language and law (following German pragmatist philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s work of 1953). This Article introduces both research traditions in their current German incarnations (Evidence-Based Jurisprudence and Legal Linguistics) and shows how three common features—their pragmatist observation of social practices, their interest in dissecting legal authority, …


Comments On James C. Phillips & Jesse Egbert, Advancing Law And Corpus Linguistics: Importing Principles And Practices From Survey And Content-Analysis Methodologies To Improve Corpus Design And Analysis, Edward Finegan Aug 2017

Comments On James C. Phillips & Jesse Egbert, Advancing Law And Corpus Linguistics: Importing Principles And Practices From Survey And Content-Analysis Methodologies To Improve Corpus Design And Analysis, Edward Finegan

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.


Corpus Linguistics As A Tool In Legal Interpretation, Lawrence M. Solan, Tammy Gales Aug 2017

Corpus Linguistics As A Tool In Legal Interpretation, Lawrence M. Solan, Tammy Gales

BYU Law Review

In this paper, we set out to explore conditions in which the use of large linguistic corpora can be optimally employed by judges and others tasked with construing authoritative legal documents. Linguistic corpora, sometimes containing billions of words, are a source of information about the distribution of language usage. Thus, corpora and the tools for using them are most likely to assist in addressing legal issues when the law considers the distribution of language usage to be legally relevant. As Thomas R. Lee and Stephen C. Mouritsen have so ably demonstrated in earlier work, corpus analysis is especially helpful when …