Constitutional Law Commons^™

The Constitutionality Of Decolonization By Associated Statehood: Puerto Rico's Legal Status Reconsidered, Gary S. Lawson, Robert D. Sloane

Faculty Scholarship

International and constitutional law arguably collide in the legal arrangement between the United States and Puerto Rico. As a matter of international law, it is unclear that this arrangement conforms to customary international and treaty obligations. As a matter of national law, it is unclear that the Constitution permits an arrangement between Puerto Rico and the United States—short of separation (independence as a State) or integration (admission to the Union as a state)—that could conform to these international obligations. In particular, the Appointments Clause and the Constitution’s voting provisions may well be in tension with contemporary international law relative to …

'Equal Citizenship Stature': Justice Ginsburg’S Constitutional Visionq, Neil S. Siegel

Faculty Scholarship

In this essay, Professor Siegel examines the nature and function of constitutional visions in the American constitutional order. He argues that Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg possesses such a vision and that her vision is defined by her oft-stated commitment to “full human stature,” to “equal citizenship stature.” He then defends Justice Ginsburg’s characteristically incremental and moderate approach to realizing her vision. He does so in part by establishing that President Barack Obama articulated a similar vision and approach in his Philadelphia speech on American race relations and illustrated its capacity to succeed during the 2008 presidential election.

New Groups And Old Doctrine: Rethiking Congressional Power To Enforce The Equal Protection Clause, William D. Araiza

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

When Students Speak Away From School How Much Does The First Amendment Hear?, Leora Harpaz

Faculty Scholarship

Controversies arising over the extent of the First Amendment speech rights of public school students while at school are resolved by an analysis of the familiar quartet of major decisions of the United States Supreme Court: Tinker, Fraser, Kuhlmeier, and Morse. While these decisions have not removed all uncertainty over the scope of student speech rights, they at least have divided these cases into distinct categories and identified the standard to be applied within each category. The wide range of judicial views on the issue of when student off-campus speech can be the basis of discipline by school authorities makes …

Toward A More Democratic Congress?, James E. Fleming

Faculty Scholarship

There is considerable talk of failure in the air these days - including constitutional failure, moral failure, political failure and institutional failure - and criticisms of Congress figure prominently in this discourse. First, I shall ask whether talk about Congress being "the broken branch," the topic of the first panel in this symposium, is talk of constitutional failure or failure of some other sort. Second, to link the topic of that panel to the topic of the panel in which I participated, I will ask whether some call Congress the broken branch because it is not adequately or appropriately democratic. …

The Constitution's Congress, Gary S. Lawson

Faculty Scholarship

In order to know whether Congress is (as the title of this panel wonders)1 "the broken branch,"'2 one needs a baseline describing how a normallyfunctioning Congress would look.3 Congress is a creation of the Constitution, and so the Constitution seems to be the obvious place to look for this baseline: what sort of people does the Constitution expect to serve in Congress and how does it expect those people to behave once they arrive?

Dr. King And The Battle For Hearts And Minds, Wendy B. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

In 1954, a unanimous Supreme Court held that laws requiring dual public school systems, separated solely on the basis of race, violated the rights afforded to African American children under the Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection and Due Process clauses. Brown v. Board of Education marked the beginning of a judicial assault on what the Court in Loving v. Virginia called statutory schemes and state court decisions that served as “an endorsement of the doctrine of White Supremacy.” Both Chief Justice Earl Warren and Dr. King recognized that the practice of White Supremacy did more than keep people separated. In Brown, …

Rebuilding The Slaughter-House: The Cases' Support For Civil Rights, David S. Bogen

Faculty Scholarship

The Slaughter-House Cases have a bad reputation for good reason. Justice Miller’s narrow reading of the Privileges or Immunities Clause was used to prevent the federal government from adequately protecting African-Americans after the Civil War. Further, his opinion for the Court significantly delayed the application of the Bill of Rights to the states. But no one knows whether the world would be better with a different decision, because counter-factuals are never certain. The case did not involve either racial discrimination or incorporation, and total condemnation of the opinion for weakening civil rights misses its context and misreads its design. This …

Running Cars, Constitutions And Metaphors Into The Ground, Mark A. Graber

Faculty Scholarship

Professor Sanford Levinson frequently analogizes the Constitution of the United States to a vehicle that desperately needs repairs. “[R]elying on the present Constitution.” he writes, “is similar to driving a car with very bad brakes and slick tires.” Much commentary on Our Undemocratic Constitution implicitly challenges the automotive metaphor. The Constitution of the United States, supporters profess, is not really as bad as Levinson would have us believe. The following pages take a road less traveled. Ancient constitutional institutions in the United States are suffering from severe wear and tear. Nevertheless, decisions to drive a comparatively unsafe car are often …

The Universal Declaration And South African Constitutional Law: A Response To Justice Arthur Chaskalson, Peter E. Quint

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Faith And Dynamic Stability: Thoughts On Religion, Constitutions, And Transitions To Democracy, David C. Gray

Faculty Scholarship

This essay, written for the 2009 Constitutional Schmooze, explores the complex role of religion as a source of both stability and instability. Drawing on a broader body of work in transitional justice, this essay argues that religion has an important role to play in the complex web of overlapping associations and oppositions constitutive of a dynamically stable society and further contends that constitutional protections which encourage a diversity of religions provide the best hope of harnessing that potential while limiting the dangers of religion evidenced in numerous cases of mass atrocity.

Brief For Amicus Curiae David A. Super: Supporting Plaintiff-Appellants Urging Reversal, In Howard V. Hawkins (2009)., David A. Super

Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court has consistently held that congressional intent governs whether federal statutes are privately enforceable. Where Congress has been silent, a line of cases culminating in Gonzaga Univ. v. Doe, 536 U.S. 273 (2002), prescribes a formula for inferring congressional intent from the structure of a statute. Here, however, Congress has not been silent: the Food and Nutrition Act specifies the amount of retroactive benefits that may be awarded households in “any judicial action arising under this Act” and makes certain records of state agencies “available for review in any action filed by a household to enforce any provision …

60 Years Of The Basic Law And Its Interpretation: An American Perspective, Peter E. Quint

Faculty Scholarship

In commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the adoption of the German Basic Law (Constitution) , the author discusses certain aspects of the Basic Law, in comparison with the Constitution of the United States, and examines important developments in the jurisprudence if the German Constitutional Court interpreting the Basic Law.

Foreword: Our Paradoxical Religion Clauses, Mark A. Graber

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Judicial Diversity, Sherrilyn A. Ifill

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Necessity And Presidential Prerogative: Does Presidential Discretion Undergird Or Undermine The Constitution?, Michael P. Van Alstine

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Supreme Court Preemption Doctrine, Christopher H. Schroeder

Faculty Scholarship

In the United States, law and policy always function within layers of government authority – federal, state, and local. This book primarily examines the choices policy makers, legislatures, or agencies face in allocating and coordinating responsibility among these layers; choices that will always be constrained by any limits placed on them by the U.S. Constitution, as interpreted by the Supreme Court. This chapter explores the doctrine that the Supreme Court has elaborated to address one set of those constraints, namely the doctrine of preemption.

Preemption doctrine rests on Article VI of the Constitution, which provides that the laws and treaties …

Making Sense Of Schaumburg: Seeking Coherence In First Amendment Charitable Solicitation Law, John D. Inazu

Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court shaped its approach to charitable solicitation in a trilogy of cases in the 1980s: Schaumburg v. Citizens for a Better Environment (1980), Secretary of State of Maryland v. Joseph H. Munson Co. (1984), and Riley v. National Federation of the Blind of North Carolina (1988). Owing largely to ambiguity surrounding the concepts of content analysis, tiered scrutiny, and commercial speech emerging during that era, the Court failed to articulate a coherent framework for evaluating regulations of charitable solicitation. The result has left the Court without a clear understanding of the value of charitable solicitation. It has also …

‘The Federalist’ Abroad In The World, Donald L. Horowitz

Faculty Scholarship

This paper traces the influence of The Federalist Papers on five continents. From 1787 to roughly 1850, The Federalist was widely read and highly influential, especially in Europe and Latin America. Federalist justifications for federalism as a solution to the problem of creating a continental republic or to provincial rivalries were widely accepted. So, too, was the presidency, at least in Latin America, and that region adopted judicial review later in the nineteenth century. Presidentialism and judicial review fared less well in Western Europe. Following World War II, judicial review slowly became part of the standard equipment of new and …

Presidential Popular Constitutionalism, Jedediah Purdy

Faculty Scholarship

This Article adds a new dimension to the most important and influential strand of recent constitutional theory: popular or democratic constitutionalism, the investigation into how the U.S. Constitution is interpreted (1) as a set of defining national commitments and practices, not necessarily anchored in the text of the document, and (2) by citizens and elected politicians outside the judiciary. Wide-ranging and groundbreaking scholarship in this area has neglected the role of the President as a popular constitutional interpreter, articulating and revising normative accounts of the nation that interact dynamically with citizens’ constitutional understandings. This Article sets out a “grammar” of …

Historical Practice And The Contemporary Debate Over Customary International Law, Ernest A. Young

Faculty Scholarship

Response to: Anthony J. Bellia, Jr. & Bradford R. Clark, The Federal Common Law of Nations, 109 Colum. L. Rev. 1 (2009).

A.J. Bellia and Brad Clark have performed a valuable service for other scholars interested in foreign relations law and federal jurisdiction by collecting and illuminating—with their usual care and insight—the historical practice of both English and early American courts with respect to the law of nations. Their recent Article, The Federal Common Law of Nations, demonstrates that, while American courts have not generally treated customary international law (CIL) as supreme federal law, they have applied such law where …

Full Faith And Credit In The Early Congress, Stephen E. Sachs

Faculty Scholarship

After more than 200 years, the Full Faith and Credit Clause remains poorly understood. The Clause first issues a self-executing command (that "Full Faith and Credit shall be given"), and then empowers Congress to prescribe the manner of proof and the "Effect" of state records in other states. But if states must accord each other full faith and credit-and if nothing could be more than full-then what "Effect" could Congress give state records that they wouldn't have already? And conversely, how could Congress in any way reduce or alter the faith and credit that is due?

This Article seeks to …

Heller’S Problematic Second Amendment Categoricalism, Joseph Blocher

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Cruel And Unequal Punishment, Nita A. Farahany

Faculty Scholarship

This article argues Atkins and its progeny of categorical exemptions to the death penalty create and new and as of yet undiscovered interaction between the Eighth and the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The United States Supreme Court, the legal academy and commentators have failed to consider the relationship between the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause and the Equal Protection Clause that the Court's new Eighth Amendment jurisprudence demands. This article puts forth a new synthesis of these two clauses, and demonstrates how the Court's new Eighth Amendment jurisprudence has remarkable Fourteenth Amendment implications. To see the point in …

The Unbearable Lightness Of Marriage In The Abortion Decisions Of The Supreme Court: Altered States In Constitutional Law, William W. Van Alstyne

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Property And Speech In ‘Summum’, Joseph Blocher

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Heller And Constitutional Interpretation: Originalism's Last Gasp, Rory K. Little

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Judicial Nullification Of Juries: Use Of Acquitted Conduct At Sentencing, Eang L. Ngov

Faculty Scholarship

At trial, defendants are afforded a panoply of rights right to counsel, to proof beyond a reasonable doubt, to confront witnesses, and to exclude inadmissible evidence. However, these rights, except for the right to counsel, disappear at sentencing. In deciding a defendant’s sentence, a court may consider conduct that has not been proven beyond a reasonable doubt and even conduct of which the jury has acquitted the defendant. Consideration of acquitted conduct has resulted in dramatic increases in the length of defendants’ sentences sometimes resulting in life imprisonment based merely on a judge’s finding that a defendant more likely than …

Case For A Constitutional Definition Of Hearsay: Requiring Confrontation Of Testimonial, Nonassertive Conduct And Statements Admitted To Explain An Unchallenged Investigation, The, James L. Kainen, Carrie A. Tendler

Faculty Scholarship

Crawford v. Washington’s historical approach to the confrontation clause establishes that testimonial hearsay inadmissible without confrontation at the founding is similarly inadmissible today, despite whether it fits a subsequently developed hearsay exception. Consequently, the requirement of confrontation depends upon whether an out-of-court statement is hearsay, testimonial, and, if so, whether it was nonetheless admissible without confrontation at the founding. A substantial literature has developed about whether hearsay statements are testimonial or were, like dying declarations, otherwise admissible at the founding. In contrast, this article focuses on the first question – whether statements are hearsay – which scholars have thus far …

Heller High Water? The Future Of Originalism, Jamal Greene

Faculty Scholarship

Has originalism won? It's easy to think so, judging from some of the reaction to the Supreme Court's recent decision in District of Columbia v. Heller. The Heller Court held that the District of Columbia could neither ban possession of handguns nor require that all other firearms be either unloaded and disassembled or guarded by a trigger lock. In finding for the first time in the Court's history that a gun control law violated the Second Amendment, Justice Scalia's opinion for the 5-4 majority appeared to be a sterling exemplar of originalism, the method of constitutional interpretation that he …