Constitutional Law Commons^™

The Equal Access Act: Still Controversial After All These Years, Leora Harpaz

Faculty Scholarship

Over its twenty-year history, the Equal Access Act has continued to spark controversy. Despite a large number of court decisions that have interpreted the scope of the statute, those controversies have not yet subsided nor are they likely to for the foreseeable future. Interpretation of the Equal Access Act is complicated by ambiguities in the statute's language and the complex relationship that exists between the statute and the First Amendment's prohibition on religious establishments combined with its protection for freedom of expression. The delicate constitutional balancing act that the statute attempts to accomplish complicates the task of statutory interpretation in …

Against Separation, Philip A. Hamburger

Faculty Scholarship

In 1802, in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, Thomas Jefferson wrote that the First Amendment had the effect of "building a wall of separation between Church & State." As it happens, when Congress drafted the First Amendment in 1789, Jefferson was enjoying Paris. Nonetheless, his words about separation are often taken as an authoritative interpretation of the First Amendment's establishment clause. Indeed, in the 1947 Everson v. Board of Education decision, the Supreme Court quoted Jefferson's pronouncement to justify its conclusion that the First Amendment guarantees a separation of church and state. Not only the justices but …

The "Inexorable Zero", Bert I. Huang

Faculty Scholarship

[F]ine tuning of the statistics could not have obscured the glaring absence of minority [long-distance] drivers .... [T]he company's inability to rebut the inference of discrimination came not from a misuse of statistics but from "the inexorable zero."

The Supreme Court first uttered the phrase "inexorable zero" a quarter-century ago in International Brotherhood of Teamsters v. United States, a landmark Title VII case. Ever since, this enigmatic name for a rule of inference has echoed across legal argument about segregation, discrimination, and affirmative action. Justice O'Connor, for instance, cited the "inexorable zero" in a major sex discrimination decision upholding an …

Natural Resources Policy In The Bush (Ii) Administration: An Outsider's Somewhat Jaundiced Assessment, John D. Leshy

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Editorial: The European Union As A Constitutional Experiment, George Bermann

Faculty Scholarship

In the constellation of international governance regimes, the European Union occupies a singular place, and not merely because it has recently engaged in the process of drafting a document whose title includes the words A Constitution for Europe'. Even if that particular document, or any such document, were never to see the light of day as a fully adopted and ratified instrument (an eventuality I consider to be unlikely), the EU will already have been constitutionalised, albeit in a fashion unfamiliar to those who, like most of us, are accustomed to the constitutions of Nation States. To claim that the …

Judicial Campaign Codes After Republican Party Of Minnesota V. White, Richard Briffault

Faculty Scholarship

The vast majority of judicial offices in the United States are subject to election. The votes of the people select or retain at least some judges in thirty-nine states, and all judges are elected in twenty-one states. By one count, 87% of the state and local judges in the United States have to face the voters at some point if they want to win or remain in office. Judicial elections, however, differ from elections for legislative or executive offices in a number of significant ways. In nineteen states, most judges are initially appointed but must later go before the voters …

Constitutional And Statutory Interpretation, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

This article discusses relatively established theories with respect to statutory and constitutional interpretation. Written constitutions and statutes provide authoritative directions for officials and citizens within liberal democracies. The article mentions that descriptive and normative theories connect with each other in critical respects. Statutory interpretation involves the construction and application of provisions adopted by legislatures. The theoretical questions about interpreting statutes and constitutions suggest more general questions about the meaning of human communications; and scholars of philosophy of language, linguistics, literary theory, and religious hermeneutics discuss analogous issues. This article discusses an important issue in statutory interpretation that is the nature …

Madisonian Equal Protection, James S. Liebman, Brandon L. Garrett

Faculty Scholarship

James Madison is considered the "Father of the Constitution," but his progeny disappointed him. It had no effective defense against self-government's "mortal disease" – the oppression of minorities by local majorities. This Article explores Madison's writings in an effort to reclaim the deep conception of equal protection at the core of his constitutional aspirations. At the Convention, Madison passionately advocated a radical structural approach to equal protection under which the "extended republic's" broadly focused legislature would have monitored local laws and vetoed those that were parochial and "unjust." Rejecting this proposal to structure equal protection into the "interior" operation of …

The Origins Of The American Public Trust Doctrine: What Really Happened In Illinois Central, Joseph D. Kearney, Thomas W. Merrill

Faculty Scholarship

The public trust doctrine has always been controversial. The general rule in American law favors ownership of natural resources as private property. The public trust doctrine, a jarring exception of uncertain dimensions, posits that some resources are subject to a perpetual trust that forecloses private exclusion rights. For environmentalists and preservationists who view private ownership as a source of the degradation of our natural and historical resources, the public trust doctrine holds out the hope of salvation through what amounts to a judicially enforced inalienability rule that locks resources into public ownership. For those who view private property as the …

"You Are Entering A Gay And Lesbian Free Zone": On The Radical Dissents Of Justice Scalia And Other (Post-) Queers – [Raising Questions About Lawrence, Sex Wars, And The Criminal Law], Bernard Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

The most renowned substantive criminal law decision of the October 2002 Term, Lawrence v. Texas, will go down in history as a critical turning point in criminal law debates over the proper scope of the penal sanction. For the first time in the history of American criminal law, the United States Supreme Court has declared that a supermajoritarian moral belief does not necessarily provide a rational basis for criminalizing conventionally deviant conduct. The Court's ruling is the coup de grâce to legal moralism administered after a prolonged, brutish, tedious, and debilitating struggle against liberal legalism in its various criminal …

Ambivalence About Treason, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

Betrayal and disloyalty are grievous moral wrongs, yet today when the disloyal commit treason we seem reluctant to punish them. John Walker Lindh fought for the Taliban with full knowledge that it was engaged in hostilities against the United States. It should not have been so difficult to prove by two witnesses to the overt act, as the Constitution requires, that he adhered to the enemy giving them aid and comfort. Admittedly, there were legal problems about whether the Taliban as an indirect enemy in an undeclared war could qualify as the enemy in the constitutional sense. But there was …

Making A Federal Case Of It: Sabri V. United States And The Constitution Of Leviathan, Gary S. Lawson

Faculty Scholarship

The popular expression “Don't make a federal case out of it!” only makes sense if federal involvement is something unusual or special that is reserved for matters of urgent national interest. It assumes that a “federal case” is, or at least ought to be, something relatively rare and noteworthy.

For the founding generation, federal involvement in people's affairs, especially through the criminal law, was in fact a relatively rare and noteworthy event. In The Federalist, James Madison told the citizens of New York that the powers of the proposed new national government “will be exercised principally on external objects, as …

Experimentalist Equal Protection, Brandon L. Garrett, James S. Liebman

Faculty Scholarship

Elsewhere Garrett and Liebman have recounted that though James Madison is considered "the Father of the Constitution," his progeny disappointed him because it was defenseless against self-government's "mortal disease " – the oppression of minorities by local majorities – because the Framers rejected the radical structural approach to equal protection that Madison proposed. Nor did the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause and federal courts enforcing it adopt a solution Madison would have considered "effectual." This Article explores recent subconstitutional innovations in governance and public administration that may finally bring the nation within reach of the constitutional polity …

Reading Clarence Thomas, Kendall Thomas

Faculty Scholarship

Several years ago, a special issue of The New Yorker entitled "Black in America" included an extraordinary profile of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Authored by Jeffrey Rosen, the article begins with an account of Justice Thomas's interventions in two of the most important cases decided during the Court's previous term. In the first of these cases, Missouri v. Jenkins, the Court was called upon to define the constitutional scope and limits of the federal judicial power to address racial concentration in Kansas City's public schools through salary increases and the creation of magnet programs. In the second …

Understanding Macs: Moral Hazard In Acquisitions, Ronald J. Gilson, Alan Schwartz

Faculty Scholarship

The standard contract that governs friendly mergers contains a material adverse change clause (a "MAC") and a material adverse effect clause (a "MAE"); these clauses permit a buyer costlessly to cancel the deal if such a change or effect occurs. In recent years, the application of the traditional standard-like MAC and MAE term has been restricted by a detailed set of exceptions that curtails the buyer's ability to exit. The term today engenders substantial litigation and occupies center stage in the negotiation of merger agreements. This paper asks what functions the MAC and MAE term serve, what function the exceptions …

Parks As Gyms? Recreational Paradigms And Public Health In The National Parks, Jay D. Wexler

Faculty Scholarship

When scholars and policymakers think about the relationship between public health and environmental law and policy, they likely think first about controlling pollution and other toxic substances. As other articles have amply demonstrated, water pollution, air pollution, and other environmental toxins can have significant deleterious effects on the public's health. Scholars rightly pay serious attention to these relationships, and policymakers wisely devise methods and strategies to ameliorate the public health risks posed by these polluting substances.

Although pollution control might be the most obvious and important intersection between environmental policy and public health, legal and policy decisions regarding the management …

Introduction: What Does Oakley Tell Us About The Failures Of Constitutional Decision-Making?, Taylor Flynn

Faculty Scholarship

The Wisconsin Supreme Court's decision in State v. Oakley, in which the court upheld a probation order prohibiting Mr. Oakley from fathering additional children until he could support them, is a compelling example of a troubling flaw in our constitutional jurisprudence. Absent the countervailing check perhaps provided by the doctrine of unconstitutional conditions, each path of doctrinal analysis, considered separately, arguably leads to the conclusion that the probation order is valid. This is so even though a number of institutional, structural, and process-based considerations converge to render the order's constitutionality highly suspect. The prevailing doctrinal approach is to disaggregate the …

Probation Restrictions Impacting The Right To Procreate: The Oakley Error, Jennifer L. Levi

Faculty Scholarship

In State v. Oakley, the all-male four-justice majority held that a probation condition restricting David Oakley's right to have children passed constitutional muster. This Article discusses this question of the appropriate approach to evaluating the constitutionality of probation conditions. The Wisconsin Supreme Court's approach is compared to that of other courts in cases involving, in some way, decisions limiting a probationer's right to have children. The Author concludes that regardless of what constitutional standard or degree of scrutiny courts apply, cases can (and do) go both ways with respect to upholding or striking down probation restrictions on fundamental rights. However, …

Marbury V. Madison And European Union "Constitutional" Review, George A. Bermann

Faculty Scholarship

The U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Marbury v. Madison specifically raises the question of the legitimacy of a "horizontal" species of judicial review, that is, review by courts of the exercise of powers by the coordinate branches of government. The same question could be asked with respect to judicial review in the European Union. More particularly, how problematic or contestable has "horizontal" judicial review been within the European Union as a matter of principle? And, irrespective of its contestability, how have the courts of the European Union exercised "horizontal" review? We will find, however, that it is not the "horizontal" …

Rethinking Article I, Section I: From Nondelegation To Exclusive Delegation, Thomas W. Merrill

Faculty Scholarship

The first substantive clause of the Constitution – providing that "[all legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress" – is associated with two postulates about the allocation of legislative power. The first is the nondelegation doctrine, which says that Congress may not delegate legislative power. The second is the exclusive delegation doctrine, which says that only Congress may delegate legislative power. This Article explores the textual, historical, and judicial support for these two readings of Article I, Section 1, as well as the practical consequences of starting from one postulate as opposed to the other. The Article …

Fire, Metaphor, And Constitutional Myth-Making, Robert L. Tsai

Faculty Scholarship

From the standpoint of traditional legal thought, metaphor is at best a dash of poetry adorning lawyerly analysis, and at worst an unjustifiable distraction from what is actually at stake in a legal contest. By contrast, in the eyes of those who view law as a close relative of ordinary language, metaphor is a basic building block of human understanding. This article accepts that metaphor helps us to comprehend a court's decision. At the same time, it argues that metaphor plays a special role in the realm of constitutional discourse. Metaphor in constitutional law not only reinforces doctrinal categories, but …

You Can't Ask (Or Say) That: The First Amendment And Civil Rights Restrictions On Decisionmaker Speech, Helen L. Norton

Faculty Scholarship

Many antidiscrimination statutes limit speech by employers, landlords, lenders, and other decisionmakers in one or both of two ways: (1) by prohibiting queries soliciting information about an applicant's disability, sexual orientation, marital status, or other protected characteristic; and (2) by proscribing discriminatory advertisements or other expressions of discriminatory preference for applicants based on race, sex, age, sexual orientation, or other protected characteristics.

This Article explores how we might think about these laws for First Amendment purposes. Part I outlines the range of civil rights restrictions on decisionmaker speech, while Part II identifies the antidiscrimination and privacy concerns that drive their …

The Frictions Of Federalism: The Rise And Fall Of The Federal Common Law Of Interstate Nuisance, Robert V. Percival

Faculty Scholarship

Prior to the erection in the 1970s of a comprehensive federal regulatory infrastructure to protect the environment, transboundary pollution disputes frequently were adjudicated by the U.S. Supreme Court, exercising its original jurisdiction over disputes between states. In a series of cases commencing at the dawn of the Twentieth Century, the Court served as a national arbiter of interstate pollution disputes. This paper reviews the history of the Supreme Court's use of these cases to develop a federal common law of interstate nuisance.

The paper argues that while federal common law initially performed a zoning function by encouraging polluters to relocate …

Federal Maritime Commission V. South Carolina State Ports Authority: Small Iceberg Or Just The Tip?, Gordon G. Young

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Justice White And The Right Of Privacy, David D. Meyer

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Interpretative Equality As A Structural Imperative (Or "Pucker Up And Settle This!"), Gary S. Lawson

Faculty Scholarship

To serious students of the Constitution, Chief Justice Marshall's discussion of judicial review in Marbury v. Madisont was about judicial equality-the power of the courts, co-equal to the similar powers of the legislative and executive departments, to construe and apply the Constitution in the course of their duties. To less serious students of the Constitution, Marbury was about judicial supremacy-the supposedly paramount power of courts to interpret and apply the Constitution in a fashion that binds other legal actors, including the legislative and executive departments and state officials.

The Modest Promise Of Children’S Relationship Rights, David D. Meyer

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

One Strike And You're Out? Constitutional Constraints On Zero Tolerance In Public Education, Eric D. Blumenson, Eva Nilsen

Faculty Scholarship

Various studies reported that juvenile crimes of violence fell in the 1990s by as much as 30%. ¹⁰ In high schools specifically, the incidence of threatening behavior in 1996 changed little from two decades earlier, ¹¹ with the chances of being killed in school far less than being struck by lighting. ¹² The "juvenile crime bomb" proved illusory (as Delulio himself eventually acknowledged ¹³), but the severe measures designed to deal with it remain entrenched. Zero tolerance has taken on a life of its own, partly because public misperception remains high, ¹⁴ and partly because in our hardheaded times …

The Missing Selves In Constitutional Self-Government, James E. Fleming

Faculty Scholarship

Both Christopher Eisgruber and Jed Rubenfeld have written important books developing sophisticated theories of constitutional self-government. Eisgruber's Constitutional Self-Government' and Rubenfeld's Freedom and Time: A Theory of Constitutional SelfGovernment2 join issue in significant ways, and therefore a dialogue concerning them should prove illuminating. Rubenfeld says his book and Eisgruber's book are somewhat similar, but very different.' Eisgruber says his book and Rubenfeld's book are fairly similar, yet also somewhat different-and where they differ, they sometimes complement one another, or perhaps supply the deficiencies in the other.4 I say the books are very similar-more similar than either recognizes or concedes-and that …

A Six-Three Rule: Reviving Consensus And Deference On The Supreme Court, Jed Handelsman Shugerman

Faculty Scholarship

Over the past three decades, the Supreme Court has struck down federal statutes by a bare majority with unprecedented frequency. This Article shows that five-four decisions regularly overturning acts of Congress are a relatively recent phenomenon, whereas earlier Courts generally exercised judicial review by supermajority voting.

One option is to establish the following rule: The Supreme Court may not declare an act of Congress unconstitutional without a two-thirds majority. The Supreme Court itself could establish this rule internally, just as it has created its nonmajority rules for granting certiorari and holds, or one Justice who would otherwise be the fifth …