Constitutional Law Commons^™

Immigration And Cooperative Federalism: Toward A Doctrinal Framework, Ming H. Chen

Publications

What can the new federalism teach us about what is happening in immigration law? The changing relationship of federal-state government in the regulation of immigrants has led to the creation of “immigration federalism” as a field of scholarship. Most of this scholarly attention has been directed at resisting restrictionist legislation that encourages vigorous law enforcement against undocumented immigrants. The scholarly tilt is especially pronounced since the Supreme Court recently struck down several provisions of S.B. 1070, Arizona’s restrictive law enforcement legislation. However, law enforcement is only one type of regulation, and the overwhelming focus on it skews the broader debate …

Same-Sex Marriage, Federalism, And Judicial Supremacy, Robert F. Nagel

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Justice Kennedy's opinion in United States v. Windsor is characterized by a number of strained and wavering constitutional claims. Prominent among these is the argument that the principle of federalism calls into question the congressional decision to adopt the traditional definition of marriage, which the state of New York rejected. An examination of earlier federalism cases demonstrates that Kennedy's appreciation for federalism is in fact severely limited and suggests and that his lax use of legal authority is directly if perversely related to this limited appreciation.

Federalism cases prior to Windsor show that Justice Kennedy supports state authority only when …

Constitutional Concern, Membership, And Race, Sarah Krakoff

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American Indian Tribes in the United States have a unique legal and political status shaped by fluctuating federal policies and the over-arching history of this country’s brand of settler-colonialism. One of the several legacies of this history is that federally recognized tribes have membership rules that diverge significantly from typical state or national citizenship criteria. These rules and their history are poorly understood by judges and members of the public, leading to misunderstandings about the “racial” status of tribes and Indian people, and on occasion to incoherent and damaging decisions on a range of Indian law issues. This article, which …

From Google To Tolstoy Bot: Should The First Amendment Protect Speech Generated By Algorithms?, Margot Kaminski

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No abstract provided.

Too Strict?, Richard B. Collins

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Should the strict scrutiny standard govern judicial review of claims that government has burdened religious freedom? American law’s patchwork of rules applies that demanding standard to some claims but denies any meaningful review to others. A major difficulty is that most claims alleging denial of religious freedom depend on beliefs that cannot be reviewed by secular courts. Claims based on allegations alone shift the burden to the defending government. Strict scrutiny purports to make justification very difficult; governments are supposed to lose most cases. A second defect of the test in religious freedom cases is its failure to consider harm …

Foreword: Public Constitutional Literacy; A Conversation, Melissa Hart

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No abstract provided.

Undue Burdens In Texas, Jennifer S. Hendricks

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No abstract provided.

A Structuralist Approach To The Two State Action Doctrines, Justin Deystone

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By all accounts, the constitutional and antitrust state-action doctrines are strangers. Courts and scholars see the constitutional state-action doctrine as about the applicability of constitutional rights in private disputes, and the antitrust state-action doctrine as a judicial negotiation between the scope of the Sherman Act and the demands of federalism. In this conventional view, the only thing the doctrines share in common is that they are both an awful mess. This Article challenges the conventional wisdom and argues that the two state-action doctrines are fundamentally connected, and when viewed in a certain light, not even that messy. It is not …

Guns And Membership In The American Polity, Pratheepan Gulasekaram

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No abstract provided.

Cosmic Constitutional Theory: Why Americans Are Losing Their Inalienable Right To Self-Governance, Karen Skinner

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No abstract provided.

Constructing The Threat And The Role Of The Expert Witness: A Response To Aziz Rana's Who Decides On Security?, Wadie E. Said

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Aziz Rana's article presents clearly the overlooked but crucial question of "Who Decides on Security?" Namely, is determining who or what groups constitute a threat something that we are capable of making ourselves, or must we necessarily cede that authority to those in power-who supposedly have both the access to knowledge and the ability to understand it-to protect us from threats we cannot perceive? Using Rana's historical analysis as a framework, this Article builds on his thesis to show how the wide latitude granted to the conclusions of the Executive Branch's national security specialists in political matters has migrated into …

Tenth Amendment Challenges After Bond V. United States, Scott G. Thompson, Christopher Klimmek

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In its recent decision in Bond v. United States, the Supreme Court explained that because the Tenth Amendment "secures the freedom of the individual," private parties who otherwise satisfy Article III's standing requirements and other prudential requirements may challenge federal laws as violating the Tenth Amendment. In so doing, the Court reversed the majority of circuit courts that have addressed the issue and removed a significant categorical bar to individual Tenth Amendment challenges. This Article explains Bond's holding and explores its implications for future Tenth Amendment challenges by private parties.

Although Bond contains some expansive language regarding the role …

Secrets, Lies, And Disclosure, Helen Norton

Publications

This symposium essay suggests that we can sometimes understand those who resist campaign disclosure or disclaimer requirements as interested in keeping a secret and occasionally even in telling a sort of lie about the source or intensity of support for a particular candidate or cause. Such secrets and lies threaten listeners’ autonomy interests when the speaker seeks to keep such secrets (and sometimes seeks to tell such lies) to enhance her ability to influence her listeners’ decisions. For these reasons, I suggest greater attention to the reasons speakers seek to keep secrets (or occasionally tell such lies) in assessing the …

Partiality And Disclosure In Supreme Court Opinions, Robert F. Nagel

Publications

This Essay begins by identifying the various kinds of partiality the Justices of the Supreme Court can have in the cases they decide. Although there is widespread recognition of the influence these biases might have, for the most part the Justices continue to write opinions as if they (and other judges) were entirely disinterested. This practice is often thought to be justified as a source of judicial legitimacy, but there are a number of reasons to doubt that a pretense of impersonality is actually important for maintaining respect for the Court. Consequently, the possibility has to be considered that the …

Incitement To Riot In The Age Of Flash Mobs, Margot E. Kaminski

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As people increasingly use social media to organize both protests and robberies, government will try to regulate these calls to action. With an eye to this intensifying dynamic, this Article reviews First Amendment jurisprudence on incitement and applies it to existing statutes on incitement to riot at a common law, state, and federal level. The article suggests that First Amendment jurisprudence has a particularly tortuous relationship with regulating speech directed to crowds. It examines current crowd psychology to suggest which crowd behavior, if any, should as a matter of policy be subject to regulation. It concludes that many existing incitement-to-riot …

Lies And The Constitution, Helen Norton

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Although the Supreme Court declared almost forty years ago that “there is no constitutional value in false statements of fact,” the Court in United States v Alvarez ruled that the First Amendment protects at least some -- and perhaps many -- intentional lies from government prohibition. In Alvarez, a divided Court struck down the Stolen Valor Act, a federal statute that made it a crime for any person to state falsely that he or she had received a military decoration or medal. In three separate opinions, all of the Justices agreed that the First Amendment permits the government to …

Government Speech In Transition, Helen Norton

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This symposium essay explores the legacy of the Supreme Court’s decision in Johanns v. Livestock Mktg. Ass’n. There the Court offered its clearest articulation to date of its emerging government speech doctrine. After characterizing contested expression as the government’s, the Court then held such government speech to be exempt from free speech clause scrutiny. In so doing, the Court solved at least one substantial problem, but created others that remain unresolved today. On one hand, Johanns marked the Court’s long overdue recognition of the ubiquity and importance of government speech, appropriately exempting the government’s own expressive choices from free …

Inextricably Political: Race, Membership, And Tribal Sovereignty, Sarah Krakoff

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Courts address equal protection questions about the distinct legal treatment of American Indian tribes in the following dichotomous way: are classifications concerning American Indians "racial or political?" If the classification is political (i.e., based on federally recognized tribal status or membership in a federally recognized tribe) then courts will not subject it to heightened scrutiny. If the classification is racial rather than political, then courts may apply heightened scrutiny. This Article challenges the dichotomy itself. The legal categories "tribe" and "tribal member" are themselves political, and reflect the ways in which tribes and tribal members have been racialized by U.S. …

The Market As A Legal Concept, Justin Deystone

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In the wake of the recent financial crisis of 2008, and in the run-up to what some are calling a perfect fiscal storm, there is no shortage of commentary on the need for fundamental market reform. Though there are certainly disagreements about where the real problems are and what to do, almost all the commentary remains wedded to an old and entirely false image of “free competition.” Of course, there is hardly consensus about whether markets require the heavy hand of regulative control, or are better left to regulate themselves, but a belief in the distinction between these two images …

Bridging The Great Divide--A Response To Linda Greenhouse And Reva B. Siegel's Before (And After) Roe V. Wade: New Questions About Backlash, Lolita Buckner Inniss

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This essay discusses the history of Roe v. Wade as recently addressed by Linda Greenhouse and Reva B. Siegel. Going beyond their assertions, I suggest that an additional, more encompassing inquiry focuses on what factors are implicated in the politics of abortion and how these factors relate to larger social, political, and cultural conflicts both before and after Roe. By naming party politics and the Catholic Church, Greenhouse and Siegel posit two crucial elements that shaped the abortion debate. I assert, however, that what is not discussed in their Article is the way numerous other factors have figured into …

The Overhyped Path From Tinker To Morse: How The Student Speech Cases Show The Limits Of Supreme Court Decisions--For The Law And For The Litigants, Scott A. Moss

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Each of the Supreme Court's high school student speech cases reflected the social angst of its era. In 1965's Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, three Iowa teens broke school rules to wear armbands protesting the Vietnam War. In 1983, amidst parental and political upset about youth exposure to sexuality in the media, Bethel School District No. 403 v. Fraser and Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier allowed the censorship of an innuendo-filled student government speech and a school newspaper article on teen pregnancy and parental divorce. In 2007, Morse v. Frederick paralleled the rise of reality television …

Imaginary Threats To Government's Expressive Interests, Helen Norton

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The Supreme Court’s emerging government speech doctrine permits the government to refuse to allow other parties to join, and thus change or distort, its own message. In this way, the government speech doctrine appropriately protects government’s legitimate – and valuable – expressive interests by providing a defense to free speech clause claims by private speakers who seek to compel the government to deliver their own views. Too often, however, governmental bodies are asserting their own expressive interests to claim – and some courts are permitting them to exercise – the power to punish private parties’ speech that does not threaten …

The Equal Protection Implications Of Government's Hateful Speech, Helen Norton

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Under what circumstances should we understand government's racist or otherwise hateful speech to violate the Equal Protection Clause? Government speech that communicates hostility or animus on the basis of race, gender, national origin, sexual orientation, or other class status can facilitate private parties' discriminatory behavior, deter its targets from certain important opportunities or activities, and communicate a message of exclusion and second-class status. Contemporary equal protection doctrine, however, does not yet fully address the harms that such government expression potentially poses. The recent emergence of the Court's government speech doctrine--which to date has emphasized the value of government expression without …

Book Review, Derek Kiernan-Johnson

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No abstract provided.

Section 5 Constraints On Congress Through The Lens Of Article Iii And The Constitutionality Of The Employment Non-Discrimination Act, Craig Konnoth

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The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) that will (hopefully) soon prohibit discrimination against LGB, and ideally, T, individuals, allows state employees to sue states for this discrimination. Scholars and activists fear that these provisions will be struck down as violative of state sovereign immunity, using the Court's recent jurisprudence on Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. This jurisprudence requires Congress to put forth evidence of past state violations of a defined constitutional right before it can subject states to suit. This Congress has done.

However, this Comment suggests that a new requirement of Section 5 legislation is in the works. Key …

Teaching Values, Teaching Stereotypes: Sex Education And Indoctrination In Public Schools, Jennifer S. Hendricks, Dawn Marie Howerton

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Many sex education curricula currently used in public schools indoctrinate students in gender stereotypes. As expressed in the title of one article: "If You Don't Aim to Please, Don't Dress to Tease," and Other Public School Sex Education Lessons Subsidized by You, the Federal Taxpayer, Jennifer L. Greenblatt, 14 Tex.J. on CL. & CR. 1 (2008). Other lessons pertain not only to responsibility for sexual activity but to lifelong approaches to family life and individual achievement. One lesson, for example, instructs students that, in marriage, men need sex from their wives and women need financial support from their husbands. …

Campaign Speech Law With A Twist: When The Government Is The Speaker, Not The Regulator, Helen Norton

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Although government entities frequently engage in issue-related campaign speech on a variety of contested ballot and legislative measures, this fact has been entirely overlooked in contemporary First Amendment debates over campaign speech law specifically and government speech more generally. The Supreme Court's "campaign speech" and "government speech" dockets have focused to date on claims by private parties that the government has restricted or silenced their speech in violation of the First Amendment. In contrast, disputes over what this Article calls "governmental campaign speech" involve Free Speech Clause and other challenges by private parties who seek instead to silence the government's …

Placing Your Faith In The Constitution, Harold H. Bruff

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No abstract provided.

Regulating Cyberharassment: Some Thoughts On Sexual Harassment 2.0, Helen Norton

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No abstract provided.

Exposing The Underground Establishment Clause In The Supreme Court's Abortion Cases, Justin Murray

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In Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court held that women have a right to abortion under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court reasoned toward this conclusion by importing concepts and concerns that are ordinarily associated with the Establishment Clause. This Article is the first attempt to systematically describe, and critically evaluate, the Court's use of Establishment Clause ideas in Roe and later abortion cases.

Some brief background is essential in order to see how the Court wove Establishment Clause themes into the structure of its Due Process analysis. The Due Process Clause prohibits the government …