Constitutional Law Commons^™

Security Vs. Personal Freedom: America's Challenge In The War On Terrorism, Raymond B. Marcin

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Rethinking Sullivan: New Approaches In Australia, New Zealand And England, Susanna Frederick Fischer

Scholarly Articles

This Article employs a comparative analysis of some important recent Commonwealth libel cases to analyze what has gone wrong with U.S. defamation law since New York Times v. Sullivan and to suggest a new direction for its reform. In Lange v. Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Lange v. Atkinson, and Reynolds v. Times Newspapers, the highest courts of the Australian, New Zealand, and English legal systems were confronted with the same challenge faced by the U.S. Supreme Court in New York Times v. Sullivan. They had to decide the proper constitutional balance between protection of reputation and protection …

Free Speech Rationales After September 11th: The First Amendment In Post-World Trade Center America, Marin Roger Scordato

Scholarly Articles

The tragic events of September 11th generated numerous proposals for greater security measures and increased police powers that might, if implemented, constrict the customary scope of free speech in the United States. Legitimate concerns for internal security have placed increased pressures on traditional constitutional protections for expressive activity. It is against this backdrop that this article presents a careful examination of the basic rationales for adopting constitutional level protections for free speech. The article analyzes the nature of, and many of the conflicts among, the traditional rationales for a constitutional right of free expression. It also suggests that much of …

Federal Courts, Overbreadth, And Vagueness: Guiding Principles For Constitution Challenges To Uninterpreted State Statutes, Mark L. Rienzi, Stuart Buck

Scholarly Articles

When a federal court is asked to declare an uninterpreted state law to be unconstitutionally overbroad or vague, it faces several tensions. On one side, the overbreadth and vagueness doctrines urge the court to strike down the statute on its face. On the other side, the related doctrines of constitutional avoidance, narrowing interpretations, abstention and certification all urge the court to find some way to save the statute at least as to some applications. But because of the cardinal principle that federal courts are not the final authority on the interpretation of state law, many federal courts err on the …

Constitutional Values And The Ethics Of Health Care: A Comparison Of The United States And Germany, William J. Wagner

Scholarly Articles

In the first section, this essay will consider questions the new era in health care poses for a health-care ethics of ends. The second section will address the question this emerging era raises for a health-care ethics of duty. Under the rubric of an ethics of ends, the essay examines, more particularly, the ends of health and efficiency. Under that of duty, it addresses the duties of respect for the dignity of the human person; respect for the covenant of treatment; and respect for justice in distribution. In each case, it seeks to identify the basis for an adequate response …

The Science, Law, And Politics Of Fetal Pain Legislation, Kevin C. Walsh

Scholarly Articles

Most people prefer not to inflict gratuitous pain on other sentient beings, especially other humans. What, then, should be the legal system's reaction to the mounting evidence that in late-term abortions doctors are inflicting just such pain on fetuses who have the anatomical, physiological, and neurological capacity to experience it? The pain being inflicted is gratuitous because it can be easily avoided with no significant increases in cost or health risk by the administration of tar geted fetal pain relief. If informed that an abortion is likely to cause pain to the fetus and given a choice between a procedure …

Politicization And Judicialization Of The U.S. Chief Executive’S Political And Criminal Responsibility: A Threat To Constitutional Integrity Or A Natural Result Of The Constitution’S Flexibility?, Rett R. Ludwikowski

Scholarly Articles

This article attempts to analyze to what extent the scope of executive privilege, constitutionally committed to the executive branch, is determined by judicial process or by purely political factors. It opens with a brief report on the process of formation of the Presidential model of government and the system of checks and balances in the United States. Focusing on the checks imposed on the Executive, this article distinguishes those restraints that are clearly constitutionalized, or stemming from judicial determination of their constitutionality, and those which are the result of judicial interpretation of the beneficial aspects of public policy or political …

Federal Preemption Of State Tort Claims, Marin Roger Scordato

Scholarly Articles

This article explores a continuing disagreement among Justices of the United States Supreme Court regarding the proper doctrinal framework for federal preemption jurisprudence. This important difference in views became apparent in the four federal preemption cases that the Supreme Court decided during its 1999-2000 term. The article describes this critical disagreement among the Justices, places it in the larger context of preemption doctrine, and then carefully analyzes a number of possible resolutions.

Federal preemption is an area of enormous practical and theoretical importance. It is a subject that has earned a regular place on the Supreme Court's docket for many …

May The Child Online Protection Act Rely On Community Standards To Identify Material That Is Harmful To Minors?, Susanna Frederick Fischer

Scholarly Articles

The Communications Decency Act, the government's previous attempt to protect minors from online pornography, was struck down in 1997 on the grounds that it required Internet content to be judged by the standards of the community most likely to be offended by it. Now the Court has agreed to review the constitutionality of the new Child Online Protection Act, which seeks to address the Court's free-speech concerns by regulating Web communications in a manner similar to existing laws restricting minors' access to print pornography.

Enforcing Federal Civil Rights Against Public Entities After Garrett, Roger C. Hartley

Scholarly Articles

In this article, I focus on the Section 5 branch of the federalism revival, the branch that was at issue in Board of Trustees of the University of Alabama v. Garrett, and the one that is most likely to arise when litigating on behalf of or against an arm of state government. In order to position Garrett doctrinally, I first describe the conceptual framework that determines the validity of Congress' effort to abrogate state judicial sovereignty. This is an abridged version since more complete histories have been reported widely, both recently in these pages, and in many other journals. I …

U.S. Federalism And Spanish Autonomy – Lessons From U.S. Federalism For The External Activities Of Substate Entities, Antonio F. Perez

Scholarly Articles

This article will focus on a narrow aspect of the larger question of the effect of international economic integration and increased international security on the national legal order of complex states, such as the United States and Spain. At first glance, the United States and Spain have rather different systems of constitutional law concerning the relationship between the center and periphery. Nonetheless, as this article will argue, it is revealing to explore the recent responses of theories as different as U.S. federalism and Spain's system of autonomous communities to the new international environment in the crucial area of the external …

Note, Kdm Ex Rel. Wjm V. Reedsport School District, Kevin C. Walsh

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Emerging Trends In Religious Liberty, Robert A. Destro

Scholarly Articles

From a religious liberty perspective, the October 2000 term of the United States Supreme Court was relatively uneventful. The Court decided only one case raising significant religious liberty concerns, Good News Club v. Milford Central School. Good News Club adds little to the First Amendment case law already on the books, but it does provide an excellent opportunity to highlight the growing need for well-informed scholars, both American and foreign, to examine the relationships between and among clauses of the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States.

Supreme Law Or Basic Law? The Decline Of The Concept Of Constitutional Supremacy, Rett R. Ludwikowski

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Safety Valve Closed: The Removal Of Non-Violent Outlets For Dissent And The Onset Of Anti-Abortion Violence, Mark L. Rienzi

Scholarly Articles

This Note examines abortion opposition over the past two centuries and the extent to which recent trends toward violence have followed from the elimination of major nonviolent methods of dissent. Part I explores the history of abortion opposition prior to Roe, noting that opponents during this period relied almost exclusively on legislative action to effect change. Roe removed this principal nonviolent outlet, and the first wave of anti-abortion violence in American history en-sued. Even within this post-Roe violence, an examination of the rise and fall of mass nonviolent civil disobedience in the late i98Os and the dramatic increase in anti-abortion …

Constitutional Culture Of The New East-Central European Democracies, Rett R. Ludwikowski

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

The Reawakening Of Marriage, Raymond C. O'Brien

Scholarly Articles

This Article contends that the convergent societal pressures from the same-sex marriage debate, the effect of the welfare legislation to define family, and the allowance of greater religious involvement in marriage preparation and divorce will precipitate a reawakening of marriage. The emergence of covenant marriage, the public debate over no-fault divorce, the resurgence of fault grounds, and Florida's enactment of its Marriage Preparation and Preservation Act are ramifications of this reawakening. Public concern over the frequency of divorce and the resulting adverse consequences for children and adults, indicate a change in attitude concerning marriage, divorce and family. Covenant marriage is …

Religious Liberty And The Politics Of Judicial Review, Robert A. Destro

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

What Does The Constitution Say About The Vouchers?, John H. Garvey

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Law—Abortion—Sixth Circuit Strikes Down Ohio Ban Of Post-Viability And Dilation And Extraction Abortions—Women’S Medical Professional Corp. V. Voinovich, 130 F.3d 187 (6th Cir. 1997), Cert. Denied, 118 S. Ct. 1347 (1998), Mark L. Rienzi

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

The Bishops' New Statement On Abortion: Why It Isn't Accomplishing Much Of Anything., Raymond B. Marcin

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Political Speech—Restrictions On Ballot-Initiative Petitions, Buckley V. American Constitutional Law Foundation, Mark L. Rienzi

Scholarly Articles

The Supreme Court has repeatedly noted that ballot and election regulations raise difficult questions about the interplay between the First Amendment's heightened protection for political speech, and states' need to regulate ballots and elections to ensure fair and orderly democracy. When making the delicate judgments between protecting political speech and allowing states to regulate elections, the Court has traditionally stated precisely which test it was employing to evaluate individual restrictions. Last Term, in Buckley v. American Constitutional Law Foundation, the Court invalidated several of Colorado's restrictions on the signature-gathering process for ballot initiative petitions. In so doing, the Court failed …

The Free Exercise Of Religion After The Fall: The Case For Intermediate Scrutiny, Rodney A. Smolla

Scholarly Articles

Not available.

Control Freaks, John H. Garvey

Scholarly Articles

Last year, in Washington v. Glucksberg, the Supreme Court decided that the Constitution does not afford us a right to commit assisted suicide. I endorse this conclusion. I might less modestly say that it endorses me, for the Court's understanding of freedom is similar to the one I propose in What Are Freedoms For?, and the theory it rejects is the one I am most concerned to combat.

Mandatory Hiv Testing Of Professional Boxers: An Unconstitutional Effort To Regulate A Sport That Needs To Be Regulated, Raymond C. O'Brien, Michael T. Flannery

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Natural Law, Homosexual Conduct, And The Public Policy Exception, Raymond B. Marcin

Scholarly Articles

The specific focus of this conference is on the problems posed by the imminent recognition of homosexual marriages in one or more jurisdictions. The question posed by the "laws of nature" exception to the inter-jurisdictional marriage recognition principle is whether legally endorsed homosexual marriages, involving (as they must) societal approval and endorsement of homosexual conduct, are contrary to natural law. This paper will explore the classic natural law theory of Saint Thomas Aquinas and the reasons why that theory condemns homosexual conduct as being contrary to the law of nature.

Foreword: The ‘Right To Marry’ In The Decisions Of The United States Supreme Court, Robert A. Destro

Scholarly Articles

Given the importance of Loving in American constitutional law, we were somewhat surprised to learn that no commemorative conferences or symposia had been planned to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the decision. We designed our conference, "Law and the Politics of Marriage: Loving v. Virginia After 30 Years," to fill that gap.

The conference was held at The Catholic University of America's Columbus School of Law, 19-21 November 1997, and was co-sponsored by three institutions, each having a unique and abiding interest in the subject matter: The Catholic University of America, the Howard University School of Law, and the J. …

Is Roe V. Wade Obsolete?, Robert A. Destro

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

‘Mixed’ Constitutions: Product Of An East-Central European Constitutional Melting Pot, Rett R. Ludwikowski

Scholarly Articles

Part I of this Article discusses the difficulties involved in attempting to classify the new constitutions using traditional criteria. Part II examines the processes involved in the adoption of the various components of existing constitutional models into the constitutions of the East-Central European states, including separate analysis of the distributions of power, the structures of the legislatures, the electoral systems, the systems of governance and mechanisms of judicial enforcement provided by these instruments. Finally, Part III makes observations and draws conclusions regarding the processes examined in Part II.

Politics And The Constitution, Lewis H. Larue

Scholarly Articles

Not available.