Constitutional Law Commons^™

Straw Polls, Daniel B. Rodriguez

University of San Diego Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper Series

A key measure of the democratic quality of a political community is how its members vote. The design and implementation of voting arrangements can illuminate the nature, purposes, and even potential of a community of citizens. Voting is, at the very least, used to sort out and implement preferences. Voting processes help in sorting out winners from losers and thereby provide a presumptively fair method for the implementation of public policy. At the same time, voting in a democratic policy is a coercive act. Voters are not merely expressing preferences; they are acting in order to transform their preferences into …

Enforcing Affirmative State Constitutional Obligations And Sheff V. O'Neill, Justin R. Long

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Premature Predictions Of Multiculturalism?, Kirsten Matoy Carlson

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Executive Orders, The Very Definition Of Tyranny, And The Congressional Solution, The Separation Of Powers Restoration Act, Leanna M. Anderson

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

James Madison wrote, "The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands... may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny." The Federalist No. 47, at 300 (James Madison) (Henry Cabot Lodge ed., 1888). Expansive executive orders are often criticized as the merger of legislative and executive powers in the hands of the President. This Note examines how the judiciary has worked to check this "tyranny." After examining the difficulties in challenging executive orders, this Note examines how the proposed Separation of Powers Restoration Act would facilitate legal challenges to executive orders.

From The Courtroom To The Street: Court Orders And Section 1983, Sheldon Nahmod

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

Using a seriously questionable Eighth Circuit decision as a foil but going well beyond it, Professor Nahmod argues that absolute quasi-judicial immunity from section 1983 damages liability should only protect law enforcement officers and others whose challenged conduct is prescribed by presumptively valid court orders. In contrast, neither absolute nor qualified immunity should protect law enforcement officers and others who follow presumptively invalid judicial orders (a "Nuremberg following-orders" defense issue). Furthermore, quasi-judicial immunity should not protect law enforcement officers and others whose allegedly unconstitutional conduct is not prescribed by presumptively valid court orders; qualified immunity is more than adequate to …

Foreword: The Legal History Of The Great Sit-In Case Of Bell V. Maryland, William L. Reynolds

Faculty Scholarship

Reviews the environment and history of the 1960 Baltimore sit-in case that eventually made its way to the United States Supreme Court.

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 …

Congressional Authority To Induce Waivers Of State Sovereign Immunity: The Conditional Spending Power (And Beyond), Michael T. Gibson

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

Since 1997, the Court has issued almost a dozen Eleventh Amendment decisions, each of which expanded State sovereign immunity. Meanwhile, the Court's conservative, pro-State justices have discussed what Justice Anthony Kennedy has said is the most important federalism issue before the Court: Congressional authority to place conditions on grants of federal funds.

This article unites those two apparently independent doctrines. It contends that the Conditional Spending Power, as developed by Rehnquist, Scalia, and O'Connor, permits Congress to condition a State's receipt of federal funds upon that State's waiver of immunity to suits regarding how those funds are spent. The article …

Child Witness Policy: Law Interfacing With Social Science, Louise E. Graham, Dorothy F. Marsil, Jean Montoya, David Ross

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The number of children testifying in court has posed serious practical and legal problems for the judicial system. One problem confronting the courts is how to protect children from experiencing the psychological trauma resulting from a face-to-face confrontation with a defendant who may have physically harmed the child or threatened future harm to the child. Another concern is that this trauma may impair children's memory performance and their willingness to disclose the truth. In response to these concerns, child witness innovations proliferated throughout the United States in the 1980s and 1990s. Among the innovations were: placing a screen between child …

Charities And The Constitution: Evaluating The Role Of Constitutional Principles In Determining The Scope Of Tax Law's Public Policy Limitation For Charities, David A. Brennen

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This Article expands the discussion of whether tax-exempt charities, for constitutional law purposes, should be treated as government actors, as private actors or as something in between. While government actors are subject to constitutional law restrictions concerning discrimination and free speech, private non-government actors are not generally subject to these same restrictions. Although tax-exempt charities are often thought of as sovereigns and, thus, government-like, the fact remains that charities are private entities created to serve public purposes. As private entities, charities - like all other private entities - are not necessarily bound by constitutional law principles. Still, the many “public” …

Bush V. Gore And A Proper Separation Of Powers, George Anastaplo

Faculty Publications & Other Works

No abstract provided.

The Problem Of Confederate Symbols: A Thirteenth Amendment Approach, Alexander Tsesis

Faculty Publications & Other Works

No abstract provided.

Mr. Dooley And Mr. Gallup: Public Opinion And Constitutional Change In The 1930s, Barry Cushman

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Federalism, Popular Sovereignty, And The Individual Right To Keep And Bear Arms: A Structural Alternative To United States V. Emerson, Jack Trachtenberg

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Disciplining Delegation After "Whitman V. American Trucking Ass'ns", Lisa Schultz Bressman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The Supreme Court's recent reversal of the D.C. Circuit's decision in "Whitman v. American Trucking Ass'ns" brings to center stage the critical question for disciplining delegation of lawmaking authority to administrative agencies: Should courts use constitutional law or administrative law for requiring agencies to supply the standards that guide and limit their lawmaking discretion when Congress does not? Professor Bressman argues that "Ashwander v. TVA" provides a resolution. In Ashwander, Justice Brandeis directed courts to refrain from deciding constitutional questions unless absolutely necessary to decide a particular case. Following Justice Brandeis' now famous teaching, courts should refrain from using constitutional …

Conflicts Of Interest And The Constitution, David Orentlicher

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Introduction: Favorite Insurance Cases Symposium, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

Insurance law scholars and teachers sometimes feel, with a mixture of paranoia and justification, that insurance law simply does not receive its proper respect in the hierarchy of legal education and law generally.

Consider the law school curriculum. In none of America’s nearly 200 ABA-approved law schools in insurance law a required course. Nor is it considered a course that, although not required, prudent students “must” be sure to take before they graduate (e.g. Evidence, Corporations). Enrollments may be respectable but the class is seldom oversubscribed, even where the law school is located in an insurance hub city. Although other …

Of Orphans And Vouchers: Nevada's "Little Blaine Amendment" And The Future Of Religious Participation In Public Programs, Jay S. Bybee

Scholarly Works

In December 1875, President Ulysses S. Grant delivered his last annual message to Congress. He warned of “the dangers threatening us” and the “importance that all [men] should be possessed of education and intelligence,” lest “ignorant men . . . sink into acquiescence to the will of intelligence, whether directed by the demagogue or by priestcraft.” He recommended as “the primary step” a constitutional amendment “making it the duty of each of the several States to establish and forever maintain free public schools adequate to the education of all of the children” and “prohibiting the granting of any school funds, …

Missouri, The “War On Terrorism,” And Immigrants: Legal Challenges Post 9/11, Sylvia R. Lazos

Scholarly Works

This article explains how the 2000 census confirmed what many already knew--the traditional image of what it means for Missouri to be a heartland state is changing. The 2000 census shows that the fastest growing racial/ethnic group in Missouri are Latinos. This growth in first generation immigrants has not been limited to Missouri's large urban centers. In rural Missouri and its small towns, the major group of first generation immigrants is Latinos.

Paradise Lost: Good News Club, Charitable Choice, And The State Of Religious Freedom, Ian C. Bartrum

Scholarly Works

The United States Constitution's two religion clauses prohibit Congress from passing laws that establish religion or restrict its free exercise. This Note argues that James Madison and Thomas Jefferson worked to include this language in the Constitution because of their belief that citizens' religious duties were more fundamental than their civic duties. It argues that they intended the Constitution's religion clauses to form a simple dialectic: the government may not force citizens to renounce their religious duties by compelling them to support another faith, nor may it pass laws that act coercively to restrict their religious beliefs and practices. This …

Is There A Little (Or Not So Little) Constitutional Crisis Developing In Indian Law?, Frank Pommersheim

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Anastasoff, Unpublished Opinions, And Federal Appellate Justice, Carl W. Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

In Anastasoff v. United States, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit recently invalidated the court's local rule of appellate procedure providing that "unpublished opinions are not precedent and parties generally should not cite them." Eighth Circuit Judge Richard S. Arnold authored the opinion, holding that this local requirement violates Article ill of the United States Constitution. Regardless of whether the provocative decision in Anastasoff is constitutionally sound, the opinion trenchantly emphasizes the critical significance of a public policy issue that has remained essentially untreated for too long.

The three-judge panel, thus, threw …

Enemy Aliens, David Cole

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In the wake of September 11, many have argued that the new sense of vulnerability that we all feel calls for a recalibration of the balance between liberty and security. In fact, however, much of what our government has done in the war on terrorism has not asked American citizens to make the difficult choice of deciding which of their liberties they are willing to sacrifice for increased security. Instead, the government has taken the politically easier route of selectively sacrificing the rights of aliens, and especially Arab and Muslim aliens, in the name of furthering national security. This is …

Law's Constitution: A Relational Critique, Victoria Nourse

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

It is a simple fact: we begin from others. Without others we, quite literally, could not live, feel, be born. Every mother, every mother's partner, every father, every child, knows this. But law sees these relations as something lesser, as foreign. Mention the word "relationship" to the average lawyer and she will likely assume that you are talking about sex, dating, or perhaps marriage. She may even wonder what "relationship" has to do with the law at all.

In this paper, the author wonders whether it is possible to flip that equation, to think of the relational as central, rather …

Is The Rehnquist Court An "Activist" Court? The Commerce Cause Cases, Randy E. Barnett

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In United States v. Lopez, the Supreme Court, for the first time in sixty years, declared an act of Congress unconstitutional because Congress had exceeded its powers under the Commerce Clause. In 2000, the Court reaffirmed the stance it took in Lopez in the case of United States v. Morrison, once again finding that Congress had exceeded its powers. Are these examples of something properly called "judicial activism"? To answer this question, we must clarify the meaning of the term "judicial activism." With this meaning in hand, the author examines the Court's Commerce Clause cases. The answer he …

Ordered Liberty And The Homeland Security Mission, James E. Baker

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This paper will start with a brief discussion of the terrorism threat because the threat remains predicate for any serious discussion of where we draw our legal lines. I will then suggest a legal model for looking at questions of homeland security called ordered liberty. The model is simple. First, given the nature of the threat, the executive must have broad and flexible authority to detect and respond to terrorism-–to provide for our physical security. Second, the sine qua non for such authority is meaningful oversight. Oversight means the considered application of constitutional structure, executive process, legal substance, and relevant …

When Lawyers Advise Presidents In Wartime: Kosovo And The Law Of Armed Conflict, James E. Baker

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The events of September 11 changed how we perceive national security as a society, a government, and as individuals. This is as true of national security specialists, who have been aware that America has been at war with terrorism sine at least the 1990s, as it is for those whose sense of geographic security was shattered in New York and Washington. There is talk of “new war” and “new rules,” and concern that we not apply twentieth-century lessons to a twenty-first-century war.

Over time, September 11 and its aftermath will test our interpretation and application of domestic law. It may …

The Original Understanding Of The Census Clause: Statistical Estimates And The Constitutional Requirement Of An "Actual Enumeration", Thomas R. Lee

Washington Law Review

This Article addresses the question of whether statistical methods of estimating the population for purposes of congressional apportionment are consistent with the constitutional requirement of an "actual enumeration." Although the existing literature generally asserts that history provides no meaningful guidance on this question, this Article uncovers an extensive historical record--of both British and American origin—that supports the conclusion that the generation of the Framers understood that an "actual enumeration" would consist of an actual count and would not be based on statistical estimation. Specifically, the Article shows that assessments of population on both sides of the Atlantic routinely contrasted methods …

Reviewing Congressionally Created Remedies For Excessiveness, Colleen P. Murphy

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.