Constitutional Law Commons^™

Substantive Due Process And The Involuntary Confinement Of Sexually Violent Predators, Wayne A. Logan, Eric S. Janus

Scholarly Publications

Over the past fifty years the Supreme Court has been repeatedly asked to address the constitutionality of civil commitment laws, including laws specifically targeting sexually violent predators (SVPs). The SVP laws have withstood challenge, in each instance redeemed by their putative civil purpose. Today, however, roughly 13 years after the first modern SVP law was enacted by the State of Washington, serious concern exists over whether the laws are fulfilling their civil purpose, or are merely serving as vehicles for impermissible preventive detention.

This Article addresses this question, in the process exploring the viability of the major remaining constitutional basis …

Unmasking Federalism, Carl W. Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

Judge John Noonan has astutely chronicled law and society over a half century. He was a professor for twenty-five years, authoring such classics as Persons and Masks of the Law, and has rendered distinguished service since 1985 on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.Thus, the publication of Narrowing the Nation's Power: The Supreme Court Sides with the States ("Narrowing') would be important, even if the monograph were only a venerated scholar's reflections on his long, rich experience. This book, however, is a provocative critique that meticulously and incisively exposes the Court's new federalism and separation of …

Freedom Of Speech And The Language Of Architecture, Kevin G. Gill

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater, in Bear Run, Pennsylvania, is a celebrated architectural masterpiece of groundbreaking vision and design ingenuity. Today unfortunately, in many municipalities, strict design controls prevent architects from designing such visionary work. These controls preclude buildings that do not mimic a certain architectural style, or otherwise conform to the neighborhood. They are promulgated on notions of community harmony; the argument is made that unconventional architectural design is somehow discordant and will adversely affect property values.

Architecture has been called humanity's greatest form of expression. Architecture can be a physical expression of philosophical, religious, political, and aesthetic ideas and …

Race Conscious Affirmative Action By Tax Exempt 501(C)(3) Corporations After Grutter And Gratz, David A. Brennen

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment generally acts as a legal limit on the permissible bounds of government action. Accordingly, public universities and other government entities are constitutionally prohibited from engaging in acts that violate equal protection of the laws. The Supreme Court recently reinforced this point when it ruled, in two related cases, that public universities may consider the race of applicants when making admissions decisions, so long as an applicant's race does not amount to a deciding factor when granting admission. By its very terms, the constitutional limitation imposed by the Equal Protection Clause only directly …

The Constitutionality Of An Executive Spending Plan, Paul E. Salamanca

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Operation of government in the absence of appropriations has become relatively common in the United States, particularly when projected expenses exceed projected revenue, making adoption of a budget a difficult task for the legislature. This Article focuses on the budget crisis in the Commonwealth of Kentucky from 2002 through 2003. In Part I, this Article recapitulates the history of the spending plan, including the action filed in Franklin Circuit Court to affirm its constitutionality. In Part II, this Article discusses certain theoretical, historical, and legal principles that inform analysis of the plan. In Part III, it considers certain deviations and …

The Constitutional Contributions Of John Dickinson, Robert G. Natelson

Faculty Law Review Articles

This article explores the contributions of John Dickinson to the Constitution and as a member of the Continental Congress. Part II provides a brief biography of John Dickinson through the ratification debates. Part II discusses Dickinson's political philosophy. Part IV examines Dickinson's philosophy in action at the Constitutional Convention.

The Enumerated Powers Of States, Robert G. Natelson

Faculty Law Review Articles

In this article, the author distills the essence of the federalists' enumeration of state powers for the benefit of the ratifying public. The article concludes that the listed items strongly suggest that a guiding principle of American federalism is a Coasean one: externalities and/or interdependence, without more, generally do not serve as constitutional justification for further centralization.

Loyal Opposition In A Modern Democracy, George Anastaplo

Faculty Publications & Other Works

No abstract provided.

Symposium: Ethics 2000 And Beyond: Reform Or Professional Responsibility As Usual: Dedication, Ronald D. Rotunda, John E. Nowak

Faculty Publications & Other Works

No abstract provided.

Constitutionalism And The Good: Explorations, George Anastaplo

Faculty Publications & Other Works

No abstract provided.

Thermal Imaging And The Fourth Amendment: The Role Of The Katz Test In The Aftermath Of Kyllo V. United States, Gregory Gomez

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Brief Response To Attorney Albright's Article, Peter Brandon Bayer

Scholarly Works

This article is a brief response to another article arguing that the words “under God” do not render the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional. Attorney D. Chris Allbright’s provocative plea that the phrase “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance is insufficiently religious to offend contemporary Establishment Clause principles rests on three wobbly premises: (1) a limited perspective of some of the Framers, one which the Supreme Court rightly has eschewed; (2) Supreme Court dicta reflecting at best certain justices’ cursory suppositions about the religiosity of the words “under God;” and, (3) the wholly irrelevant, and possibly inaccurate argument that the …

Is Including "Under God" In The Pledge Of Allegiance Lawful?: An Impeccably Correct Ruling, Peter Brandon Bayer

Scholarly Works

On June 26, 2002, in Newdow v. U.S. Congress, a divided panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that the 1954 Congressional amendment adding the words “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance violated the First Amendment’s  proscription that, “Congress shall make not law respecting an establishment of religion.” Because the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause applies to the States via the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Ninth Circuit likewise found unlawful a California school district’s policy encouraging public school students to utter the words “under God” as part of teacher-led …

Note, A Woman’S Life, A Woman’S Health: Equalizing Medicaid Abortion Funding In Simat Corp. V. Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, Sara Gordon

Scholarly Works

This casenote discusses the Arizona Supreme Court’s decision in Simat Corp. v. Arizona Health Care Cost Container System. In a decision deviating from those of the United States Supreme Court, the Arizona Supreme Court declared the Arizona statute and accompanying Arizona Heath Care Cost Containment System provisions unconstitutional because they did not survive strict scrutiny analysis under the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the Arizona Constitution. Where the state of Arizona has undertaken to fund abortions for indigent women whose lives are directly threatened by pregnancy, it cannot refuse to pay for abortions for similarly indigent women whose health, …

The Gun Control Debate: A Culture-Theory Manifesto, Dan M. Kahan

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Van Ert Methodology Of Domestic Reception, Jamie Cameron

Articles & Book Chapters

A review of Gibran van Ert's book: Using International Law in Canadian Courts. This review approaches the author's methodology of domestic reception from a constitutionalist's perspective.

Revitalizing The Quiet Ninth Amendment: Determining Unenumerated Rights And Eliminating Substantive Due Process, Christopher J. Schmidt

University of Baltimore Law Review

No abstract provided.

Federalism, U.S. Style, James S. Heller

Library Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Tom Paine's Constitution, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In Common Sense, our brief for the American Revolution, the pamphleteer Tom Paine famously declared that “in America the law is king.” What, precisely, is the “law” that Paine declared to have dethroned the king? Does the phrase, penned by the advocate not only of our revolution but also of the rights of man everywhere, presage our modern practice of rights-based constitutionalism? This reading – in America, constitutional law is king – might also make Paine an early friend of judicial review, as he was unquestionably also a friend of United States constitutionalism, both federal and state. Paine’s manifesto can …

Are Foreign Nationals Entitled To The Same Constitutional Rights As Citizens?, David Cole

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Are foreign nationals entitled only to reduced rights and freedoms? The difficulty of the question is reflected in the deeply ambivalent approach of the Supreme Court, an ambivalence matched only by the alternately xenophobic and xenophilic attitude of the American public toward immigrants. On the one hand, the Court has insisted for more than a century that foreign nationals living among us are "persons" within the meaning of the Constitution, and are protected by those rights that the Constitution does not expressly reserve to citizens. Because the Constitution expressly limits to citizens only the rights to vote and to run …

The Significance Of Entrenchment Of Equality Rights, Dianne Pothier

Dianne Pothier Collection

Not until April 17, 1985 did Canada's Constitution officially embrace guarantees of equality. The three year delay in the coming into force of section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was a clear acknowledgement that equality was not a pre-existing condition at the time of entrenchment of the Charter in 1982. After 17 years of experience with entrenched rights, it can unequivocally be said that entrenchment has brought progress toward equality. Yet it must also be said that significant barriers to the attainment of full legal equality remain. This article will explain the basis upon which I …

Should Klansmen Be Lawyers? Racism As An Ethical Barrier To The Legal Profession, Carla Pratt

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

How The Overturn Of The Child Pornography Prevention Act Under Ashcroft V. Free Speech Coalition Contributes To The Protection Of Children, Emily D. Goldberg

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The note examines the Supreme Court's decision in Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, which struck down portions of the Child Pornography Prevention Act (CPPA) as unconstitutional under the First Amendment. The Court ruled that the CPPA's ban on virtual child pornography was overbroad, as it prohibited lawful speech that could have artistic, literary, or scientific value. The decision highlights the tension between protecting children from exploitation and safeguarding free speech, ultimately emphasizing the importance of allowing narratives that confront and address difficult issues like child sexual abuse.

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

Publications

Federal, state, and local civil rights laws regulate private decisionmaking about whom an employer may hire or fire, to whom a landlord may rent an apartment, or to whom a creditor may extend credit. In prohibiting discriminatory conduct, however, these laws also limit the speech of those making these decisions. In this Article, Professor Norton explores how we might think about these civil rights laws in the context of the First Amendment, and their place within the Supreme Court's commercial speech jurisprudence. She concludes that the speech restricted by these laws may be characterized as falling outside the protection of …

Marbury V. Madison And Modern Judicial Review, Robert F. Nagel

Publications

This Article compares the realist critique of Marbury with several revisionist defenses of that decision. Realists claim to see Marbury as essentially political and thus as the fountainhead of modern judicial review. Revisionists claim to see the decision as legalistically justified and thus inconsistent with current practices. Close examination, however, indicates that, despite sharp rhetorical differences, these two accounts are largely complementary rather than inconsistent. Each envisions Marbury as embodying elements of both political realism and legal formalism. Once the false argument about whether Marbury was either political or legal is put aside, it is possible to trace the influence …

Justice White And Judicial Review, Philip J. Weiser

Publications

No abstract provided.

Assessing Legislative Restrictions On Constitutional Rights: The Russian Constitutional Court And Article 55(3), Peter Krug

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

In Praise Of The Rule Of Law, The Role Of Judges, And The Right To Shop, Nadine Strossen

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Caseload Burdens And Jurisdictional Limitations: Some Observations From The History Of The Federal Courts, Edward A. Purcell Jr.

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Rethinking Fairness: Principled Legal Realism And Federal Jurisdiction, Aviam Soifer

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.