Constitutional Law Commons^™

Brown V. Board Of Education, Footnote 11, And Multidisciplinarity, Michael Heise

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

La Vida Considerada Como Cosa: Un Error Norteamericano Fundamental, Richard Stith

Law Faculty Publications

El autor explica un error fundamental que puede subyacer a la aprobación, por el Tribunal Supremo norteamericano en el año 2000, del aborto durante el parto. Este error consiste en concebir la vida física como una mera cosa, como algo que puede existir sin que haya un ser humano que la viva. En cuanto al aborto, el error radica en la confusión entre desarrollo y construcción (del feto), confusión debida en parte a ciertas creencias medievales ya superadas por la ciencia moderna. En la segunda mitad del artículo, el autor sostiene que un error semejante puede proporcionar fácilmente un argumento …

Hamdi Meets Youngstown: Justice Jackson's Wartime Security Jurisprudence And The Detention Of Enemy Combatants, Sarah H. Cleveland

Faculty Scholarship

More than any Justice who has sat on the United States Supreme Court, Associate Justice Robert H. Jackson explained how our Eighteenth Century Constitution – that "Eighteenth-Century sketch of a government hoped for" – struggles both to preserve fundamental liberties and to protect the nation against fundamental threats. Drawing upon his collective experience as a solo practitioner with only one year of formal legal education at Albany Law School; government tax and antitrust lawyer, Solicitor General, and Attorney General in the Roosevelt Administration; Associate Justice to the Supreme Court; and Representative and Chief of Counsel for the United States at …

Implementing The U.N. Convention On The Rights Of The Child, Lauren M. Spitz

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted by the General Assembly on November 20, 1989, articulates a comprehensive scheme of rights specifically tailored to children. International recognition of children's rights is only the first step, however. The effectiveness of the Convention on the Rights of the Child depends on the signatories' efforts to comply with its provisions and to incorporate children's rights into existing schemes of established rights. The 1996 Constitution of the Republic of South Africa includes specific rights for children resembling those articulated in the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Although South …

Congress's Power To Enforce Fourteenth Amendment Rights: Lessons From Federal Remedies The Framers Enacted , Robert J. Kaczorowski

Faculty Scholarship

Professor Robert Kaczorowski argues for an expansive originalist interpretation of Congressional power under the Fourteenth Amendment. Before the Civil War Congress actually exercised, and the Supreme Court repeatedly upheld plenary Congressional power to enforce the constitutional rights of slaveholders. After the Civil War, the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment copied the antebellum statutes and exercised plenary power to enforce the constitutional rights of all American citizens when they enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and then incorporated the Act into the Fourteenth Amendment. The framers of the Fourteenth Amendment thereby exercised the plenary power the Rehnquist Court claims the …

Congressional Threats Of Removal Against Federal Judges, Marc O. Degirolami

Faculty Publications

The federal judicial branch has lately become the object of increasing scrutiny and distrust by its legislative counterpart. Congressional suspicion is often directed toward judicial discretion in criminal sentencing and, more generally, the degree to which judges are perceived to be beholden to a particular ideological point of view or personal bias. This distrust has bred a potent strain of political opportunism that Congress has manifested in several recent bills. One of these, the Feeney Amendment to the PROTECT Act, all but eliminated judicial discretion in sentencing and tacitly threatens judges' continued employment. Though the Supreme Court's recent decision in …

A Commander's Power, A Civilian's Reason: Justice Jackson's Korematsu Dissent, John Q. Barrett

Faculty Publications

Robert Houghwout Jackson was a justice of the United States Supreme Court during the years of World War II. This article considers his great but potentially perplexing December 1944 dissent in Korematsu v. United States, in which he refused to join the Court majority that proclaimed the constitutionality of military orders excluding Japanese Americans from the West Coast of the United States during the War years. This article considers Justice Jackson's Korematsu dissent in full. It was and is, contrary to some of the criticisms it has received over the past 60 years, a coherent position. Jackson's dissent is also …

In Defense Of The Debt Limit Statute, Anita S. Krishnakumar

Faculty Publications

The debt limit statute is a critical feature of the federal budget process and prompts frequent legislation to increase the government's borrowing authority. In this Article, Professor Anita S. Krishnakumar examines the history of the debt limit statute as well as its function in the fiscal constitution. The Article deconstructs several popular criticisms of the debt limit statute, arguing that the criticisms exaggerate and that the statute in fact serves two important roles: first, the statute is the last remnant of congressional control and accountability over the national debt; second, it acts as an important institutional check on party and …

Judicial Review Before Marbury, William Michael Treanor

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

While scholars have long probed the original understanding of judicial review and the early judicial review case law, this article presents a study of the judicial review case law in the United States before Marbury v. Madison that is dramatically more complete than prior work and that challenges previous scholarship on the original understanding of judicial review on the two most critical dimensions: how well judicial review was established at the time of the Founding and when it was exercised. Where prior work argues that judicial review was rarely exercised before Marbury (or that it was created in Marbury), …

Spiritual Custody: Relational Rights And Constitutional Commitments, Jeffrey Shulman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Patricia and David Zummo were married on December 17, 1978. When they divorced ten years later, the Zummos were unable to come to agreement about the religious upbringing of their three children. Prior to their marriage, Patricia and David had agreed that they would raise their children in the Jewish faith, and while they were married, "the Zummo family participated fully in the life of the Jewish faith and community." But after the divorce David wanted to take the children to Roman Catholic services as he saw fit, and he refused to arrange for the children's attendance at Hebrew School …

Judicial Selection As...Talk Radio, Michael J. Gerhardt

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Panel Presentation Transcript: Symposium: Free Speech In Wartime, Nadine Strossen

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Democracy Without A Net? Separation Of Powers And The Idea Of Self-Sustaining Constitutional Constraints On Undemocratic Behavior, James A. Gardner

Journal Articles

The United States Constitution is designed to achieve good government by relying on two distinct systems: a primary system that achieves good governance through democratic electoral accountability; and a set of self-sustaining structural backup systems designed for situations in which the democratic system fails, and which operate by limiting the ability of bad rulers to do serious harm to the public good. A key premise of this kind of dual structural arrangement is that effective backup systems must operate independently of primary democratic systems; because they are needed precisely when democratic mechanisms have failed, they cannot depend for their success …

Designing Federalism In Burma, David C. Williams, Lian H. Sakhong

Books & Book Chapters by Maurer Faculty

This volume is designed to serve as a concise introduction to certain constitutional ideas that may be relevant to Burma. It contains three documents: one essay by Lian Sakhong, and two lectures that I delivered to the SCSC, over several days in November 2003 and August 2004. All three contain common themes. First, sometimes ideas can show us a way through problems that we had thought were impenetrable. Second, Burma’s problems have grown in part from some misunderstandings of certain ideas. In particular, many in Burma have imagined that governance can really occur only at the center: people look to …

Crawford V. Washington: Encouraging And Ensuring The Confrontation Of Witness, Robert P. Mosteller

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Military Spying In The United States: When It Is Not Your Neighbor Knocking At Your Door, Where Do You Turn?, Miriam Schneider

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

This Note will describe the role of the military in the United States and its relationship to privacy rights. Part I of this Note will describe the historical underpinnings that led to a limited role for the military within the United States territory, beyond defending against attack. Part II will describe the expectations by the courts and legislature for the military. In addition, it will illustrate instances where the military, along with numerous federal agencies, overstepped its traditional, constitutional and legal bounds. Part III will offer the legislature's response to, and its subsequent regulation of, the military and other federal …

Limited Powers In The Looking-Glass: Otiose Textualism, And An Empirical Analysis Of Other Approaches, When Activists In Private Shopping Centers Claim State Constitutional Liberties, Richard J. Peltz

Cleveland State Law Review

This Article examines closely a narrow range of highly factually analogous cases, in which state constitutional rights are asserted despite a clear lack of entitlement to assert any federal constitutional claim. Specifically, the cases selected are those in which private persons assert a right to conduct expressive activity, including electoral activity, in private shopping centers during hours when the properties are held open to the general public. These cases may be referred to colloquially as “the mall cases.” Selected here are only those cases that were decided after the federal question became clear. The Article first inquires into the role …

Repudiating Morals Legislation: Rendering The Constitutional Right To Privacy Obsolete, Sonu Bedi

Cleveland State Law Review

This article is set out in three parts. Part II outlines the difficulties with the right to privacy. Part III articulates the relationship between morals legislation and privacy, demonstrating that we no longer need the latter as long as the state eschews the former. Part IV argues that the Court in Lawrence articulates a new standard of rational review where specific appeal to morality is constitutionally suspect, allowing us to reject the right to privacy

Equal Protection For Homosexuals: Why The Immutability Argument Is Necessary And How It Is Met, Kari Balog

Cleveland State Law Review

The immutability factor is possibly the most disputed of the four factors of the Frontiero test, a test laid out by the Supreme Court to identify suspect classifications. Doctors and scientists have spent years studying sexual orientation, attempting to find the cause of homosexuality in order to determine whether or not sexual orientation may be changed. Unfortunately, the many studies have not provided a definitive answer to the question of immutability. This Note considers many of the psychological, hormonal, and more recent genetic studies and determines what the medical and scientific evidence means for homosexuals in their pursuit for equal …

Constitutional Law—Fourth Amendment—Knock And Announce: The Ninth Circuit Knocks And The Supreme Court Announces A Re-Emphasis On The Case-By-Case Analysis.United States V. Banks, 540 U.S. 31 (2003), Erin Elizabeth Cassinelli

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Evidence—Sixth Amendment And The Confrontation Clause—Testimonial Trumps Reliable: The United States Supreme Court Reconsiders Its Approach To The Confrontation Clause. Crawford V. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004)., Kristen Sluyter

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Eminent Domain And Secondary Rent-Seeking, Gregory S. Alexander

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The Manacled Octopus: The Unitary Executive And Epa Enforcement Involving Federal Agencies, William C. Tucker

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

Congress, Cave Bugs, Courts And The Commerce Clause: Did The Fifth Circuit Figure Out How To Regulate Intrastate Activity Under The Endangered Species Act, John Gregory Koch

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

Navigating Dangerous Constitutional Straits: A Prolegomenon On The Federal Marriage Amendment And The Disenfranchisement Of Sexual Minorities, Ronald J. Krotosynski, Jr., E. Gary Spitko

University of Colorado Law Review

No abstract provided.

How Traditional And Minority Religions Fare In The Courts: Empirical Evidence From Religious Liberty Cases, Gregory C. Sisk

University of Colorado Law Review

There is an enduring legal myth that members of minority religious groups face a decidedly uphill battle in securing accommodation for or even tolerance of unconventional religious practices, expression, or values from the courts. According to conventional wisdom, traditional Christian believers may anticipate a more hospitable welcome from the judiciary when asserting claims of conscience or religious liberty. However based upon an empirical study of religious liberty decisions in the federal courts, the proposition that minority religions are less successful with their claims was found to be without empirical support, at least in the modern era and in the lower …

Child Custody, Religious Practices, And Conscience, Kent Greenwalt

University of Colorado Law Review

This article asks to what extent considerations relating to religion should figure in custody disputes. One inquiry is whether the kind of religious life that a parent plans for his or her child should figure in the decision whether to grant custody to that parent. The article focuses on a religious life that involves very substantial deprivation no after-school activities, no television, no pets, no reading except schoolwork and the Bible-from an ordinary secular perspective. A second inquiry is whether one parent of a divorced couple should be able to prevent the other parent from exposing a child to various …

In Search Of A Theory For Constitutional Comparativism, Roger P. Alford

Journal Articles

Constitutional comparativism - the notion that international and foreign material should be used to interpret the U.S. Constitution - is gaining currency. Yet proponents of this practice rarely offer a firm theoretical justification for the practice. This Article contends that constitutional comparativism should be examined from the perspective of constitutional theory. The use of comparative and international material must be deemed appropriate or inappropriate based on a particular judge's interpretive mode of constitutional analysis. The Article presents four classic constitutional theories - originalism, natural law, majoritarianism, and pragmatism - and addresses the propriety of constitutional comparativism under each theory. This …

Essay: A Search For Reason In Fairy Tales, John F. Hernandez

Faculty Articles

A fairy tale: Once upon at time (not so very long ago), in a land (not so far away) lived a beautiful queen (well, actually a "runner up ") with a golden voice. The beautiful queen reined over her people and sang of sunshine. Some of the queen's subjects had felt that they were not treated fairly by the laws of the land and sought to have their unfair treatment prohibited. Apparently, this caused the queen to develop a fear and hatred for these subjects. These subjects had done nothing to the queen. Yet, the queen made it her mission …

Constitutional Conversations And New Religious Movements: A Comparative Case Study, Leigh H. Greenhaw, Michael H. Koby

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Using the metaphor of a constitutional conversation to compare the treatment of a relatively new and unpopular religion by the legal systems of the United States, Russia, and Spain, this Article examines the methodology by which laws affecting religion are made and enforced. It uses as a case study the interaction of the Jehovah's Witnesses with the legal system of the United States, comparing it with more recent interactions in Russia and Spain. The Authors argue that while the experience in the United States was profoundly influenced by a common-law methodology, the experience in two civil-law countries, Russia and Spain, …