Constitutional Law Commons^™

Supreme Court Of New York, Kings County: People V. Garcia, Adam Hyman

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Supreme Court Of New York, New York County: People V. Diggins, Laura R. Bugdin

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Court Of Appeals Of New York: Hurrell-Harring V. State, Andrew W. Koster

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

City Court Of New York, City Of Watertown: People V. Saldana, Ara K. Ayvazian

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Appellate Division, Second Department: People V. Rodriguez, Michael J. Puma

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Supreme Court Of New York, New York County: People V. Crespo, Bradley Shelowitz

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

City Court Of New York, City Of Watertown: People V. Saldana, Ara K. Ayvazian

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Supreme Court Of New York, New York County: People V. Derrell, Maurice M. Labrie

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Court Of Appeals Of New York: People V. Mcbride, Joseph Leocata

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Supreme Court Of New York, Kings County: People V. Adbul-Akim, Laura R. Bugdin

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Court Of Appeals Of New York: People V. Devone, Michael S. Newman

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Appellate Division, Third Department: People V. Hardy, Whitney Montgomery

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Court Of Appeals Of New York: People V. Mothersell, Lauren L. Morales

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Criminal Court Of New York, City Of New York: People V. Larsen, Benjamin Fox Tracy

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

October 13, 2011: Are Things Getting Worse Or Better?, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Are Things Getting Worse or Better?“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Taxes, Free Expression, And Adult Entertainment, Steve R. Johnson

Scholarly Publications

The interaction of morality and money produces interesting results. One manifestation is legislation in some states and proposals in others to impose higher taxes on “gentlemen’s show lounges” (OK, I mean strip clubs) and other venues of adult entertainment.

In 2010 and 2011 two state supreme courts passed on the legality of different forms of those taxes, upholding them against challenges that they infringed on free speech/free expression rights protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. This installment of the column considers those two decisions: the February 2010 Utah decision in Bushco v. Utah State Tax Commi …

Our Exceptional Constitution, Timothy Zick

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

October 9, 2011: Why Does There Need To Be A Ministerial Exception?, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Why Does There Need to be a Ministerial Exception?“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

October 6, 2011: How Does Forgiveness Of Sins Work?, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “How Does Forgiveness of Sins Work?“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Presidential Authority And The 2001 Constitution Of Senegal, Judy Scales-Trent

North Carolina Central Law Review

No abstract provided.

October 1, 2011: The Problem Of Nonpreferentialism, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “The Problem of Nonpreferentialism“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

The Bonds That Tie: The Politics Of Motherhood And The Future Of Abortion Rights, Mary Ziegler

Scholarly Publications

What is the relationship between women’s still predominant share of caretaking work and the constitutional recognition of a right to choose abortion? Caretaking-based rationales for abortion rights have become increasingly prominent in the Supreme Court's abortion jurisprudence, as well as in abortion-rights litigation. These justifications propose that women tend overwhelmingly to raise their own children. Consequently, as the argument goes, the decision to give birth creates a lifetime commitment for most women, and in some cases, may cost women valuable career or educational opportunities.

When care taking-based rationales first appeared in the early 1970s in debate about rights to both …

Religious Documents And The Establishment Clause, Brian Sites

Faculty Scholarship

A priest, a rabbi, and an imam walk into a contract lawyer's office. Fortunately, this is not the opening of a lawyer joke, but it might well be the prelude to a complicated constitutional question about the interaction of the First Amendment and contract law. Pastors, priests, rabbis, imams, religious schools, churches, religious businesses, and a wealth of faith-based groups all enter into contractual agreements. Not surprisingly, these agreements often contain religious language, and sometimes they even hinge on provisions invoking expressly religious concepts. Religious documents come in a variety of forms, including marriage contracts, disposition of property documents, agreements …

Educating Prosecutors And Supreme Court Justices About Brady V. Maryland, Bennett L. Gershman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The author reviews the Supreme Court decision in Connick v. Thompson and provides a course outline, including problems, for training prosecutors on their duty to disclose materially favorable evidence to the defendant under Brady v. Maryland.

Lochner V. New York (1905) And Kennedy V. Louisiana (2008): Judicial Reliance On Adversary Argument, Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist called Lochner v. New York (1905) “one of the most ill-starred decisions that [the Supreme Court ever rendered.” The Justices’ deliberations preceding the 5-4 decision demonstrate the courts’ reliance on advocacy in the adversary system of civil and criminal justice. The stark imbalance between the state’s “incredibly sketchy” brief and Joseph Lochner’s sterling submission may have determined Lochner’s outcome, and thus may have changed the course of constitutional history, by leading two Justices to join the majority on the central question of whether New York’s maximum-hours law for bakery workers was a reasonable public health …

Uses And Abuses Of Textualism And Originalism In Establishment Clause Interpretation, Carl H. Esbeck

Faculty Publications

This article takes up the curious tale as to why the text and drafting record in the House and Senate were ignored by the Court in Everson, as well as what the text and debate can tell us about contemporary theories making the rounds. One theory of conservatives is that the Establishment Clause was not intended to prohibit support for religion so long as no religion is preferred.

Equal Citizenship And The Individual Right To Vote, Jospeh Fishkin

Indiana Law Journal

An emerging consensus among election law scholars urges courts to break out of “the stagnant discourse of individual rights and competing state interests” and instead adopt a jurisprudence of “structural” democratic values that sidelines individual rights. This structuralist approach won out in the great “rightsstructure” debate in election law, and came to dominate the field, during a period in which the main controversies—vote dilution, gerrymandering, ballot access, campaign finance—were all ones in which the structuralist move was illuminating. However, structuralism is now causing both scholars and courts to evaluate the new wave of vote denial controversies, over such issues as …

Iqbal, Al-Kidd And Pleading Past Qualified Immunity: What The Cases Mean And How They Demonstrate A Need To Eliminate The Immunity Doctrines From Constitutional Tort Law, John M. Greabe

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

The Supreme Court’s decisions in Ashcroft v. Iqbal and Ashcroft v. al-Kidd contain issue-framing statements indicating that a constitutional tort plaintiff is required to plead facts sufficient to establish the inapplicability of the qualified immunity defense. Yet, framing the issue in this way ignores the Court’s earlier decisions in Gomez v. Toledo and Crawford-El v. Britton and is at odds with the established law of pleading; a plaintiff is not required to anticipate an affirmative defense and negate its applicabilityin the complaint. These cases thus raise a number of questions—Does the Court really mean what its issue-framing statements suggest? If …

The Religious Liberty Of Judges, Daniel R. Suhr

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

This Article begins by reviewing the government employee line of cases, starting with United Public Workers v. Mitchell in 1947.29 The first section concludes that the modified Pickering balancing test set forth in United States v. National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) is the appropriate level of scrutiny for judicial conduct rules. The body of this Article reviews ways in which the four canons of the ABA Model Code of Judicial Ethics and official interpretations of and rulings regarding them limit the religious activities of judges. I conclude that numerous applications of the Model Code are unconstitutional infringements on judges’ First …

The Auto-Authentication Of The Page: Purely Written Speech And The Doctrine Of Obscenity, Ryen Rasmus

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.