Constitutional Law Commons^™

Justice Roberts’ America, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Less than a week after the Roberts Court issued its decision in National Federation of Independent Business v Sebelius, Jeffrey Toobin, writing in The New Yorker, compared the first part of Chief Justice John Roberts's opinion, in which he found that the Commerce Clause did not authorize Congress to enact the "individual mandate" section of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that requires all individuals to buy health insurance, with an Ayn Rand screed, noting that the pivotal sections of the argument were long on libertarian rhetoric but short on citations of authority. Roberts held (although "held" might be …

July 23, 2012: What Is Religion?, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “What is Religion?“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

July 19, 2012: Confronting Capitalism, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

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

Homosexuals, Equal Protection, And The Guarantee Of Fundamental Rights In The New Decade: An Optimist’S Quasi-Suspect View Of Recent Events And Their Impact On Heightened Scrutiny For Sexual Orientation-Based Discrimination, John Nicodemo

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Silencing The Victims In Child Sexual Abuse Prosecutions: The Confrontation Clause And Children's Hearsay Statements Before And After Michigan V. Bryant, Deborah Paruch

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Satellites And Municipalities: One Town’S Use Of Google Earth For Residential Surveillance, Edward Knoedler

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

July 15, 2012: Our House, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

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

July 12, 2012: What Is Law School For?, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “What is Law School For?“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

July 8, 2012: If The Higgs Boson Particle Affected Capitalism, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “ If the Higgs Boson Particle Affected Capitalism“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

July 4, 2012: How To Be Religious, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “How to be Religious“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

The Bin Laden Exception, Erik Luna

Scholarly Articles

Osama bin Laden's demise provides an opportune moment to reevaluate the extraordinary measures taken by the U.S. government in the "war on terror," with any reassessment incorporating the threat posed by al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. Some modest analysis suggests that terrorism remains a miniscule risk for the average American, and it hardly poses an existential threat to the United States. Nonetheless, terrorism-related fears have distorted the people's risk perception and facilitated dubious public policies, exemplified here by a series of programs implemented by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Among other things, this agency has adopted costly technology and …

July 1, 2012: The Significance Of The Obamacare Decision, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

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

The Importance Of Constitution-Making, David Landau

Scholarly Publications

In this short invited contribution, I argue that scholars and policy-makers need to shift focus from the moment at which the break with the old regime occurs towards the moment at which new constitutional orders are constructed. The constitution-making process in countries like Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, for example, is likely to determine in large measure what these new regimes are likely to look like. In particular, I draw off of a case study of the 2009 military coup in Honduras, which was provoked by ex-President Zelaya’s attempt to call a constituent assembly, to make two points. First, both constitutional …

The Legal Significance Of Adolescent Development On The Right To Counsel: Establishing The Constitutional Right To Counsel For Teens In Child Welfare Matters And Assuring A Meaningful Right To Counsel In Delinquency Matters, Michael J. Dale, Jennifer K. Pokempner, Riya Saha Shah, Mark F. Houldin, Robert G. Schwartz

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Redress: Rights And Other Remedies, A Comment On David Engel's Article On Rights Consciousness, Arzoo Osanloo

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

In responding to David Engel's Article, this Comment analyzes how Engel situates contemporary perspectives on rights drawing from his research in Thailand. Engel shows how the discourse of rights carries with it meanings that have multiple and changing connotations and on the ground effects. Following on Engel's questions about how consciousness of rights spreads and takes shape in local contexts, this Comment calls for expanding the substantive and methodological bases for understanding the changing effects of rights discourses. This Comment suggests that a study of the broader social and political implications, including the costs, of rights discourses (internationally, nationally, and …

Who Decides On Liberty?, Thomas P. Crocker

Faculty Publications

Whether approached as a matter of executive discretion, judicial role, or individual rights, questions about security are never far removed from questions about liberty. Tradeoffs between liberty and security often seem unavoidable. Defenders of unbounded executive power argue that security relies on experts to whom citizens and courts alike must defer. But, if the tradeoff between security and liberty is to be a real weighing of the risks, costs, benefits, burdens, and consequences of various policy decisions, then who has the necessary expertise to decide on liberty? After all, to make decisions about the appropriate balance between security and liberty …

Federal Constraints: Possible Constitutional Hurdles To Cross-Border Cap-And-Trade,, Shelley Welton

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Common Law Constitutionalism, The Constitutional Common Law, And The Validity Of The Individual Mandate, Abigail R. Moncrieff

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

The paper proceeds as follows. Part I describes the constitutional common law and its interactions with common-law constitutionalism. Part II uses the fight over the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) and its so-called "individual mandate" as a case study to flesh out the core differences between common-law constitutionalism and constitutional common law. Part III argues that a viable justification for a living constitution needs to embrace and defend the courts' essentially political nature, confronting head-on the (skyscraper) originalists' sense that courts should never do politics.

Constitutional Law—First Amendment And Freedom Of Speech—The Constitutionality Of Arkansas’S Prohibition On Political Robocalls, Caleb J. Norris

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

The note first discusses the pros and cons of robocalls, concluding that certain restrictions on robocalls are desirable. Next, the note examines current constitutional case law governing the issue. Thereafter, the note illustrates how Arkansas's regulation on political robocalls would fail a First Amendment challenge as currently written. Accordingly, the note proposes a revision to the robocall statute that would most likely allow it to pass constitutional review.

The note concludes that the burdens resulting from robocalls are placed upon robocall recipients, opposing political campaigns (especially those that determine not to use them under current law), and unrelated third parties. …

Privacy For Social Networking, Connie Davis Powell

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

This article begins by considering the emergence of social networks as a major medium of communication and posits that the success of social networks is attributable to their users' willingness to share their information. Next, the article considers the expectation of privacy for users of social networks and whether such expectation is reasonable. In particular, the article discusses the privacy policies and legal terms governing the use of social networks, and tracks the evolution of such terms and policies as they slowly whittle away user control over time. The article then discusses public outcry regarding the disclosure of information contrary …

Editor's Note: Rights Consciousness In A Globalized World

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

No abstract provided.

Vertical And Horizontal Perspectives On Rights Consciousness, David M. Engel

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

It has become commonplace to assert that rights consciousness is expanding globally and that individuals worldwide are demonstrating an increasing awareness of and insistence upon their legal entitlements. To marshal empirical support for such claims is, however, exceedingly complex. One important line of socio-legal research on rights consciousness adopts what might be called a "vertical" perspective, tracing the flow of legal forms and practices from prestigious and authoritative centers of cultural production to local settings, where they may be adopted, resisted, or transformed. Vertical perspectives on global rights consciousness have broadened and enriched the field of law and society by …

Dimensions Of Rights Consciousness, Carol J. Greenhouse

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Commenting on David Engel's Article, this Comment responds particularly to Engel's formulation of horizontal and vertical axes as a metaphor for the ways different analytical approaches to law and legal consciousness potentially yield *recombinant interpretive questions. Pursuing Engel's concerns with the embeddedness of local norms and social relations in state-based and global legal processes, this Comment suggests expanding the two dimensions of Engel's matrix to four, so as to highlight the relevance of social distance and temporality in the differing accounts of law he assays, and in appreciating their stakes. In so doing, this Comment situates Engel's essay as a …

Expanding The Horizons Of Horizontal Inquiry Into Rights Consciousness: An Engagement With David Engel, Michael W. Mccann

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This Comment interprets and reflects on the key features of David Engel's argument about the importance of balancing vertical models of rights diffusion with horizontal ethnographic studies of how rights consciousness develops out of practical experience in everyday social contexts. The primary focus is on endorsing the general argument and amplifying some understated or undeveloped dimensions of Engel's position. In particular, this reflection makes the case for: 1) expanding the range of subjects and contexts subjected to horizontal study, including especially greater attention to "haves" and elite actors; 2) studying subjects expected to have high rights consciousness as well as …

Against Wishful Scholarship: The Importance Of Engel, Duncan Mccargo

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

David Engel's Article on global consciousness' crystallizes a set of arguments he recently made in a number of publications, most notably in his coauthored book Tort, Custom, and Karma.2 To me, the main point of his argument is by no means limited to questions of law or globalism. Rather, he argues against the dominant mode of writing among scholars across a wide range of social science and related disciplines-a mode of writing that might best be termed "wishful scholarship." In wishful scholarship, the starting point of the author is the world as she or he wishes to see it, or …

Punishment Without Culpability, John F. Stinneford

UF Law Faculty Publications

For more than half a century, academic commentators have criticized the Supreme Court for failing to articulate a substantive constitutional conception of criminal law. Although the Court enforces various procedural protections that the Constitution provides for criminal defendants, it has left the question of what a crime is purely to the discretion of the legislature. This failure has permitted legislatures to evade the Constitution’s procedural protections by reclassifying crimes as civil causes of action, eliminating key elements (such as mens rea) or reclassifying them as defenses or sentencing factors, and authorizing severe punishments for crimes traditionally considered relatively minor.

The …

How Not To Criminalize Cyberbullying, Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky, Andrea Garcia

UF Law Faculty Publications

This essay provides a sustained constitutional critique of the growing body of laws criminalizing cyberbullying. These laws typically proceed by either modernizing existing harassment and stalking laws or crafting new criminal offenses. Both paths are beset with First Amendment perils, which this essay illustrates through 'case studies' of selected legislative efforts. Though sympathetic to the aims of these new laws, this essay contends that reflexive criminalization in response to tragic cyberbullying incidents has led law-makers to conflate cyberbullying as a social problem with cyberbullying as a criminal problem, creating pernicious consequences. The legislative zeal to eradicate cyberbullying potentially produces disproportionate …

Who Decides On Security?, Aziz Rana

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Despite over six decades of reform initiatives, the overwhelming drift of security arrangements in the United States has been toward greater—not less— executive centralization and discretion. This Article explores why efforts to curb presidential prerogative have failed so consistently. It argues that while constitutional scholars have overwhelmingly focused their attention on procedural solutions, the underlying reason for the growth of emergency powers is ultimately political rather than purely legal. In particular, scholars have ignored how the basic meaning of "security" has itself shifted dramatically since World War II and the beginning of the Cold War in line with changing ideas …

First Amendment Protection For Union Appeals To Consumers, Michael C. Harper

Faculty Scholarship

This article explains why decisions of the National Labor Relations Board under President Obama holding non-picketing secondary appeals to consumers not to be illegal under the National Labor Relations Act were necessary under a 1988 decision of the Supreme Court, Edward J. DeBartolo Corp. v. Florida Gulf Coast Building & Construction Trades Council. The article also explains why both the Supreme Court decision and the Board’s recent decisions were compelled by the first amendment and could not be based on the language of § 8(b)(4)(ii)(B) of the National Labor Relations Act as interpreted by the Court in other cases. The …

Follow The Money! Article I And Article Vi Constitutional Barriers To Renewable Energy In The U.S. Future, Steven Ferrey

Suffolk University Law School Faculty Works

When one "follows the money," the current Administration‘s economic stimulus funding injected unprecedented billions of dollars into new energy-related capital investments. In doing so, it endeavors to fundamentally re-sculpt the legal fabric and infrastructure of the U.S. economy in a once-in-a-generation change of watershed proportion. However, this re-sculpting is hitting fundamental constitutional barriers under Articles I and VI.

There is a jurisdictional barrier: Renewable energy investments, promoted primarily at the state level, confront real challenges pursuant to the Constitution‘s Supremacy Clause (Article VI) and Commerce Clause (Article I). Among the most litigated constitutional issues before the U.S. Supreme Court, these …