Constitutional Law Commons^™

December 5, 2012: Is Abortion Next?, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Is Abortion Next?“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Limitations On Government: A Comparative Constitutional Analysis Of American And Iraqi Efforts To Preserve Liberty And To Protect Against Arbitrariness, Hemin Ibrahim Qadir

Law Student Scholarship

This dissertation is a comparative study in constitutionalism, the historical process of limiting government powers to enable the people to be well served and protected in important aspects of their human dignity. The two constitutional systems explored here are those of the United States and Iraq.

People have to be guaranteed protection and the Constitution must restrict the government from being too powerful to enact whatever laws or acts they want. The United States of America passed through many stages from the colonial period until present day to limit government powers, to protect human rights, fundamental rights, natural rights, and …

Excavating Constitutional Antecedents In Asia: An Essay On The Potential And Perils, Arun K. Thiruvengadam

Chicago-Kent Law Review

This essay seeks to endorse Tom Ginsburg's call for studies that expand the relatively limited range of historically informed scholarship on constitutional law in Asia. Such a trend will no doubt also broaden the focus of the discipline of contemporary constitutional scholarship, which remains unjustifiably narrow and excludes many regions of the globe. While appreciating the virtues of Ginsburg's broader analysis, the essay also seeks to draw attention to the potential pitfalls of such historically-oriented inquiry. I emphasize the fact that in many Asian societies, contemporary constitutional practice marks radical departures from pre-existing traditions of law and constitutionalism. Drawing upon …

Horizontal Rights And Chinese Constitutionalism: Judicialization Through Labor Disputes, Ernest Caldwell

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Western academics who criticize Chinese constitutionalism often focus on the inability of the Supreme People's Court to effectively enforce the rights of Chinese citizens enshrined within the Constitution of the People's Republic of China. Such criticism, I argue, is the result of analytical methods too invested in Anglo-American constitutional discourse. These approaches tend to focus only on those Chinese political issues that impede the institution of western-style judicial review mechanisms, and often construe a 'right' as merely having vertical effect (i.e., as individual rights held against the State). Drawing on recent scholarship that studies Chinese constitutionalism using its own categories …

Constitutionalism And The Rule Of Law: Considering The Case For Antecedents, Rogers M. Smith

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Tom Ginsburg credibly establishes that East Asian legal traditions include elements that can be considered antecedents for perhaps the strongest form of the rule of law, constitutional restraints that apply even to sovereigns. Treating these precedents chiefly as anticipations of Western-style constitutionalism, however, may be historically misleading and may inhibit reflection on the desirability of practices that represent alternatives to Western conceptions of the rule of law.

Beyond The Courts, Beyond The State: Reflections On Caldwell's "Horizontal Rights And Chinese Constitutionalism", Victor V. Ramraj

Chicago-Kent Law Review

This article provides a critical response to Ernest Caldwell's article, Horizontal Rights and Chinese Constitutionalism: Judicialization through Labor Disputes. According to Caldwell, those looking for an emerging constitutional culture in China should be looking not in the higher courts (as the American paradigm of constitutional law suggests), but in the lower courts that settle day-to-day disputes. Moreover, the constitutional discourse in those lower courts is not about limiting state power, but about the need for "horizontal" protections of citizens—specifically laborers—from their powerful employers in furtherance of constitutional values. This article offers three responses to Caldwell's thesis. First, while acknowledging and …

From Constitutional Listening To Moral Listening, Roy Tseng

Chicago-Kent Law Review

In order to provide comments on Michael Dowdle's account of "Constitutional Listening," this paper aims to establish three counter-arguments. First of all, in contrast to Dowdle's particularly narrow understanding of liberalism, I argue that to evaluate the moral import of liberalism properly, we need to draw attention to the diversities of liberalism. According to what I will call "historicist liberalism," for example, in understanding other cultures we should try to show sensitivities toward alien political systems and moral values. Second of all, although I appreciate Dowdle's effort to avoid the misinterpretation of non-Western constitutional discourse, I do not agree with …

From Constitutional Listening To Constitutional Learning, Leigh Jenco

Chicago-Kent Law Review

In this article, I point out some limitations of Michael Dowdle's "listening" model, particularly its basis in the "principle of charity." I try to show that listening, as well as the principle of charity, are inadvertently passive and one-sided exercises that seem to have little similarity to the deeply self-transformative "learning" Dowdle urges us to undertake. I go on to suggest other ways of accomplishing the goals Dowdle sets for this project. Specifically, I develop the "self-reflexive approach" to think about how we might change ourselves—our conversations, our terms, our concerns—in addition to, and in the process of, learning from …

Discrimination In The Marcellus Shale: The Dormant Commerce Clause And Hydraulic Fracturing Waste Disposal, Eric Michel

Chicago-Kent Law Review

The environmentally controversial process of hydraulic fracturing (commonly referred to as "fracking") has led to a recent explosion in the supply and sale of natural gas in the United States. However, every fracking operation creates a sizable amount of toxic wastewater that requires disposal, and drillers in Pennsylvania have increasingly been shipping their waste across the border to Ohio because of Pennsylvania's inadequate internal disposal options. In response, Ohio has passed legislation that taxes out-of-state fracking waste at a greater rate than waste derived from natural gas drilling within its borders. This Note examines whether Ohio's taxing scheme violates the …

Constitutionalism: East Asian Antecedents, Tom Ginsburg

Chicago-Kent Law Review

To what degree can traditional Asian political and legal institutions be seen as embodying constitutionalist values? This question has risen to the fore in recent decades as part of a new attention to constitutionalism around the world, as well as the decline in orientalist perceptions of Asia as a region of oppressive legal traditions. This article juxtaposes East Asian analogues or antecedents of constitutionalism with a particular set of recent theoretical understandings of the concept of constitutionalism. After conducting a historical review of political and legal institutions in China, Japan and Korea, the article argues that we can indeed speak …

Inside Voices: Protecting The Student-Critic In Public Schools, Josie F. Brown

Faculty Publications

First Amendment doctrine acknowledges the constructive potential of citizens’ criticism of public officials and governmental policies by offering such speech vigilant protection. However, when students speak out about perceived injustice or dysfunction in their public schools, teachers and administrators too often react by squelching and even punishing student-critics. To counteract school officials’ reflexively repressive responses to student protest and petition activities, this Article explains why the faithful performance of public schools’ responsibility to prepare students for constitutional citizenship demands the adoption of a more receptive and respectful attitude toward student dissent. After documenting how both educators and courts have mistakenly …

Constitutional Listening, Michael W. Dowdle

Chicago-Kent Law Review

This article explores a particular methodology of comparative constitutional analysis that it calls "constitutional listening." Derived from the interpretive "principle of charity," constitutional listening involves interpreting constitutional discourse of other polities in their best light. This includes not simply polities whose constitutional structures and values resemble our own, but perhaps even more importantly, polities and constitutional systems whose values and structures seem alien to us. The value of this methodology, it is argued, lies in its ability to expand our understanding of the diversity of experiences that have gone into the human project of constitutionalism, and in the diversity of …

The Unity Of Constitutional Values: A Comment On Ernest Caldwell's "Horizontal Rights And Chinese Constitutionalism: Judicialization Through Labor Disputes", Arif A. Jamal

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Ernest Caldwell wants to defend Chinese constitutionalism from criticism, mainly from Western constitutional scholars or scholars who hold up Western constitutional patterns as an ideal. Caldwell makes both a 'comparative' claim and a 'value' claim. The comparative claim is that Chinese constitutional law must be understood on its own terms and that on these terms it does protect rights, even if it does not do so in the same way as Western constitutional law. The value claim is that the procedures in China's legal system satisfy value concerns captured in the term 'constitutionalism' because they show how that system respects …

The Transformation Of Immigration Federalism, Jennifer M. Chacón

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

“Abandoned… Without A Word Of Warning”: Perspectives On Maples V. Thomas, Deborah A. Demott

Duke Journal of Constitutional Law & Public Policy

No abstract provided.

Clarity At Sentencing Deferred: How Dorsey V. United States Could Have Reformed Federal Sentencing, Jonathan Ross

Duke Journal of Constitutional Law & Public Policy

No abstract provided.

On The Border Patrol And Its Use Of Illegal Roving Patrol Stops., David Anton Armendariz

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract Forthcoming.

Religious Treatment Exemption Statutes: Betrayest Thou Me With A Statute., Shirley Darby Howell

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract Forthcoming.

Making The Most Of United States V. Jones In A Surveillance Society: A Statutory Implementation Of Mosaic Theory, Christopher Slobogin

Duke Journal of Constitutional Law & Public Policy

No abstract provided.

Getting Juvenile Life Without Parole “Right” After Miller V. Alabama, Doriane L. Coleman, James E. Coleman Jr.

Duke Journal of Constitutional Law & Public Policy

No abstract provided.

Talking Chalk: Defacing The First Amendmen In The Public Forum, Marie A. Failinger

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Can The States Keep Secrets From The Federal Government?, Robert A. Mikos

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

States amass troves of information detailing the regulated activities of their citizens, including activities that violate federal law. Not surprisingly, the federal government is keenly interested in this information. It has ordered reluctant state officials to turn over their confidential files concerning medical marijuana, juvenile criminal history, immigration status, tax payments, and employment discrimination, among many other matters, to help enforce federal laws against private citizens. Many states have objected to these demands, citing opposition to federal policies and concerns about the costs of breaching confidences, but the lower courts have uniformly upheld the federal government’s power to commandeer information …

Shall The Twain Never Meet? Competing Narratives And Discourses Of The Rule Of Law In Singapore, Jack Tsen-Ta Lee

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This article aims to assess the role played by the rule of law in discourse by critics of the Singapore Government’s policies and in the Government’s responses to such criticisms. It argues that in the past the two narratives clashed over conceptions of the rule of law, but there is now evidence of convergence of thinking as regards the need to protect human rights, though not necessarily as to how the balance between rights and other public interests should be struck. The article also examines why the rule of law must be regarded as a constitutional doctrine in Singapore, the …

Originalism And Loving V. Virginia, Steven G. Calabresi, Andrea Matthews

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Repudiating The Narrow Rule In Capital Sentencing, Scott W. Howe

BYU Law Review

This Article proposes a modest reform of Eighth Amendment law governing capital sentencing to spur major reform in the understanding of the function of the doctrine. The Article urges the Supreme Court to renounce a largely empty mandate known as the “narrowing” rule and the rhetoric of equality that has accompanied it. By doing so, the Court could speak more truthfully about the important but more limited function that its capital-sentencing doctrine actually pursues, which is to ensure that no person receives the death penalty who does not deserve it. The Court could also speak more candidly than it has …

Why The National Popular Vote Compact Is Unconstitutional, Norman R. Williams

BYU Law Review

Unable to secure passage of a federal constitutional amendment abolishing the Electoral College, several opponents of the Electoral College have sought to establish the direct, popular election of the President via an interstate compact according to which individual signatory states agree to appoint their presidential electors in accordance with the nationwide popular vote. Ostensibly designed to prevent elections, such as the one in 2000, in which the Electoral College “misfired” and chose the candidate who received fewer popular votes, the National Popular Vote Compact has been adopted by several states, including California. In this Article, I argue that the National …

The Dual-Faceted Federalism Framework And The Derivative Constitutional Status Of Local Governments, Michael W. Cannon

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Right To Refuse Life Sustaining Medical Treatment And The Noncompetent Nonterminally Ill Patient: An Analysis Of Abridgment And Anarchy, Elizabeth Helene Adamson

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

A First Amendment Right Of Access To A Juror's Identity: Toward A Fuller Understanding Of The Jury's Deliberative Process , Robert Lloyd Raskopf

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Boland In The Wind: The Iran-Contra Affair And The Invitation To Struggle , Bretton G. Sciaroni

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.