Constitutional Law Commons^™

May 17, 2014: The End Of Democracy, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

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

May 14, 2014: When Science And Religion Mixed, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “When Science and Religion Mixed“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

May 11, 2014: Would The World Be Better Off Without Religion?, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Would the World Be Better Off Without Religion?“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Ending Perpetual War? Constitutional War Termination Powers And The Conflict Against Al Qaeda, David A. Simon

Pepperdine Law Review

This Article presents a framework for interpreting the constitutional war termination powers of Congress and the President and applies this framework to questions involving how and when the war against Al Qaeda and associated forces could end. Although constitutional theory and practice suggest the validity of congressional actions to initiate war, the issue of Congress’s constitutional role in ending war has received little attention in scholarly debates. Theoretically, this Article contends that terminating war without meaningful cooperation between the President and Congress generates tension with the principle of the separation of powers underpinning the U.S. constitutional system, with the Framers’ …

An Analysis Of Death Penalty Decisions From The October 2006 Supreme Court Term, Richard Klein

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

First Amendment Decisions From The October 2006 Term, Erwin Chemerinsky, Marci A. Hamilton

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

An Overview Of The October 2006 Supreme Court Term, Erwin Chemerinsky

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Resolving The Alj Quandary, Kent Barnett

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

Three competing constitutional and practical concerns surround federal administrative law judges (“ALJs”), who preside over all formal adjudications within the executive branch. First, if ALJs are “inferior Officers” (not mere employees), as five current Supreme Court Justices have suggested, the current method of selecting many ALJs likely violates the Appointments Clause. Second, a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision reserved the question whether the statutory protections that prevent ALJs from being fired at will impermissibly impinge upon the President’s supervisory power under Article II. Third, these same protections from removal may, on the other hand, be too limited to satisfy impartiality …

Final Decision Authority And The Central Panel Alj, Larry J. Craddock

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

No abstract provided.

May 5, 2014: A Brain Dead Decision, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “A Brain Dead Decision“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

May 3, 2014: The End Of The American Experiment, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

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

Court Of Appeals Of New York - Cubas V. Martinez, Gregory Gillen

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Court Of Appeals Of New York - New York Ex Rel. Harkavy V. Consilvio, Sardar Asadullah

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Supreme Court Of New York Appellate Division, First Department - Street Vendor Project V. City Of New York, Sarah Marx

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Court Of Appeals Of New York - People V. Ramchair, Joseph Maehr

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Court Of Appeals Of New York - People V. Nieves-Andino, Jason Gines

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Court Of Appeals Of New York - People V. Gajadhar, Joseph Maehr

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Family Court Of New York, Nassau County - In Re S.S., Steven Fox

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Court Of Appeals Of New York - Polito V. Walsh, William Pike

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Supreme Court Of New York Appellate Division, Third Department - People V. Ruppert, Sardar Asadullah

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Supreme Court Of New York Appellate Division, Third Department - People V. Willette, Mark Tsukerman

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Supreme Court Of New York Appellate Division, Third Department - Kings Mall, Llc V. Wenk, Steven Fox

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Least Activist Supreme Court In History? The Roberts Court And The Exercise Of Judicial Review, Keith E. Whittington

Notre Dame Law Review

Not too many years ago, scholars could reasonably speak of the U.S. Supreme Court as being among the most activist in American history. Both empirical and normative scholarship was driven by the sense of a Court that was aggressive in the assertion of its own supremacy and active in the exercise of the power of judicial review. The Court under Chief Justice John Roberts cannot be viewed in the same way. The Roberts Court has issued its share of controversial constitutional decisions, but a rarely observed but important feature of the Roberts Court is its unusual restraint in the exercise …

The "Constitution In Exile" As A Problem For Legal Theory, Stephen E. Sachs

Notre Dame Law Review

How does one defend a constitutional theory that’s out of the mainstream? Critics of originalism, for example, have described it as a nefarious “Constitution in Exile,” a plot to impose abandoned rules on the unsuspecting public. This framing is largely mythical, but it raises a serious objection. If a theory asks us to change our legal practices, leaving important questions to academics or historians, how can it be a theory of our law? If law is a matter of social convention, how can there be conventions that hardly anybody knows about? How is a constitution in exile even possible?

This …

From Progressivism To Modern Liberalism: Louis D. Brandeis As A Transitional Figure In Constitutional Law, David E. Bernstein

Notre Dame Law Review

Part I of this Article discusses Brandeis’s many deviations from civil libertarianism as it came to be understood in the post–New Deal period. These deviations include his acquiescence to coercive eugenics, his general lack of interest in African American rights, his support for protective labor legislation for women and concomitant disregard for women’s legal equality, his toleration of government abuses attendant to Prohibition enforcement, and his desire to repeal the Fourteenth Amendment. Part II shows that despite these deviations, Brandeis had a significantly stronger record on civil liberties as a Supreme Court Justice than one would expect from someone of …

Intragenerational Constitutional Overruling, L.A. Powe Jr.

Notre Dame Law Review

This Article seeks to shed some light on a comparatively rare, but important issue in constitutional jurisprudence: Under what circumstances does the Supreme Court formally overrule one of its own significant constitutional precedents within the same judicial generation as the announcement of the precedent? This phenomenon is one part of the broader role of precedent and stare decisis in fashioning and maintaining constitutional law—albeit in part because of the modifier “significant”—there are a limited number of such cases (some three dozen where the overruled case was decided after the introduction of President Franklin Roosevelt’s Court-packing plan, roughly once every other …

The Jurisprudence Of The Hughes Court: The Recent Literature, Barry Cushman

Notre Dame Law Review

The balance of this Article is devoted, after a fashion, to an exploration of the extent to which the recent literature on the Hughes Court seeks to incorporate the internal point of view. In Part I, I seek to identify the historiographical premises undergirding each author’s treatment of the subject. In Part II, I explore how those historiographical premises are reflected in each author’s treatment of the substantive development of constitutional doctrine during the period. In Part III, I examine the ways in which those historiographical premises inform each author’s analysis of the causal forces driving that doctrinal development. Part …

The Former Clerks Who Nearly Killed Judicial Restraint, Brad Snyder

Notre Dame Law Review

This symposium piece explores the rise and fall of legal process theory as well as the scholarship of former Warren Court and early Burger Court clerks who nearly killed it. It also suggests that there could be a revival of a process-based judicial restraint based on a new generation of late Burger Court/early Rehnquist Court clerks-turned-academics who came of age during the mid-1980s. These law clerks rejected judicial supremacy and adopted popular constitutionalism and other democratic approaches to constitutional interpretation. Popular constitutionalism is inspired by the same faith in the democratic political process as the judicial restraint advocated by James …

Our Anchor For 225 Years And Counting: The Enduring Significance Of The Precise Text Of The Constitution, Brett M. Kavanaugh

Notre Dame Law Review

When one comes to Notre Dame, whether for a law review symposium or for a football game or for both, your mind is drawn to fundamentals and history. This is a place that oozes history, and in that vein, I want to take a step back and focus on the text of our Constitution. I want to focus on that text in two dimensions. First, I want to explain how the text of the Constitution creates a structure—a separation of powers—that protects liberty. And in particular, I want to emphasize how that structure tilts toward liberty, how it creates legislative …

The Decline Of Legal Classicism And The Evolution Of New Deal Constitutionalism, Samuel R. Olken

Notre Dame Law Review

This Article explores how some of the salient characteristics of classical legal thought influenced the evolution of the Supreme Court’s constitutional jurisprudence during the New Deal era. It focuses upon the Court’s jurisprudence of economic liberty in the context of substantive due process. Though a similar pattern of evolution occurred in the Court’s Commerce Clause jurisprudence, examination of this area of constitutional development is beyond the scope of this Article. Part I provides an overview of legal classicism and its influence upon late nineteenth and early twentieth-century constitutional law. The next Part examines the paradox of legal classicism and its …