Constitutional Law Commons^™

Officers Under The Appointments Clause, John Plecnik

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Much ink has been spilled, and many keyboards worn, debating the definition of "Officers of the United States" under the Appointments Clause of Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 of the Constitution. The distinction between Officers and employees is constitutionally and practically significant, because the former must be appointed by the President, with or without the advice and consent of the Senate, Courts of Law, or Heads of Departments. In contrast, employees may be hired by anyone in any manner.

Appointments Clause controversies are triggered when a government official who was hired as an employee is accused of unconstitutionally wielding …

Enforcement Discretion And Executive Duty, Zachary S. Price

Vanderbilt Law Review

Recent Presidents have claimed wide-ranging authority to decline enforcement of federal laws. The Obama Administration, for example, has announced policies of abstaining from investigation and prosecution of certain federal marijuana crimes, postponing enforcement of key provisions of the Affordable Care Act, and suspending enforcement of removal statutes against certain undocumented immigrants. While these examples highlight how exercises of executive enforcement discretion-the authority to turn a blind eye to legal violations-may effectively reshape federal policy, prior scholarship has offered no satisfactory account of the proper scope of, and constitutional basis for, this putative executive authority. This Article fills that gap. Through …

Personal Curtilage: Fourth Amendment Security In Public, Andrew Guthrie Ferguson

William & Mary Law Review

Do citizens have any Fourth Amendment protection from senseenhancing surveillance technologies in public? This Article engages a timely question as new surveillance technologies have redefined expectations of privacy in public spaces. It proposes a new theory of Fourth Amendment security based on the ancient theory of curtilage protection for private property. Curtilage has long been understood as a legal fiction that expands the protection of the home beyond the formal structures of the house. Based on custom and law protecting against both nosy neighbors and the government, curtilage was defined by the actions the property owner took to signal a …

Failing To Warn In The Context Of Rare Side Effects, Morris Dweck

Cardozo Public Law, Policy & Ethics Journal

No abstract provided.

Unconstitutionality And The Rule Of Wide-Open Cross-Examination: Encroaching On The Fifth Amendment When Examining The Accused, Ronald L. Carlson, Michael S. Carlson

Scholarly Works

When Georgia adopted a new evidence code on January 1, 2013, it embraced the rule on scope of cross-examination which local courts have traditionally followed. This is the wide-open rule which permits the cross-examiner to range across the entire case, no matter how limited the direct exam. Subjects foreign to the direct can be freely explored, limited only by the rule of relevancy.

Commentators have associated the majority, more limited cross-examination methodology with American jurisprudence and the wide-ranging approach with English courts. Reflecting this divide, the Supreme Court of South Dakota recognized "two principal schools of thought" when it comes …

Overcoming Barriers To The Protection Of Viable Fetuses, Randy Beck

Scholarly Works

I start this Article from the premise that the Court was correct in Roe v. Wade concerning the significance of fetal viability. I assume for the sake of argument that viability is a momentous point in pregnancy and that “logical and biological justifications” support a compelling state interest in protecting the lives of fetuses that have crossed the viability threshold. The goal of this Article is to highlight factors that individually and in concert significantly hinder legislative attempts to preserve the lives of viable fetuses, and to identify measures that, if permitted by the courts, could facilitate the pursuit of …

Targeted Killing: United States Policy, Constitional Law, And Due Process, Mark Febrizio

Senior Honors Theses

The increased incorporation of targeted killing, primarily through the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, into United States policy raises salient questions regarding its consistency with the U.S. Constitution. This paper contrasts interpretations of constitutional due process with the current legal framework for conducting targeted killing operations. The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution establishes the due process owed to U.S. citizens. This paper determines that the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen, was accomplished in a manner inconsistent with constitutional due process and demonstrates an over-extension of executive branch power. This paper examines one scholarly recommendation that seeks to increase …

Why Arizona V. Gant Is The Wrong Solution To The Warrantless Cell Phone Search Problem, Adam M. Gershowitz

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Transformative Twelfth Amendment, Joshua D. Hawley

William & Mary Law Review

Scholars have long treated the Twelfth Amendment as a constitutional obscurity, a merely mechanical adjustment to the electoral college—and perhaps a less than successful one at that. This consensus is mistaken. In fact, the Twelfth Amendment accomplished one of the most consequential changes to the structure of our constitutional government yet. It fundamentally altered the nature of the Executive and the Executive’s relationship to the other branches of government. The Amendment changed the Executive into something it had not been before: a political office. The presidency designed at Philadelphia was intended to be neither a policymaking nor a representative institution, …

A Pragmatic Republic, If You Can Keep It, William R. Sherman

Michigan Law Review

These things we know to be true: Our modern administrative state is a leviathan unimaginable by the Founders. It stands on thin constitutional ice, on cracks between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. It burdens and entangles state and local governments in schemes that threaten federalism. And it presents an irresolvable dilemma regarding democratic accountability and political independence. We know these things to be true because these precepts animate some of the most significant cases and public law scholarship of our time. Underlying our examination of administrative agencies is an assumption that the problems they present would have been bizarre …

Taking States (And Metaphysics) Seriously, Sanford Levinson

Michigan Law Review

Sotirios A. Barber has written many incisive and important books, in addition to coediting an especially interesting casebook on constitutional law and interpretation. He is also a political theorist. An important part of his overall approach to constitutional theory is his philosophical commitment to “moral realism.” He believes in the metaphysical reality of moral and political truths, the most important of which, for any constitutional theorist, involve the meanings of justice and the common good. He not only believes in the ontological reality of such truths — that is, that these truths are more than mere human conventions or social …

Federalism And Phantom Economic Rights In Nfib V. Sibelius, Matthew Lindsay

All Faculty Scholarship

Few predicted that the constitutional fate of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act would turn on Congress’ power to lay and collect taxes. Yet in NFIB v. Sebelius, the Supreme Court upheld the centerpiece of the Act — the minimum coverage provision (MCP), commonly known as the “individual mandate” — as a tax. The unexpected basis of the Court’s holding has deflected attention from what may prove to be the decision’s more constitutionally consequential feature: that a majority of the Court agreed that Congress lacked authority under the Commerce Clause to penalize people who decline to purchase health insurance. …

The Filibuster And The Framing: Why The Cloture Rule Is Unconstitutional And What To Do About It, Dan T. Coenen

Scholarly Works

The U.S. Senate’s handling of filibusters has changed dramatically in recent decades. As a result, the current sixty-vote requirement for invoking cloture of debate does not produce protracted speechmaking on the Senate floor, as did predecessors of this rule in earlier periods of our history. Rather, the upper chamber now functions under a “stealth filibuster” system that in practical effect requires action by a supermajority to pass proposed bills. This Article demonstrates why this system offends a constitutional mandate of legislative majoritarianism in light of well-established Framing-era understandings and governing substance-over-form principles of interpretation. Having established the presence of a …

Protecting The Family Home By Reunderstanding United States V. Bajakajian, Yan Slavinskiy

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Double Helix Of Supremacy And Commerce Clause Constitutional Restraints Encircling The New Energy Frontier, Steven Ferrey

Suffolk University Law School Faculty Works

This article unwinds the legal double helix to examine the constitutional jurisdictional assault on American energy infrastructure and law. We examine pivotal elements of the Commerce Clause, the Supremacy Clause, and procedural aspects of ongoing challenges on energy and climate change law. We untwist and dissect energy law and regulation, focusing on key cases in the East, the Midwest, and California. In integrating the recent federal court interpretations, the Article I and VI constitutional double helix remains the critical legal restriction arresting the future of U.S. energy policy and infrastructure. Each region's law creates a distinct wedge into energy infrastructure, …

The Carbon Suite In The Hotel California: "We Are All Just Prisoners Here, Of Our Own Device", Steven Ferrey

Suffolk University Law School Faculty Works

As in the Eagle’s classic album and song “Hotel California,” California became a legal “prisoner of its own device,” amid a suite of legal challenges for exceeding the U.S. Constitution’s limits on state power. What distinguished California is not the large suite of recent legal challenges, but the fact that they are initiated by all stakeholders -- environmental, low-income, and industry groups. California was declared to have acted illegally on some basis, or it capitulated through settlement, in the majority of these challenges.

This article charts more than a half dozen recent and often successful challenges to California regulation based …

The Myth Of Strict Scrutiny For Fundamental Rights, James E. Fleming, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

Dissenting in Lawrence v. Texas, Justice Scalia stated that, under the Due Process Clause, if an asserted liberty is a "fundamental right," it triggers "strict scrutiny" that almost automatically invalidates any statute restricting that liberty. For strict scrutiny requires that the challenged statute, to be upheld, must further a "compelling governmental interest" and must be "necessary" or "narrowly tailored" to doing so. Scalia also wrote that if an asserted liberty is not a fundamental right, it is merely a "liberty interest" that triggers rational basis scrutiny that is so deferential that the Court all but automatically upholds the statute in …

March 28, 2014: Nihilism At The Heart Of Secularism, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Nihilism at the Heart of Secularism“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Arkansas Game & Fish Commission V. U.S., Katelyn J. Hepburn

Public Land & Resources Law Review

The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, on remand from the Supreme Court, reconsidered whether temporary increased dam-releases resulting in downstream flooding, constituted a physical taking under the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution. Applying the Supreme Court’s more complex balancing test, the Court of Appeals affirmed the Court of Federal Claims’ decision holding that temporary government-induced flooding can qualify as a Fifth Amendment taking. The court upheld an award of damages in excess of $5.7 million.

Improving Rights, Nancy Leong

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Courts and commentators regularly assume that a single avenue for rights-making is both sufficient and unproblematic. For example, it is enough if a Fourth Amendment claim may be litigated either in suppression hearings or in civil suits under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. In previous work, I presented original quantitative and qualitative evidence that challenged this assumption, arguing that litigation in a single context tends to flatten and distort constitutional rights.

In this Article, I build on this critique by introducing cognitive psychology research explaining why judicial rights-making is better undertaken simultaneously in multiple contexts. For example, on this view, Fourth …

March 25, 2014: What’S Going To Happen In The Hobby Lobby Case?, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “What’s Going to Happen in the Hobby Lobby Case?“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

The Difference Prevention Makes: Regulating Preventive Justice, David Cole

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States and many other countries have adopted a ‘‘paradigm of prevention,’’ employing a range of measures in an attempt to prevent future terrorist attacks. This includes the use of pre textual charges for preventive detention, the expansion of criminal liability to prohibit conduct that precedes terrorism, and expansion of surveillance at home and abroad. Politicians and government officials often speak of prevention as if it is an unqualified good. Everyone wants to prevent the next terrorist attack, after all. And many preventive initiatives, especially where they are not coercive and …

March 22, 2014: Death, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

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

Evaluating Candidacy Restrictions: The Implications Of New York's Modified Approach, Brian Hodgkinson

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Mcmanus V. Horn: The Legality Of Setting A Single Form Of Bail, Maureen Wynne

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

One Less Juror: A Defendant's Right To Juror Substitution, Luzan Moore

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

"But My Attorney Didn't Tell Me I'D Be Deported!"--The Retroactivity Of Padilla, Tara M. Breslawski

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Are You Satisfied With Your Representation?--The Sixth Amendment Right To Effective Assistance Of Counsel, Dean M. Villani

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

An Effective But Unreported Application Of Lafler & Frye, Christopher M. Gavin

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Choose Your Own Path: A Defendant's Constitutional Right To Legal Representation, Luzan Moore

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.