Constitutional Law Commons^™

Banning The Bing: Why Extreme Solitary Confinement Is Cruel And Far Too Usual Punishment, Elizabeth Bennion

Indiana Law Journal

The United States engages in extreme practices of solitary confinement that maximize isolation and sensory deprivation of prisoners. The length is often indefinite and can stretch for weeks, months, years, or decades. Under these conditions, both healthy prisoners and those with preexisting mental-health issues often severely deteriorate both mentally and physically. New science and data provide increased insight into why and how human beings (and other social animals) deteriorate and suffer in such environments. The science establishes that meaningful social contacts and some level of opportunity for sensory enrichment are minimum human necessities. When those necessities are denied, the high …

Moving From Carolene To The Commerce Clause: A New Approach To Race For The New American Future, Nareissa L. Smith

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

George Washington. Elena Kagan, And The Town Of Greece, New York: The First Amendment And Religious Minorities, Kermit V. Lipez

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Law—Fifth Amendment And Takings—Courts And The Judicial Process Will Impede Orderly City Development By Limiting Local Governments’ Use Of Exactions In Development Planning. Koontz V. St. Johns River Water Management District, 133s. Ct. 2586 (2013)., Rebecca L. Matlock

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Bias In Disguise: The Constitutional Problems Of Arkansas’S Intrastate Commerce Improvement Act, John M. A. Dipippa

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

God And Guns: The Free Exercise Of Religion Problems Of Regulating Guns In Churches And Other Houses Of Worship, John M.A. Dipippa

Law Faculty Scholarship

This Article demonstrates that the cases raising religious liberty challenges to state regulation of weapons in houses of worship reveal the persistent problems plaguing religious liberty cases. First, these cases illustrate the difficulties non-mainstream religious claims face. Courts may not understand the religious nature of the claim or they may devalue claims that do not seem “normal” or “reasonable.” This is compounded by how few religious liberty claimants, especially non-mainstream religions, win their cases. Second, the cases are part of the larger debate about how easy it should be to get judicially imposed religious exemptions from general and neutral laws. …

High Court Pretense, Lower Court Candor: Judicial Impartiality After Caperton V. Massey Coal Co., Lynne H. Rambo

Cardozo Public Law, Policy & Ethics Journal

No abstract provided.

A Contagion Of Fear: Post-9/11 Alarm Expands Executive Branch Authority And Sanctions Prosecutorial Exploitation Of America's Privacy, Carol M. Bast, Cynthia A. Brown

Cardozo Public Law, Policy & Ethics Journal

No abstract provided.

Duty To Defend And The Rule Of Law, Gregory F. Zoeller

Indiana Law Journal

This Article challenges Eric Holder’s and William Pryor’s views and explains the proper role of a state attorney general when a party challenges a state statute. In short, an attorney general owes the state and its citizens, as sovereign, a duty to defend its statutes against constitutional attack except when controlling precedent so overwhelmingly shows that the statute is unconstitutional that no good-faith argument can be made in its defense. To exercise discretion more broadly, and selectively to pick and choose which statutes to defend, only erodes the rule of law. (introduction)

Scrutinizing Federal Electoral Qualifications, Derek T. Muller

Indiana Law Journal

Candidates for federal office must meet several constitutional qualifications. Sometimes, whether a candidate meets those qualifications is a matter of dispute. Courts and litigants often assume that a state has the power to include or exclude candidates from the ballot on the basis of the state’s own scrutiny of candidates’ qualifications. Courts and litigants also often assume that the matter is not left to the states but to Congress or another political actor. But those contradictory assumptions have never been examined, until now.

This Article compiles the mandates of the Constitution, the precedents of Congress, the practices of states administering …

A Cautionary Tale About Policing Peaceful Protests: First Amendment Rights Still Reign Supreme, Kia H. Vernon

North Carolina Central Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Constitution, Desegregation, And Public Opinion: Swan V. Charlotte-Mechlenburg Board Of Educationi, James L. Hunt

North Carolina Central Law Review

No abstract provided.

Functionally Suspect: Reconceptualizing "Race" As A Suspect Classification, Lauren Sudeall Lucas

Faculty Publications By Year

In the context of equal protection doctrine, race has become untethered from the criteria underlying its demarcation as a classification warranting heightened scrutiny. As a result, it is no longer an effective vehicle for challenging the existing social and political order; instead, its primary purpose under current doctrine is to signal the presence of an impermissible basis for differential treatment.

This Symposium Article suggests that, to more effectively serve its underlying normative goals, equal protection should prohibit not discrimination based on race per se, but government actions that implicate the concerns leading to race’s designation as a suspect classification. For …

"The Only Thing We Have To Fear Is Fear Itself": The Constitutional Infirmities With Felon Disenfranchisement And Citing Fear As The Rationale For Depriving Felons Of Their Right To Vote, Erika Stern

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

Felon disenfranchisement, a mechanism by which felons and former felons are deprived of their right to vote, is a widespread practice that has been challenged on many grounds. However, felon disenfranchisement has not yet been properly challenged under the First Amendment. This Article argues that states implicate felons’ First Amendment rights through felon disenfranchisement without citing adequate or compelling rationales to justify this severe intrusion. In fact, at least one rationale, a rationale based on the fear of the way felons might vote, is itself inconsistent with First Amendment principles. Disenfranchising felons based on a fear of the way that …

When Rhetoric Obscures Reality: The Definition Of Corruption And Its Shortcomings, Jessica Medina

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

Due to public scorn after the unraveling of the Watergate scandal, the Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of the Federal Election Campaign Act’s restrictions on political contributions and expenditures. Buckley v. Valeo established that no legitimate government interest existed to justify restrictions on campaign expenditures, and only the prevention of corruption or the appearance of corruption could justify restrictions on campaign contributions. Since then, the Court has struggled to articulate a definition of corruption that balances First Amendment protections with the potential for improper influence. This Article argues that the Court’s current definition of corruption is too narrow, and proposes …

Statutory Restrictions On Concealed Carry: A Five-Circuit Shoot Out, Justine E. Johnson-Makuch

Fordham Law Review

    In District of Columbia v. Heller, the U.S. Supreme Court clarified a citizen’s core Second Amendment right to keep a firearm at home; however, the Court left open the question of how the Second Amendment applies beyond the home. Since Heller, lower courts have struggled to determine the constitutionality of concealed carry laws in light of this new understanding of the Second Amendment.

    Many states have enacted laws that restrict a citizen’s ability to obtain a concealed carry permit, and some of the restrictions are not controversial, such as the requirements to be above a certain age and have a …

Complex Experimental Federalism, Doni Gewirtzman

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Countersupermajoritarianism, Frederic Bloom, Nelson Tebbe

Michigan Law Review

Our Constitution can change. We can amend it, update it, improve it. And so we have—twenty-seven times by one count, many more by another. Everyone recognizes this. But fewer people appreciate that the mechanics of constitutional change can change as well. A method of alteration unaddressed at the founding can grow into established practice. A procedure built into constitutional text can slip into disuse. As much as citizens can change the substance of the Constitution, they can also change the ways they change it. In Originalism and the Good Constitution, John McGinnis and Michael Rappaport make an elegant and provocative …

The Politics Of The Takings Clauses, Mila Versteeg

Northwestern University Law Review

A long-standing consensus exists that the arbitrary or excessive expropriation of private property by a country hurts its economic growth. Although constitutions can play an important role in protecting private property, remarkably little is known about how they actually restrict the power of eminent domain and whether such restrictions are associated with reduced de facto expropriation risks. This Essay fills that gap by presenting original data on the procedural and substantive protections in constitutional takings clauses from 1946 to 2013. Its main finding is that no observable relationship exists between de jure constitutional restrictions on the power of eminent domain …

Countersupermajoritarianism, Frederic M. Bloom, Nelson Tebbe

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

How should the Constitution change? In Originalism and the Good Constitution, John McGinnis and Michael Rappaport argue that it ought to change in only one way: through the formal mechanisms set out in the Constitution’s own Article V. This is so, they claim, because provisions adopted by supermajority vote are more likely to be substantively good. The original Constitution was ratified in just that way, they say, and subsequent changes should be implemented similarly. McGinnis and Rappaport also contend that this substantive goodness is preserved best by a mode of originalist interpretation.

In this Review, we press two main arguments. …

Eaja Fees For Reasons-And-Bases Remands: The Perspective Of A Veterans' Lawyer, David E. Boelzner

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Constitutionalism And The Foundations Of The Security State, Aziz Rana

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Scholars often argue that the culture of American constitutionalism provides an important constraint on aggressive national security practices. This Article challenges the conventional account by highlighting instead how modern constitutional reverence emerged in tandem with the national security state, critically functioning to reinforce and legitimize government power rather than primarily to place limits on it. This unacknowledged security origin of today’s constitutional climate speaks to a profound ambiguity in the type of public culture ultimately promoted by the Constitution. Scholars are clearly right to note that constitutional loyalty has created political space for arguments more respectful of civil rights and …

The Derivative Nature Of Corporate Constitutional Rights, Margaret M. Blair, Elizabeth Pollman

William & Mary Law Review

This Article engages the two-hundred-year history of corporate constitutional rights jurisprudence to show that the Supreme Court has long accorded rights to corporations based on the rationale that corporations represent associations of people from whom such rights are derived. The Article draws on the history of business corporations in America to argue that the Court’s characterization of corporations as associations made sense throughout most of the nineteenth century. By the late nineteenth century, however, when the Court was deciding several key cases involving corporate rights, this associational view was already becoming a poor fit for some corporations. The Court’s failure …

Intellectual Property And The Presumption Of Innocence, Irina D. Manta

William & Mary Law Review

Our current methods of imposing criminal convictions on defendants for copyright and trademark infringement are constitutionally defective. Previous works have argued that due process under the Sixth Amendment requires prosecutors to prove every element of a crime beyond a reasonable doubt, including the jurisdictional element. Applying this theory to criminal trademark counterfeiting results in the conclusion that prosecutors should have to demonstrate that an infringing mark needs to have traveled in or affected interstate commerce, which currently is not mandated. Parallel to this construction of the Commerce Clause, criminal prosecutors would also have to prove that Congress has the power …

The Implications Of Exclusion: How Pregnancy Exclusions Deny Women Constitutional Rights, Hannah Schwager

Cardozo Public Law, Policy & Ethics Journal

No abstract provided.

Verbal Speech Versus Visual Art: Evidence Of Unequal First Amendment Protection In Right Of Publicity Jurisprudence, Daniel Forman

Cardozo Public Law, Policy & Ethics Journal

No abstract provided.

Why Can't I Know How The Sausage Is Made?: How Ag-Gag Statutes Threaten Animal Welfare Groups And The First Amendment, Daniel L. Sternberg

Cardozo Public Law, Policy & Ethics Journal

No abstract provided.

Wild West Campus: A Discussion On Concealed Weapons And The College Campus, Luke W. Mcminn

Senior Honors Theses

This thesis reviews the recent history of gun-related violence on college campuses in relation to gun control laws and argues whether college campuses should allow students and teachers with Carrying a Concealed Weapon permits to carry these weapons on campus, or if such a policy would merely exacerbate the issue at hand. The purpose of this thesis is to show that such a policy is effective, safe, and overall a benefit to the campus atmosphere and experience. Important points considered include the legal history of carrying concealed weapons, the current policies of universities concerning students carrying concealed weapons, the opinions …

Functionally Suspect: Reconceptualizing 'Race' As A Suspect Classification, Lauren Sudeall

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In the context of equal protection doctrine, race has become untethered from the criteria underlying its demarcation as a classification warranting heightened scrutiny. As a result, it is no longer an effective vehicle for challenging the existing social and political order; instead, its primary purpose under current doctrine is to signal the presence of an impermissible basis for differential treatment. This Symposium Article suggests that, to more effectively serve its underlying normative goals, equal protection should prohibit not discrimination based on race per se, but government actions that implicate the concerns leading to race’s designation as a suspect classification. For …

Fifty States, Fifty Attorneys General, And Fifty Approaches To The Duty To Defend, Neal Devins, Saikrishna B. Prakash

Faculty Publications

Whether a state attorney general has a duty to defend the validity of state law is a complicated question, one that cannot be decided by reference either to the oath state officers must take to support the federal Constitution or the supremacy of federal law. Instead, whether a state attorney general must defend state law turns on her own state’s laws. Each state has its own constitution, statutes, bar rules, and traditions, and not surprisingly, the duties of attorneys general vary across the states. To simplify somewhat, we believe that there are three types of duties. One set of attorneys …