Constitutional Law Commons^™

No, Joe Biden And The Dems Are Not Collapsing, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

October 13, 2021: The Case For Joe Biden, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “The Case for Joe Biden“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Held V. State, Alec D. Skuntz

Public Land & Resources Law Review

On March 13, 2020, a group of 16 Montana children and teenagers filed a complaint in the First Judicial District, Lewis and Clark County against the State of Montana and several state agencies. These young Plaintiffs sought injunctive and declaratory relief against Defendants for their complicity in continuing to extract and release harmful amounts of greenhouse gases which contribute to climate change. Plaintiffs premised their argument on the Montana Constitution’s robust environmental rights and protections. The Defendants filed a motion to dismiss which the District Court granted in-part and denied in-part. Held provides a roadmap for future litigation by elucidating …

Pure Privacy, Jeffrey Bellin

Northwestern University Law Review

In 1890, Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis began a storied legal tradition of trying to conceptualize privacy. Since that time, privacy’s appeal has grown beyond those authors’ wildest expectations, but its essence remains elusive. One of the rare points of agreement in boisterous academic privacy debates is that there is no consensus on what privacy means.

The modern trend is to embrace the ambiguity. Unable to settle on boundaries, scholars welcome a broad array of interests into an expanding theoretical framework. As a result, privacy is invoked in debates about COVID-19 contact tracing, police body cameras, marriage equality, facial recognition, …

Redeeming Justice, Terrell Carter, Rachel López, Kempis Songster

Northwestern University Law Review

Approximately three decades ago, two of us, Terrell Carter and Kempis Songster, were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The U.S. Supreme Court has said that this sentence, effectively an order to die in prison, represented a legal determination that we were irredeemable. In this Article, with insights from our coauthor and friend, human rights scholar Rachel López, we ask: What does it mean for the law to judge some human beings as incapable of redemption? Isn’t the capacity for change core to the human condition, and shouldn’t that be reflected in the law?

This Article …

October 8, 2021: Tune In To The Grimes Lecture I Delivered Yesterday At Bethany College, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Tune in to the Grimes Lecture I Delivered Yesterday at Bethany College“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Maternity Rights: A Comparative View Of Mexico And The United States, Roberto Rosas

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

Women play a large role in the workplace and require additional protection during pregnancy, childbirth, and while raising children. This article compares how Mexico and the United States have approached the issue of maternity rights and benefits. First, Mexico provides eighty-four days of paid leave to mothers, while the United States provides unpaid leave for up to twelve weeks. Second, Mexico allows two thirty-minute breaks a day for breastfeeding, while the United States allows a reasonable amount of time per day to breastfeed. Third, Mexico provides childcare to most federal employees, while the United States provides daycares to a small …

October 3, 2021: A Response To My Column Criticizing The National Vote Compact--What Ledewitz Missed, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “A Response to My Column Criticizing the National Vote Compact--What Ledewitz Missed“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Wade’S Way No More? The Future Of Reproductive Rights In Light Of Texas Senate Bill 8’S Constitutionality, Dolly Suresh

SLU Law Journal Online

There are many hot-topic discussions occurring in today's political climate. In this article, Dolly Suresh focuses on the recent legislation in Texas, the Texas Heartbeat Act, and the conversations surrounding it.

The Free Speech Record Of The Roberts Court, William D. Araiza

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

As Muddy As The Mississippi River: An Examination Of Louisiana Jury Venire Creation Procedures, Kristen M. Vicknair

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

Americans expect their constitutional rights to be respected by the federal, state, and local governments, but a lack of transparency on a government’s behalf prevents Americans from being able to trust their governments fully. This Note demonstrates the astounding lack of transparency in Louisiana parishes’ jury venire creation procedures, which prevent Louisianans from trusting that their communities are represented by a fair cross-section on jury venires. The same lack of transparency restricts any constitutional challenges of the representation on appeal, as the major test for the fair cross-section, the Duren test, requires a showing of systematic exclusion on the government’s …

The Meaning, History, And Importance Of The Elections Clause, Eliza Sweren-Becker, Michael Waldman

Washington Law Review

Historically, the Supreme Court has offered scant attention to or analysis of the Elections Clause, resulting in similarly limited scholarship on the Clause’s original meaning and public understanding over time. The Clause directs states to make regulations for the time, place, and manner of congressional elections, and grants Congress superseding authority to make or alter those rules.

But the 2020 elections forced the Elections Clause into the spotlight, with Republican litigants relying on the Clause to ask the Supreme Court to limit which state actors can regulate federal elections. This new focus comes on the heels of the Clause serving …

How The Gun Control Act Disarms Black Firearm Owners, Maya Itah

Washington Law Review

Through 18 U.S.C. § 924(c), the Gun Control Act (GCA) outlaws the possession of a firearm “in furtherance of” a drug trafficking crime. The statute’s language is broad, and federal courts have interpreted it expansively. By giving prosecutors wide discretion in charging individuals with § 924(c) violations, the language enables the disproportionate incarceration of Black firearm owners.

This Comment addresses this issue in three parts. Part I discusses the ways early gun control laws overtly disarmed Black firearm owners. Additionally, Part I provides context for the passage of the Gun Control Act of 1968, which coincided with the backlash to …

The Law Of License Plates And Other Inevitabilities Of Free Speech Context Sensitivity, William D. Araiza

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Education, Antidomination, And The Republican Guarantee, Kip M. Hustace

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

This Article offers a new interpretation of the United States Constitution’s republican guarantee and theorizes its protection of a fundamental right to education. Courts and education law scholars have identified the republican guarantee as a plausible source of educational rights but have not detailed how. Drawing on recent work by legal scholars, historians, political scientists, and philosophers, this Article reinterprets the guarantee as the federal government’s obligation to secure freedom as nondomination, and it argues that excellent, equitable public education is necessary to fulfilling this duty. Nondomination, a robust conception of freedom, is freedom from subjection to the will of …

Disloyalty & Disqualification: Reconstructing Section 3 Of The Fourteenth Amendment, Myles S. Lynch

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

To become President of the United States, you must be constitutionally qualified. You must be thirty-five years old, a natural born citizen, and fourteen years a resident within the United States. Neither Congress nor any state can set this threshold higher; the same is true for congresspeople. But since it was last successfully invoked in 1917, most have forgotten the other qualifier—for officers at both the state and federal levels—from Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. Those who have violated their oath to uphold our Constitution can be disqualified from holding any public office under the United States or any …

Inspectors General And The Law Of Oversight Independence, Andrew C. Brunsden

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

President Trump’s defiance of basic norms threatened the oversight institutions of American democracy. His brazen assault on the prosecutorial and investigative independence of federal law enforcement was well documented. Yet few have thoroughly scrutinized his violations of the oversight independence of internal institutions that monitor the government to promote integrity, transparency, and accountability. This Article examines the independence of Inspectors General (IGs), the internal watchdogs of the Executive Branch, and the President’s attacks on the institution. President Trump breached long-standing independence norms when he fired or replaced IGs in retaliation for their legitimate exercise of oversight duties. Then, in some …

The Era Brief October 2021, Center For Gender And Sexuality Law

Center for Gender & Sexuality Law

We are excited to return to campus and rejoin the vibrant law school community. Our work at the ERA Project has taken on a renewed sense of urgency as we seek to advance sex equality in a time when the right to bodily autonomy is under threat from restrictions on reproductive and transgender rights.

The Equal Rights Amendment And The Equality Act: Talking Points, Center For Gender And Sexuality Law

Center for Gender & Sexuality Law

The Equal Rights Amendment, first proposed nearly 100 years ago, is still needed today.

• The ERA is a constitutional amendment that would protect against discrimination on the basis of sex—including on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression.
• The ERA would also usher in advancements in sex equality in all three branches of government, empower advocates, and encourage recognition of related forms of discrimination such as pregnancy discrimination.
• By including the ERA in our Constitution, the United States would catch up with the more than 100 other countries with constitutional protections against sex-based discrimination.

The Equal Rights Amendment And The Equality Act: Two Equality Measures Explained, Center For Gender And Sexuality Law

Center for Gender & Sexuality Law

When the United States Constitution was written in 1787, its defining phrase “We the people” did not include women, LGBTQ+ people, people of color, or immigrants. In 2021, these groups, among others, still lack fundamental equality under the law. Two pieces of legislation are pending in Congress that would strengthen legal protections against discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity: the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) and the Equality Act.

Making The Impractical, Practical: A Modest And Overdue Approach To Reforming Fourth Amendment Consent Search Doctrine, Augustine P. Manga

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

At some point in your life, you may have a personal encounter with a police officer. During that moment, you may feel utterly powerless, especially if you do not know your rights. One important right that police are not required to inform people of is their right to deny an officer’s request to search their property. Forty-eight years ago, the Supreme Court made its position clear in Schneckloth v. Bustamonte that requiring law enforcement to provide citizens with this warning would be “thoroughly impractical.” Since then, the relationship between law enforcement and society—especially communities of color—has gradually deteriorated, and states …

Breathing Room For The Right Of Assembly, Tabatha Abu El-Haj

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

This Article explores the legal and political fault lines that the wave of protests highlighting police violence and systemic racism in the summer of 2020 reveal. It focuses in depth on Detroit, Michigan, as a window into the ways that the First Amendment, as currently construed, under-protects those seeking political change and racial reckoning by demonstrating in the streets.

"Hey, Hey! Ho, Ho! These Mass Arrests Have Got To Go!": The Expressive Fourth Amendment Argument, Karen J. Pita Loor

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

The racial justice protests ignited by the murder of George Floyd in May 2020 constitute the largest protest movement in the United States. Estimates suggest that between fifteen and twenty-six million people protested across the country during the summer of 2020 alone. Not only were the number of protestors staggering, but so were the number of arrests. Within one week of when the video of George Floyd’s murder went viral, police arrested ten thousand people demanding justice on American streets, with police often arresting activists en masse. This Essay explores mass arrests and how they square with Fourth Amendment …

Baby & Bathwater: Standing In Election Cases After 2020, Steven J. Mulroy

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

The current consensus among commentators is that the flood of cases challenging the 2020 presidential election results was almost completely meritless. This consensus is correct as to the ultimate result, but not as to the courts’ treatment of standing. In their (understandable) zeal to reject sometimes frivolous attempts to overturn a legitimate election and undermine public confidence in our electoral system, many courts were too quick to rule that plaintiffs lacked standing. These rulings resulted in unjustified sweeping rulings that voters were not injured even if their legal votes were diluted by states accepting illegal votes; that campaigns did not …

Taking Exception To Assessments Of American Exceptionalism: Why The United States Isn’T Such An Outlier On Free Speech, Evelyn Mary Aswad

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

One of the most significant challenges to human freedom in the digital age involves the sheer power of private companies over speech and the fact that power is untethered to existing free speech principles. Heated debates are ongoing about what standards social media companies should adopt to regulate speech on their platforms. Some have argued that global social media companies, such as Facebook and Twitter, should align their speech codes with the international human rights law standards of the United Nations (“U.N.”). Others have countered that U.S.-based companies should apply First Amendment standards. Much of this debate is premised on …

Qualified Immunity: Round Two, Andrew Coan, Delorean Forbes

Washington and Lee Law Review

For the first time in its fifty-year history, the future of qualified immunity is in serious doubt. The doctrine may yet survive for many years. But thanks largely to the recent mass movement for racial justice, major reform and abolition are now live possibilities. This development raises a host of questions that have been little explored in the voluminous literature on qualified immunity because its abolition has been so difficult to imagine before now. Perhaps the most pressing is how overworked federal courts will respond to a substantial influx of new cases fueled by qualified immunity’s curtailment or demise. Might …

Police Or Pirates? Reforming Washington's Civil Asset Forfeiture System, Jasmin Chigbrow

Washington Law Review

Civil asset forfeiture laws permit police officers to seize property they suspect is connected to criminal activity and sell or retain the property for the police department’s use. In many states, including Washington, civil forfeiture occurs independent of any criminal case—many property owners are never charged with the offense police allege occurred. Because the government is not required to file criminal charges, property owners facing civil forfeiture lack the constitutional safeguards normally guaranteed to defendants in the criminal justice system: the right to an attorney, the presumption of innocence, the government’s burden to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt, …

Quilombo Land Rights, Brazilian Constitutionalism, And Racial Capitalism, Karen Engle, Lucas Lixinski

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The 1988 Brazilian Constitution, the first in a wave of new democratic and multicultural constitutions in Latin America, contains a transitory provision guaranteeing collective land rights to quilombo communities. These communities are composed of quilombolas, primarily descendants of formerly enslaved Africans, many of whom had escaped slavery. A 2003 executive decree to implement the land title provision became the subject of a constitutional challenge lasting over fifteen years. When the Brazilian constitutional court eventually upheld the decree in 2018, it relied heavily on the work of US political theorist Nancy Fraser to justify quilombo land title as both recognition and …

Fighting A New Wave Of Voter Suppression: Securing College Students’ Right To Vote Through The Twenty-Sixth Amendment’S Enforcement Clause, Ryan D'Ercole

Washington and Lee Law Review

Throughout the 1960s, young people protested for racial and LGBTQ+ equality, women’s rights, and an end to the Vietnam war. In the process, they earned the most fundamental right— the right to vote.

Fifty years ago, in the summer of 1971, the Twenty-Sixth Amendment was ratified. In addition to lowering the voting age to eighteen, the Twenty-Sixth Amendment prescribed that the right to vote “shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.” But in the fifty years since ratification, states have continued to enact laws that abridge the right to …

Manufacturing Sovereign State Mootness, Daniel Bruce

William & Mary Law Review

The idea that public defendants should receive any special treatment in the mootness context has been subject to intense criticism among commentators. Most notably, in the lead-up to the New York Rifle decision, Joseph Davis and Nicholas Reaves—two prominent First Amendment litigators from the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty—urged the Supreme Court to take the opportunity to correct the lower courts’ practice of blessing government abuse of the voluntary cessation doctrine. Indeed, the Supreme Court has never adopted a presumption in favor of government defendants such as the one applied by the Seventh Circuit in Killeen, and it failed to …