Constitutional Law Commons^™

Symposium: Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, & The Constitution: Business Owners' Religious Objections To Same-Sex Marriage: The American Versus European Perspective, Lenka Křičková

ConLawNOW

This Article focuses on the Lee v. Ashers Baking Company case from the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, a decision similar to that of the U.S. Supreme Court in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. Both cases involved bakers whose religious objections to same-sex marriage led them to refuse to sell cakes to gay customers. The Article discusses several common ideas appearing in these cases, mainly the need to distinguish between the message and the messenger when applying antidiscrimination law and the role of fundamental rights in the assessment. Based on this analysis, the Article then suggests …

Nature Deserves Rights, Too: The Case For A ‘Rights Of Nature’ Constitutional Amendment, Michelle Mandler

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

Picture this: Every day, millions of Americans enjoy the great outdoors. People of all ages dive into cool, blue oceans and babbling rivers across the United States. Others visit local and National parks, hiking steep mountains and running through green fields sprinkled with tall trees and sweet-smelling flowers in every color. They pick and snack on apples and berries along their paths, breathing in the crisp outdoor air. Birds soar overhead. Insects buzz and flutter through the breeze. Sunshine gleams down upon the earth.

Now, picture this: The surrounding environment is actually deteriorating— silently suffering—and harming these people all …

Locked Out: Sora, Sara And The Need For Defense Counsel Advisals And Judicial Plea Colloquies On Sex Offense-Related Housing Consequences, Matthew Cleaver

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

On May 20, 2014, Miguel Gonzalez became eligible for conditional release from prison, having served over two years of his two-and-a-half-year sentence for statutory rape. Instead of releasing Gonzalez, the New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) confined Gonzalez for an additional seven and a half months after his initial release date and over four months after his maximum sentence. On February 4, 2015, DOCCS finally released Gonzalez from New York’s Woodbourne Correctional Facility. The sole reason for Gonzalez’s additional confinement was his failure to secure housing that complied with the residency restrictions placed on individuals convicted …

Confidentiality, Warning And Aids: A Proposal To Protect Patients, Third Parties And Physicians

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Government Cannot Grant Personhood: How Eugenics Has Engulfed Our Society And Violated Inalienable Rights, Emily Paige Huseman

Helm's School of Government Conference - 2021-2024

No abstract provided.

The Declaration Of Independence, Constitution, And Slavery, Johnny B. Davis

Helm's School of Government Conference - 2021-2024

The paper address the nature of the principles of the Declaration and the Declaration's relationship to the Constitution and how these related to slavery. The argument is that the Declaration did stand for universal equality of the individual before God and the law and therefore its principles condemned slavery. The Constitution did not embrace slavery even though it failed to ban slavery but did set the foundation for the end of slavery.

Fellowship Is Fundamental To A Flourishing Community, Drew Varner

Helm's School of Government Conference - 2021-2024

No abstract provided.

How To Decide Religious Liberty Cases: An Analysis Of Balancing Versus Principalism, Marc A. Clauson

Helm's School of Government Conference - 2021-2024

No abstract provided.

The Connecticut Four, Beth Wade

Helm's School of Government Conference - 2021-2024

This paper provides a glimpse into the serious privacy issues that librarians have to address in their role as a public servant as well as the extent that they have to stand up to government agencies to protect the privacy of patrons.

The Local Community Standard: Modernizing The Supreme Court's Obscenity Jurisprudence, Jacob S. Gordon

Helm's School of Government Conference - 2021-2024

Paper presentation on the Supreme Court's outdated case law on obscenity and how it needs to be modernized to in order to combat the dissemination of inappropriate materials in the age of decentralized digital media.

Administrative Rule And Constitutional Governance, Kaleb Horne

Helm's School of Government Conference - 2021-2024

Presentation on the effects of administrative rule and its incompatibilities with Constitutional governance.

Deterioration Of The Tenth Amendment: Why Federalism’S Hierarchy Must Be Restored, Giana Depaul

Helm's School of Government Conference - 2021-2024

No abstract provided.

Government, Big Tech, And Individual Liberty, Romaine Miller, Johnny B. Davis

Helm's School of Government Conference - 2021-2024

The thesis is that the first principles of the Founding Fathers express in the Declaration give the proper guidance for dealing with the impact of high tech on individual liberty.

George Mwanza And Melvin Beene V Attorney General Select Judgment No 33 Of 2019, O'Brien Kaaba

SAIPAR Case Review

The case came to the Supreme Court by way of appeal from the High Court. The two appellants were inmates at Lusaka Central Prison. It turned out that the appellants were HIV positive and were on Anti-Retroviral Treatment (ART). The medical condition and treatment required that they be provided with food of a balanced diet in line with their medical condition.

The prison authorities, however, only provided limited quantities of maize sump for breakfast; maize meal (nshima) with dry sardines for lunch and super.2 The food was often rotten and contained foreign particles. Not only was it of of poor …

A Solution For The Third-Party Doctrine In A Time Of Data Sharing, Contact Tracing, And Mass Surveillance, Tonja Jacobi, Dustin Stonecipher

Notre Dame Law Review

Today, information is shared almost constantly. People share their DNA to track their ancestry or for individualized health information; they instruct Alexa to purchase products or provide directions; and, now more than ever, they use videoconferencing technology in their homes. According to the third-party doctrine, the government can access all such information without a warrant or without infringing on Fourth Amendment privacy protections. This exposure of vast amounts of highly personal data to government intrusion is permissible because the Supreme Court has interpreted the third-party doctrine as a per se rule. However, that interpretation rests on an improper understanding of …

Whose Secularism? Which Laïcité? Negotiating Transnational And National Constitutionalism In Kosovo, Thomas J. Hellenbrand

Notre Dame Law Review

This Note will proceed as follows: Part I will set the stage and briefly outline the history of Kosovo and its current political status. Part II will then introduce the Kosovo Constitution and the process by which international agreements (such as the European Convention of Human Rights) were embedded in the text and made binding legal authority. It will show that, although the international agreements are binding, the Kosovo Constitution does not make international case law obligatory. Part III will then address different foundational documents drafted in anticipation of Kosovo’s statehood and how judicial and administrative institutions should apply them …

Establishment’S Political Priority To Free Exercise, Marc O. Degirolami

Notre Dame Law Review

Americans are beset by disagreement about the First Amendment. Progressive scholars are attacking the venerable liberal view that First Amendment rights must not be constricted to secure communal, political benefits. To prioritize free speech rights, they say, reflects an unjust inflation of individual interest over our common political commitments. These disagreements afflict the Religion Clauses as well. Critics claim that religious exemption has become more important than the values of disestablishment that define the polity. Free exercise exemption, they argue, has subordinated establishment.

This Article contests these views. The fundamental rules and norms constituting the political regime—what the Article calls …

Outside Tinker’S Reach: An Examination Of Mahanoy Area School District V. B. L. And Its Implications, Michelle Hunt

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

In the 1969 landmark case Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, the Supreme Court reassured students that they do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.” Ever since then, the exact scope of students’ free speech rights has been unclear, but the high court has used Tinker’s substantial disruption test to clarify its scope in successive legal challenges. In 2017, B. L., a Mahanoy Area School District student, was suspended from her cheerleading team after using vulgar language off-campus that made its way back to her coaches. She …

Quiescent Sovereignty Of U.S. Territories, Michael J. Kelly

Marquette Law Review

Under modern democratic theory, the font of sovereignty springs from the people; however, traces of its past as a power emanating from the Crown continue to haunt the domestic and international status of sub-sovereign legal entities such as U.S. Territories. Quiescent sovereignty describes that which is possessed by the people of the Territories; a sovereignty that is theirs, but that is wielded on their behalf by the federal government. Although fiduciary responsibilities attach to this arrangement, cycles of attention/neglect are the modus vivendi. Bilateral relationships between the Territories and the federal government are varied, but such differences should not impact …

Constitutional Cautions Post-Covid-19: A Proposal For 5th Amendment Protection From Police Power Overreach, Ethan Finster, Jessica Dofelmire, Editor

Brigham Young University Prelaw Review

The invocation of police powers by state governments throughout the Covid-19 pandemic to restrict business activity created a legal protection around government action that prevents 5th Amendment claims. This protection persists whether or not those actions fit within precedential criteria for takings. While police powers are certainly an important aspect of governance in times of crisis, the infringement of individuals’ constitutional rights that accompanied their utilization must be addressed. Moreover, their use during the pandemic set a potentially dangerous precedent for their use in future emergencies. Considering the growing concern surrounding the adequacy of Takings Clause precedent for preventing government …

The Shadow Docket: What Is Happening And What Should Be Done, Collin Mitchell

Brigham Young University Prelaw Review

In light of recent emergency decisions made by the Court ranging from issues addressing the COVID-19 pandemic, religious freedom, abortion rights, and polarized redistricting plans, the Supreme Courts use of the shadow docket has come under renewed scrutiny. This paper argues that the Court's use of the shadow docket, while permissible in the past, is threatening the legitimacy of the Supreme Court and unduly burdening the American Judicial System at large. Due to these effects, this paper advocates to reduce the Supreme Court's use of the shadow docket through the creation of a new specialized court system to handle emergency …

The Constitutionality Of The Title Ix Religious Exemption, Madelyn Jacobsen, Rebecca Batty, Editor

Brigham Young University Prelaw Review

Petitioners in Hunter v. Department of Education questioned the constitutionality of the Title IX religious exemption as the basis of their 2021 class-action lawsuit. They claimed that more than 30 religious schools maintained discriminatory policies against LGBTQ students under the exemption. The religious exemption, often painted as unconstitutional discrimination, permits religious schools' adherence to sincerely held religious beliefs—and promotes a distinctive religious education that secular schools lack. This paper examines legal precedents relevant to religious freedom, higher education, and discrimination that demand the Title IX religious exemption remains in effect.

Aggregate Stare Decisis, Kiel Brennan-Marquez

Indiana Law Journal

The fate of stare decisis hangs in the wind. Different factions of the Supreme Court are now engaged in open debate—echoing decades of scholarship—about the doctrine’s role in our constitutional system. Broadly speaking, two camps have emerged. The first embraces the orthodox view that stare decisis should reflect “neutral principles” that run orthogonal to a case’s merits; otherwise, it will be incapable of keeping the law stable over time. The second argues that insulating stare decisis from the underlying merits has always been a conceptual mistake. Instead, the doctrine should focus more explicitly on the merits—by diagnosing the magnitude of …

The Dilemma Of Banned Books: Questioning The Ethics Of Censoring Literature In Schools, Kyle King

Augustana Center for the Study of Ethics Essay Contest

Literature, specifically in the form of novels, has been a vital organ of the public education system within the United States. Not only does reading such works transform us into better close readers and strengthen our vocabulary, but the texts at hand can be very essential to analyze specific contexts or issues that might have existed either throughout history or even in the present day. In today’s country, the issue of banning certain books from school curricula has become as prevalent as ever, where mostly Southern Republican officials are calling for lists of books to be restricted from teaching due …

Hidden In Plain Sight: The Dangers Of Environmental Protections Waivers, Olivia Stevens

Indiana Law Journal

When enacting both statutory and regulatory environmental protections, Congress and various agencies have recognized that emergency situations could arise that would require flexibility in the application and enforcement of those protections. Incorporating waivers into such protections provides that flexibility. However, the current state of waivers leaves them vulnerable to abuse. In this Note, I explore how a lack of procedural and substantive safeguards allows the inappropriate use of waivers to further administrative agendas in a way that poses serious risks to both environmental and human health. I then suggest remedial measures available to Congress that would strengthen environmental protections while …

The Dignitary Confrontation Clause, Erin L. Sheley

Faculty Scholarship

For seventeen years, the Supreme Court’s Confrontation Clause jurisprudence has been confused and confusing. In Crawford v. Washington (2004), the Court overruled prior precedent and held that “testimonial” out-of-court statements could not be admitted at trial unless the defendant had an opportunity to cross-examine the declarant, even when the statement would be otherwise admissible as particularly reliable under an exception to the rule against hearsay. In a series of contradictory opinions over the next several years, the Court proceeded to expand and then seemingly roll back this holding, leading to widespread chaos in common types of cases, particularly those involving …

Juvenile Solitary Confinement And The Eighth Amendment, Taylor R. Graves

Honors Thesis

This literature review examines the practice of juvenile solitary confinement, applies the United States Supreme Court’s Eighth Amendment jurisprudence, argues that the practice should be declared unconstitutional as a violation of the Eighth Amendment, and calls for a categorical ban. The Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause of the Eighth Amendment states, “nor [shall] cruel and unusual punishments [be] inflicted.” U.S. Const. amend. VIII. Juvenile solitary confinement is cruel and unusual, in violation of the Eighth Amendment, because juveniles are different. The United States Supreme Court has long recognized that juveniles should not be held to the same standards of …

A Balancing Act: Overcoming Incommensurability In Rights Adjudication, Samantha Knutson Jex

Brigham Young University Prelaw Review

The Supreme Court's current system for rights adjudication is insufficient in cases where both sides feel that a fundamental right has been violated, such as Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. To overcome this insufficiency, I argue that the Court should implement a new test that is a modified combination of the Supreme Court's strict scrutiny and the test used internationally for rights adjudication--the proportionality test. I call this new test the "Incommensurability Test" and explain how it works and why it is beneficial for rights adjudication in the United States. Applying the "Incommensurability Test" would enable the Court …

Truth And Reconciliation: The Ku Klux Klan Hearings Of 1871 And The Genesis Of Section 1983, Tiffany R. Wright, Ciarra N. Carr, Jade W.P. Gasek

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Over the course of seven months in 1871, Congress did something extraordinary for the time: It listened to Black people. At hearings in Washington, D.C. and throughout the former Confederate states, Black women and men—who just six years earlier were enslaved and barred from testifying in Southern courts—appeared before Congress to tell their stories. The stories were heartbreaking. After experiencing the joy of Emancipation and the initial hope of Reconstruction, they had been subjected to unspeakable horror at the hands of white terrorists. They had been raped and sexually humiliated. Their children and spouses murdered. They had been savagely beaten …

The Neuroscience Of Qualified Immunity, Gary S. Gildin

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Qualified immunity not only absolves public officials from accountability for the damages caused when they deprive a citizen of their constitutional rights; by virtue of companion doctrines shielding governmental entities from liability, conferral of immunity leaves the victim to bear the loss. Therefore, it is essential that the contours of immunity be carefully calibrated to align with its intended purposes.

The United States Supreme Court has continuously expanded immunity to protect the exercise of discretion where, albeit acting in violation of constitutional norms, the official could have reasonably believed their conduct was constitutional. This Article exposes the implicit assumptions as …