Constitutional Law Commons^™

Book Review: Justice Breyer's Problematic Pragmatism, Mark S. Kende

ConLawNOW

Courts often face difficult questions of statutory interpretation and constitutional interpretation. Various judges take different approaches. This essay reviews the book, Reading the Constitution, Why I Chose Pragmatism Not Textualism, authored by former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, who used methods that were often in the Court minority. Justice Breyer argued in favor of relying on purpose in federal statutory interpretation cases, and in favor of pragmatic balancing in federal constitutional cases. He was anti-formalistic and therefore generally opposed to textualism or originalism. The essay argues that this trade publication, intended for a general audience, has strengths and …

Other People's Poverty, Emmanuel Hiram Arnaud, Shaun Ossei-Owusu

Faculty Scholarship

Puerto Ricans have a relationship with the United States that is historically unparalleled. They have been citizens of the United States since 1917, served in every major conflict since World War I, and have been influential members of American culture, politics, and society. Yet, Puerto Rico is not fully part of the United States. The island of 3.2 million people— more than the population of eighteen states—is a U.S. territory. This means the federal government wields its complete and largely unrestrained plenary power over the Island, often treating Puerto Ricans differently than the rest of the United States. This differential …

Presidential Noncompliance And Judicial Response: A Two-Branch Dialectic, Seth Waxman

Washington Law Review

No abstract provided.

"Speech Swept Up"—The Constitutionality Of State Prohibitions Of Conversion Therapy For Lgbtq+ Youth, Lauren A. Chivers

Washington Law Review

Since 2012, individual states have passed laws prohibiting state-licensed mental health professionals from engaging in conversion therapy with minor clients. Despite the breadth of research undermining its efficacy and documenting harms, the practice of conversion therapy persists. State regulation of conversion therapy—and thereby licensed professionals’ conduct with their clients—has emerged as a contentious issue for the judiciary. Most significantly, the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in on the matter for the first time in 2026. In Chiles v. Salazar, the Court addressed a challenge to Colorado’s conversion therapy ban, confronting fundamental questions about this unsettled area of First Amendment law. …

Deaf In Prison: The Courts' Failure To Remedy Ada Violations In Prisons, Ruby Grossman

Washington Law Review

The carceral system is one of the many institutions that fails to adequately accommodate individuals with disabilities. D/deaf individuals specifically face a severe lack of resources and accommodations, pervasive mistreatment, and inadequate services while incarcerated. While the Supreme Court has recognized that individuals necessarily do not retain all their constitutional rights while incarcerated, there are constitutional rights and statutory protections with which prisons are required to comply. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is one such statute. When it comes to D/deaf incarcerated individuals, the ADA requires that prisons provide reasonable accommodations so those individuals are not deprived of programs, …

Academic Freedom's Inflection Point, Jerry C. Edwards

Law Faculty Scholarship

Academic freedom faces an existential crisis. The Trump administration, building on a movement that began in the states, is seeking ideological conquest of higher education. Some universities have already surrendered. Others fight on, facing an endless barrage of assaults on their institutional autonomy. Faculty too have chosen to resist, relying on their free expression rights. One of the most potent weapons in higher education’s arsenal is the constitutional academic freedom doctrine, a First Amendment protection that safeguards faculty’s academic expression and universities’ academic judgments. But the Supreme Court’s embrace of history and tradition as a focal point of its individual …

The Evolution Of The Supreme Court's Second Amendment Jurisprudence, Kermit V. Lipez

Maine Law Review

We live in the shadow of an epidemic of gun violence. We dread the next report of an inevitable mass shooting. We no longer feel secure in public places. We fear for the safety of our children and our grandchildren at their schools. We shake our heads in disbelief at the empty ritual of "thoughts and prayers" for victims and their families. As one commentator put it, we suffer from the "[u]nbearable [m]onotony of [g]rief." Why must we live like this? Why are there no solutions? In conversations posing these questions, there are often references to the Supreme Court's Second …

The Takings Clause And The Environment, Timothy M. Harris

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

Congress and state legislatures have been slow to address growing cries for increased environmental protections. Climate change and the attendant sea-level rise, wetland protections, cleanup of hazardous substances, and protections for species listed under the Endangered Species Act often require extensive regulation of private lands to be effective. The political will to implement environmentally conscious regulations varies with election cycles and social mores, but there is a legal—constitutional—impediment that overrides these political winds. The Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause frequently creates an insurmountable budgetary obstacle to broad land use restrictions that may otherwise be implemented to protect the environment.

Government …

The Power To Declare Peace, Michael Stokes Paulsen

Pepperdine Law Review

The Constitution gives Congress the power “to declare War.” The meaning of that grant of power is much debated, but its converse is much neglected: To whom does the Constitution assign the power to declare peace? This Article comprehensively examines the Constitution’s various assignments of the power(s) to make peace—constitutional powers to end, as a practical matter and as a binding legal matter, a prior legal condition of war. Both the President and Congress possess several such powers. The President has the power, with the advice and consent of two-thirds of the Senate, to make treaties, including peace treaties that …

Book Review: We're All Traditionalists Now (Most Of The Time), Richard H. Fallon, Jr., The Changing Constitution: Constitutional Law In The Trump-Era Supreme Court, Michael Gentithes

ConLawNOW

This review highlights the scope and importance of Richard Fallon’s book, The Changing Constitution: Constitutional Law in the Trump-Era Supreme Court. Fallon, a giant of constitutional work, provides a comprehensive, accessible, and vitally important catalogue of the Court’s methodological changes in his posthumously published book. The book argues that while textualism and originalism “have achieved unparalleled prominence,” the Court is also “not consistently originalist” and often relies on a version of traditionalism, similar to but importantly distinct from originalism, that marks an important and undertheorized change. And in yet other areas, the Court eschews either originalism or traditionalism for …

Law’S Limits: Abortion And The Social Determinants Of Health, Maya Manian

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

After Dobbs: How the Supreme Court Ended Roe but Not Abortion (“After Dobbs”) is a prescient and timely response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade and upended nearly five decades of constitutional protection for abortion. In this meticulously structured oral history, law professor David S. Cohen and sociologist Carole Joffe center the voices of abortion providers, clinic administrators, funders, and advocates from across the country. After Dobbs, not only documents the extraordinary persistence of abortion supporters in the face of legal devastation but also bears witness to …

Against Doctrinal Siloing: Harmonizing Fiscal Federalism And The U.S. Constitution, David Gamage, Darien Shanske

Faculty Publications

This Essay argues that constitutional law’s treatment of fiscal federalism has fractured into a bewildering collection of doctrinal silos. Federal spending that pressures states, federal preemption of state taxes, the Dormant Commerce Clause, sovereign immunity, Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, and the federal taxing power are all analyzed through distinct tests, even when they implicate the same basic conflict between federal authority and state fiscal autonomy. The result is not just theoretical confusion but inconsistent constitutional answers. Current doctrine can protect states from comparatively modest liabilities while leaving uncertain whether Congress may displace large swaths of state revenue authority. …

Balancing The Scales Of Justice: The Unconstitutionality Of Marital Rape In India, Pallavi Raju

CMC Senior Theses

Marital rape remains an unpunished crime in India, despite decades of dispute and litigation. This thesis explores the question of why the state continues to retain the marital rape exception within the Indian criminal code, even though it commits to combat gender based violence in other areas of justice. The research begins with a broader understanding of privatization of women’s rights in the international sphere and culturally sanctioned violence to protect the institution of marriage. With a focus on the legal justifications and language of Indian court cases, this thesis determines that judges adjudicate on gender justice inconsistently. Attempting to …

Tariffs And The Progressive Fiscal Constitution, Lawrence J. Liu, Alex Zhang

Scholarship@WashULaw

For more than a century, progressive taxation has constituted the American fiscal state. A resurgent and expanding tariff regime, however, threatens that commitment to progressive distribution. Given the ongoing popularity of tariffs, this Article examines how they might be designed and administered in a way that mitigates their regressive distributive impact. The Article thus develops and assesses proposals to (1) vary tariff burdens in accordance with the consumption of imported goods, (2) reduce income- or payroll-tax burdens on lower-income households, and (3) earmark tariff revenue for specified spending programs. Although none is perfect, we seek to articulate possibilities and highlight …

Apportioned Direct Taxes, Conor Clarke, Ari Glogower

Scholarship@WashULaw

The Constitution requires that Congress apportion any “direct” tax among the states by population. This once-dormant provision is now the most important constitutional limitation on Congress’s taxing power. Last year, in Moore v. United States, the Supreme Court seriously considered, for the first time in decades, whether to invalidate an Act of Congress as an unapportioned direct tax. While the law survived, Moore has opened a new era in which scholars and policymakers must again take apportionment seriously. Yet the apportionment requirement remains poorly understood.

This Article provides a new perspective on apportionment by examining how Congress and Treasury …

Teaching Constitutional Law: Politics, Democracy And History, Andrea Scoseria Katz

Scholarship@WashULaw

Teaching Constitutional Law in the present era presents unique pedagogical challenges. My students arrive skeptical of the field, doubtful of the Supreme Court’s authority, questioning the relevance of legal methods in determining case outcomes, and perceiving constitutional adjudication as irreducibly political. Rather than dismiss these concerns, I argue that constitutional law professors must acknowledge them directly. Our task is not to restore naïve faith in judicial neutrality (an impossible ideal), but to present students with a vision of constitutional meaning-making—one grounded in politics, history, and democratic politics—in which they can recognize themselves as engaged participants in the future of our …

Status, Conduct, Belief, And Message: The Wedding Vendor Cases, Mark L. Movsesian

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

Catholic Institutions And The Religion Clauses: Faith In A Liberal Democracy, Angela C. Carmella

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

Can First Amendment "History And Tradition" Protect Both Sides In Polarized America?, Thomas C. Berg

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

"Simple Accommodation": A Solution For Conflicts Between Religious Claims And Secular Law?, Laura S. Underkuffler

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Ten Commandments In Louisiana Public Schools: A Study In The Survival Of Establishment Norms, Ira C. Lupu, Robert W. Tuttle

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

Religious Liberty And The Constitution, Steven J. Heyman

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

Introduction To Symposium — In Search Of Common Ground: Religion And Secularism In A Liberal Democratic Society, Kathleen A. Brady, Steven J. Heyman

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

History, Tradition, And Finding Common Ground: The Establishment Clause And Religious Expression By The State, Kathleen A. Brady

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

Jurisdictional Diversity, Tradition, And The Religion Clauses, Steven D. Smith

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

Attempting To Protect The Liberty And Equality Of Minority Faiths And Nonreligious Individuals When The Surpreme Court Will Not Do So, Alan Brownstein

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Supreme Court's Gay Rights-Religious Liberty Contortions, Andrew Koppelman

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

Checks, Balances, Tariffs, And Justice Kavanaugh, Stanley I. Langbein

ConLawNOW

Justice Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion in FCC v. Consumers Research was remarkable in a number of respects, principally because it expressed very strong views on matters currently under consideration by the Supreme Court, although some of the issues he resolved were not issues posed by the Consumers’ Research case itself. Foremost among the positions he expressed were a muted version of the nondelegation doctrine and the view that the major questions doctrine has virtually no application to matters involving foreign affairs. The tariff decision now pending before the Court, in the V.O.S. Enterprises and Learning Research cases, may present a collision …

Fundamental Fairness Guides The Supreme Court's Criminal Justice Decisions In The 2024-2025 Term, Sharon R. Fairley

ConLawNOW

During the 2024-2025 term, the Supreme Court decided fifteen cases related to the criminal justice system. These cases were brought by criminal defendants seeking post-conviction relief and civil litigants seeking redress for governmental harms arising out of criminal processes. Remarkably, two-thirds of the cases resulted in decisions favoring defendants or civil litigants opposing the government. This Article argues that the pro-defendant outcomes from this term are consistent with a recent trend in the Court’s decisions favoring defendants in these types of cases. The pro-defendant outcomes from the 2024-2025 term generally resulted from the less conservative justices aligning with the liberal …

Missing Children Discrimination, Itay Ravid, Tanisha Brown

Faculty Publications

The problem of missing children in America—many of whom are victims of crime—has haunted society for decades. In response, a range of laws and policies have emerged, culminating in the nationwide adoption of the AMBER Alert system in the early 2000s. While often hailed as a success, this Article reveals a sad truth: Not all children benefit equally from AMBER. In particular, missing Black children are systematically underserved by the system, which ultimately contributes to the disproportionate impact of the missing children crisis on Black communities. While this issue received limited scholarly attention, states have recently started recognizing it. In …