Constitutional Law Commons^™

Symposium: The Puzzling And Troubling Grant In Kisor, Gillian E. Metzger

Faculty Scholarship

From one perspective, the Supreme Court’s decision to grant review in Kisor v. Wilkie is not surprising. Dating back at least to Justice Antonin Scalia’s 2011 concurrence in Talk America v. Michigan Bell Telephone Co., through Decker v. Northwest Environmental Defense Center in 2013 and Perez v. Mortgage Bankers Association in 2015, there’s been growing interest on the Supreme Court’s conservative wing in overturning Auer deference, or the doctrine that an agency’s interpretation of its own regulation is “controlling unless plainly erroneous or inconsistent with the regulation.” The campaign to overturn Auer v. Robbins then stalled, with the court denying …

War Powers: Congress, The President, And The Courts – A Model Casebook Section, Stephen M. Griffin, Matthew C. Waxman

Faculty Scholarship

This model casebook section is concerned with the constitutional law of war powers as developed by the executive and legislative branches, with a limited look at relevant statutes and federal court cases. It is intended for use in Constitutional Law I classes that cover separation of powers. It could also be used for courses in National Security Law or Foreign Relations Law, or for graduate courses in U.S. foreign policy. This is designed to be the reading for one to two classes, and it can supplement or replace standard casebook sections on war powers that are shorter and offer less …

Coordinating Injunctions, Bert I. Huang

Faculty Scholarship

Consider this scenario: Two judges with parallel cases are each ready to issue an injunction. But their injunctions may clash, ordering incompatible actions by the defendant. Each judge has written an opinion justifying her own intended relief, but the need to avoid conflicting injunctions presses her to make a further choice – “Should I issue the injunction or should I stay it for now?” Each must make this decision in anticipation of what the other will do.

This Article analyzes such a judicial coordination problem, drawing on recent examples including the DACA cases and the “sanctuary cities” cases. It then …

Race And Reasonableness In Police Killings, Jeffrey A. Fagan, Alexis D. Campbell

Faculty Scholarship

Police officers in the United States have killed over 1000 civilians each year since 2013. The constitutional landscape that regulates these encounters defaults to the judgments of the reasonable police officer at the time of a civilian encounter based on the officer’s assessment of whether threats to their safety or the safety of others requires deadly force. As many of these killings have begun to occur under similar circumstances, scholars have renewed a contentious debate on whether police disproportionately use deadly force against African Americans and other nonwhite civilians and whether such killings reflect racial bias. We analyze data on …

Profiling And Consent: Stops, Searches, And Seizures After Soto, Jeffrey A. Fagan, Amanda Geller

Faculty Scholarship

Following Soto v. State (1999), New Jersey was the first state to enter into a Consent Decree with the U.S. Department of Justice to end racially selective enforcement on the state’s highways. The Consent Decree led to extensive reforms in the training and supervision of state police troopers, and the design of information technology to monitor the activities of the State Police. Compliance was assessed in part on the State’s progress toward the elimination of racial disparities in the patterns of highway stops and searches. We assess compliance by analyzing data on 257,000 vehicle stops on the New Jersey Turnpike …

The New "Essential": Rethinking Social Goods In The Age Of Covid-19, Olatunde C.A. Johnson

Faculty Scholarship

The Covid-19 crisis has laid bare the fragility of social insurance systems in the United States and the lack of income security and basic benefits for many workers and residents. The United States has long had weaker protections for workers compared to other liberal democracies racial and economic disparities among those most affected by these dislocations (analyses are hampered by a paucity of demographic data). Those who were socially and economically vulnerable before the pandemic (for example due to homelessness, immigration status, or incarceration) are likely to suffer the most harm. Changes in workplace conditions as a result of the …

Covid-19 And Lgbt Rights, Suzanne B. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

Even in the best of times, LGBT individuals have legal vulnerabilities in employment, housing, healthcare and other domains resulting from a combination of persistent bias and uneven protection against discrimination. In this time of COVID-19, these vulnerabilities combine to amplify both the legal and health risks that LGBT people face.

This essay focuses on several risks that are particularly linked to being lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender, with the recognition that these vulnerabilities are often intensified by discrimination based on race, ethnicity, age, disability, immigration status and other aspects of identity. Topics include: 1) federal withdrawal of antidiscrimination protections; 2) …

Executive Overreach And Underreach In The Pandemic, Kim Lane Scheppele, David E. Pozen

Faculty Scholarship

The pandemic that convulsed the globe in 2020 was long foretold but still surprising to many. Within a few months of its appearance, COVID-19 became one of the leading causes of death worldwide. Governments struggled at first to comprehend what was happening – and then reacted in very different ways. Most political leaders followed the advice of epidemiologists. Many declared states of emergency. A few pursued autocratic agendas. And some did almost nothing.

During emergencies, constitutional scholars normally worry about executive aggrandizement at the expense of human rights and democratic values. Emergencies often require national executives to act quickly and …

Precedent, Non-Universal Injunctions, And Judicial Departmentalism: A Model Of Constitutional Adjudication, Howard M. Wasserman

Lewis & Clark Law Review

This Article proposes a model of constitutional adjudication that offers a deeper, richer, and more accurate vision than the simple “courts strike down unconstitutional laws” narrative that pervades legal, popular, and political discourse around constitutional litigation. The model rests on five principles: 1) an actionable constitutional violation arises from the actual or threatened enforcement of an invalid law, not the existence of the law itself; 2) the remedy when a law is constitutionally invalid is for the court to halt enforcement; 3) remedies must be particularized to the parties to a case and courts should not issue “universal” or “nationwide” …

The Contributions Of William Funk To American Constitutional Law Scholarship, William D. Araiza

Lewis & Clark Law Review

This Essay discusses the contributions of Professor William Funk to American constitutional law scholarship on the occasion of a festschrift held in his honor at Lewis & Clark Law School on April 5, 2019. Reviewing Professor Funk’s varied scholarship reveals his careful, attentive, and even-handed approach. The Essay concludes by comparing Professor Funk’s style of constitutional law scholarship to the approach to substantive due process embraced by Justice David Souter in his classic concurring opinion in Washington v. Glucksberg. Just like Justice Souter’s analysis in Glucksberg, Professor Funk’s scholarship seeks justification for rules in the results they generate, rejects arid …

Multidistrict Litigation And Personal Jurisdiction, Zachary T. Nelson

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, a court cannot lawfully adjudicate a party’s rights or obligations unless, among other things, that court possesses sufficient personal jurisdiction over the party. The means by which a court may obtain such jurisdiction have grown increasingly narrow in recent years. Parallel to that trend has been the meteoric rise of multidistrict litigation (MDL), in which the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation transfers and consolidates numerous civil cases in a single federal court that, in many instances, lacks personal jurisdiction over one or more parties. Although MDL is statutorily limited to “pretrial proceedings,” 97% …

Manipulating Risk: Immigration Detention Through Automation, Kate Evans, Robert Koulish

Lewis & Clark Law Review

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security arrests as many as 500,000 migrants per year and detains more than 350,000 of them through Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Since 2012, ICE has relied on an automated Risk Classification Assessment (RCA) system to recommend whom to detain and whom to release. The authors are the first to obtain access to its algorithm and this Article is the first to make that system’s methodology public. While purportedly basing these recommendations on indicia of flight risk and risk to public safety, the RCA in fact relies on an algorithm driven by political preferences. By …

Separation Of Functions For Ai: Restraining Speech Regulation By Online Platforms, Niva Elkin-Koren, Maayan Perel

Lewis & Clark Law Review

The Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution restricts government regulation of private speech. However, it generally does not apply to private management of speech. New forms of speech regulation by online platforms disrupt this constitutional framework. Platforms, such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter, are responsible for mediating much of the public discourse and governing access to speech and speakers around the world. These private businesses match users and content in whatever way best benefits their commercial interests. At the same time, however, they exercise regulatory power when they filter, block, and remove content at the …

The 2019 Higgins Distinguished Visitor Lecture: The Subversive Side Of Textualism And Original Intent, Donald B. Ayer

Lewis & Clark Law Review

The Lorene Sails Higgins Charitable Trust provides the Lewis & Clark community access to leading legal scholars from around the world. Each year, the campus is graced with a visitor renowned in their field whose stay is funded by a grant from the trust. This lecture, given by the former Deputy Attorney General and Principal Deputy Solicitor General Donald B. Ayer during the course of his visit, discussed the changes in American legal thinking during his career.

Originalist Sin: The Failure Of Originalism To Justify The Unitary Executive Theory, Marc Mohan

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Originalists justify a “unitary executive” theory of presidential powers using the Constitution’s vesting of the executive power in “a President,” as opposed to a council or other multi-member setup. Inspite of this justification’s popularity with originalists, a deeper understanding of prerogative and power, as the Founders understood those key concepts, reveals that the unitary executivetheory cannot be justified through either the original intent orthe original meaning of our founding document. Intheabsence of this grounding, the unitary executive theory is underpinned by modern exigenciesand thereforeloses coherency as an originalist theory.

Cyberattacks And The Constitution, Matthew C. Waxman

Faculty Scholarship

Contrary to popular view, cyberattacks alone are rarely exercises of constitutional war powers – and they might never be. They are often instead best understood as exercises of other powers pertaining to nonwar military, foreign affairs, intelligence, and foreign commerce, for example. Although this more fine-grained, fact-specific conception of cyberattacks leaves room for broad executive leeway in some contexts, it also contains a strong constitutional basis for legislative regulation of cyber operations.

Executive Underreach, In Pandemics And Otherwise, David E. Pozen, Kim Lane Scheppele

Faculty Scholarship

Legal scholars are familiar with the problem of executive overreach, especially in emergencies. But sometimes, instead of being too audacious or extreme, a national executive's attempts to address a true threat prove far too limited and insubstantial. In this Essay, we seek to define and clarify the phenomenon of executive underreach, with special reference to the COVID-19 crisis; to outline ways in which such underreach may compromise constitutional governance and the international legal order; and to suggest a partial remedy.

Historical Gloss, Madisonian Liquidation, And The Originalism Debate, Curtis A. Bradley, Neil S. Siegel

Faculty Scholarship

The U.S. Constitution is old, relatively brief, and very difficult to amend. In its original form, the Constitution was primarily a framework for a new national government, and for 230 years the national government has operated under that framework even as conditions have changed in ways beyond the Founders’ conceivable imaginations. The framework has survived in no small part because government institutions have themselves played an important role in helping to fill in and clarify the framework through their practices and interactions, informed by the realities of governance. Courts, the political branches, and academic commentators commonly give weight to such …

Disuniformity Of Federal Constitutional Rights, Joseph Blocher

Faculty Scholarship

Judge Jeffrey Sutton’s 51 Imperfect Solutions describes and celebrates the crucial role of state constitutional law in “making” American constitutional law. The fact that states do not speak with one voice in doing so is, in Sutton’s account, a feature rather than a bug. The diversity in their approaches permits experimentation and tailoring, and ultimately produces a stronger and more supple constitutional fabric.

Sutton’s enthusiasm for the diversity and dynamism of state constitutional law is entirely convincing. But is the federal alternative quite so flat? Although federal constitutional rights are undoubtedly more uniform than those of states, they are not …

The Rise And Fall Of Transcendent Constitutionalism In The Civil War Era, Cynthia Nicoletti

Faculty Scholarship

In the aftermath of the Civil War, American intellectuals saw the war itself as a force of transcendent lawmaking. They viewed it as a historical catalyst that had forged the United States into a nation. In writing the Fourteenth Amendment, Congress sought to translate the war's nationalistic spirit into text. But in the eyes of many contemporary thinkers, the war's centripetal energy was a doubleedged sword. It could create a nation out of disparate parts, but it was also potentially uncontainable, divorced from the regular lawmaking process and beyond the control of human actors. As a result, many American jurists …

The Modern Architecture Of Religious Freedom As A Fundamental Right, Peter G. Danchin

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Reimagining The Death Penalty: Targeting Christians, Conservatives, Spearit

Buffalo Law Review

This Article is an interdisciplinary response to an entrenched legal and cultural problem. It incorporates legal analysis, religious study and the anthropological notion of “culture work” to consider death penalty abolitionism and prospects for abolishing the death penalty in the United States. The Article argues that abolitionists must reimagine their audiences and repackage their message for broader social consumption, particularly for Christian and conservative audiences. Even though abolitionists are characterized by some as “bleeding heart” liberals, this is not an accurate portrayal of how the death penalty maps across the political spectrum. Abolitionists must learn that conservatives are potential allies …

Benefit Or Burden?: Brackeen V. Zinke And The Constitutionality Of The Indian Child Welfare Act, Katie L. Gojevic

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Ai Report: Humanity Is Doomed. Send Lawyers, Guns, And Money!, Ashley M. London

Law Faculty Publications

AI systems are powerful technologies being built and implemented by private corporations motivated by profit, not altruism. Change makers, such as attorneys and law students, must therefore be educated on the benefits, detriments, and pitfalls of the rapid spread, and often secret implementation of this technology. The implementation is secret because private corporations place proprietary AI systems inside of black boxes to conceal what is inside. If they did not, the popular myth that AI systems are unbiased machines crunching inherently objective data would be revealed as a falsehood. Algorithms created to run AI systems reflect the inherent human categorization …

Confederate Monuments As Badges Of Slavery, Alexander Tsesis

Faculty Publications & Other Works

This Article develops a Thirteenth Amendment theory supporting the removal of Confederate symbols from government properties. It argues that such monuments to the Lost Cause are badges of slavery that should have no place in public squares.

The Article discusses how white supremacist groups, such as those who participated in the 2017 Unite the Right March in Charlottesville, effectively draw together around monuments honoring leaders and soldiers who fought for the cause of slavery. Relying on the Thirteenth Amendment's principles of freedom, States and municipalities can and should eliminate those monuments from their properties. Such policy initiatives communicate the government's …

Legal Interpretation, Mykaila Ashlynn Berry

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

The purpose of this project is to provide a fresh and in-depth analysis of legal jurisprudence through the use of two of the most important legal theorists of our time, H. L. A. Hart and Ronald Dworkin. This project focuses on how Dworkin’s position in his famous paper “Hard Cases”, helps us understand an important Supreme Court case, Cohen v. California. Cohen will be the main focus of my project. The project will discuss the case and the possible ways of deciding the case. Then the project explains both Dworkin’s and Hart’s positions. Finally, the project will analyze how Dworkin’s …

State Attorneys General As Agents Of Police Reform, Stephen Rushin, Jason Mazzone

Faculty Publications & Other Works

State attorneys general can and should play an important role in remedying police violations of constitutional rights. In 1994, Congress enacted 42 U.S.C. § 14141 to authorize the U.S. Attorney General to seek equitable relief against state and local police departments engaged in patterns or practices of misconduct. The Department of Justice (DOJ) has used this statute to reform some of the nation’s most troubled police departments. However, the DOJ has lacked the resources to pursue more than a few cases each year and the Trump Administration has recently announced it would no longer enforce § 14141.

In response, a …

Are Presidential Electors Free To Vote As They Wish, Despite A State’S Popular Vote?, Alan Raphael, Elliott Mondry

Faculty Publications & Other Works

No abstract provided.

A Constitutional Right To A Functioning United States Government? Are Governments Shutdowns Unconstitutional?, Allen E. Shoenberger

Faculty Publications & Other Works

No abstract provided.

The Purpose Paradox: A Linguistic Dilemma Within Fourth Amendment Jurisprudence, Luke Belflower

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.