Constitutional Law Commons^™

Loving Retroactivity, Charles W. "Rocky" Rhodes

Florida State University Law Review

Pending actions across the nation highlight the ongoing struggle between adjudicative retroactivity and marital equality. The Supreme Court's constitutional decisions overruling prior precedents or applying new legal rules to the parties retroactively govern all pending and future adjudicative proceedings on direct review, even if the underlying operative events occurred under a prior legal framework. But this understanding of the temporal boundaries of legal change is being challenged after the Supreme Court's holding in Obergefell v. Hodges that laws excluding same-sex couples from civil marriage on the same terms and conditions as opposite-sex couples are invalid. The retroactive application of Obergefell …

Privacy Vs. Protection: Why Tracking Mobile-Device Location Data Without A Warrant Requires A Fourth Amendment Exception, Andrew Stover

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

No abstract provided.

Precedent And Preclusion, Alan M. Trammell

Notre Dame Law Review

Preclusion rules prevent parties from revisiting matters that they have already litigated. A corollary of that principle is that preclusion usually does not apply to nonparties, who have not yet benefited from their own “day in court.” But precedent works the other way around. Binding precedent applies to litigants in a future case, even those who never had an opportunity to participate in the precedent-creating lawsuit. The doctrines once operated in distinct spheres, but today they often govern the same questions and apply under the same circumstances, yet to achieve opposite ends. Why, then, does due process promise someone a …

After Sex, Courtney Megan Cahill

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

“Nationwide” Injunctions Are Really “Universal” Injunctions And They Are Never Appropriate, Howard Wasserman

Faculty Publications

Federal district courts are routinely issuing broad injunctions prohibiting the federal government from enforcing constitutionally invalid laws, regulations, and policies on immigration and immigration-adjacent issues. Styled “nationwide injunctions,” they prohibit enforcement of the challenges laws not only against the named plaintiffs, but against all people and entities everywhere.

The first problem with these injunctions is one of nomenclature. “Nationwide” suggests something about the “where” of the injunction, the geographic scope in which it protects. The better term is “universal injunction,” which captures the real controversy over the “who” of the injunction, as courts purport to protect the universe of all …

Bias, Corruption & Obstruction, Oh My: The Due Process "Shocks The Conscience" Limit On Investigative & Prosecutorial Conduct, Elizabeth Price Foley

Faculty Publications

Due process guarantees the government will not exercise its power in a manner falling below the standard of civilized decency. Under Supreme Court precedent, behavior by government officials, including prosecutors and investigators, that objectively may be characterized as outrageous, arbitrary, capricious, biased, vindictive, or conscience shocking violates due process. Whether officials’ behavior crosses the constitutional threshold requires an assessment of the totality of the circumstances and is, accordingly, a factually sensitive inquiry. Facts disinterred thus far suggest that the “collusion” narrative—alleging that Russia and Donald Trump’s campaign colluded to throw the 2016 presidential election—may have a corrupt or politically biased …

Private Habeas, Chris Kozak

Intercultural Human Rights Law Review

Half a century ago, Abraham Maslow demonstrated that conditioning a person's physical safety on their participation in some higher-order social project is sheer madness. Yet this is exactly what federal immigration law does to undocumented victims of human trafficking. To receive a visa, victims must first convince Donald Trump's immigration officials-who have a strong interest in deporting them-that they are, in fact, victims. They also must cooperate fully in the prosecution of their trafficker, a process over which they have no real control. This is not a new complaint. Advocates have been frustrated by this myopia for a long time. …

State Court Protection Of Individual Constitutional Rights: State Constitutional Structures Affect Access To Civil Justice, Justin R. Long

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

The Nondelegation Doctrine: Alive And Well, Jason Iuliano, Keith E. Whittington

Notre Dame Law Review

The nondelegation doctrine is dead. It is difficult to think of a more frequently repeated or widely accepted legal conclusion. For generations, scholars have maintained that the doctrine was cast aside by the New Deal Court and is now nothing more than a historical curiosity. In this Article, we argue that the conventional wisdom is mistaken in an important respect.

Drawing on an original dataset of more than one thousand nondelegation challenges, we find that, although the doctrine has disappeared at the federal level, it has thrived at the state level. In fact, in the decades since the New Deal, …

Unlocking The Fifth Amendment: Passwords And Encrypted Devices, Laurent Sacharoff

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Each year, law enforcement seizes thousands of electronic devices — smartphones, laptops, and notebooks — that it cannot open without the suspect’s password. Without this password, the information on the device sits completely scrambled behind a wall of encryption. Sometimes agents will be able to obtain the information by hacking, discovering copies of data on the cloud, or obtaining the password voluntarily from the suspects themselves. But when they cannot, may the government compel suspects to disclose or enter their password?

This Article considers the Fifth Amendment protection against compelled disclosures of passwords — a question that has split and …

Policymaking As Power-Building, K. Sabeel Rahman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Why Courts Fail To Protect Privacy: Race, Age, Bias, And Technology, Bernard Chao, Catherine Durso, Ian Farrell, Christopher Robertson

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable “searches and seizures,” but in the digital age of stingray devices and IP tracking, what constitutes a search or seizure? The Supreme Court has held that the threshold question depends on and reflects the “reasonable expectations” of ordinary members of the public concerning their own privacy. For example, the police now exploit the “third party” doctrine to access data held by email and cell phone providers, without securing a warrant, on the Supreme Court’s intuition that the public has no expectation of privacy in that information. Is that assumption correct? If judges’ intuitions about …

Sex, Lies, And Ultrasound, B. Jessie Hill

Faculty Publications

State-mandated falsehoods are rampant in the context of abortion regulation. State legislatures have required doctors, before performing abortions, to provide scientifically unsupported information to women, such as that having an abortion increases the risk of breast cancer, or that it has negative mental health effects. Given the lack of evidence to sustain these sorts of claims, it seems reasonable to refer to such statements as government-mandated lies. However, this article argues that government mandated lies in the abortion context are unique in several ways that make them unlikely to be found unconstitutional, despite the fact that they obviously hinder patients’ …

Fifty Years Of Foia In Operation, 1967-2017, Tuan N. Samahon

Working Paper Series

No abstract provided.

No Cake For You: Discrimination, Dignity, And Refusals To Serve, William D. Araiza

Marquette Benefits and Social Welfare Law Review

No abstract provided.

Lethal Injection Or Lethal Litigation: Florida's Amended Lethal Injection Protocol Opens The Door For Cries Of Cruel And Unusual Punishment, Cynthia Ventura

St. Thomas Law Review

In Florida, lethal injection has been the primary method of execution since the 1990s. The Florida Department of Corrections recently amended its protocol by replacing all three drugs previously used. The first administered lethal dose is now etomidate, an anesthetic that has never been used in the United States as a lethal injection drug. This Comment discusses the lack of empirical research available to support the state of Florida's use of etomidate as an appropriate method of rendering a prisoner unconscious prior to administering the second and third injections. First, this Comment will provide a brief background of the history …

On Litigating Constitutional Challenges To The Federal Supermax: Improving Conditions And Shining A Light, Laura L. Rovner

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Prisons and jails are the most invisible part of the American criminal justice system. In this hidden world of punishment, no prison is more shrouded in secrecy than the federal Bureau of Prisons’ only “supermax” prison — the U.S. Penitentiary-Administrative Maximum known as ADX. Located in a remote area of Colorado, ADX has been described by one journalist as “a black site on American soil.” The men at ADX are held in solitary confinement, locked in cells the size of a parking space for twenty-three hours a day, with little or no contact with other people. Some of them have …

Slave Narratives And The Sentencing Court, Lindsey Webb

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

The United States incarcerates a greater percentage of its population than any other country in the world. Courts are substantially more likely to sentence African American and Latino people to prison than white people in similar circumstances, and African Americans in particular represent a grossly disproportionate percentage of the incarcerated population. Violence and other ills endemic to jails and prisons are thus disproportionately experienced by people of color.

This Article argues that criminal defense lawyers should explicitly address conditions of confinement at sentencing. In doing so, a criminal defense lawyer has the opportunity to serve as both advocate and abolitionist. …

Legal Consciousness As Race Consciousness: Expansion Of The Fourth Amendment Seizure Analysis Through Objective Knowledge Of Police Impunity, Lindsey Webb

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Encounters between police officers and members of the community are deeply influenced by race. Yet when courts assess whether police officers have complied with the Fourth Amendment, they explicitly exclude consideration of the ways in which the police-civilian interaction was influenced by racial bias, assumptions, and fear. In determining whether law enforcement officers seized a civilian, for example, courts look to the objective circumstances of the event, such as the number of officers involved, whether police weapons were drawn, and the tone of voice the officers used. They then assess whether, under such circumstances, a reasonable person would feel free …

2017 Annual Survey: Recent Developments In Sports Law, Jordan Lysiak, Katherine Hampel

Marquette Sports Law Review

None

Isonomy, Austerity, And The Right To Choose Counsel, Janet Moore

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

People who can afford to hire criminal defense attorneys have a Sixth Amendment right to choose a lawyer who is qualified, available, and free from conflicts of interest. The same right to choose counsel is routinely denied to people who need government-paid defense lawyers because they cannot afford to hire attorneys. In prior work, I invoked democratic theory to argue that this de jure discrimination blocks constitutional law formation by poor people and should be eliminated. This Article extends the analysis by explaining how a different theoretical approach—one grounded in libertarian commitments to private enterprise and austerity in public funding—shaped …

State Standing In United States V. Texas: Opening The Floodgates To States Challenging The Federal Government Or Proper Federalism?, Bradford Mank

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

In United States v. Texas, the Supreme Court by an equally divided vote, 4 to 4, affirmed the decision of the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that the State of Texas had Article III standing to challenge in federal court the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) directive establishing a Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (“DAPA”) program to grant lawful immigration status to millions of undocumented immigrants. A serious question is whether state standing in this case will open the floodgates to allow states to challenge virtually every federal executive action. On the other hand, …

The Growing Gender/Religion Divide, Marcia L. Mccormick

Marquette Benefits and Social Welfare Law Review

No abstract provided.

Control The Casinos And Stop The Dogs: Florida’S 2018 Proposed Constitutional Amendments, Robert Jarvis

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

"Natural Born Citizen", Thomas H. Lee

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Federal Circuit Jurisdiction: Looking Back And Thinking Forward, Timothy B. Dyk

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Posse Comitatus Act And The Fourth Amendment's Exclusionary Rule, Patrick Walsh, Paul Sullivan

American University National Security Law Brief

No abstract provided.

How Cybersecurity Regulation For The Smart Grid Could Upset The Current Balance Of Federal And State Jurisdiction In Electricity Regulation, Cynthia Anderson

American University National Security Law Brief

No abstract provided.

From The Italian Mafia To Suppressing Societal Challenges: The Evolution Of Federal Criminal Rico And The Constitutional Objections Against It, 51 J. Marshall L. Rev. 647 (2018), Bianca Ciarroni

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Without Evidence: Joel Richard Paul’S John Marshall, Kevin C. Walsh

Scholarly Articles

John Marshall—soldier, lawyer, legislator, statesman, and fourth chief justice of the United States—led a long public life that spanned from the American Revolution to the rise of Jacksonian democracy. Joel Richard Paul’s full-length biography takes the reader from Marshall’s birth on the Virginia frontier in 1755, to his death in 1835 at the head of an American judiciary that had gained significantly in power and respect because of Marshall’s leadership over the preceding 34 years.