Jurisprudence Commons^™

The Judicial Activism Of Justice Anthony Kennedy, Carlos A. Ball

American University Law Review

Few recent Supreme Court justices have had a greater impact on constitutional law than Anthony Kennedy. Although commentators have explored the substance of Justice Kennedy’s jurisprudence in some detail, legal scholars have not systematically analyzed the extent of his judicial activism. This Article uses the term “judicial activism” descriptively rather than normatively to help account for a judge’s willingness to strike down federal, state, and local laws on constitutional grounds. It finds that, under a descriptive definition, when compared to the justices with whom he served, Justice Kennedy was a singularly judicial activist judge.

This conclusion rests on three findings. …

The Art Of International Law, Hilary Charlesworth

American University Law Review

International lawyers study international law primarily through its written texts—treaties, official documents, judgments, and scholarly works. Critical to being an international lawyer, it seems, is access to the written word, whether in hard copy or online. Indeed, as Jesse Hohmann observes, “the production of text can come to feel like the very purpose of international law.”

The Failed Idea Of Judicial Restraint: A Brief Intellectual History, Susan D. Carle

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This essay examines the intellectual history of the idea of judicial restraint, starting with the early debates among the US Constitution’s founding generation. In the late nineteenth century, law professor James Bradley Thayer championed the concept and passed it on to his students and others, including Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Learned Hand, Louis Brandeis, and Felix Frankfurter, who modified and applied it based on the jurisprudential preoccupations of a different era. In a masterful account, Brad Snyder examines Justice Frankfurter’s attempt to put the idea into practice. Although Frankfurter arguably made a mess of it, he passed the idea of …

Digital Disease Surveillance, Alan Z. Rozenshtein

American University Law Review

The fight against future pandemics will likely involve digital disease surveillance: the use of digital technology to enhance traditional public-health techniques like contact tracing, isolation, and quarantine. But legal scholarship on digital disease surveillance is still in its infancy. This Article fills that gap.

Part I explains the role that digital disease surveillance could have played in responding to coronavirus, and the role it likely will play in future infectious disease outbreaks. Part II explains how the “special needs” exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement permits almost any rationally designed disease surveillance program. Part III suggests safeguards beyond what …

The Failure To Grapple With Racial Capitalism In European Constitutionalism, Jeffrey Miller

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Since the 1980s prominent scholars of European legal integration have used the example of U.S. constitutionalism to promote a federal vision for the European Community. These scholars, drawing lessons from developments across the Atlantic, concluded that the U.S. Supreme Court had played a key role in fostering national integration and market liberalization. They foresaw the possibility for the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to be a catalyst for a similar federal and constitutional outcome in Europe. The present contribution argues that the scholars who constructed today’s dominant European constitutional paradigm underemphasized key aspects of the U.S. constitutional experience, including judgments …

America's Amoral Constitution, Richard Albert

American University Law Review

The celebrated United States Constitution does not derive its legitimacy from morality. Its legitimacy is rooted in an amoral code structured around the peculiar value of outcome-neutrality. By design, the Constitution does not evaluate whether a lawful choice is morally right or wrong; it evaluates only whether the choice satisfies the procedures the Constitution requires for it to have been made. What matters, then, is not the content of the choice. It is the very act of choosing. These fiercely democratic foundations serve as both the font of the Constitution’s popular legitimacy and more ominously the greatest threat to the …

Enchanted By The Tools? An Enlightenment Perspective, Martti Koskenniemi

American University International Law Review

No abstract provided.

Elegy For Anti-Corruption Law: How The Bridgegate Case Could Crush Corruption Prosecutions And Boost Liars, Ciara Torres-Spelliscy

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Antitrust Regulation And The Federal-State Balance: Restoring The Original Design, Alan J. Meese

American University Law Review

The U.S. Constitution divides authority over commerce between states and the national government. Passed in 1890, the Sherman Act (“the Act”) reflects this allocation of power, reaching only those harmful agreements that are “in restraint of . . . commerce among the several States.” This Article contends that the Supreme Court erred when it radically altered the balance between state and national power over trade restraints in 1948, abruptly abandoning decades of precedent recognizing exclusive state authority over most intrastate restraints. This revised construction of the Act contravened the statute’s apparent meaning, unduly expanded the reach of federal antitrust regulation, …

Illiberalism And Authoritarianism In The American States, James A. Gardner

American University Law Review

Federalism contemplates subnational variation, but in the United States, the nature and significance of that variation has long been contested. In light of the recent turn, globally and nationally, toward authoritarianism, and the concurrent sharp decline in public support not merely for democracy but also for the philosophical liberalism on which democracy rests, it is necessary to discard or to substantially revise prior accounts of the nature of state-to-state variation in the United States. All such accounts implicitly presuppose a common commitment, across the political spectrum, to the core tenets of democratic liberalism, and consequently assume that subnational variations in …

Equality Is A Brokered Idea, Robert Tsai

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This essay examines the Supreme Court's stunning decision in the census case, Department of Commerce v. New York. I characterize Chief Justice John Roberts' decision to side with the liberals as an example of pursuing the ends of equality by other means – this time, through the rule of reason. Although the appeal was limited in scope, the stakes for political and racial equality were sky high. In blocking the administration from adding a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, 5 members of the Court found the justification the administration gave to be a pretext. In this instance, that lie …

Coronavirus, Civil Libertities, And The Courts: The Case Against Suspending Judicial Review, Lindsay Wiley

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Introduction: For obvious reasons, local and state orders designed to help “flatten the curve” of novel coronavirus infections (and conserve health care capacity to treat coronavirus disease) have provoked a series of constitutional objections — and a growing number of lawsuits attempting to have those orders modified or overturned. Like the coronavirus crisis itself, much of that litigation remains ongoing as we write this Essay. But even in these early days, the emerging body of case law has rather elegantly teed up what we have previously described as “the central (and long-running) normative debate over emergency powers: Should constitutional constraints …

Justice Breyer And The Rise Of Globalization: An Analysis Of The Jurisprudence Of Justice Breyer As A Pragmatic Visionary, Timothy Sajal Klee

Upper Level Writing Requirement Research Papers

No abstract provided.

Manufactured Emergencies, Robert Tsai

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Emergencies are presumed to be unusual affairs, but the United States has been in one state of emergency or another for the last forty years. That is a problem. The erosion of democratic norms has led to not simply the collapse of the traditional conceptual boundary between ordinary rule and emergency governance, but also the emergence of an even graver problem: the manufactured crisis. In an age characterized by extreme partisanship, institutional gridlock, and technological manipulation of information, it has become exceedingly easy and far more tempting for a President to invoke extraordinary power by ginning up exigencies. To reduce …

Considerations Of History And Purpose In Constitutional Borrowing, Robert Tsai

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This essay is part of a symposium issue dedicated to "Constitutional Rights: Intersections, Synergies, and Conflicts" at William and Mary School of Law. I make four points. First, perfect harmony among rights might not always be normatively desirable. In fact, in some instances, such as when First Amendment and Second Amendment rights clash, we might wish to have expressive rights consistently trump gun rights. Second, we can't resolve clashes between rights in the abstract but instead must consult history in a broadly relevant rather than a narrowly "originalist" fashion. When we do so, we learn that armed expression and white …

What Would Justice Brennan Say To Justice Thomas, Stephen Wermiel

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

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

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Supreme Court And The Federal Circuit Turn Patent Infringement Venue Jurisprudence Upside Down, Robert Tapparo

American University Business Law Review

No abstract provided.

We "Kent" Keep Transferring Kids Without A Hearing: Using Recent Supreme Court Jurisprudence To Revive Kent V. United States And End Mandatory Transfer For Juveniles, Summer Woods

Criminal Law Practitioner

No abstract provided.

Jezebels And Jungle Bunnies: How The Stereotypes Of Black Women Shape Legislation, The Legal Profession, And Feminist Jurisprudence, Kersti Myles

The Modern American

No abstract provided.

The Battle Over U.S. Water: Why The Clean Water Rule "Flows" Within The Bounds Of Supreme Court Precedent, Ashleigh Allione

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Circular Logic Of Actavis, Joshua B. Fischman

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

My Body Is My Temple: Utilizing The Concept Of Dignity In Supreme Court Jurisprudence To Fight Sex Reassignment Surgery Requirements For Recognition Of Legal Sex, Doran Shemin

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

In Search Of The Real Roberts Court, Stephen Wermiel

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Following New Lights: Critical Legal Research Strategies As A Spark For Law Reform In Appalachia, Nicholas F. Stump

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

The nascent “critical legal research” movement applies the constellation of critical theory to the American legal research regime. Work in this discourse has unpacked the means through which commercial print and online legal resources (e.g., Westlaw and Lexis) insidiously channel the efforts of legal researchers, essentially predetermining research outcomes. Although legal research is commonly conceived as a normatively neutral paradigm, such commercial homogenizing agents (paired with traditional methods of legal analysis) in fact reflect and perpetuate society’s dominant interests. As grounded in the existing literature, this Article outlines novel strategies that may together constitute one potential version of a critically …

Empirical Studies Of Claim Construction, Jonas Anderson

Working Papers

Patent claims define the scope of the patent right and hence are central to the operation of the patent system. Patent prosecutors devote substantial effort to crafting patent claims so as to maximize the scope of their right without “reading on” prior art (and thereby defeating novelty). Businesses seeking to enter a technology marketplace must be careful to avoid encroaching patent claims. Thus, when patentees enforce their rights, the interpretation of claim boundaries guides both validity and infringement analysis. Following the Supreme Court’s decision in Markman v. Westview Instruments (517 U.S. 370 (1996)), holding that “the construction of a patent, …

A Tradition At War With Itself: A Reply To Professor Rana's Review Of America's Forgotten Constitutions: Defiant Visions Of Power And Community, Robert Tsai

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This essay responds to Professor Aziz Rana's review essay, "The Many American Constitutions," 93 Texas Law Review 1193 (2015).

He contends: (1) my portrayal of American constitutionalism might contain a “hidden” teleological understanding of the development of constitutional law; (2) my notion of "conventional sovereignty" sometimes seems content-free and at other times "interlinked with liberal egalitarianism"; and (3) a focus on failed constitutions "inadvertently tends to compartmentalize the overall tradition."

I answer in the following ways: (1) I reject any sense that constitutional law has moved in an arc of steady progress toward Enlightenment and instead embrace a tradition of …

Human Rights Hero: The Supreme Court In Griswold V. Connecticut, Stephen Wermiel

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Magna Carta In Supreme Court Jurisprudence, Stephen Wermiel

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Editor's Note: This article is adapted from "Magna Carta in Supreme Court Jurisprudence," which appears as Chapter 5 in Magna Carta and the Rule of Law, Daniel Magraw et al., eds., published by the American Bar Association in 2014.

Through Our Glass Darkly: Does Comparative Law Counsel The Use Of Foreign Law In U.S. Constitutional Adjudication?, Kenneth Anderson

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This (35 pp.) essay appears as a contribution to a law review symposium on the work of Harvard Law School professor Mary Ann Glendon in comparative law. The essay begins by asking what comparative law as a scholarly discipline might suggest about the use of foreign (or unratified or nationally "unaccepted" international law) by US courts in US constitutional adjudication. The trend seemed to be gathering steam in US courts between the early-1990s and mid-2000s, but by the late-2000s, it appeared to be stalled as a practice, notwithstanding the intense scholarly interest throughout this period.

Practical politics within the US …