Constitutional Law Commons^™

The Indirect Taxes, Conor Clarke, Ari Glogower

Scholarship@WashULaw

Article I of the Constitution empowers Congress to “lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises.” It is arguably Congress’s most important power. A government’s first task is to fund itself, and the absence of an enforceable funding mechanism under the Articles of Confederation was a primary reason for the Constitution in the first place. Yet scholarly and judicial attention has focused mostly on the term “taxes” (and specifically what constitutes a “direct tax” that must be apportioned) while largely overlooking the three terms that follow—the duties, imposts, and excises that are collectively known as the “indirect taxes.” 

While poorly …

Can The Public Be Persuaded To Support Institutional Reform? The Case Of American Judicial Elections, Debra Leiter, Benjamin Woodson

ConLawNOW

Judicial reform is a challenging issue for political activists to address. Reformers face two barriers in persuading voters to support institutional changes—first, in communicating the impact of extant institutions on unwanted outcomes; and, secondly, of persuading them to support a different institutional solution. Voters are frequently underinformed about judicial institutions and appear reluctant to make changes, and, especially in American politics, the judicial system often acts as the institutional “third rail.” To understand the ability of voters to connect judicial institutions with different outcomes under different campaign messaging, we use an experiment to present pro and anti-judicial election messages to …

L’Influence De La Nationalité De La Mère En Droit Libanais, Pierre Gannagé

Proche-Orient, Études juridiques

No abstract provided.

Transposition Et Mutations Du Modèle Administratif Français (Les Cas Libanais Et Tunisien), Michel Duprat

Proche-Orient, Études juridiques

No abstract provided.

Le Secret De L’Administration Au Liban, Hassan-Tabet Rifaat

Proche-Orient, Études juridiques

No abstract provided.

Le Secret De La Vie Privée Et Le Droit Au Liban, Youssef Gebran

Proche-Orient, Études juridiques

No abstract provided.

La Libanaise À L’Assaut De Ses Droits Politiques, Hassan-Tabet Rifaat

Proche-Orient, Études juridiques

No abstract provided.

Recent Case: Election Law - Campaign Finance And Ballot Counting That Affect Elections: The U.S. Supreme Court Makes Decisions That Affect Elections National Republican Senatorial Comm. V. Fec, Watson V. Republican National Comm., Lillian Engelhart

ConLawNOW

This Recent Case Note analyzes the Supreme Court’s decisions in two cases decided within two days that are crucial to elections. In National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission, the Court struck down the Federal Election Campaign Act’s (FECA) limits on a political party’s coordinated spending with its own candidates. In Watson v. Republican National Committee, the Court upheld state laws allowing absentee ballots to count when received after Election Day. Read together, the decisions leave fewer federal restrictions on election participation: one removes a cap on how much money a party may spend alongside its candidates, …

Recent Case: Citizenship - Trump V. Barbara, Julius R. Fout

ConLawNOW

This Recent Case Note analyzes the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. Barbara upholding longstanding definitions of constitutional birthright citizenship. The Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship established a constitutional foundation for American citizenship. An executive order issued by President Trump in 2025 attempted to rewrite the concept of birthright citizenship to exclude from citizenship the children born to foreign individuals temporarily or unlawfully present in the United States. The Court struck down this order as unconstitutional and affirmed the Fourteenth Amendment’s universal grant of citizenship to children born in the United States, with no consideration for the status of …

Ai And Government Disinformation: Vaccine Disinformation, Caroline Mala Corbin

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Ai Suffrage For Human Flourishing, Simon Goldstein, Guha Krishnamurthi, Peter N. Salib

Fordham Law Review

Should Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems have the vote? One approach to this question is to explore AI systems’ moral characteristics, asking whether they possess the qualities that entitle humans to equal political standing and, consequently, suffrage. Those are important questions. But they are very hard ones, resting on highly contestable premises about ethics, AI, and humanity.

We instead take a functionalist approach: On the current trajectory, AIs will soon be highly agentic and capable, while remaining difficult to align with human objectives. If so, law will be an essential tool for shaping such systems’ behavior to favor positive-sum cooperation with …

Against Constitutional Rights For Frontier Ai Companies In Government Contracts, Thomas H. Lee

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Nonhuman Speakers And The Constitution, Helen Norton

Fordham Law Review

Long-standing free speech law sometimes does—and sometimes does not—turn on speakers’ human character. This Essay explores how these doctrinal threads might shape the constitutional doctrine applied to generative artificial intelligence’s (AI) speech outputs if we assume that a human speaker cannot be identified as the creator of those words and images—and that those words and images are nevertheless considered “speech” for First Amendment purposes.

For example, First Amendment doctrine sometimes requires proof of a speaker’s culpable mental state before that speaker can be held liable for what would otherwise be unprotected speech. These requirements seek to prevent the chilling of …

Clickwrap Accountability, Alicia Solow-Niederman

Fordham Law Review

Picture a public‑facing generative artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot on a government website that can answer questions about benefits eligibility. Systems like these expose a sociotechnical-legal divide: They route around the standard due process framework because there has been no formal government determination, yet they induce reliance from users, above and beyond past rounds of automated legal guidance. Moreover, if there is an error, current doctrine on government errors and equitable estoppel makes relief unlikely.

This Essay focuses on government deployment of public‑facing generative AI chatbots and critically assesses the front‑end power dynamics that determine who is filtered out of government …

Algorithmic Models And The Freedom Of Speech, Alexander Tsesis

Fordham Law Review

Intentionality and reason are intrinsic features of the human mind that large language models (LLMs) entirely lack. Although LLMs generate natural-language sentences through algorithmic processes, autonomously produced machine speech lacks the consciousness of human speakers. This intrinsic distinction between natural persons and artificial machines is consequential to whether LLM-generated outputs are covered by the First Amendment. Scholars who equate the constitutional value of human speech with algorithmic outputs tend to emphasize the informational value of those outputs to audiences while giving insufficient attention to the absence of machine consciousness. The conscious underpinnings of thought and their relation to constitutional protections …

Revolving In, Richard Briffault

Faculty Scholarship

The “revolving door” — that is, the movement of policymakers from the private sector into government and back out again—is a longstanding issue of concern in law, political science, public administration, and government ethics. Although some applaud this exchange of personnel between the public and private sectors, the general tenor of popular, political, and academic coverage of the revolving door has been highly negative, marked by frequent references to corruption, capture, and conflicts of interest.

One striking feature of the scholarly treatment and nearly all the legal regulation of the revolving door has been a focus on “revolving out,” that …

Dicta’S Danger: The Lingering Nuisance Of Abel V. United States, Meg Penrose

University of Miami Law Review

This Article urges judges and lawyers to avoid relying on dicta when making legal claims. Dicta can cause confusion and generate incorrect legal conclusions. The most recent instance of dicta’s danger involves legal guidance on immigration arrests provided by the Department of Homeland Security’s General Counsel. Counsel erroneously relies on dicta from a 1960 Supreme Court case, Abel v. United States, in advising that law enforcement can legally enter a home armed solely with an administrative immigration arrest warrant. They cannot. The cited dicta precede binding Supreme Court precedent holding that the Fourth Amendment draws a firm line at …

Preserving Pickering, Deepa Das Acevedo

University of Miami Law Review

In the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, the terminations of employees across dozens of industries and geopolitical environments shocked Americans into wondering whether they had workplace speech rights at all. Indeed, the promise of workplace speech freedom has been narrowing for decades—even for public employees, who enjoy more protections than private employees thanks to the Supreme Court’s landmark 1968 decision Pickering v. Board of Education.

Pickering held that the First Amendment prevents a public employer from summarily dismissing employees based on private speech regarding matters of public concern. Although Pickering’s protections have been narrowed and although they formally …

Cruel By Design: Reclaiming The Eighth Amendment From The Feasible-Alternative Requirement, Heath C. Newman

University of Miami Law Review

For more than two centuries, the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on “cruel and unusual punishments” has stood as a safeguard against the barbarous and excessive exercise of state power. Rooted in the English Bill of Rights of 1689 and adopted by Framers who denounced torturous punishments, the Amendment was designed to protect the condemned from needless suffering. Yet, under the Supreme Court’s modern method-of-execution jurisprudence, that protection no longer turns on whether the state’s chosen method will inflict extreme pain, but on whether the prisoner can identify a feasible alternative way to die. The feasible-alternative requirement—developed in Baze v. Rees, Glossip …

Recent Case: Executive Power - The Supreme Court Relies On Historical Context To Protect The Federal Reserve's Independence In Trump V. Cook, Charles Britton

ConLawNOW

The Supreme Court in Trump v Cook carved out an exception for the Federal Reserve Bank to the unfettered right of the president to terminate administrative employees at will, a right it established the same day in Trump v. Slaughter. Rather than entirely eliminating the need for “cause,” the Court maintained the requirement in the bank context and defined it as something more than just a reason to dispose of a political adversary. The Court relied on historical and traditional support for insulating the Federal Reserve and pragmatism to protect against national economic turmoil. This Note explains how the …