Constitutional Law Commons^™

The Third Annual Women In Law Leadership Lecture: A Fireside Chat Featuring Amy Barasch, Esq., Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Ukrainians Are Fighting And Dying To Defend Their Homes. Could I Do The Same?, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

A Constitutional Theory Of Territoriality: The Case Of Puerto Rico, Joel Colón-Ríos, Yaniv Roznai

Cleveland State Law Review

This Article offers an analysis of the relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States that, unlike most of the existing literature, goes beyond discussions of the jurisprudence of U.S. courts and avoids providing merely descriptive or justificatory accounts. Using the tools of constitutional theory, we seek to describe the nature of what we call the “basic structure of territoriality,” the way that structure reproduces itself, and the possibility of its replacement. The basic structure of territoriality, we argue, is comprised by ten fundamental legal rules and five principles. Although those principles are not legally enforceable, they inform in important …

Ending The Economic War Among States, Nathan Altstadt

Cleveland State Law Review

The United States is under siege; however, the cause is not a foreign adversary. Rather, infighting among states to attract and retain big businesses is jeopardizing the Nation’s economic prosperity.

States compete for businesses, using tax incentives, hoping to capitalize on the benefits these businesses represent. Benefits include improved job growth numbers, a future increase in tax revenue, or, simply, elevated political clout. While competition can lead to a more efficient use of resources, unregulated competition between states for businesses does not illustrate this theory. A national auction for a business, where states are blind to rival offers, may, and …

Countering Gerrymandered Courts, Jed Handelsman Shugerman

Faculty Scholarship

The key insight in Professor Miriam Seifter's outstanding article Countermajoritarian Legislatures is that state legislatures are usually antidemocratic due to partisan gerrymandering, whereas state governors and judiciaries are insulated from gerrymandering by statewide elections (or selection), and thus they should have a more prominent role in framing election law and in enforcing the separation of powers.

This Piece offers afriendly amendment: These observations are true, so long as states do not gerrymander their state supreme courts into antidemocratic districts. The problem is that historically, judicial elections emerged generally as districted elections, and often with regional and partisan politics shaping those …

Review Essay: A Contribution To The Debates About Law, Non-Violence, And The Struggle For Democracy, Walter J. Kendall Lll

The Journal of Social Encounters

No abstract provided.

F.B.I. V. Fazaga: The Secret Of The State-Secrets Privilege, Rebecca Reeves

Duke Journal of Constitutional Law & Public Policy Sidebar

When the government successfully invokes the state-secrets privilege, it allows for evidence to be excluded from trial if making that evidence public would threaten national security. It is unclear, however, under what circumstances this privilege can be invoked, what happens when it is successfully invoked, and what occurs after the evidence is excluded. In Federal Bureau of Investigation v. Fazaga, the Supreme Court will have the opportunity to clarify the state-secrets privilege. Additionally, the Court will be asked to determine whether the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) displaces this privilege when the government invokes it regarding evidence …

Disgust And Guns: Conduct, Identity, And Second Amendment Animus, William D. Araiza

Northwestern University Law Review

In Second Amendment Animus, Professor Jacob Charles examines whether the burgeoning doctrine of unconstitutional animus should play any role in adjudicating Second Amendment claims. This Essay responds to Professor Charles’s important work. While it concludes that he is likely correct to reject animus as a grounding for Second Amendment claims, it points out areas where the analysis is more nuanced than he suggests. After considering Professor Charles’s analysis, the Essay examines the Second Amendment animus issue through the theoretical lens provided by Professor Martha Nussbaum’s work on disgust as a motivating factor for the types of exclusionary and subordinating …

The United States Of California: Ninth Circuit Tips The Dormant Commerce Clause Scales In Favor Of The Golden State's Animal Welfare Legislation, Tanner Hendershot

Pepperdine Law Review

In November 2018, California voters overwhelmingly passed Proposition 12, the Prevention of Cruelty to Farm Animals Act. This law requires in-state and out-of-state farmers to provide additional living space for egg-laying hens, breeding pigs, and calves raised for veal by 2022 if the farmers wish to continue doing business within the state. In response, North American Meat Institute (NAMI), whose members account for approximately 95% of the country’s output of various meat products, filed a lawsuit in federal district court seeking a preliminary injunction against Proposition 12’s enforcement. NAMI contended Proposition 12 violated the Dormant Commerce Clause, a legal doctrine …

Jury Nullification As A Spectrum, Richard Lorren Jolly

Pepperdine Law Review

Jury nullification traditionally refers to the jury’s power to deliver a verdict that is deliberately contrary to the law’s clearly dictated outcome. A spirited scholarship is built around this conception, with some painting nullification as democratic and others as anarchic. But this debate is largely unmoored from experience. In practice, courts have formally eliminated the jury’s authority to review the law and have established procedures that make it easier to prevent and overturn seemingly nullificatory verdicts. Thus, outside of a jury’s verdict acquitting a criminal defendant, jury nullification as traditionally understood does not exist. In no other context is a …

What Does The Jan. 6 Committee Hope To Learn From Sen. Doug Mastriano?, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

The Broken Fourth Amendment Oath, Laurent Sacharoff

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

The Fourth Amendment requires that warrants be supported by “Oath or affirmation.” Under current doctrine, a police officer may swear the oath to obtain a warrant merely by repeating the account of an informant. This Article shows, however, that the Fourth Amendment, as originally understood, required that the real accuser with personal knowledge swear the oath.

That real-accuser requirement persisted for nearly two centuries. Almost all federal courts and most state courts from 1850 to 1960 held that the oath, by its very nature, required a witness with personal knowledge. Only in 1960 did the Supreme Court hold in Jones …

Campaign Finance Reform, Union Dues, And The First Amendment: The Collision Of Politics And Rights, Mark Adams

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Dignitary Confrontation Clause, Erin Sheley

Washington Law Review

For seventeen years, the Supreme Court’s Confrontation Clause jurisprudence has been confused and confusing. In Crawford v. Washington (2004), the Court overruled prior precedent and held that “testimonial” out-of-court statements could not be admitted at trial unless the defendant had an opportunity to cross-examine the declarant, even when the statement would be otherwise admissible as particularly reliable under an exception to the rule against hearsay. In a series of contradictory opinions over the next several years, the Court proceeded to expand and then seemingly roll back this holding, leading to widespread chaos in common types of cases, particularly those involving …

Against Political Speech, John M. Kang

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Law—Large-Capacity Magazine Bans And The Second Amendment, Jared Self

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Arkansas’S Civil Asset Forfeiture Statute And The Eighth Amendment’S Excessive Fines Clause, Aaron Newell

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Will Due Process Be Returned To Academic Suspension?: An Analysis Of Academia's Rejection Of The Title Ix Final Rule, Andrew F. Emerson

Catholic University Law Review

In 2011, the Department of Education ("DOE") under the Obama administration issued its Dear College Letter ("DCL") ordering publicly funded educational institutions to undertake aggressive actions to deter what was deemed an epidemic of sexual violence on college campuses. DOE subsequently aggressively enforced the directives of the DCL with scores of costly investigations of college disciplinary systems and threatened withdrawal of federal funding for institutions that failed to respond to sexual harassment claims aggressively. Hundreds of lawsuits followed in the wake of the DCL's issuance. Specifically, the flood of litigation was initiated by males contending they were briskly expelled, suspended, …

The Unbearable Emptiness Of Formalism: Autonomy, Equality, And The Future Of Affirmative Action, Rachel F. Moran

Faculty Scholarship

Debates over affirmative action in higher education generally focus on equality interests under the Fourteenth Amendment but ignore liberty interests under the First Amendment. That tendency persists, even though the academic freedom to enroll a diverse student body has allowed colleges and universities to defend race-conscious admissions programs against legal challenges for decades. Today, the rise of formalism in judicial interpretation poses new perils for these programs. Justice Powell’s seminal decision in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke was a pragmatic compromise that used diversity to temper the polarized debate over equality that sharply divided the Court. In …

Your Liberty Is Not A Right To Jeopardize My Health: How A State Covid-19 Vaccine Mandate Promotes Health Justice, Rebecca L. Doloski

Marquette Benefits and Social Welfare Law Review

The COVID-19 pandemic has once again brought the vaccine debate into the national spotlight. Except this time, whether to be vaccinated or not has become widely politicized and the rapid spread of misinformation has led to a deadly game of those who refuse to be vaccinated not only allowing themselves to be susceptible to a deadly virus, but also putting others at risk. In addition to the misinformation and politicization of this issue, the question of constitutionality of such measures is back in the spotlight as potential state vaccine mandates appear to be on the horizon. This paper seeks to …