Constitutional Law Commons^™

August 14, 2021: Lale Gul Wants To Lie On The Beach In A Bikin, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Lale Gul Wants to Lie on the Beach in a Bikin“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

New Hampshire's 'Divisive Concepts' Law And The Big Chill, John M. Greabe

Law Faculty Scholarship

[Excerpt] "

Much critical commentary on the so-called “divisive concepts” provisions in this year’s budget legislation – the label comes from language in an earlier version of the bill – has focused on their content- and viewpoint-based restraints on speech. These speech restrictions prohibit state public employers, including public K-12 school teachers, from (among other things) instructing that persons are “inherently superior or inferior to [others]” “inherently racist or sexist,” “should be discriminated against,” or “should not attempt to treat others equally” because of their “age, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, creed, color, marital status, familial status, mental or …

Linguistic Estoppel: A Custodial Interrogation Subject’S Reliance On Traditional Language Customs When Facing Unknown Expectations For Legally Efficacious Speech, Taylor J. Smith

BYU Law Review

For various reasons, speakers often communicate indirectly, hiding their words’ true meaning beneath an apparent surface meaning. For example, a woman trying to brush off her co-worker’s date invitation might respond, “I have to prepare for a presentation tomorrow.” While the words’ surface meaning doesn’t relate to the date invitation, the hearer usually understands the underlying message—that is to say, the words’ function differs from their form. However, because the law’s language ideology requires directness and surface-level meaning, lay-speaking interrogation subjects often have difficulty effectively invoking their Miranda rights. Because the legal system’s search for determinacy often results in reliance …

What A Novel Can Teach Us About Religion In America, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

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

August 3, 2021: The Startup Wife Shows We Need Help With Our Spiritual Infrastructure--This Week's Column, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “The Startup Wife Shows We Need Help With Our Spiritual Infrastructure--This Week's Column“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Breaking The Logjam: Principles And Practice Of Congressional Oversight And Executive Privilege, Katherine A. Shaw

Testimony

My name is Kate Shaw, and I am a Professor of Law at Cardozo Law School, where my work focuses, among other things, on executive power and questions of constitutionalism outside the courts. Before I entered law teaching, I worked as an Associate Counsel in the White House Counsel’s Office, from 2009–2011.

I understand that the purpose of today’s hearing is to evaluate recent breakdowns in the process for resolving conflicts between executive privilege and congressional oversight. My testimony will therefore offer some brief background on executive privilege, both generally and in the context of Congress’s exercise of its oversight …

Lake Erie Bill Of Rights Struck Down: Why The Rights Of Nature Movement Is A Nonviable Legislative Strategy For Municipalities Plagued By Pollution, Kathleen M. Mannard

Buffalo Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

One Man’S Trash: Constitutional Principles Of Federalism And Privacy Implicated In San Francisco’S Mandatory Recycling Ordinance And Future Similar Legislation, J. Tyler Smith

Buffalo Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Prohibiting Cashless Retailers And Protecting The Impoverished, Allison Kretovic

Georgia State University Law Review

A growing number of customer-facing businesses have opted to implement cashless policies, declining to accept cash for payment and limiting consumers’ options on how they can pay for goods and services. Proponents for cashless policies cite the efficiencies gained by removing cash from a business and concerns about theft as their primary reasons for supporting such policies. Opponents to the move toward cashless express concerns that the policy is discriminatory and has a disparate impact on lower-income consumers who do not have access to financial institutions. Policymakers at the local and state levels have responded by proposing and enacting legislation …

Radbruch’S Formula Revisited: The ‘Lex Injusta Non Est Lex’ Maxim In Constitutional Democracies, Seow Hon Tan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

According to German legal philosopher Gustav Radbruch, laws that are substantively unjust to an intolerable degree should not be regarded as legally valid, even if they were promulgated according to stipulated procedure. Radbruch’s Formula (as his position has been termed) contradicts the central tenet of legal positivism, according to which the existence of laws does not necessarily depend on their merit. While some legal positivists suppose that legal invalidity based on the content of particular laws is a central tenet of natural law theory, natural law theorists such as John Finnis opine that the lex injusta non est lex maxim …

Personal Data Privacy And Protective Federal Legislation: An Exploration Of Constituent Position On The Need For Legislation To Control Data Reliant Organizations Collecting And Monetizing Internet-Obtained Personal Data, Giovanni De Meo

Dissertations

In the past twenty years, the business of online personal data collection has grown at the same rapid pace as the internet itself, fostering a multibillion-dollar personal data collection and commercialization industry. Unlike many other large industries, there has been no major federal legislation enacted to monitor or control the activities of organizations dealing in this flourishing industry. The combination of these factors together with the lack of prior research encouraged this research designed to understand how much voters know about this topic and whether there is interest in seeing legislation enacted to protect individual personal data privacy.

To address …

July 31, 2021: Give Trump The Presidential Medal Of Freedom, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Give Trump the Presidential Medal of Freedom“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Brief Of Amicus Curiae Ethics And Public Policy Center In Support Of Petitioners And Reversal, Richard W. Garnett, Charles J. Cooper, Peter A. Patterson, Brian W. Barnes, John D. Ohlendorf

Court Briefs

No. 19-1392
Thomas E. Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization

On Writ of Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit

From the Introduction and Summary of the Argument

By the narrowest of margins, this Court in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992), refused to overrule Roe—not because it thought Roe was correct, but because it thought Roe must endure as a matter of stare decisis. But 30 years later it has become clear that Casey, too, was egregiously wrong, for each one of the stare decisis factors cited by …

National Security Rules: America's Constitution Of Law And War, Kyle L. Greene

Maine Law Review

Contemporary debates over the appropriate allocation of war powers between the political branches overemphasize the rigidity of the Constitution’s framework. This style of academic discussion sacrifices the lessons of practice in search of steadfast, yet empty, principles. Even beyond the practical failings of this approach, there is no constitutional basis for the notion that either Congress or the President has a singular, fixed role when dealing with national security issues. In fact, the Founders developed a constitutional structure capable of continually reshaping—within parameters—the government’s division of national security power to match the nation’s security challenges. Rather than scouring the constitutional …

A Case Against School Choice: Carson Ex Rel. O.C. V. Makin And The Future Of Maine's Nonsectarian Requirement, Blake E. Mccartney

Maine Law Review

School choice advocates, such as the nonprofit libertarian law firm, The Institute for Justice, have spent decades arguing that states violate the Free Exercise Clause when they exclude private religious schools from public programs that otherwise provide public dollars to non-religious private schools. Recently, in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, the Supreme Court effectively agreed with that sentiment. After this victory, the Institute for Justice returned to the state of Maine to represent three sets of parents in a renewed effort to defeat Maine’s nonsectarian requirement in federal court. Maine’s nonsectarian requirement provides that private religious schools may not …

Children Of The Government: Affording A Higher Education A Review Of The State Of Pennsylvania’S Recently Implemented Law That Grants Children Who “Age Out” Of The Foster Care Tuition And Fee Waivers At Every University In The State, Erin K. Cooper

Helms School of Government Undergraduate Law Review

No abstract provided.

Partisan Or Precedent: The History Of Nominating Supreme Court Judges In Presidential Election Years, Hattie Jefferies

Helms School of Government Undergraduate Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Return Of A Judicial Artifact? How The Supreme Court Could Examine The Question Of The Nondelegation Doctrine’S Place In Future Cases, Dalton Davis

Helms School of Government Undergraduate Law Review

No abstract provided.

July 27, 2021: The Universe Is On Our Side Is Now On Sale On The Oup Website, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “The Universe Is on Our Side is now on sale on the OUP Website“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

July 27, 2021: Last Week's Column In Pennsylvania Capital-Star, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “ Last Week's Column in Pennsylvania Capital-Star“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.