Constitutional Law Commons^™

Defanging Environmental Law: Extracting Citizen Suit Provisions Under Seminole Tribe V. Florida, Jefferson D. Reynolds

Journal of Natural Resources & Environmental Law

No abstract provided.

Adalah Legal Center For Arab Minority Rights In Israel V. State Attorney’S Office – Cyber Department, Hanan Melcer, Esther Hayut, Alex Stein

Translated Opinions

The petition addressed the question of the authority to conduct “voluntary enforcement” activity for the removal of harmful content from the internet, the manner and configuration of the activity of the Cyber Department of the State Attorney’s Office, and the lack of express statutory authority for the activity.

Background: In accordance with the Work Procedure established by the State Attorney’s Office, the Cyber Department initiates referrals to online platform operators, content providers, and other internet platforms (like Facebook and Google), reporting publications that the State Attorney’s Office deems as constituting an offense under Israeli criminal law, and that also …

Second-Class Rights And Second-Class Americans: Applying Carolene Products Footnote Four And The Court’S Enforcement Of Nationally Accepted Norms Against Local Outlier Jurisdictions In Second Amendment Enforcement Litigations, Mark W. Smith

Catholic University Law Review

In the years since deciding District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) and McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010), the Supreme Court has largely abandoned the role of protecting American gun owners despite the text, history, and tradition of the Second Amendment’s right to keep and bear arms. The Supreme Court has failed to use the jurisprudential tools at its disposal to ensure that the fundamental right to arms is protected as robustly as other enumerated constitutional rights. This failure is an acute one. And it is unjustifiable across a wide variety of jurisprudential methodologies, from originalism to the non-originalist approaches …

All For Nothing?: Executive Authority And Congressional Evasion On Arms Sales, Margaret M. Murphy

Catholic University Law Review

On August 17, 2018, CNN reported that Lockheed Martin manufactured a bomb that killed dozens of Yemeni schoolchildren in Northern Yemen. Saudi Arabia purchased the bomb in an arms deal authorized under the Arms Export Control Act, the statute in which Congress delegates to the President authority to control the import and export of arms. Under the Act, the President must comply with reporting and waiting periods allowing time for Congress to oppose a sale by enacting a joint resolution. However, the Act allows the President to sell arms in an emergency without notice or waiting periods. President Trump invoked …

Guns And Their Place In The Us, Jacob Garibaldi

English Department: Research for Change - Wicked Problems in Our World

Creating this paper was a wicked problem due to how deep of an issue the gun debate is in the United States. In the discussion of guns, there is a side that wants to abolish them, a side that believes in the right of the second amendment, and a middle ground where we can have guns in society with added in legal measures. Surely enough, those that are in opposition to firearms are persuaded due to the acts of violence and crime committed with them. Then there are those that use them in a way of self-defense. Through this paper, …

What To Do About The Coming Crisis In The Rule Of Law, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

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

April 8, 2021: Aals Gets It Backward--This Week's Column In The Pennsylvania Capital-Star, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

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

Where's The Beef?: A Guide To Judges On Preemption Of State Tort Litigation Involving Branded Drugs, Victor E. Schwartz, Christopher E. Appel

University of Cincinnati Law Review

No abstract provided.

Symposium: Examining Black Citizenship From Reconstruction To Black Lives Matter: Falling Short Of The Promise Of The Thirteenth Amendment: Time For Change, Michael A. Lawrence

ConLawNOW

This Essay seeks to shine additional light on the potential of the underutilized Thirteenth Amendment (as contrasted to the much-litigated Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clause) for advancing racial justice and equity. The Essay suggests the Thirteenth Amendment provides strong constitutional basis for an unapologetic embrace of the sorts of new, race-conscious measures that will be necessary to begin to achieve true racial equity in a country that for centuries has erected massive structural barriers to Black opportunity and advancement

Confrontation's Multi-Analyst Problem, Paul F. Rothstein, Ronald J. Coleman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Confrontation Clause in the Sixth Amendment affords the “accused” in “criminal prosecutions” the right “to be confronted with the witnesses against” them. A particular challenge for courts over at least the last decade-plus has been the degree to which the Confrontation Clause applies to forensic reports, such as those presenting the results of a DNA, toxicology, or other CSI-type analysis. Should use of forensic reports entitle criminal defendants to confront purportedly “objective” analysts from the lab producing the report? If so, which analyst or analysts? For forensic processes that require multiple analysts, should the prosecution be required to produce …

April 4, 2021: Happy Easter, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Happy Easter“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Unclear And Unestablished: Exploring The Supreme Court/Tenth Circuit Disconnect In Qualified Immunity Jurisprudence, Josiah Cohen

University of Colorado Law Review Forum

No abstract provided.

The Compensation Constraint And The Scope Of The Takings Clause, Thomas W. Merrill

Notre Dame Law Review

The idea I wish to explore in this Essay is whether the established methods for determining just compensation can shed light on the meaning of other issues that arise in litigation under the Takings Clause. Specifically, is it possible to “reverse engineer” the Takings Clause by reasoning from settled understandings about how to determine just compensation in order to reach certain conclusions about when the Clause applies, what interests in private property are covered by the Clause, and what does it mean to take such property? The proposed exercise is positive or descriptive in nature rather than normative. The hypothesis …

Valuation Blunders In The Law Of Eminent Domain, Richard A. Epstein

Notre Dame Law Review

In dealing with the valuation problem, I will bracket these estimation issues in order to look to different and disturbing types of difficulties in the valuation enterprise. The law of eminent domain starts with the implicit assumption that the government is in general a good actor whose motives and laudable and whose behavior does not need excessive judicial oversight. Hence the general norm of judicial deference often applies to valuation decisions. In the cases that I shall review, as well as others, a general pattern emerges, whereby all doubtful valuation questions that arise dealing with key problems are at best …

Who Has The Right?: Analysis Of Second Amendment Challenges To 18 U.S.C. § 922(G)(4), Alexandra T. Cline

Notre Dame Law Review

This Note argues that courts should decide challenges to § 922(g)(4) solely under the first step of the test, based on the notion that individuals subject to § 922(g)(4) fall outside the scope of Second Amendment protection. Thus, under the two-part test, the law would not burden conduct protected by the Amendment, rendering step two unnecessary for at least the vast majority of § 922(g)(4) challenges. This Note provides three independent ways in which courts could deem § 922(g)(4) outside the purview of the Second Amendment, and each should be considered a permissible approach.

The first Part of this Note …

Covid-19 Impacts: How A Global Pandemic Amid The Sunsets Of The Ptc And Itc Made The U.S. Wind And Solar Industries More Resilient, Kimberly E. Diamond

Fordham Environmental Law Review

A cataclysmic event is sometimes the necessary catalyst for companies within certain industries to re- examine, radically shift, and replace their standard practices with technologically-advanced alternatives. In the United States, the occurrence of the Coronavirus pandemic (“COVID-19”) during the sunsets of the Production Tax Credit (“PTC”) and the Investment Tax Credit (“ITC”) created a unique confluence of factors that produced a perfect storm tantamount to such a cataclysmic event for companies in the wind and solar industries, particularly developers. Over the years, the domestic utility-scale wind industry has come to rely heavily upon the PTC, while the domestic utility- scale …

Illegal Discharge: Exploring The History Of The Criminal Enforcement Of The U.S. Clean Water Act, Dr. Joshua Ozymy, Dr. Melisssa L. Jarrell

Fordham Environmental Law Review

The criminal prosecution of defendants that violate federal clean water laws has been ongoing for roughly four decades. Yet, we continue to have a poor understanding of how federal prosecutors use the U.S. Clean Water Act (“CWA”) to charge and prosecute criminals and the outcomes of those prosecutions. We use content analysis to analyze 2,588 federal criminal prosecution case summaries, 1983-2019, to gain a better historical understanding of how the CWA has been used as a prosecutorial tool, to bring out the major themes in the prosecutions, and quantify sentencing outcomes. Findings from the 828 CWA prosecutions undertaken during this …

Red Tide: A Blooming Concern For Florida Manatees, Shannon Price Esq.

Fordham Environmental Law Review

Although red tides are a common and natural occurrence around the coast of Florida, within the last few decades they have intensified and become much more deadly. Several identifiable human-caused factors exacerbate the size, concentration, and duration of the harmful algae bloom and disturb the environment’s natural balance. The Florida Gulf Coast provides all the algae’s necessary requirements for survival, the perfect storm to create a resilient super bloom that annihilates its host ecosystem.

This article explains the plight of Florida manatees who, like other marine animals and plants, are being injured or killed by this algae crisis. It also …

The Use Of Regular Militaries For Natural Disasters After A Major Event Where The Military Was Seen As A Failure - The Somalia Effect In The Age Of Black Lives Matters And Covid-19, Donald D.A. Schaefer

Fordham Environmental Law Review

This is written as a continuation of Dr. Schaefer’s recent article entitled, “The Use of the Regular Militaries for Natural Disaster Assistance: Climate Change and the Increasing Need for Changes to the Laws in the United States, China, Japan, the Philippines, and Other Countries.” 2 Perhaps few other areas have affected so many people than the Covid-19 pandemic. Coupled with this has been the struggle over the use of force by the military and police in the age of “black lives matters” and the movements that have been transpired as a result. With the increased global warming likely to continue …

How Does It Feel To Be A Solution?: How South Asian Migration From 1885 To 1923 Created A Modern South Asian “Other” Used To Promote Conservative Rhetoric, Ayushi Neogi

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

This note seeks to understand the place of a South Asian American in a country that considers itself bi-racial. The note analyzes the racial ambiguity of the South Asian in two major historical contexts. First, it provides an overview of the legal history of South Asian migration, the first “wave” of which occurred from 1885 to 1923. It analyzes the various exclusionary laws (both state and federal) that set a framework for how to view and treat the common Indian migrant. It further looks at California and the Pacific North- west’s deliberate, xenophobic acts during this time period, such as …