Constitutional Law Commons^™

Symposium: Pandemics And The Constitution: Federalism And Contagion: Reevaluating The Role Of The Cdc, Kyle J. Connors

ConLawNOW

The United States Government’s response to the coronavirus outbreak raises difficult questions of federalism. This essay argues for greater federal leadership and involvement to mount the most effective response to a pandemic. As history shows, a response led by local governments is vulnerable to collective action problems and political impediments. An improved response structure in a contagious disease event would include more federal leadership and policy dictated by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), to be then effectuated by state and local governments. This power can be exercised either formally, through federal grants, or informally through the influence of public …

Symposium: Pandemics And The Constitution: Pandemic Surveillance - The New Predictive Policing, Michael Gentithes, Harold J. Krent

ConLawNOW

As the fight against the coronavirus pandemic continues, state governments are considering more invasive surveillance to determine who has been exposed to the virus and who is most likely to catch the virus in the future. Widespread efforts to test temperatures have been initiated; calls for contact tracing have increased; and plans have been revealed to allow only those testing positive for the virus’s antibodies (who presumably now are immune) to return to work and travel. Such fundamental liberties may now hinge on the mere probabilities that one may catch the disease or be immune from it.

To assess the …

May 20, 2020: Dropping The Flynn Case Was The Right Thing To Do, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “ Dropping the Flynn Case Was the Right Thing to do“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Law School News: Distinguished Service Professor: Deborah Gonzalez 05-20-2020, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

The Right To A Public Trial In The Time Of Covid-19, Stephen E. Smith

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

Maintaining social distance in the time of COVID-19 is a public health priority. A crowded courtroom is an environment at odds with public health needs. Accordingly, until science determines otherwise, it will be necessary for judges to manage courtroom attendance and exclude the public from trials, wholly or in part. Courtrooms may be closed to the public, despite the Sixth Amendment’s right to a public trial, when the closure is justified by a strong government interest and is narrowly tailored to further that interest. Typically, this heightened scrutiny is applied on a case-by-case basis and turns on a case’s specific …

Symposium: Pandemics And The Constitution: Tiered Scrutiny In A Pandemic, Jeffrey D. Jackson

ConLawNOW

During this spring of COVID-19, Americans are facing numerous state and local government-imposed restrictions that would have seemed implausible a few short months ago. While many of these restrictions seem to be unquestionably warranted, there have been others that have the potential to negatively impact fundamental rights. From abortion restrictions to gun control, these actions threaten liberty in the name of police powers. During this time of crisis, there is a need for courts to be especially vigilant. Throughout the nation’s history, the concept of emergency power has been used to justify restrictions on the rights of Americans, with tragic …

May 18, 2020: Why Have Taxes At All?, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Why Have Taxes At All?“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Essay: Understanding First Amendment Freedoms Through The Remarkable Life Of "The Greatest" --Muhammad Ali, David L. Hudson Jr.

Law Faculty Scholarship

Muhammad Ali represents much more than a great sports figure and one of the greatest fighters of all time.He is also the epitome of the citizen protected by the First Amendment– a man who paid dearly for his religious convictions and provocative speech, but found a defense in the amendment’s forty-five words. An examination of First Amendment freedoms through the prism of Ali can teach us much about the fragility of the amendment but also the strength that we all can find in it. The First Amendment provides: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting …

Speak Up, Or Not: Lack Of Freedom Of Speech Protection In Vietnam, Its Global Impact, And Proposed Solutions For Adequate Remedies, H. Grant Doan

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Response Letter To Chairman Mcgovern On Remote Voting, Deborah Pearlstein

Testimony

Letter sent to Congressman Jim McGovern, Chair of the House Rules Committee. This letter has been entered into the Congressional Record.

"I read with interest an article by Mssrs. Mark Strand and Tim Lang introduced into the record during yesterday’s hearing of the House Rules Committee on H. Res. 965 - Authorizing remote voting by proxy in the House of Representatives. Having written elsewhere in detail about my conviction that the rules change under consideration readily passes constitutional muster, I am grateful for the opportunity to explain why the Strand and Lang position fails to persuade."

The Constitutionality Of Abortion, John M. Nerney

Senior Honors Theses

The purpose of this study is to determine whether abortion is constitutional under the Fourth Amendment. Essentially, the Supreme Court used what is known as the “right to privacy” which they created using the First, Fourth, Fifth and Ninth Amendments finding penumbras of the Bill of Rights, and in the concept of liberty guaranteed by the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment. This study addresses the history of the right to privacy and tries to show that the Supreme Court stretched the meaning of these Amendments beyond what the founders of the Constitution intended. This study analyzed the application of …

Restoring The Rights Multiplier: The Right To An Education In The United States, Katherine Smith Davis, Jeffrey Davis

Journal of Law and Policy

In 1973 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that education was not a fundamental right, leaving in place systems that continue today to perpetrate vast inequities among school districts. Through a comparative analysis of treaties, constitutions, legislation, and international and state judicial decisions, we demonstrate that education is indeed a fundamental human right, though our constitutional jurisprudence has denied its fundamental right status. We use case studies from Baltimore, a typical city whose residents face economic hardships, to reveal the dire consequences of this ruling. Without the right to an education, schoolchildren in poor systems continue to be deprived of the …

Laboratory Of Democracy: How The District Of Columbia Is Using The Home Rule Act To Achieve Elements Of Statehood, Walter A. Smith Jr., Kevin M. Hilgers

University of the District of Columbia Law Review

On January 3, 2019, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia's (the "District') nonvoting delegate to the House of Representatives, reintroduced the Washington, D.C. Admission Act, which would make much of the District the 51st state. While Norton had made a tradition of opening each new Congress by introducing D.C. democracy bills, the context this time gave District advocates more reason to be optimistic. With the Democrats gaining control of the House, the bill gained a record 155 original cosponsors, and Representative Elijah Cummings, chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, committed to holding a hearing on …

A Proposal To Win The District Of Columbia A Partial Vote In The House Of Representatives, Mary M. Cheh

University of the District of Columbia Law Review

Unlike many citizens of the United States, citizens of the District of Columbia are denied a vote in the national legislature. Not only are they denied a voting representative on matters of national scope and importance, but Congress may control all facets of local governance for the 700,000 residents of the District. This paper suggests a new initiative. It calls for the D.C. Council, under its "Home Rule" authority granted by Congress, to amend a federal law, "The District of Columbia Delegate Act," ("Delgate Act") and give the District's delegate to the House of Representatives the authority to vote in …

California V. Texas: Brief For Jonathan H. Adler, Nicholas Bagley, Abbe R. Gluck, And Ilya Somin As Amici Curiae Supporting Petitioner, Nicholas Bagley

Appellate Briefs

Amici are experts in constitutional law, legislation, statutory interpretation, and administrative law. They disagree on many legal and policy questions concerning the Affordable Care Act (“ACA”), Pub. L. No. 111-148, 124 Stat. 119 (2010), including many questions about how to interpret it and whether the plaintiff States have standing in the present case. Yet they agree on this: even assuming the insurance mandate is unconstitutional, it is severable from the other provisions of the ACA. Any contrary conclusion would be inconsistent with settled law and Congress’s clearly expressed intent. Amici respectfully submit this amicus brief to explain this point.<\p>

Amici’s …

The Government Has Information Foia (For Ya): An Analysis Of Requesting Police Records In Collegedale, Tennessee And Athens, Georgia, Tierra Hayes

Capstone Research Projects

The Freedom of Information Act first went into effect in 1967 and was intended to give the general public of the United States more access to information and documents held by government entities. Since enactment, this act has given specifically journalists a means of approach to request previously undisclosed or hard to access materials including, but not limited to, police reports, body camera footage, court filings, budgets, salaries, and other documents held by various government offices. While there are restrictions with considerations such as national security, this access can be seen on national, state, and, as assessed in this research, …

John Fitisemanu, Et. Al. V. United States Of America, Et. Al., And The American Samoa Government And The Hon. Aumua Amata, Rafael Cox Alomar

Court Briefs

No abstract provided.

May 11, 2020: Why Can’T We Be Reasonable? Because There Is No Such Thing As Reason, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Why Can’t We Be Reasonable? Because There Is No Such Thing As Reason“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Justice Diseased Is Justice Denied: Coronavirus, Court Closures, And Criminal Trials, Ryan Shymansky

West Virginia Law Review Online

This Article aims to consider the immediate impacts of the novel coronavirus on criminal defendants’ access to speedy trials by jury. In particular, it aims to examine whether court closures and delays could affect the substantive rights of criminal defendants—and particularly pretrial detainees—to a speedy and public trial by jury. To date, very little scholarship has considered this question. Yet the ideal of a speedy trial by jury is deeply embedded in our Constitution and our judicial system, and the potential for a pandemic to limit or negate that right should ring scholastic and judicial alarm bells.

This analysis proceeds …

Minority Vetoes In Consociational Legislatures: Ultimately Weaponized?, Devin Haymond

Indiana Journal of Constitutional Design

In societies emerging from or at risk for conflict, dividing power among rival groups—called power-sharing—can be an appropriate arrangement to maintaining peace. But how can groups, who are often emerging from violent conflict, trust sharing a government with rival groups that were just recently shooting at them?

A potential solution is the minority veto, which is allows minority groups to block the government from harming those groups’ vital interests. But what sorts of change blocking mechanisms constitute a minority veto? Who gets the veto power, and when can they be used? Do minority vetoes function as effective incentives for ensuring …