Constitutional Law Commons^™

Warrantless Searches Of Electronic Devices At U.S. Borders: Securing The Nation Or Violating Digital Liberty?, Ahad Khilji

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

The steady increase of U.S. citizens traveling with smart phones and other electronic devices has been met with the rise of searches and seizures by CBP officers at U.S borders. Although only less than 0.1% of all travelers may actually be subjected to a search while entering the United States, when comparing the statistics between a six month period in 2016 with the same period in 2017, electronic device searches have almost doubled from 8,383 to 14,993. Approximately one million travelers to the U.S. are inspected by the CBP every day. Out of this population, nearly 2,500 electronic devices are …

The Imaginary Constitution, Suzanna Sherry

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

How many ways can conservatives spin an originalist tale to support their deregulatory, small-government vision? The answer is apparently infinite. In a new book, Gary Lawson and Guy Seidman are the latest in a long line of scholars who insist that the real original meaning of the Constitution demands unwinding the regulatory state and substantially limiting the power of the federal government. They argue that the Constitution is a fiduciary instrument, specifically a power of attorney. After summarizing the book, this essay turns to three of its most important failings, each of which serves to make the book a work …

The Role Of Fault In Sec. 1983 Municipal Liability, Michael L. Wells

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Using Art To Make A Baby: How Rhode Island's Insurance Coverage Mandate Is Preventing Same-Sex Couples From Having Biological Children, Carla Centanni

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Hard, Simple Truth About Gun Control, Carl Bogus

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Life Sentence: An Evaluation Of Voter Disenfranchisement Through A Constitutional Lens, Miranda Noel Janssen

Departmental Honors Projects

As the number of incarcerated pupils has increased in the United States, so has the number of pupils who cannot vote, due to a felony conviction. This paper is organized, (i) the history of felon voter disenfranchisement, (ii) statistics on state and federal levels, (iii) the collateral consequences of felon voter disenfranchisement, (iv) different perspectives about felon voter disenfranchisement, (v) understanding suspect classification and voting as a fundamental right, (vi) understanding strict scrutiny, (vii) examining past court rulings, (viii) identifying why the United States needs to change its current laws on felon voter disenfranchisement, an (ix) the proposal of a …

The Slaughterhouse Cases: “Unforeseen” Consequences And Public Reaction, Gavin Jensen

Departmental Honors Projects

This Project focuses on the Slaughterhouse Cases, the ramifications of the Supreme Court decision, and the reaction to the decision from the public. The Slaughterhouse Cases were a series of cases originating in New Orleans around the year 1869. The white, French butchers inside the city of New Orleans had been creating a sanitary and health issue for the city for decades. The lack of ways to dispose of offal and inedible product mixed with general apathy from the butchers as to how their practices were impacting the city led to widespread cholera epidemics.

To solve this issue the newly …

Animus And Its Discontents, William Araiza

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Call It By Its Name, William Araiza

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Response: Animus, Its Critics, And Its Potential, William Araiza

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Warrant Requirement Resurgence: The Fourth Amendment In The Roberts Court, Benjamin Priester

Journal Publications

Over many years, the United States Supreme Court has developed an extensive body of precedent interpreting and enforcing the provisions of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures by law enforcement agents conducting criminal investigations. Commonly called the "warrant requirement," one key component of this case law operates to deem some police investigatory techniques to be unconstitutional unless they are conducted pursuant to a search warrant issued in advance by a judge. The terms of the doctrine and its exceptions also authorize other investigatory actions as constitutionally permissible without a search warrant. The …

Recording As Heckling, Scott Skinner-Thompson

Publications

A growing body of authority recognizes that citizen recording of police officers and public space is protected by the First Amendment. But the judicial and scholarly momentum behind the emerging “right to record” fails to fully incorporate recording’s cost to another important right that also furthers First Amendment principles: the right to privacy.

This Article helps fill that gap by comprehensively analyzing the First Amendment interests of both the right to record and the right to privacy in public while highlighting the role of technology in altering the First Amendment landscape. Recording information can be critical to future speech and, …

Taxing Combat, Samuel Kan

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

When you are being shot at or dodging landmines you are in a combat zone. Diplomatic niceties aside, these brave warriors are in danger because of the policies of their Government and we must take care of them. Quite frankly, we must act to insure that we do not have a repeat of what happened in Somalia. In Somalia, the families of the soldiers who lost their lives could not receive the benefits that should have gone to them under the Tax Code because the President never declared it a combat zone.

We don’t know exactly where we’re at in …

Bandimere V. Sec: Significant Authority Exists Without Finality, Abbey Zuech

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

Detaining Isis: Habeas And The Phantom Menace, Ernesto Hernández-López

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Historical Case For Constitutional "Concepts", Glenn E. Chappell

University of Richmond Law Review

The concepts/conceptions dichotomy is prominent in both the philosophy of language and the field of constitutional interpretation. It is most prominently illustrated through the provisions in the Constitution that contain broad, open-ended moral language. Those who hold the “conceptions” view believe that the legal content of those provisions includes both abstract moral concepts and its communicators’ subjective beliefs about, or conceptions of, how those concepts should apply. Under this view, the judge’s role is mostly empirical: he is tasked with examining historical evidence to ascertain those conceptions, which in turn supply applicational criteria by which he can decide specific cases. …

Enforcing The Right To Public Education, Areto A. Imoukuede

Journal Publications

This paper suggests that although each state within the United States currently recognizes a right to public education, the states do not provide meaningful and consistent judicial enforcement of the right. Recognizing a federal fundamental right to public education would be a step towards ensuring meaningful and consistent judicial enforcement of the right.

Municipal Minimum Wage Ordinances In Ohio: A Home Rule Analysis, Paul J. Lysobey

Cleveland State Law Review

In 2016, a grassroots proposal in Cleveland, Ohio sought to raise the minimum wage in the City of Cleveland to fifteen dollars per hour. But before Cleveland residents could vote on the proposal, the Ohio legislature enacted Senate Bill 331, prohibiting Ohio municipalities from setting their own minimum wage rates. However, the Ohio Home Rule Amendment gives municipalities the right to self-governance in certain instances, and there is question as to whether the Ohio legislature’s action is a violation of the right to home rule for Ohio cities. This Note evaluates the constitutionality of Senate Bill 331’s minimum wage provision …

Hardball Vs. Beanball: Identifying Fundamentally Antidemocratic Tactics, Jed H. Shugerman

Faculty Scholarship

The “constitutional hardball” metaphor used by legal scholars and political scientists illuminates an important phenomenon in American politics, but it obscures a crisis in American democracy. In baseball, hardball encompasses legitimate tactics: pitching inside to brush a batter back but not injure, hard slides, hard tags. Baseball fans celebrate hardball. Many of the constitutional hardball maneuvers previously identified by scholars have been legitimate, if aggressive, constitutional political moves. But the label “hardball” has been interpreted too broadly to include illegitimate, fundamentally undemocratic tactics. I suggest a different baseball metaphor for such tactics: beanball, pitches meant to injure and knock out …

Aedpa As Forum Allocation: The Textual And Structural Case For Overruling Williams V. Taylor, Carlos Manuel Vázquez

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In Williams v. Taylor, the Supreme Court read a section of the Anti- Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) to change the long-prevailing de novo standard of review of federal habeas petitions by state prisoners. In holding that Congress had denied the lower federal courts the power to grant habeas relief to prisoners in custody pursuant to wrong but reasonable state court decisions, the Court departed from the provision’s text and relied instead on its perception of a generalized congressional purpose to cut back on habeas relief and on the non-redundancy canon of statutory construction. On both scores, …