Constitutional Law Commons^™

What Judges Say And Do In Deciding National Security Cases: The Example Of The State Secrets Privilege, Anthony John Trenga

Duke Law Master of Judicial Studies Theses

From the criminal trial of Aaron Burr on charges of treason to modern-day litigation involving the CIA, the state secrets privilege presents a thorny issue for federal judges. Judge Trenga examines the legal issues at the heart of this privilege—separation of powers, non-justiciability, evidentiary privilege, national security interests, and military secrets—and the two primary doctrinal tracks judges invoke. Then, based on interviews with thirty-one federal judges, Judge Trenga offers insights into how judges think about applying the state secrets privilege to sensitive material.

The Bellona Company's Case, Casey Conrad

Legal History Publications

The Bellona Gunpowder Company of Maryland was one of Maryland’s most prominent gunpowder manufactories during the early nineteenth century. Founded in 1801, the gunpowder company become the second leading gunpowder producer for the American government, and supplied almost one-fifth of American domestic gunpowder. In 1828, the Baltimore and Susquehanna Railroad Company was incorporated by the State of Maryland to construct a railroad that would connect the City of Baltimore to the Susquehanna River. The legislature authorized the railroad company to initiate condemnation proceedings against private property owners, if it was unable to negotiate for the sale of such land. In …

Justified Outbreak: Bringing Together Law, Public Health, And Ethics During An Infectious Disease Emergency, Clark Colwell

LLM Theses

Infectious diseases have recently found renewed significance in Canadian scholarship, with a corresponding increased interest in Canada's overall preparedness, including legal preparedness, to combat infectious disease emergencies. Nearly every Canadian province has emergency legislation containing a "basket clause" - a provision which, for the duration of an emergency, authorizes a decision maker to take 'all necessary measures' to defeat it. Public health legal preparedness scholarship has not yet examined what criteria the decision maker must consider before deciding to deploy measures that could seriously impact the rights of individuals, including those under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This …

Perceiving Orientation: Defining Sexuality After Obergefell, Mary Ziegler

Scholarly Publications

In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, constitutional jurisprudence will have to more clearly define sexual orientation itself. The Obergefell majority describes sexuality as binary and suggests that any sexual orientation is immutable, normal, and constitutive of individual identity. Other scholars have shown how the kind of binary created by Obergefell excludes those with more fluid sexual identities and experiences from legal protection.

This Article illuminates new problems with Obergefell’s approach to sexuality by putting that definition in historical context. While describing sexuality as a matter of orientation may now seem inevitable, …

Selective Entrenchment In State Constitutional Law: Lessons From Comparative Experience, David Landau

Scholarly Publications

While the U.S. Constitution has long been viewed as an outlier along a number of dimensions, recent work has explored the similarities between comparative constitutionalism and the constitutionalism of the states. Scholars have noted that state constitutions look more like the constitutions often found abroad along several key dimensions. Most importantly for our purposes, they are often long, detailed, and specific documents that go well beyond merely setting up a basic framework, and they are often relatively flexible and easy to amend. In contrast, the U.S. Constitution seems unusually sparse and rigid.

This essay argues that the recent work on …

Contingent Constitutionality, Legislative Facts, And Campaign Finance Law, Michael T. Morley

Scholarly Publications

Many of the Supreme Court's important holdings concerning campaign finance law are not pure matters of constitutional interpretation. Rather, they are "contingent" constitution- al determinations: the Court's conclusions rest in substantial part on legislative facts about the world that the Court finds, intuits, or assumes to be true. While earlier commentators have recognized the need to improve legislative factfinding by the Supreme Court, other aspects of its treatment of legislative facts-particularly in the realm of campaign finance- require reform as well. Stare decisis purportedly insulates the Court's purely legal holdings and interpretations from future challenge. Factually contingent constitutional rulings should, …

The New Elections Clause, Michael T. Morley

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Law Of Democracy At A Crossroads: Reflecting On Fifty Years Of Voting Rights And The Judicial Regulation Of The Political Thicket, Franita Tolson

Florida State University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Legislative Delegations And The Elections Clause, Derek T. Muller

Florida State University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Rescuing Retrogression, Michael J. Pitts

Florida State University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Voting Is Association, Daniel P. Tokaji

Florida State University Law Review

No abstract provided.

What Personal Jurisdiction Doctrine Does -- And What It Should Do, Katherine Florey

Florida State University Law Review

Commentators have routinely noted the complexity, opacity, and multiple functions of U.S. personal jurisdiction doctrine. Yet underlying this comparative chaos are two important concerns. Both commentary and Supreme Court cases have long recognized that a court's assertion of power over a particular defendant and case may have two undesirable consequences. First the burden on the defendant of having to appear before a certain type of court or in a particular location may be unacceptably high. Second a court's jurisdictional overreaching may encroach upon the sovereignty of other states or nations and in so doing, may foster uncertainty about which sovereign's …

Filling The Gap Of Domestic Violence Protection: Returning Human Rights To U.S. Victims, Melanie Kalmanson

Florida State University Law Review

The prevalence of domestic violence in the United States indicates a need for increased governmental protection. The current state-based system inadequately serves victims of domestic violence, and previous US. Supreme Court rulings indicate that the U.S. Constitution leaves the federal government in an impotent position for providing any form of protection for domestic violence victims. Pursuant to the American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man, domestic violence violates one's human rights, or those fundamental to personhood. By ratifying the American Declaration through the Charter of the Organization of the American States, the United States established its responsibility for …

Guns, Sex, And Race: The Second Amendment Through A Feminist Lens, Verna L. Williams

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

This article uses a recent move on the part of feminist legal advocates-social justice feminism ("SJF')--to explore the contours of the Second Amendment. Feminist legal theory, specifically SJF, reveals that the Second Amendment and attendant societal understandings ofthe right to keep and bear arms played a role in establishing and reproducing white male dominance. Understood in this way, the Court's decisions in Heller and McDonald reinforce structural oppression under the guise of promoting individual rights. To make that case, this article proceeds in four parts. Part I briefly addresses the question of why a feminist lens is useful in this …

Does A House Of Congress Have Standing Over Appropriations?: The House Of Representatives Challenges The Affordable Care Act, Bradford Mank

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

In U.S. House of Representatives v. Sylvia Matthews Burwell, the District Court for D.C. in 2015 held that the House of Representatives has Article III standing to challenge certain provisions of the Affordable Care Act as violations of the Constitution’s Appropriations Clause. The Supreme Court’s jurisprudence on legislative standing is complicated. The Court has generally avoided the contentious question of whether Congress has standing to challenge certain presidential actions because of the difficult separation-of-powers concerns in such cases. In Raines v. Byrd, the Court held that individual members of Congress generally do not have Article III standing by simply holding …

E Pluribus Unum: Controversias Estatales Y Compromisos Nacionales En La Formación De La Constitución De Los Estados Unidos De América, Robert S. Barker

Barker Papers

La tesis de este breve trabajo es que muchas de las caracteristicas basicas de la Constituci6n de los Estados Unidos son productos de diferencias y debates entre Estados y regiones del pais, y de compromisos politicos alcanzados entre los representantes de esos distintos Estados.

The thesis of this brief work is that many of the basic characteristics of the Constitution of the United States are products of differences and debates between States and regions of the country, and political commitments required compromise by the representatives of these different States.

Data Breaches, Identity Theft And Article Iii Standing: Will The Supreme Court Resolve The Split In The Circuits, Bradford Mank

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

In data breach cases, the lower federal courts have split on the question of whether the plaintiffs meet Article III standing requirements for injury and causation. In its 2013 decision Clapper v. Amnesty International USA, the Supreme Court, in a case involving alleged electronic surveillance by the U.S. government’s National Security Agency, declared that a plaintiff alleging that it will suffer future injuries from a defendant’s allegedly improper conduct must show that such injuries are “certainly impending.” Since the Clapper decision, a majority of the lower federal courts addressing “lost data” or potential identity theft cases in which there is …

Contingent Constitutionality, Legislative Facts, And Campaign Finance Law, Michael T. Morley

Florida State University Law Review

Many of the Supreme Court’s important holdings concerning campaign finance law are not pure matters of constitutional interpretation. Rather, they are “contingent” constitutional determinations: the Court’s conclusions rest in substantial part on legislative facts about the world that the Court finds, intuits, or assumes to be true. While earlier commentators have recognized the need to improve legislative factfinding by the Supreme Court, other aspects of its treatment of legislative facts—particularly in the realm of campaign finance—require reform as well.

Stare decisis purportedly insulates the Court’s purely legal holdings and interpretations from future challenge. Factually contingent constitutional rulings should, in contrast, …

Residency And Democracy: Durational Residency Requirements From The Framers To The Present, Eugene D. Mazo

Florida State University Law Review

After years of struggle, we no longer require property ownership, employ poll taxes, or force citizens to take literary tests to vote. The franchise is now also open to women, African Americans, and other groups that were previously disenfranchised. However, our states still prevent citizens from voting if they fail to meet a durational residency requirement. The states also impose lengthy durational residency requirements on candidates seeking public office. This Article examines the history of America’s durational residency requirements. It looks at the debates of the framers at the Constitutional Convention, at how state durational residency requirements were broadened in …

Race, Shelby County, And The Voter Information Verification Act In North Carolina, Michael D. Herron, Daniel A. Smith

Florida State University Law Review

Shortly after the Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder struck down section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), the State of North Carolina enacted an omnibus piece of election- reform legislation known as the Voter Information Verification Act (VIVA). Prior to Shelby, portions of North Carolina were covered jurisdictions per the VRA’s sections 4 and 5—meaning that they had to seek federal preclearance for changes to their election procedures— and this motivates our assessment of whether VIVA’s many alterations to North Carolina’s election procedures are race-neutral. We show that in presidential elections in North Carolina black early voters …