Constitutional Law Commons^™

The Second Amendment In The 21st Century: An In-Depth Examination Of Firearm Freedoms And Their Relationship With Public Safety And Interests, Mathew E. Klein

Honors Undergraduate Theses

One of the most hotly contested topics in the world today revolves around an object. An object that has caused debate among all members of society both in the United States, and all across the globe. But how could an object, something that on its own does nothing, spur such heated argument? This object is the evolution of invention and the product of fighting amongst each other. This object changes the way people think and how they act. This object can be used for both good and bad. This object is a gun.

This research project will explore the Second …

The Incest Horrible: Delimiting The Lawrence V. Texas Right To Sexual Autonomy, Y. Carson Zhou

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Is the criminalization of consensual sex between close relatives constitutional in the wake of Lawrence v. Texas and Obergefell v. Hodges? Justice Scalia thought not. The substantive due process landscape has changed dramatically in response to the LGBTQ movement. Yet, when a girl in a sexual relationship with her father recently revealed in an anonymous interview with New York Magazine that they were planning to move to New Jersey, one of the only two states where incest was legal, the New Jersey legislature introduced with unprecedented speed a bill criminalizing incest. But who has the couple harmed? The very …

Eighth Amendment's Lost Jurors: Death Qualification And Evolving Standards Of Decency, Aliza Plener Cover

Articles

The Supreme Court’s inquiry into the constitutionality of the death penalty has overlooked a critical “objective indicator” of society’s “evolving standards of decency”: the rate at which citizens are excluded from capital jury service under Witherspoon v. Illinois due to their conscientious objections to the death penalty. While the Supreme Court considers the prevalence of death verdicts as a gauge of the nation’s moral climate, it has ignored how the process of death qualification shapes those verdicts. This blind spot biases the Court’s estimation of community norms and distorts its Eighth Amendment analysis.

This Article presents a quantitative study of …

Independent Agencies In The United States: The Responsibilities Of Public Lawyers, Marshall J. Breger, Gary Edles

Scholarly Articles

Independent federal agencies occupy a special constitutional position in the governmental structure. Their stock-in-trade is the expert, apolitical resolution of regulatory issues. They are supposedly “independent” of the political will of the executive branch. Because most are multi-member organizations, they are also perceived as accommodating diverse views and able to prevent extreme outcomes through the compromise inherent in the process of collegial decision-making. But such a view is not universally held. A well known examination of such agencies in the 1930s described them uncharitably as a “headless ‘fourth branch’ of government, a haphazard deposit of irresponsible agencies and uncoordinated powers.” …

Parentage Without Gender, Joanna L. Grossman

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Dramatic changes in the family form over the last several decades have put increasing pressure on the parent-child relationship. This elevation of the parent-child relationship in law and policy means that parents have both greater rights and more onerous obligations than in a system that spreads responsibility for children more broadly. The question of what constitutes a legal parent-child relationship under American law has become increasingly important because of its primacy in the determination of rights and obligations, but also increasingly complex because of reproductive technology and changing patterns of childbearing. The complexity and lack of cohesion that characterizes modern …

On Commercial—And Corporate—Speech, Jonathan Weinberg

Marquette Law Review

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Applying The U.S. Constitution To Foreign Asylum Seekers: Exposing A Curious, Inconsistent Practice In The Federal Courts, Shalini Bhargava Ray

Marquette Law Review

Asylum law is based on an international treaty, but federal courts routinely invoke U.S. constitutional norms in adjudicating asylum claims. Specifically, they rely on constitutional norms when gauging whether an asylum applicant has suffered harm amounting to “persecution” and whether the harm was inflicted “on account of” a protected characteristic, such as political opinion or religion. In a close analysis of this unusual practice, this Article argues that federal courts have come to inconsistent, and often incompatible, conclusions regarding the use of constitutional norms in the analysis of asylum claims: principally, on whether constitutional norms establish sufficient, insufficient, necessary, or …

The Extraterritoriality Doctrine Of The Dormant Commerce Clause Is Not Dead, Susan Lorde Martin

Marquette Law Review

In 1895, the New York Court of Appeals, in refusing to enforce a Kansas statute, referred to “a principle of universal application, recognized in all civilized states, that the statutes of one state have . . . no force or effect in another.” In 1897, the Court of Appeals of Kentucky noted that “[t]he statute of another state has, of course, no extraterritorial force.” That old notion describes the extraterritoriality doctrine of the dormant Commerce Clause. In recent years, the doctrine has become problematic for several reasons. One, the line between intrastate and interstate business has become blurred with many …

Never Alone: Why The Inevitable Influx Of Drones Necessitates A New Fourth Amendment Standard That Adequately Protects Reasonable Expectations Of Privacy, Paul Burgin

University of Baltimore Law Review

In June 2011, North Dakota cattle rancher Rodney Brossart became the first American to be arrested with the aid of a drone (Unmanned Aircraft System(s) or UAS) operated by law enforcement. Six cows found their way onto Brossart's property, and he refused to turn them over to law enforcement officials. Brossart and a few family members chased police officers off of his property at gunpoint, and police later returned with a warrant and SWAT team. A sixteen-hour standoff ensued until police called in the assistance of a UAS to pinpoint Brossart's exact location. Shortly thereafter, SWAT officers rushed in, tased, …

"And To Your Left You'll See...": Licensed Tour Guides, The First Amendment, And The Free Market, Kristin Tracy

University of Baltimore Law Review

If you are a beer-lover visiting Washington, D.C., you might want to check out “DC Brew Tours,” a “beer tour company in the Capital region that offers daily brewery tours to Washington’s best breweries, brewpubs, and bars.” As you would expect, the tour includes samples of beer from a number of local craft breweries, as well as information about how each beer is made. What you might not expect, however, is that, until very recently, DC Brew tour guides were legally obligated to pass a written exam about the history of D.C., a topic which has little to do with …

Defining Lawmaking Power, Kimberly L. Wehle

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article teases apart the various permutations of what the federal lawmaking power means, canvases the Court's historical treatment of that question, and describes its practical implications as a matter of both constitutional and administrative law. It proposes a taxonomy of lawmaking in an effort to bring coherence to the task of defining the lawmaking power as well as Congress's prerogative to exercise it.

The Inequality Of America's Death Penalty: A Crossroads For Capital Punishment At The Intersection Of The Eighth And Fourteenth Amendments, John Bessler

All Faculty Scholarship

We live in a divided society, from gated communities to cell blocks congested with disproportionate numbers of young African-American men. There are rich and poor, privileged and homeless, Democrats and Republicans, wealthy zip codes and stubbornly impoverished ones. There are committed "Black Lives Matter" protesters, and there are those who—invoking "Blue Lives Matter" demonstrate in support of America‘s hardworking police officers. In her new article, "Matters of Strata: Race, Gender, and Class Structures in Capital Cases," George Washington University law professor Phyllis Goldfarb highlights the stratification of our society and offers a compelling critique of America‘s death penalty regime—one, she …

Interpretation: Article I, Section 5, Ronald Weich, Martin B. Gold

All Faculty Scholarship

In Article I of the Constitution, the Framers vest the legislative authority of the United States government in a bicameral Congress, and over the ten sections of the Article they systematically flesh out the structure, duties, and powers of that Congress. In the early sections of Article I they describe the membership of each House, giving life to the “Great Compromise” of the Constitutional Convention under which each state has equal representation in the Senate but population-based representation in the House of Representatives. In Section 5, they grant Congress the power to govern itself.

Section 5 consists of four separate …

The Process Of Marriage Equality, Josh Blackman, Howard M. Wasserman

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

This article offers the first comprehensive history of the marriageequality litigation process leading from Windsor to Obergefell. It explores how four aspects of federal procedure and jurisdiction doctrine both enabled and frustrated marriage equality's advancement to the Supreme Court. First, we examine common misconceptions about how judgments, injunctions, and judicial precedent control real-world conduct and how litigation brings about legal reform. These misconceptions reached their nadir in Alabama in spring 2015. Guided by Chief Justice Roy Moore, Alabama officials properly declined to follow persuasive precedent, prompting unfortunate and inaccurate comparisons to George Wallace and Massive Resistance, and to Brown and …

Youthfulness Matters: A Call To Modernize Juvenile Waiver Statutes, Chelsea Ellen Heaney

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

The fundamental values that underlie the juvenile justice system have developed and changed since its inception in 1899. A system that was once focused on rehabilitating and protecting troubled youth, has developed into a system focused on punishing and confining youth. A decade of increased juvenile crime rates in the United States from the mid-1980s to the mid- 1990s, led many states to change their policies regarding the treatment of juvenile delinquents. Specifically, between 1992 and 1994, forty-nine out of the fifty states broadened or enacted legislation making it easier for juveniles to be tried as adults. Automatic and mandatory …

Must Courts Respect Hidden Legislative Bargains, Brendan Selby

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

The most complete and sophisticated justification for a strong form of textualism is grounded in the need to preserve legislative compromise. I call this justification the "Bargaining Argument." Its primary expositor is Professor John Manning, the leading academic textualist. The thrust of the Bargaining Argument is that, because express provisions of the Constitution evince an intent to give political minorities the right to insist upon compromise as the price of assent, courts should read the phrase "the judicial power" in Article III as prescribing an interpretive method that furthers this intent. While the general inference concerning minority rights is sound, …

The Right To Education For Unaccompanied Minors, Jeanette M. Acosta

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

In response to the increase of unaccompanied minors seeking refuge in the United States in 2014, officials within federal, state, and local institutions readied themselves to receive and serve a greater number of child migrants in detention facilities, shelters, immigration courts, and public schools. While attention has been paid to the need for legal representation of unaccompanied minors and the need to end the inhumane detention of children, this Note reveals the state of educational opportunities and services provided for unaccompanied minors in detention facilities, shelters, and public schools. This Note looks to the role education plays in the lives …

Out Of The Shadows: Deferred Action For Childhood Arrivals, Deferred Action To Parents Of Americans And Lawful Permanent Residents, And Executive Prosecutorial Discretion In Immigration Law, Olga Y. Kuchins

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

Currently, more than eleven million undocumented immigrants live and work in the United States unlawfully. The Administration's effort to bring undocumented immigrants out of the "shadows" under the deferred action programs, while constitutional, is merely a Band-Aid-a temporary solution to Congress' unsuccessful efforts to pass legislation that addresses the issue of undocumented immigrants head on. This Note contextualizes the Obama Administration's deferred action programs within the larger framework of prosecutorial discretion in immigration law.

Section I lays the foundation for the Administration's decision to implement Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals ("DACA") by discussing some of the major developments in United …

The 2016 Election And The Future Of Constitutional Law: The Lessons Of 1968, Earl M. Maltz

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

The upcoming presidential election of 2016 may very well become a pivotal moment in the evolution of American constitutional doctrine. Given Justice Scalia's untimely passing and the ages of a number of the sitting justices, the next President could easily have the opportunity to choose several new members of the Court. Moreover, because the Court is currently divided almost equally along ideological lines, even a single appointment could have the effect of turning the overall orientation of the Court's decisions sharply to either the right or the left.

To illustrate the effect that a single election can have on the …

Deciding With Dignity: The Terminally Ill Patient's Right To Information About The California End Of Life Option Act, Christine Sung

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

For decades, states across the country have been entertaining concept of physician aid-in-dying, or more commonly known as Death with Dignity. In June 2016, California became the fifth state to legalize physician aid-in-dying, enabling qualified California citizens to have the option to choose a peaceful and autonomous death. However, many qualified patients may not be aware of this option unless informed. This is where physician-patient communication becomes vital to the patient's autonomy. This Note argues that terminally ill patients choosing what end of life option to take (hopsice, palliative care, etc.) should be informed about the California End of Life …