Constitutional Law Commons^™

Intragenerational Constitutional Overruling, L.A. Powe Jr.

Notre Dame Law Review

This Article seeks to shed some light on a comparatively rare, but important issue in constitutional jurisprudence: Under what circumstances does the Supreme Court formally overrule one of its own significant constitutional precedents within the same judicial generation as the announcement of the precedent? This phenomenon is one part of the broader role of precedent and stare decisis in fashioning and maintaining constitutional law—albeit in part because of the modifier “significant”—there are a limited number of such cases (some three dozen where the overruled case was decided after the introduction of President Franklin Roosevelt’s Court-packing plan, roughly once every other …

The Jurisprudence Of The Hughes Court: The Recent Literature, Barry Cushman

Notre Dame Law Review

The balance of this Article is devoted, after a fashion, to an exploration of the extent to which the recent literature on the Hughes Court seeks to incorporate the internal point of view. In Part I, I seek to identify the historiographical premises undergirding each author’s treatment of the subject. In Part II, I explore how those historiographical premises are reflected in each author’s treatment of the substantive development of constitutional doctrine during the period. In Part III, I examine the ways in which those historiographical premises inform each author’s analysis of the causal forces driving that doctrinal development. Part …

The Former Clerks Who Nearly Killed Judicial Restraint, Brad Snyder

Notre Dame Law Review

This symposium piece explores the rise and fall of legal process theory as well as the scholarship of former Warren Court and early Burger Court clerks who nearly killed it. It also suggests that there could be a revival of a process-based judicial restraint based on a new generation of late Burger Court/early Rehnquist Court clerks-turned-academics who came of age during the mid-1980s. These law clerks rejected judicial supremacy and adopted popular constitutionalism and other democratic approaches to constitutional interpretation. Popular constitutionalism is inspired by the same faith in the democratic political process as the judicial restraint advocated by James …

Our Anchor For 225 Years And Counting: The Enduring Significance Of The Precise Text Of The Constitution, Brett M. Kavanaugh

Notre Dame Law Review

When one comes to Notre Dame, whether for a law review symposium or for a football game or for both, your mind is drawn to fundamentals and history. This is a place that oozes history, and in that vein, I want to take a step back and focus on the text of our Constitution. I want to focus on that text in two dimensions. First, I want to explain how the text of the Constitution creates a structure—a separation of powers—that protects liberty. And in particular, I want to emphasize how that structure tilts toward liberty, how it creates legislative …

The Decline Of Legal Classicism And The Evolution Of New Deal Constitutionalism, Samuel R. Olken

Notre Dame Law Review

This Article explores how some of the salient characteristics of classical legal thought influenced the evolution of the Supreme Court’s constitutional jurisprudence during the New Deal era. It focuses upon the Court’s jurisprudence of economic liberty in the context of substantive due process. Though a similar pattern of evolution occurred in the Court’s Commerce Clause jurisprudence, examination of this area of constitutional development is beyond the scope of this Article. Part I provides an overview of legal classicism and its influence upon late nineteenth and early twentieth-century constitutional law. The next Part examines the paradox of legal classicism and its …

The Paths To Griswold, Ryan C. Williams

Notre Dame Law Review

The goal of this Article is to develop a fuller picture of Griswold by situating the case within a series of doctrinal and jurisprudential debates and developments that were prominent at the time of the Court's decision but that have faded in significance over time. This alternative picture of Griswold shifts the focus away from viewing the case as one about birth control, sexual privacy, and women's autonomy and toward viewing the decision as one about interpretive method, constitutional theory, and the Supreme Court's role within the national political system. This alternative perspective on Griswold has by no means gone …

The Cost Of Judicial Error: Stare Decisis And The Role Of Normative Theory, Kurt T. Lash

Notre Dame Law Review

The Supreme Court of the United States has long embraced the doctrine of stare decisis as an appropriate consideration any time the Court considers overruling past precedent. However, because the Court's actual application of the doctrine has been both sporadic and seemingly inconsistent, some scholars (and Justices) have accused the Court of methodological hypocrisy and bad faith. Much of this criticism assumes that, if members of the Supreme Court find certain rule of law values dispositive in one case, they should find those same considerations dispositive in all cases. Failure to do so suggests either incompetence or insincerity. This Article …

Suing Foreign Officials In U.S. Courts: Upholding Separation Of Powers By Limiting Judicial Abrogation Of Immunity, Sarah P. Hogarth

Notre Dame Law Review

This Note will propose the constitutional framework courts should implement when suits are brought against individual foreign officials post-Samantar, specifically arguing that the constitutional allocation of foreign affairs powers requires U.S. courts to broadly insulate foreign officials from suit absent authorization from a political branch. Part I examines the law of nations and its incorporation into the specific foreign relations powers delegated by the Constitution to the political branches, highlighting that the power to affect relations with foreign sovereigns resides in the political branches. Part II explains the Supreme Court’s development of foreign sovereign immunity and the act of state …

A Liberal Communitarian Approach To Security Limitations On The Freedom Of The Press, Amitai Etzioni

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

Forgetting Furman: Arbitrary Death Penalty Sentencing Schemes Across The Nation, Sarah A. Mourer

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

Abortion And The Constitutional Right (Not) To Procreate, Mary Ziegler

Scholarly Publications

With the growing use of assisted reproductive technology (“ART”), courts have to reconcile competing rights to seek and avoid procreation. Often, in imagining the boundaries of these rights, judges turn to abortion jurisprudence for guidance.

This move sparks controversy. On the one hand, abortion case law may provide the strongest constitutional foundation for scholars and advocates seeking rights to access ART or avoid un-wanted parenthood. On the other hand, abortion jurisprudence carries normative and political baggage: a privacy framework that disadvantages poor women and a history of intense polarization.

This article uses the legal history of struggle over spousal consent …

Death By Irrelevance: The Unconstitutionality Of Virginia’S Continued Exclusion Of Prison Conditions Evidence To Assess The Future Dangerousness Of Capital Defendants, Andrew Lindsey

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

This Note argues that Virginia statutory and case law requiring the exclusion of prison conditions evidence in capital trials where the jury must determine defendants’ future dangerousness is unconstitutional. In Part I, I present certain portions of a hypothetical capital trial in Virginia to introduce readers to the concepts of prison conditions evidence and future dangerousness, and why they are important to capital defendants. In Part II, I trace the development of the constitutional right that is violated by the exclusion of this evidence, as well as how Virginia has come to justify its exclusionary stance based on a flawed …

Parental Exclusion From The Education Governance Kaleidoscope: Providing A Political Voice For Marginalized Students In Our Time Of Disruption, Tiffani N. Darden

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

This Article develops how the judiciary should play an instrumental part in amplifying the parent’s voice as a citizenship broker for their child. The Supreme Court scrutinizes school-board actions with little consideration of parents’ substantive due process right to control their child’s education through the political process. Through representative school boards, effective participation models, and an enforcement framework, parents could hold the power to affect education policies. Parents deserve full citizenship recognition in the tiered processes controlling public education policy. In addition to recognizing “quality” education as a government interest, the Supreme Court should also take into account the political …

Specificity Or Dismissal: The Improper Extension Of Rule 9(B) To Negligent Misrepresentation As A Deprivation Of Plaintiffs’ Procedural Due Process Rights, Julie A. Cook

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

Eating Hot Peppers To Avoid Hiv/Aids: New Challenges To Failing Abstinence-Only Programs, Erica Woebse

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

This Note examines abstinence-only education curricula, including its history, criticisms against it, and the failure of judicial challenges to end its promotion and federal funding. It addresses how abstinence-only education has managed to remain a central means of teaching sexual education, despite its ineffective and controversial nature. Finally, this Note will discuss how abstinence-only education curricula may fall out of favor or be modified with new state and federal requirements that sexual educational curricula be medically accurate. This is demonstrated by the American Academy of Pediatrics v. Clovis Unified School District case in California.

Reasoned Explanation And Irs Adjudication, Steve R. Johnson

Scholarly Publications

Under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), an administrative action can be invalidated as arbitrary and capricious if the agency fails to sufficiently explain the reasons for its choices. This principle applies to agency adjudication as well as to agency rulemaking. How does this principle apply to IRS adjudications? Examining five paradigms of IRS decisionmaking, this Article first establishes that the IRS does engage in APA–style adjudication. The Article then examines tax-specific explanation requirements and asks whether a more robust explanation duty patterned on the APA should be imposed on IRS determinations. Based on a variety of legal and prudential considerations, …

Presidential Politics As A Safeguard Of Federalism: The Case Of Marijuana Legalization, David S. Schwartz

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Abortion And The Constitutional Right (Not) To Procreate, Mary Ziegler

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Presidential Constitutionalism And Civil Rights, Joseph Landau

William & Mary Law Review

As the judicial and legislative branches have taken a more passive approach to civil rights enforcement, the President’s exercise of independent, extrajudicial constitutional judgment has become increasingly important. Modern U.S. presidents have advanced constitutional interpretations on matters of race, gender, HIV-status, self-incrimination, reproductive liberty, and gun rights, and President Obama has been especially active in promoting the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons—most famously by refusing to defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Commentators have criticized the President’s refusal to defend DOMA from numerous perspectives but have not considered how the President’s DOMA policy fits within …

The Mechanics Of First Amendment Audience Analysis, David S. Han

William & Mary Law Review

When the government seeks to regulate speech based on its content, it generally assumes that listeners will process the speech in a manner that produces social harm. Because the chain of causation for such speech-based harm runs through the filter of an audience, courts must constantly make judgments regarding the audience’s reception of such speech. How will the speech be interpreted by the audience? To what extent will the speech cause the audience either to suffer direct emotional harm or to react physically to the speech in a harmful manner? Although this sort of inquiry—which I refer to as “audience …