Constitutional Law Commons^™

What About The Morality Of Torture, Results Aside?, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

Published scholarship collected from academic journals, law reviews, newspaper publications & online periodicals

March 12, 2011: The Pope’S New Book, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “The Pope’s New Book“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

March 10, 2011: Islam Just Like Other Religions—For Good And Ill, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Islam Just Like Other Religions—For Good and Ill“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

From Facebook To Mug Shot: How The Dearth Of Social Networking Privacy Rights Revolutionized Online Government Surveillance, Junichi P. Semitsu

Pace Law Review

No abstract provided.

Social Media And The Vanishing Points Of Ethical And Constitutional Boundaries, Ken Strutin

Pace Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Deal Is A Deal In The West, Or Is It? Montana V. Wyoming And The Yellowstone River Compact, Shiran Zohar

Duke Journal of Constitutional Law & Public Policy Sidebar

No abstract provided.

March 6, 2011: Can Philosophy Serve As An Alternative To Religion?, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Can Philosophy Serve as an Alternative to Religion?“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Summary Of Ybarra V. State, 127 Nev. Adv. Op. No. 4, Jennifer Delcarmen

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

An appeal based on claims of judicial bias. In addition, an appeal from an order denying a motion to strike the death penalty on a claim that Appellant is/was mentally retarded.

March 3, 2011: Religion At The End Of Life, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Religion at the End of Life“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

The Heart Of The Constitutional Enterprise: Affirming Equality And Freedom In Public Education, William E. Thro

Brigham Young University Education and Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Tea Party And The Constitution, Christopher W. Schmidt

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article considers the Tea Party as a constitutional movement. I explore the Tea Party’s ambitious effort to transform the role of the Constitution in American life, examining both the substance of the Tea Party’s constitutional claims and the tactics movement leaders have embraced for advancing these claims. No major social movement in modern American history has so explicitly tied its reform agenda to the Constitution. From the time when the Tea Party burst onto the American political scene in early 2009, its supporters claimed in no uncertain terms that much recent federal government action overstepped constitutionally defined limitations. A …

The Anatomy Of A Search: Intrusiveness And The Fourth Amendment, Renée Mcdonald Hutchins

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

March 1, 2011: Newt Gingrich And The Future Of Religion In American Politics, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Newt Gingrich and the Future of Religion in American Politics“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Federal Law In State Court: Judicial Federalism Through A Relational Lens, Charlton C. Copeland

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

Enforcing federalism is most commonly thought to involve the search for a
constitutional delegation of substantive power. Although in modern times the substantive power might be overlapping or shared authority, federalism enforcement proceeds from a determination about the site of substantive power. This conception of federalism enforcement preserves the Constitution’s commitment to fractionated authority by determining whether power is legitimately possessed. Thus we understand significant federalism disputes in our age as framed by whether Congress has the authority to enact comprehensive health care reform legislation, or whether Congress
has exceeded its authority in reenacting the Voting Rights Act’s preclearance requirements. …

The Dark Side Of The Force: The Legacy Of Justice Holmes For First Amendment Jurisprudence, Steven J. Heyman

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

Modern First Amendment jurisprudence is deeply paradoxical. On one hand,
freedom of speech is said to promote fundamental values such as individual selffulfillment, democratic deliberation, and the search for truth. At the same time, however, many leading decisions protect speech that appears to undermine these values by attacking the dignity and personality of others or their status as full and equal members of the community. In this Article, I explore where this Jekyll-and-Hyde quality of First Amendment jurisprudence comes from. I argue that the American free speech tradition consists of two very different strands: a liberal humanist view that emphasizes …

The Fading Free Exercise Clause, Rene Reyes

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

This Article uses the Supreme Court’s recent opinion in Christian Legal Society
v. Martinez as a point of departure for analyzing the current state of free exercise doctrine. I argue that one of the most notable features of the Christian Legal Society (CLS) case is its almost total lack of engagement with the Free Exercise Clause. For the core of CLS’s complaint was unambiguously about the declaration and exercise of religious beliefs: the group claimed that it was being excluded from campus life because it required its members to live according to shared religious principles and to subscribe to a …

The Complexities Of Judicial Takings, D. Benjamin Barros

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Lochner, Lawrence, And Liberty, Joseph F. Morrissey

Georgia State University Law Review

Many of the states of the United States have statutes, constitutional provisions, and court decisions that deny individuals the right to have a family, specifically a spouse and children, based on sexual orientation.

Advocates have made a wide variety of arguments attacking such restrictions. Scholars and litigants frequently argue that such acts violate constitutional guarantees of equal protection or invade a constitutional right to privacy. However, such arguments are often defeated by counter arguments presented with religious, moral, and even emotional fervor.

This article presents and defends a new analytical framework based on liberty of contract to advance gay rights. …

A Separation Of Powers Defense Of Federal Rulemaking Power, Michael Blasie

Faculty Scholarly Works

Judicial rulemaking—the methods by which federal courts create federal procedural rules—represents a paradigmatic clash between the functionalist and formalist theories of the separation of powers. There exist compelling practical reasons to invest such power in the judiciary, yet the Constitution’s text does not explicitly confer such power on any branch. This Article comprehensively examines the separation of powers issues raised by the current federal rulemaking process under the formalist theory of the separation of powers in light of modern precedent. Part I details the current procedure for creating the federal rules, summarizes the relevant scholarship, and examines the few Supreme …

Multiplicity In Federalism And The Separation Of Powers, Josh Chafetz

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

By highlighting multiplicity in the federalism context, Alison LaCroix’s new book does constitutional scholarship a great service. Her tracing of the federal idea in the 1760s and 1770s, as well as her tracing of jurisdictional ideas in the early Republic, is thorough and insightful. But it is unclear why her focus suddenly narrows from the federal idea—the idea that multiplicity in levels of government was a virtue rather than a vice—to federal jurisdiction. Certainly, as this Review has endeavored to show, her claim that federalism discourse after 1787 reduced entirely (or even primarily) to jurisdictional debates cannot stand.

And this …