Supreme Court of the United States Commons^™

Kiobel And Extraterritoriality: Here, (Not) There, (Not Even) Everywhere, Edward T. Swaine

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

Issue 2: Table Of Contents

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Teacher Unions, The Right-To-Work And Fair Share Agreements, Charles J. Russo

Educational Leadership Faculty Publications

The status of collective bargaining in public education has been in an almost constant state of flux recently. More than 30 states have adopted laws that allow teachers and other public school employees to form unions to bargain collectively with their boards over the terms and conditions of their employment.

Amid debates over their status in public education, the Supreme Court has consistently upheld the right of unions to charge fair-share fees even as it limited their scope. Fair-share or agency fees are based on the premise that insofar as nonmembers benefit from union activities, they should have to pay …

Institutional Competence And Civil Rules Interpretation, Lumen N. Mulligan, Glen Staszewski

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Will Work For Free: The Legality Of Unpaid Internships, Nicole M. Klinger

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

This Note addresses the current ambiguity in the law regarding if unpaid interns are employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act. The Note explores relevant case law throughout the circuit courts, but primarily focuses on the Second Circuit’s recent decision in Glatt v. Fox Searchlight Pictures. It argues that the primary benefits test created by the Second Circuit in Glatt does not adequately protect unpaid interns nor does it inform employers of the standards they need to meet in order to adopt legal unpaid internship programs. Instead, courts should adopt a clearer, more rigid test that finds an intern not …

Constitutional Avoidance As Interpretation And As Remedy, Eric S. Fish

Michigan Law Review

In a number of recent landmark decisions, the Supreme Court has used the canon of constitutional avoidance to essentially rewrite laws. Formally, the avoidance canon is understood as a method for resolving interpretive ambiguities: if there are two equally plausible readings of a statute, and one of them raises constitutional concerns, judges are instructed to choose the other one. Yet in challenges to the Affordable Care Act, the Voting Rights Act, the Chemical Weapons Convention, and other major statutes, the Supreme Court has used this canon to adopt interpretations that are not plausible. Jurists, scholars, and legal commentators have criticized …

Search Incident To Probable Cause?: The Intersection Of Rawlings And Knowles, Marissa Perry

Michigan Law Review

The search incident to arrest exception authorizes an officer to search an arrestee’s person and his or her area of immediate control. This exception is based on two historical justifications: officer safety and evidence preservation. While much of search incident to arrest doctrine is settled, tension exists between two Supreme Court cases, Rawlings v. Kentucky and Knowles v. Iowa, and a crucial question remains unanswered: Must an officer decide to make an arrest prior to commencing a search? In Rawlings, the Supreme Court stated that a search may precede a formal arrest if the arrest follows quickly thereafter. In Knowles, …

Scalia On Abortion: Originalism... But, Why?, Robert Cassidy

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

When Scalia Wasn't Such An Originalist, Michael Lewyn

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Concept Of The Speech Platform: Walker V. Texas Division, Abner S. Greene

Faculty Scholarship

In Walker, the Court deemed Texas’ specialty license plate program government speech, and thus applied no First Amendment review to the state’s refusal to allow a Confederate battle flag specialty plate, even though the reason for the refusal was that the plate was offensive. The dissent considered this unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination in a limited public forum. This article argues that the Walker result was correct, but for the wrong reason. Government should have the power to forbid hateful or vulgar speech from limited public forums such as specialty or vanity license plates, transit ads, and after-school extracurricular activities, even though …

The Sherlock Holmes Canon, Anita S. Krishnakumar

Faculty Publications

Many of the Supreme Court’s statutory interpretation cases infer meaning from Congress’s failure to comment in the legislative record. Colorfully referred to as the “dog that did not bark” canon, after a Sherlock Holmes story involving a watchdog that failed to bark while a racehorse was being stolen, the interpretive presumption holds as follows: if a new law or statutory amendment would significantly change the existing legal landscape, Congress can be expected to comment on that change in the legislative record; thus, a lack of congressional comment regarding a significant change can be taken as evidence that Congress did not …

Freedom Of Speech And Equality: Do We Have To Choose?, Nadine Strossen

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

The Changing Life Science Patent Landscape, Arti K. Rai, Jacob S. Sherkow

Articles & Chapters

Over the past two decades, patent law in the life sciences has been buffeted by numerous controversies. With courts, legislatures and patent offices all responding, one could be forgiven for believing that the main constant has been change. In the following article, we look back at some of the major events in life science intellectual property (IP) law and business practice over the past 20 years and then suggest where IP practice in the life sciences may be heading in the coming years.

A Secular Test For A Secular Statute, Abner S. Greene

Faculty Scholarship

This short essay argues that a secular test is available to determine what constitutes a “substantial burden” on religious exercise under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. It takes issue with the Court’s approach that is more deferential to the claimant, and with approaches offered by Professors Sepinwall and Helfand. It resists Sepinwall’s argument that proximity in law tracks a subjective sense of complicity, and it takes issue with Helfand’s argument that examining the substantiality of burden would implicate the religious question doctrine.

Inside The Taft Court: Lessons From The Docket Books, Barry Cushman

Journal Articles

For many years, the docket books kept by certain of the Taft Court Justices have been held by the Office of the Curator of the Supreme Court. Though the existence of these docket books had been brought to the attention of the scholarly community, access to them was highly restricted. In April of 2014, however, the Court adopted new guidelines designed to increase access to the docket books for researchers. This article offers a report and analysis based on a review of all of the Taft Court docket books held by the Office of the Curator, which are the only …

Ilya Somin's The Grasping Hand: Kelo V. City Of New London & The Limits Of Eminent Domain (Book Review), James J. Kelly Jr.

Journal Articles

Ultimately, Somin’s single-minded dedication to a federal constitutional ban on economic development taking prevents the book from offering a full and fair consideration of alternative responses to eminent domain abuse. His survey of the various state legislative reforms enacted as a result of homeowner backlash to Kelo quite rightly points out the shortcomings of populist challenges to sophisticated vested interests. But his blatant aversion to engage with the substantial problems that public purpose land assembly faces without resort to eminent domain closes off any fair comparison of proposals that rival his own, particularly the position of fellow libertarian and ardent …

Forecasting The Senate Vote On The Supreme Court Vacancy, Scott J. Basinger, Maxwell Mak

Publications and Research

This paper forecasts current senators’ votes on Merrick Garland’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court, in the unlikely case that a vote actually takes place. The forecasts are necessarily conditional, awaiting measurement of the nominee’s characteristics. Nonetheless, a model that combines parameters estimated from existing data with values of some measurable characteristics of senators—particularly their party affiliations, party loyalty levels, and ideological positions—is sufficient to identify potential swing voters in the Senate. By accounting for a more nuanced and refined understanding of the confirmation process, our model reveals that if President Obama were to nominate almost any nominee (conservative or …

Substantial Confusion About "Substantial Burdens", Chad Flanders

All Faculty Scholarship

As the Supreme Court rev1s1ts the clash between religious belief and the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in the Zubik¹ case, it is worth mulling over a key phrase in the law that governs that clash: '·substantial burden." According to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), the government must-provided it does not meet certain other conditions, such as showing a compelling interest-make an accommodation if it places a ''substantial burden'' on a person's religious exercise.² If the question in the Hobby Lobby case was whether a for-profit corporation could be a ''person" that ''exercised religion,"³ the question the …

Death Row, Calls For Indifference, And Redemption Of The Soul, Corinna Barrett Lain

Law Faculty Publications

In this Response, I first engage with McLeod’s article, summarizing its key claims and endorsing its call for legislative action, while disagreeing at times with the analytical moves it makes along the way. I then turn to two questions that the article inspired. One stems from comments in the constitutional, academic, and public discourse calling for indifference to the way we treat the condemned in light of the way they treated their victims. Given the depravity of the crimes the condemned have committed, why should we care about the conditions under which they are housed on death row? The other …

Justice Thomas's Kelo Dissent: The Perilous And Political Nature Of Public Purpose, Carol N. Brown

Law Faculty Publications

This Essay submits that the arguments that Justice Thomas constructed in his dissent were appropriately focused on the inherently political nature of the Fifth Amendment's Public Use Clause. Unlike the majority, Justice Thomas recognized that when the Supreme Court broadly interprets the public use restriction of the Fifth Amendment's Takings Clause, and at the same time defers to political actors in this arena, it fundamentally abdicates its constitutional responsibility. By deferring to political actors in this area, the Court in Kelo fundamentally abdicated its responsibility and also adopted a majoritarian doctrinal approach. Further, the Court conflated political ends with constitutional …