Featured Articles
Latest Issue: Vol. 26 No. 4
Our constitutional law of religious liberty is a riot of principles: principles of freedom of conscience, neutrality, separation of church and state, and others. To resolve concrete disputes, we must identify what those principles are and how they could ever jointly deliver singular answers to constitutional questions. Furthermore, to identify what the principles are, we must grasp what makes them so. This Article aims to meet these three needs. It clarifies what grounds our constitutional principles, sketches what our constitutional principles of religious liberty are today, and explains how the law could ever lie decisively on the side of one litigant or rule over another when individual principles point in opposite directions. It develops and tests its claims by analyzing two questions at the law’s frontiers: whether free exercise principles support a constitutional entitlement to exemption from antidiscrimination obligations beyond what free speech principles alone mandate, and whether publicly chartered religious schools are constitutionally permitted, required, or prohibited.
This is an investigation into the constitutional law of religious liberty, of course. But two of the three essential tasks it tackles—explaining how our principles are what they are and how multiple principles could ever provide determinate legal answers to contested constitutional questions—are critical across all regions of constitutional law. Accordingly, this Article examines the constitutional law of religious liberty both for its own sake and as a window into the fundamental elements and mechanics of American constitutional law generally. Its central arguments are that principles are the building blocks of our constitutional law, that they change organically as legal practices and commitments change, and that they can yield singular constitutional facts or rules despite their plurality.
Can Founding-era understandings of punishment limit the reach of punitive state activity, specifically with respect to automatic collateral consequences? This Article begins to tackle that question. For over a century, the Supreme Court has struggled to define the boundaries of crime and punishment. Under current doctrine, a deprivation constitutes punishment when it furthers a legislatively assigned penal purpose. A retributive purpose is sufficient, whereas traditionally instrumentalist purposes, such as deterrence, rehabilitation, or incapacitation, are not. Scholars have criticized this framework for several reasons, highlighting its jurisprudential assumptions, philosophical confusion, historical inconsistency, unworkability, complexity, and failure to reflect the essentially punitive nature of many, if not most, of the “collateral consequences” that flow from a conviction.
This Article offers a different critique along methodological grounds, arguing that existing doctrine is divorced from core jurisprudential premises in the broader constitutional tradition and the original meaning and understanding of crime and punishment. First, while the American Constitution and legal tradition permit legislative determination of new types of crimes and the quantity of punishment, the understanding of crime and punishment at the time of the Founding was much simpler than the understanding reflected by existing doctrine. Current law mistakenly defers to legislative judgment for resolving the definitional question, all but guaranteeing legislative overreach. Second, the Court’s precedents have restricted the only sufficient penal purpose to retribution despite significant philosophical and legal history suggesting early American thinkers, reformers, and the Framers considered other purposes to be punitive. Founding era attitudes relating to the justifications for and purposes of punishment, and the types of deprivations carried out by the state in the wake of conviction, suggest a thicker understanding of punishment that contemplates both retributive and instrumentalist purposes.
In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court held that there is no constitutional right to abortion. The decision has had a devastating impact on people seeking abortions in many states, and it will have an even more profound effect on the rights and lives of minors. Pregnant minors face greater risks than pregnant adults when they are forced to continue a pregnancy that can harm their physical and mental health and their educational and financial futures. Very young minors are incapable of consenting to the sexual acts that result in pregnancy, but many states require even these young rape victims to sacrifice their health and well-being—and potentially their lives—for the sake of a future child.
But the Dobbs opinion also calls into question other constitutional rights of minors. In Dobbs the Supreme Court interpreted its prior holdings to recognize a substantive right under the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause only for (1) “rights guaranteed by the first eight Amendments,” and (2) a “select list” of unenumerated fundamental rights. “In deciding whether a right falls into either of these categories, the Court has long asked whether the right is ‘deeply rooted in [our] history and tradition’ and whether it is essential to our Nation’s 'scheme of ordered liberty.” If a right does not fall within either of those categories, it is not entitled to substantive constitutional protection under that provision. The Court concluded that the right to abortion was not protected by the Constitution.
In 2010, the Supreme Court held in Padilla v. Kentucky that criminal defense attorneys have a constitutional obligation to advise noncitizen clients of the immigration consequences of a guilty plea in criminal court proceedings. Though it has been over a decade since the decision, little research has been done regarding Padilla’s implementation by defense counsel on a statewide level. This Article provides findings from a case study on Padilla advising in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is unique because its state courts have interpreted Padilla narrowly and permit immigration advisals that would be deemed constitutionally deficient in other jurisdictions. Pennsylvania also does not have a state-funded public defense system, which means standards for indigent representation vary by county.
As the Founding generation understood the word, “Speaker” meant an elected member of the House. Yet modern representatives nominate non-House-members for the speakership—and many argue the practice is constitutional. To correct this constitutional drift, this Article closely analyzes the text of the Speaker Clause, the structure of the Constitution, and 700 years of history and tradition to show that the Constitution requires the Speaker of the House to be a member of the House. It also considers the practicalities of correcting this drift. If, as this Article argues, the Constitution bars nonmembers from the speakership, who can enforce that rule, especially if Congress itself is the one violating it? Though the Speaker Clause likely is not justiciable, Congress has an independent duty—equally important to that of the judiciary—to uphold the Constitution.
A few years ago, conversations about artificial intelligence (“AI”) were confined to the pages of books and the ivory towers of academia. Now, even older generations know that AI makes many of the decisions in their lives. The heightened public awareness around AI has generated exciting conversations about its potential to push society into the future but it has also raised concerns about AI’s safety and inherent fairness. These concerns raises the following question: Can I trust a “robot” or automated system that makes decisions on my behalf?
As the use of AI by federal agencies continues to grow, concerns have been raised about the potential for “corporate capture of public power.” As many government agencies lack the expertise and resources to develop their own AI models, they rely on private companies to create them, leading to questions about bias and privacy safeguards in automated systems. These concerns add to the larger conversation about the trustworthiness of AI decision makers in our daily lives.
Vol. 26 No. 3
Our nation is in the middle of a constitutional revolution. While many periods of constitutional transformation have arisen out of large-scale political realignments, the Roberts Court Revolution is a product of our nation’s long (and unusual) political interregnum. Even as neither political party has managed to secure enough support to reconstruct our nation’s politics, the Roberts Court—with its young and ambitious conservative majority—has already moved quickly to reconsider key pillars of the existing constitutional regime. This represents a challenging moment for the Roberts Court and its institutional legitimacy. To counteract this danger, the Justices might return to an old idea—one that has both seduced and vexed scholars and Justices alike for generations: constitutional statesmanship. When wrestling with the statesmanship ideal, theorists are often inclined to simply shrug their shoulders, concede that a precise definition is impossible, and suggest that we often know statesmanship when we see it. We can do better. In this Article, I define constitutional statesmanship for our age of constitutional revolution. Drawing on a diverse set of theorists and methodological approaches—most notably, Ronald Dworkin’s famous concept of “fit”—I argue that constitutional statesmanship is best understood as the balance between three modes of analysis: (1) legal fit (relying on conventional legal materials and arguments); (2) popular fit (drawing on concrete indicators of current public opinion); and (3) pragmatic fit (factoring in predictions about public responses, policy consequences, and assessments by legal elites).
This Article identifies a radical transformation in constitutional law methodology: the central project of constitutional analysis has changed from offering value-neutral theories of interpretation to observing and critiquing conservative forces that undermine popular self-rule. This is most apparent in scholarly reactions to the Roberts Court’s refusal to strike down legislation that promulgates voter suppression, partisan gerrymandering, and abortion restrictions. Scholars treat these decisions to leave legislation standing as a direct assault on democracy, a distinction previously reserved for decisions that struck down legislation (such as Lochner v. New York). This new paradigm indicates a radical realignment in academic evaluation of judicial review, with a focus on substance rather than procedure. This Article illuminates this shift by observing scholars’ novel invocation of the ‘countermajoritarian difficulty.’ Widely recognized as the obsession of law professors for the past century, the countermajoritarian difficulty traditionally queries, why do non-accountable judges have authority to interdict decisions by elected representatives? The threat of far-right extremism has inspired constitutional law scholars to use countermajoritarianism to denote any political influence – the conservative-dominated judiciary, Republican legislatures, or polarized right-wing voters – that is perceived as exacerbating democratic backsliding. This changing use of countermajoritarianism portends a wider shift in constitutional theory. The classical approach to the countermajoritarian difficulty aspires to use general principles of constitutional analysis to reconcile independent judicial review with popular self-determination. This approach provides abstract explanations of constitutional interpretation and avoids openly committing to ideological or policy positions. Conversely, the new trend defines any threat to legitimate democratic self-governance as countermajoritarian. PCM constitutional theory thus takes as its starting point a set of substantive moral commitments. Polarized countermajoritarianism has a dramatic effect on doctrinal analysis. Traditionally, scholars invoke countermajoritarianism when courts strike down legislation. The new trend identifies it where courts allow legislation to stand but such inaction fails to protect democratic process against attacks from the far right. This Article posits that this radical shift in doctrinal analysis is a response to the loss of civic unity and democratic consensus in American politics. Polarized countermajoritarianism highlights the fragile condition of contemporary democracy but linquishes the analytic clarity of classical countermajoritarianism—a tradeoff scholars and jurists must incorporate into future analysis.
The 2020 presidential race was hard fought—before Election Day, and after. The loser, Donald Trump, spent weeks pressuring state legislatures to overturn his defeats. His arguments hinged on Article II of the U.S. Constitution, which, his lawyers insisted, permitted legislatures to intervene. While no legislature did so in 2020, the specter of postelection legislative interference still threatens our elections and risks a constitutional crisis.
This Article explains why Article II permits no such thing. Specifically, it argues that Article II’s grant of power—whatever its content—must be read as directed only toward pre-election legislatures, not postelection ones. This claim fills major gaps in the literature. First, previous scholarship assumes that Article II is silent, or ambiguous, on postelection interference. Blocking interventions would then depend on other authorities—like the Due Process Clause or state-constitutional provisions—ill-suited for the job. This Article shows, however, that Article II itself unambiguously bars postelection interference. Second, this Article sidesteps the debate about “independent state legislature” (ISL) theory—the focus of most scholarship on the 2020 election. Its argument holds, that is, regardless of what one believes about ISL doctrine. At the same time, this argument remains vital even after the Supreme Court snubbed ISL logic in Moore v. Harper. That decision leaves ample room, this Article argues, for Bush v. Gore-style debacles that foil state courts in constraining rogue legislatures.
To support its position, this Article advances four separate contentions, each sufficient to compel the above conclusion. The first contention analyzes Article II’s text according to intratextualist principles. The second unpacks the Framers’ original understanding of Article II. The third examines the original understanding behind Congress’s election-timing statute, which gives effect to Article II, Section 1, Clause 4. The fourth analyzes constitutional purpose. Finally, this Article also explains why the original understanding of Congress’s election-day statute—which let legislatures handpick presidential electors if their state “fail[ed]” to choose on Election Day—did not permit such handpicking after the 2020 election.
When the U.S. Supreme Court in the 2019 case of Franchise Tax Board v. Hyatt held that the Constitution bars private suits against a state in another state’s courts, it endorsed a surprisingly shallow conception of state sovereign power. But the doctrinal alternative from the now-overruled Nevada v. Hall is no better. Where Hyatt gives too much constitutional protection to would-be defendant states, Hall gives too little. And both approaches mistakenly conceive of interstate sovereign immunity as an on/off switch that the Constitution locks in one position.
Finding neither Hyatt III nor Hall satisfactory, I offer a third view. The Full Faith and Credit Clause was meant to ensure that states extend to each other dignity and respect for their sovereign duties. In the case of private suits against a defendant state in another state’s court, these sovereign duties conflict, and it is impossible for a forum state to preserve the sovereign duties of another state without impairing its own. To ensure full faith and credit, the Constitution, I argue, requires that states extend sovereign immunity to their sister states only when doing so maximizes the total sovereign power available to both states. In my view, this approach to interstate sovereign immunity is more consistent with the crucial value precipitated by the Constitution and enshrined in our federal system: states respect each other.
Congress passed the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA) to maximize voter registration opportunities and correct a century of discriminatory and overly complicated State voter registration laws. Section 7 of the NVRA was designed to increase voter registration among low-income and minority citizens by requiring States to provide voter registration services at public assistance agencies. However, a three-decade campaign by state governments to resist implementing the NVRA has undermined its effectiveness.
As a part of this campaign, States interpret Section 7 narrowly to limit its scope. Under Section 7, each State must designate as Voter Registration Agencies (VRAs) “all offices in the State that provide public assistance.” Congress used this broad language out of a concern that states would limit the number of Voter Registration Agencies. However, this is exactly what States have done. Notably, no State has ever designated Public Housing Authorities (PHAs) as Voter Registration Agencies.
Public Housing Authorities are state agencies that administer housing aid programs funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). PHAs serve millions of low-income and minority citizens who are least likely to be registered to vote. Providing voter registration services at PHAs would effectively increase democratic participation and diversify the electorate. This paper argues that the plain text and legislative intent of the NVRA require States to designate Public Housing Authorities as Voter Registration Agencies.
This paper uses prior case law and statutory interpretation techniques to demonstrate that PHAs are “offices in the State” that “provide public assistance.” These are the only requirements under Section 7. Therefore, States are out of compliance with the NVRA for failing to designate PHAs as VRAs. This paper recommends that the U.S. Department of Justice and private citizens use the statutory right of action included in the NVRA to force State compliance.
Vol. 26 No. 2
Contrary to its critics, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is not illegitimate or lawless. It is a highly consequential but fundamentally ordinary example of the inextricable connections between morality and constitutional law. If abortion is akin to murder, Dobbs could not—and should not—have come out any other way. If abortion is essential to personal autonomy and equal citizenship, the case was wrongly decided and should be reversed at the earliest opportunity.
The appropriate response to decisions like Dobbs is to criticize the moral judgments underlying them. Depending on the circumstances, institutional responses, such as court packing and jurisdiction stripping, might also be justified. But conflating moral disagreement with lawlessness is both unpersuasive and a distraction from the core issue. It is also a form of crying wolf that risks backfiring when the charge of lawlessness is actually justified.
The United States Constitution is the foundation of American law and one of the most venerated documents in the American political community. Although most constitutional scholarship focuses on the meaning of the more heavily litigated provisions, such as the equal protection clause and the due process clause, prior scholarship has also identified and pressed for the revival or re-interpretation of many neglected or largely overlooked provisions of the United States Constitution. Much of this prior scholarship, however, is narrowly focused on a particular provision or small set of interrelated provisions. This article surveys twelve constitutional provisions characterized in prior scholarship as “lost” or “forgotten,” and summarizes the arguments advanced in prior scholarship for their revival or resurrection.
When viewed collectively rather than in isolation, these twelve provisions are more than the sum of their parts. This Article argues that, taken together, these overlooked or neglected provisions constitute a ‘shadow’ constitution within the prevailing one. This article deconstructs the organizational structure and key component elements of the U.S. Constitution and demonstrates how the dormant or neglected provisions interlock and complement to form a coherent but operationally absent constitutional structure. This absence, through disuse and neglect, has not only vitiated our constitutional inheritance, but would, if fully reincorporated into the prevailing constitution and accompanying body of constitutional enforcement and interpretation, afford far greater protection and security to marginalized groups while holding more powerful elements of society to account.
The United States is a public toilet nightmare. Truly public toilets are a rarity, while the restrooms provided by private businesses are inconsistently available via “customer only” policies and the discriminatory actions of owners and their employees. Some jurisdictions have made tepid attempts at providing more bathrooms, but all have failed. The result: an accumulation of entirely preventable public health harms, including outbreaks of infectious disease, illness, and dignitary harms.
This Article is the first to provide a comprehensive review of U.S. toilet law—the laws and policies that determine where bathrooms are provided and who has access to them—and diagnose its failings. Despite municipal, state, and federal actors’ efforts to expand availability, members of the public are too often forced to rely on the private provision of bathrooms. It is clear that the status quo has failed to address this most basic human biological necessity.
This Article makes the case that recognizing a state constitutional right to public bathrooms is the best way to address this problem. Drawing from recent developments in international human rights, it sets forth the basis on which courts could recognize a right to public toilets as part of a state constitution’s public health provision.
Academic freedom is an essential principle undergirding education in the United States. Its purpose is to further the freedom of thought and inquiry in the academic profession by advancing knowledge and the search for truth. Academic freedom goes back more than a century, and is now intertwined with First Amendment doctrine. Yet today’s academic freedom doctrine suffers from serious problems, some of which perpetuate discrimination in the classroom and systemically in educational institutions.
The definition of academic freedom in theory is misaligned with that in case law. Courts have done little to analyze what protections academic freedom provides, and case law generally provides too much protection in some cases, and too little in others. Worse, academic freedom for universities and professors has been hotly debated and thus well-defined and protected in case law, whereas students’ academic freedom has received less attention, making it a “second-tier” academic freedom. Often, protecting university and professors’ academic freedom comes at the expense of students’ academic freedom, though courts have never truly struggled with multistakeholder academic freedom questions or tried to create a clear process to determine whose academic freedom prevails when the two conflict. This results in academic freedom being used as a sword to promote discriminatory behavior, and as a shield to protect acts of discrimination from being punished. Existing constitutional and statutory antidiscrimination protections do not provide adequate support against discrimination, especially for students’ academic freedom. Constitutional protections for students’ academic freedom often take the back seat to free speech doctrine, and antidiscrimination protections are often parried by using academic freedom to protect problematic behavior.
A few solutions abound: first, the definition of academic freedom is nearly a century old, and needs to be redefined to incorporate antidiscrimination principles to be relevant for the present. Second, students’ academic freedom rights need to be understood and defined more clearly. Third, courts must find a way to balance competing stakeholders’ academic freedom interests, ultimately looking to the purpose of academic freedom to advance knowledge. Finally, universities must play their part by creating systems and structures to ensure that discrimination is remedied as early as possible, and that university processes help clarify the extent of academic freedom definitions and support application of antidiscrimination law.
On April 1st, 1997, Eric Oliver was arrested by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and detained at the Clark County Detention Center (CCDC). For the first two days of his detention, Oliver was locked in a 404 square foot cell with around fifty other detainees. On April 3rd, he was transferred to a smaller cell, only 174 square feet, where he was kept with eighteen other people. For the following three days, Oliver was locked in the cell with no bed and no linens. He and the other detainees slept on the floors with intense overhead lighting and extreme air conditioning that “chilled [him] to the bone.” Oliver requested medical attention for a back condition, but his request was denied. After his release from jail, Oliver filed a § 1983 action against the management, Clark County, and the Clark County Sheriff, alleging violations of his Fourteenth Amendment rights.
Since Oliver brought his suit in Nevada, his claim for compensatory damages survived a motion to dismiss, even though he was not able to demonstrate a physical injury. This was notable because § 1997e(e) of the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) creates a physical injury requirement for incarcerated people who bring § 1983 claims. However, if Oliver had lived in Philadelphia, New York, or a number of other cities across the country, his claim for compensatory damages would have been dismissed. These disparate outcomes would have been the result of the different ways courts interpret the physical injury requirement of the PLRA. In this particular instance, Oliver’s claim survived because he was in the Ninth Circuit. Claims in Philadelphia or New York would have been governed by the Third and Second Circuits, respectively, both of which have case law that would prevent the award of compensatory damages.
Vol. 26 No. 1
There is anger among many at the growing recognition that this conservative Supreme Court is marching, not resting. That little of the past—like precedent—will constrain it. And that the decisions of the preceding terms—overturning Roe v. Wade, expanding the “right to bear arms,” ending affirmative action, among other extraordinary decisions— are just the beginning of a long and cold jurisprudential winter.
Many on the Left have responded by proposing ambitious strategies for resisting the Court. There are calls for court packing, and for the impeachment of faithless justices. Two of the most prominent among younger American law professors have declared the “need is not to reclaim the Constitution, as many would have it, but instead to reclaim America from constitutionalism.”
This response is a mistake. The right strategy to answer people who believe that they are doing right is not to try to convince them their principles are wrong. It is to show them that they are not following their principles. The answer to the growing originalist majority on the United States Supreme Court is not to attack originalism, but to show how incomplete and inconsistent this Court’s originalism has become.
“History is a jangle of accidents, blunders, surprises and absurdities, and so is our knowledge of it, but if we are to report it at all we must impose some order upon it.”
Beginning in the early 1990s, the Executive Branch took a novel approach to the enforcement of federal firearms offenses. It replaced traditional notions of restraint with a newfound willingness to exercise its power broadly, leading to a sharp increase in the number of federal firearms offenders that continues today. A recent development, however, threatens to dismantle the core of the federal firearms scheme. Decided in 2022, the effects of New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen are already being felt. Several courts, including one circuit court, have already struck down a potpourri of federal firearms statutes. This trend may continue to gain momentum, or it may be stopped in its tracks by a new Supreme Court decision that places limits on Bruen. But it is unlikely to fizzle out on its own.
This article seeks to understand these recent events as distinct modern phenomena. To do so, it creates a holistic, conceptual framework that situates the developments of the last thirty years within the broader, global history of the federal government’s approach to firearms crime. The framework organizes the story of federal firearms policy into a series of conceptual narrative clusters—or acts—each with its own characters, conflicts, and shared views about the role of law in society. Through this framework, themes and trajectories emerge, shedding valuable light on our understanding not only of where we are and where we have been, but also of where we are going in our federal approach to firearms crime. As the first article that paints a comprehensive picture of federal firearms policy in this way, and as one of the first to address the emerging post-Bruen legislation, it will also add structure, focus, and energy to important ongoing scholarly discussions.
In this piece, I examine the immigration enforcement and adjudication system as a whole from the perspective of life and death. Drawing upon social theory frames as well as legal scholarship, I look to how doctrines and laws continually devalue and risk noncitizens’ lives. Although scholarly work has examined how differing aspects of immigration law and enforcement take lives—e.g., via detention, cross-border shootings, and deportation— explorations have yet to consider the system as a whole from this perspective.
My contribution illuminates how laws as well as legal doctrines serve as mechanisms for assigning differential value to human life, ultimately taking immigrants’ lives. They do so in part by normalizing death as the inevitable cost of upholding the rule of law. And yet, there is nothing normal or inevitable about the myriad policy choices, statutory provisions, and evacuations of constitutional protection that undergird immigration law and enforcement. These choices form an architecture that, in the words of Achille Mbembe, “subjugate(s) life to the power of death.”1 I consider death by design, death by enforcement, death by denial, and death by expulsion—then show how jurisprudence and laws accept and contribute to these deaths. In the final sections of my paper, I consider how we might dismantle the assumptions, laws, doctrines that devalue and take noncitizen life throughout our immigration system.
The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania holds that Section 13 of the State’s constitution, which prohibits all “cruel punishments,” is coextensive with the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits only punishments that are both “cruel and unusual.” Rather than analyze the state provision independently, the court defers to the U.S. Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Eighth Amendment. This, says the court, is because Pennsylvania history does not provide evidence that the Commonwealth’s prohibition differs from the federal one. And without that historical basis, the court believes it is bound by federal precedent. This is mistaken.
History reveals that Pennsylvanians had a distinct, original understanding of “cruelty.” The U.S. Supreme Court has said that the original meaning of the federal provision parroted English criminal prohibitions, permitted retributive justifications, and proscribed only pain superadded beyond death through methods left in the past. This understanding is irreconcilable with the original meaning of Section 13. The Commonwealth’s provision, by contrast, parroted Enlightenment criminal philosophy, permitted only deterrence and rehabilitative justifications, and prohibited the addition of any severity contemporary science deemed unnecessary for those ends. The historical record should thus provide, not prevent, a distinctly Pennsylvanian definition of cruelty.
This article provides that historical account. It reviews the influence of Montesquieu and Beccaria’s writings on the speeches, pamphlets, and debates of founding Pennsylvanians. It also traverses the text, legislative history, and early Supreme Court of Pennsylvania interpretation of the first penal laws in the Independent State. This penal code, which circumscribed capital punishment and augured the age of the penitentiary, distilled the distinctly Pennsylvania conception of “cruelty” into law. This was the philosophy Pennsylvanians encapsulated in their prohibition on cruel punishments.
Section 13 jurisprudence should therefore build—independently—from the original meaning Pennsylvania’s history supplies.
Imagine receiving a letter in the mail from a credit card company, notifying you of your “pre-approved” status. Relief after being exempted from the complicated screening process, happiness at the prospect of an elevated credit score, elation at receiving a shiny new card in the mail. These are all common feelings when receiving an enticing credit card offer. How then would it feel if you applied, but were quickly denied? And afterwards, that your credit score plummeted due to the ensuing credit report inquiries? The parade of horribles does not stop there. Not only must you face the embarrassment of rejection and the unwarranted drop in your credit score, but also the reality of your new credit score negatively impacting future applications. This exact chain of events led to the FTC bringing a complaint against Credit Karma in 2022. While Credit Karma eventually paid upwards of $3 billion to affected consumers, many defrauded consumers are not so lucky. The current state of commercial speech regulations can make recovery difficult, if not impossible, because they center on the speaker’s right to freely promulgate ideas. Advertisements qualify as protected speech under the First Amendment so long as they are not blatantly deceptive. Even if a challenge is brought against deceptive advertising schemes, Unfair and Deceptive Practice Statutes (“UDAP”) are unwieldy in practice and can be riddled with loopholes that allow an advertiser to escape liability.
Vol. 25 No. 6
It is my honor to give the Owen J. Roberts lecture in constitutional law, named for a former dean of this law school and for a Supreme Court Justice perhaps most famous for casting the deciding vote in the 1937 case West Coast Hotel v. Parrish, which upheld a state minimum wage law and averted passage of a judicial reform bill to increase the size of the Supreme Court—the so- called “switch in time that saved nine.” Justice Roberts is also known for leading the federal commission that investigated the attack on Pearl Harbor and for being one of three dissenters in Korematsu v. United States, which upheld the relocation and incarceration of persons of Japanese descent during World War II, two-thirds of whom were American citizens.
It is also my honor to give the Provost’s Lecture on Diversity. This topic has long been a matter of personal and professional interest for me. Like many people who grew up in an immigrant family, I’ve had my share of experiences navigating racial and ethnic differences. As a judge, I have seen issues of implicit bias and structural bias play out in areas like jury selection, search and seizure, and the criminal justice system writ large.
Intent on reconciling constitutional theory to political reality, public law scholars have in recent decades dismissed as naïve both the logic of the Constitution’s design set forth in The Federalist and the Framers’ dismal view of political parties. They argue that, contrary to the Madisonian vision, competition between our two national political parties undergirds the horizontal and vertical separation of powers. But, in calling attention to the fights that take place between political parties, they underestimate the constitutional significance of the conflicts that persist within them. Reconsidering the law and theory of the separation of powers with attention to intraparty conflict, the Article explains why neither the traditional Madisonian—nor the contemporary party-based—model of the separation of powers accurately characterizes how political parties structure our constitutional framework.
The Article makes several contributions. Descriptively, it argues that intraparty conflict can immunize our constitutional system from the pathologies that arise when partisan warfare is overlayed on the Madisonian model of separated institutions sharing power. Analytically, it argues that public law scholars are wrong to treat partisanship as an identity—a fixed psychological state characteristic of individual officeholders. As the Article makes clear, partisanship is better understood as the product of institutional rules and procedures that empower partisans to join forces or go their own way. Likewise, it argues that there are analytic gains from categorizing decisions on campaign finance, candidate selection, and voter suppression as part of our separation of powers and federalism jurisprudence and explains how doing so might bear on traditional questions of constitutional law. Today, as was true at the Founding, Americans have no great love for intraparty conflict or party factionalism. But fear of the mischiefs of faction have blinded us to their merits. Preoccupied as we are by the pathologies of political polarization, we have failed to understand that the relative porousness of our parties—the very feature that drives internal party conflict—has helped to safeguard our republic and ensure the representativeness of our institutions.
“We are a nation of travelers. You cannot write our history without devoting many chapters to the pony express, the stagecoach, the railroad, the automobile, the airplane . . . . Yet, until 1964, the Federal Government did little or nothing to help the urban commuter.” President Lyndon B. Johnson’s remarks, at the signing of the Urban Mass Transportation Act, memorialized transportation evolution. His remarks also reinforced the role of federal funding to support urban commuters—many who are African American. Yet, disparate transportation funding continues to exclude people of color and people living in poverty from traveling to and benefiting from all services in their cities.
Caroline LeCount, Claudette Colvin, Irene Morgan, and Rosa Parks’ refusal to relinquish their seats and the ghastly beatings of freedom riders also document the legacy of exclusionary transportation practices. Getting on the bus symbolized mobility, access to opportunities, and ending segregated public transportation. In addition to protesting segregated buses, the 381- day Montgomery bus boycott exposed the role of transportation as a valued resource affecting economies, government operations, and employment. Similarly, the Supreme Court’s ruling that separate but equal is inherently unequal did more than integrate buses. The Court’s ruling signaled enhanced regulating of transportation systems and limiting the right to exclude in those systems.
Constitution-writing, according to the United Nations, should be participatory, non-exclusionary, and transparent. Recent scholarship has identified group inclusion, or ensuring that a broad swath of enfranchised groups is welcomed into the drafting room, as the lodestar of constitutional process.
In making this comparative case—one which has important implications for modern constitution-writing— scholarship provides precious little empirical evidence, particularly from the historical genre. This ignores the benefit of studying the oldest constitution-writing traditions in America and all that can be learned by tracing a practice or idea to its roots.
This study, the first monogram on New Hampshire’s five constitution-writing processes between 1776-1784, provides needed empirical evidence for linking a constitution’s legitimacy to getting all the right groups “in the room where it happened” and suggests further theoretical links between constitutional process and a constitution’s medium and long-term legitimacy. It also provides the first detailed telling of the moment when the theory of popular sovereignty was made real through the earliest popular constitution-writing and further participatory innovations not repeated for another 200 years in Africa.
This study first reviews relevant extant literature on domestic and comparative constitutionalism before proceeding to an in-depth study of New Hampshire’s five constitutional processes. The first process produced a temporary constitution on January 5, 1776. This crude, 911-word document heralded the first epoch of popular sovereignty- inspired constitution-writing. New Hampshire’s next three attempts were instituted via popular sovereignty innovations of constitutional conventions, supermajoritarian ratification, direct popular participation in constitution drafting via town recommendations, and special issue constitutional referenda, but all were stillborn. This because each excluded the western-most portion of the state. It was not until the process included representatives from this area “in the room [where the constitution] happened” that a draft was finally ratified in 1784.
In the last few decades, the Supreme Court adjudicated three major cases on standing for environmental litigants: Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife (Lujan II), Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Environmental Services (TOC), and Massachusetts v. EPA. Lujan II considers a multitude of questions in this inquiry. There, the Court deliberates on the specificity of injuries alleged to occur in the future, the contours of three nexus theories, and the judicial review of procedural injuries. Thereafter, Laidlaw assesses whether it is reasonable for plaintiffs to be apprehensive of the alleged future injuries. Then, Massachusetts contemplates procedural injury again, where the Court contemplates Congress’s power to influence standing requirements. These cases provide rich discussions on standing for environmental litigants; yet, the Fifth Circuit does not integrate their doctrines.
This Comment focuses on the Fifth Circuit, due to the Circuit’s critical coverage of Texas and Louisiana. These states house the largest petrochemical complexes in the United States, which affect surrounding air and waterbodies through their industrial operations. Water pollution is potent for those living near the Texas Gulf Coast, which is exposed to the nation’s highest level of toxic releases. In terms of air pollution, Texas and Louisiana emit the highest amounts of petrochemical pollutants. These releases pose health risks for nearby residents, as these chemicals are conducive to developmental damage, cancer, and elderly mortality. The influence of environmental law—and its enforcement through litigation—is particularly salient in the Fifth Circuit’s jurisdiction.
This Comment will examine cases where the Fifth Circuit could benefit from the Supreme Court’s analysis of standing in cases arising from pollution. First, the basis for environmental litigation will be outlined; Part I will explore the congressional intent behind citizen suit provisions, and Part II will outline the general requirements of Article III standing. Then, Part III will discuss the Supreme Court’s standing analysis in environmental litigation, focusing on Lujan II, Laidlaw, and Massachusetts. Finally, Part IV will compare these Supreme Court precedents to the Fifth Circuit’s caselaw, wherein missed opportunities to draw factual and logical parallels will be identified. This discussion will be focused on the specificity of injury, the judicial authority to review procedural injury, and the adoption of the nexus theories.
Few figures in American history have faded farther from renown to obscurity than John Taylor of Caroline. John Taylor was not only a widely respected United States Senator and leading member of Thomas Jefferson’s Republican party, but he was also, in the opinion of British political scientist M.J.C. Vile, “the most impressive political theorist that America has produced.” An Antifederalist lawyer and farmer, Taylor made such thoughtful contributions to the development of the Republican party and the philosophy of states’ rights that American constitutional scholar and historian Kevin R. C. Gutzman identified him as “Virginia’s favorite thinker” over the course of the Revolutionary period to the antebellum era. Taylor wrote profusely over the course of his life, devoting most of his attention to expounding the meaning of the American Revolution, the substance of the Constitution, and the principles of the American polity. But despite consensus “[a]mong specialists in the field of American intellectual history and political thought” that Taylor “deserves the status of a major thinker,” Taylor is little known by most audiences today. And even though historians, political scientists, and legal scholars “have often agreed that Taylor was important, they have seldom agreed why.” This Comment highlights one aspect of Taylor’s thought that warrants particular attention because of its relevance to modern discussions of federalism, separation of powers, and states’ rights in hopes of bringing Taylor’s work into the light it merits.
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The United States Supreme Court is expected to issue its highly anticipated decision in United States v. Rahimi by the end of its current term. The case, which considers whether the federal law barring individuals subject to protection orders from possessing firearms violates the Second Amendment, provides the Court an early opportunity to clarify its June 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. In Bruen, the Court articulated a new test for determining the constitutionality of modern-day gun regulations which requires an examination of the nation’s historical tradition of firearms laws. The Bruen test, described in more detail below, has created chaos in the lower courts, with opposing outcomes on a wide variety of gun regulations. Despite this disarray, it was somewhat unusual for the Court to grant certiorari on another Second Amendment case so quickly after Bruen. The Court’s hands are somewhat tied; it cannot, realistically, overrule Bruen after only two years in effect (nor is the government requesting that outcome). On the other hand, the Court also cannot allow Bruen to continue to produce the varied results it has. Rather, the Court can – and must – use Rahimi as a vehicle for providing additional guidance to the lower courts. It must not only reverse the Fifth Circuit’s decision, but do so in a way that offers a roadmap to lower courts to achieve consistency and commonsense results on the constitutionality of gun regulations moving forward.
Are administrative agencies illegitimate? A threat to democracy? A threat to liberty? To human welfare? To defining constitutional commitments? Many people think so. But an understanding of the actual operation of the administrative state, seen from the inside, makes it difficult to object to “rule by unelected bureaucrats” or “an unelected fourth branch of government.” Such an understanding casts a new light on some large objections from the standpoint of democracy, liberty, and welfare; indeed, it makes those objections seem coarse and largely uninformed. What is needed is more conceptual and empirical work on welfare and distributive justice, and on how regulators can increase both.
Climate change threatens nearly every corner of human life and may structurally change the global financial system. Investors increasingly demand information about how climate change may impact their investments. In response, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission issued a proposed rule that would require registered companies to disclose certain climate-related information in their registration statements and annual reports. But some critics argue that this proposed rule is unconstitutional under the Supreme Court’s current doctrine on compelled and commercial speech.
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We have another #GuessTheAmendment for you today! What amendment do these emojis represent: 🚫👿🤪⛓️🔐
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Read more about the tech cases in front of the Supreme Court this term from Penn professor Amanda Shanor for… https://t.co/ijWs2eZI4l
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We have another #GuessTheAmendment for you today! What amendment do these emojis represent: 🧑⚖️ 🏃💨 👀 👀 👀
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The Supreme Court heard argument yesterday in United States v. Hansen, a free speech challenge to a federal ban on… https://t.co/96nnJfVZ0H