Kurt T. Lash
University of Illinois College of Law
Constitutional scholars generally believe that the majority of the Supreme Court in The Slaughterhouse Cases erred in their narrow construction of the Privileges or Immunities Clause. Justice Samuel Miller’s attempt to distinguish the privileges and immunities of Article IV from the privileges or immunities of Section One is particularly vilified… Read More »
There has been a lot of talk about post-racialism since the 2008 election of Barack Obama as the first black President of the United States. Some have argued that the Obama election illustrates the evolution of the nation from its unfortunate racist past to a more admirable post-racial present in… Read More »
Hannah Wiseman
- University of Texas Law School
Place matters. No matter one’s income, and no matter one’s status as a renter or homeowner, the communities where we spend our lives strongly affect our daily enjoyment of life. The appearance of these communities is a strong component of this satisfaction. Concerns about the physical appearance of neighborhoods and… Read More »
Can women capture the benefits of equal citizenship in a legal system that does not mandate accommodations for pregnant workers? This Article argues that they cannot. Current pregnancy discrimination law, which bases the right to work on full capacity, systematically deprives women of equal opportunity to make use of their… Read More »
That some religious beliefs clash with the gay rights movement is undeniable. When these interests conflict in the form of litigation and both sides adopt the rhetoric of rights, the resulting rights clash challenges the United States legal system’s ability to come to a principled result. While the public views… Read More »
Jeffrey S. Morrow
- 2010 J.D. Candidate, Georgetown Law School
Genetic discrimination is unfair. This observation is, by all accounts, largely uncontroversial. As a result of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 (GINA), which took effect in late November, genetic discrimination is also now illegal. GINA prohibits employers from using genetic information in employment decisions and prohibits health insurers from… Read More »
Statutory construction generally involves rules of thumb that are said to allow readers to draw inferences about the meaning of a particular statute. These “canons of construction” (also known as maxims of interpretation) guide the methods and sources used in statutory interpretation and are usually deployed according to an interpreter’s… Read More »
The Supreme Court’s 1971 decision in Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics plays a central role in our system of constitutional remedies. Yet critics have long questioned the Bivens Court’s decision to fashion a federal common law right of action to enforce the Fourth Amendment. While… Read More »
The “enrolled bill” doctrine (EBD) requires courts to accept the signatures of the Speaker of the House and President of the Senate on an “enrolled bill” as unimpeachable evidence that the bill has been constitutionally enacted. This doctrine has the powerful effect of preventing judicial review of the legislative process—that is,… Read More »
Benjamin Means
- University of South Carolina School of Law
In a recent article published by the Georgetown Law Journal, I criticize the inflexibility of existing law concerning claims of minority shareholder oppression in close corporations. A more satisfactory approach, I contend, would encourage courts to vary their level of scrutiny, requiring detailed justification from controlling shareholders when the minority… Read More »