Constitutional Law

A Cautionary Note to Readers of Professor Volokh’s “Cautionary Note”

Pratheepan Gulasekaram - Santa Clara University School of Law

[Editor's note: This comment is in response to a comment by Professor Eugene Volokh on following law review article: Pratheepan Gulasekaram, "The People" of the Second Amendment: Citizenship and the Right To Bear Arms, 85 N.Y.U. L. REV. 1521 (2010). Professor Volokh's comment is also available on the Legal Workshop.]… Read More »

A Cautionary Note for Readers of “The People” of the Second Amendment: Citizenship and the Right To Bear Arms

Eugene Volokh - UCLA School of Law

[Editor's note: This comment is in response to the following law review article: Pratheepan Gulasekaram, "The People" of the Second Amendment: Citizenship and the Right To Bear Arms, 85 N.Y.U. L. REV. 1521 (2010). Professor Gulasekaram's response is also available on the Legal Workshop.]
I read with interest “The People”… Read More »

A Third Way: The Presidential Nonsigning Statement

Ross Wilson

Introduction
In my Note, I propose an alternative to the presidential signing statement that has been hotly debated in the literature in recent years.  By re-examining an often-forgotten constitutional method for enacting laws, I conclude that when the President has certain doubts about the constitutionality of a bill Congress has… Read More »

Coming off the Bench: Legal and Policy Implications of Proposals To Allow Retired Justices To Sit By Designation on the Supreme Court

Lisa McElroy & Michael C. Dorf

In her first term as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, Elena Kagan recused herself from roughly one-third of the cases on the Court’s docket. Although Justices do not typically divulge their grounds for recusing, the reason for all of these recusals was obvious: Kagan… Read More »

A New Approach to Nineteenth-Century Religious Exemption Cases

Wesley J. Campbell

In Employment Division v. Smith (1990), the Supreme Court held that the First Amendment does not afford individuals a right to receive exemptions from neutral and generally applicable laws that incidentally burden their exercise of religion. Although Justice Scalia wrote the majority opinion, the Court’s decision came without any discussion… Read More »

Widening Batson’s Net to Ensnare More Than the Unapologetically Bigoted or Painfully Unimaginative Attorney

Jeffrey Bellin & Junichi Semitsu

In Snyder v. Louisiana, the Supreme Court reaffirmed its commitment to rooting out racially discriminatory jury selection and its belief that the three-step framework established in Batson v. Kentucky is capable of unearthing racially discriminatory peremptory strikes.  Yet, the Court left in place the talismanic protection available to those who might misuse the peremptory challenge— the unbounded collection of justifications that courts, including the Supreme Court, accept as “race-neutral.” Read More »

Ending the Korematsu Era: A View from the Modern War on Terror Cases

Craig Green - Temple University Beasley School of Law

During much of the past decade, government officials have prosecuted a “Global War on Terror” that — they claim — is different from all prior conflicts and is unhinged from ordinary legal limits.  As early as September 2001, however, such claims of novelty ­were accompanied by arguments about history and… Read More »

The Bilateral Fourth Amendment and the Duties of Law-Abiding Persons

L. Rush Atkinson

I.

Ordinary people take countless measures to avoid being searched by police or other government agents.  To get an inkling of how frequently the innocent alter their behavior, consider the responses of law-abiding people to recently enacted counterterrorism programs.  When faced with delays and discomfort caused by more rigorous baggage… Read More »

Promoting Progress with Fair Use

Joshua Mitchell

Intellectual property (IP) law in the United States is off course and headed onto the shoals of ever-increasing protectionism. Copyright law, in particular, has come uncoupled from its constitutionally defined purpose. A tightly circumscribed right intended to incentivize creativity and the spread of knowledge has instead become an ever-expanding monopoly… Read More »

Tradition and Equal Protection

Kim Forde-Mazrui - University of Virginia School of Law

A central point of contention in the debate over same-sex marriage is the importance of preserving tradition. The Article on which this post is based evaluates the role of tradition as a justification for laws challenged on equal protection grounds, focusing on laws that limit marriage to opposite-sex couples. The Article… Read More »