The rhetoric surrounding the benefits of local governments has changed: In response to many cities passing progressive local regulations, state and federal legislators have shifted from emphasizing local control to promoting broad state preemption statutes designed to reduce local power. Additionally, as a result of the work of national interest groups, much of this state-level legislation has become increasingly homogenized. Although not an exclusively...
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This Essay seeks to reframe a longstanding debate by propounding a novel theory of judicial candor. Previous commentators on judicial candor have failed to draw a crucial distinction between obligations of candor, breaches of which constitute highly culpable failures, and ideals of candor that even the best judges fail to satisfy fully. This Essay argues for a theory of judicial candor that defines both minimal obligations and aspirational ideals...
This Note analyzes the difficulty that courts have in determining whether nonmarital fathers of Native American children are “parents” within the meaning of the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 (ICWA). Part I recounts the history leading to the enactment of ICWA and provides an overview of the subsequent interpretation of ICWA by the Supreme Court, state courts, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Part II presents the difficulties that...
Section 3(c) of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 provides a seldom-used path to federal preclearance of changes to state and local voting practices. It allows a federal judge, upon finding that a jurisdiction violated the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendment, to require that jurisdiction to submit for preapproval any “voting qualification or prerequisite to voting or standard, practice, or procedure with respect to voting.” Originally intended...
One of the most dramatic exercises of a court’s equitable authority is the nationwide injunction. Although this phenomenon has become more prominent in recent years, it is a routine fixture of the jurisprudence of federal courts. Despite the frequency with which these cases arise, there has been no systematic scholarly or judicial analysis of when courts issue nationwide injunctions and little discussion of when they should issue such relief. Introduction The concept of reproductive negligence is probably not unfamiliar to men and women of child-bearing or child-begetting age. Many a restless hour has been spent worrying about the consequences of a skipped pill, an abandoned condom, or some other form of contraceptive carelessness. The general rule in such circumstances is that the injured party […] Introduction In the years since Citizens United v. FEC, corporate-political-spending disclosure has become an increasingly heated public policy issue. The portion of the Court’s opinion that championed shareholder rights to make decisions about corporate political speech generated a substantial, interdisciplinary literature, and shareholders responded by demanding political-spending disclosure through a bevy of shareholder proposals. However, […] In celebrating the monumental accomplishments of the new form of public law litigation that Constance Baker Motley and her colleagues pioneered, this Essay reinterprets their paradigm-shifting body of work in a manner that obliges the current generation of civil rights advocates to change direction. In the hopes of reengaging the affirmative force of constitutional litigation after decades in which it has waned, this Essay argues that the central... Introduction Constance Baker Motley hardly needs an introduction in American civil rights circles. The first African American female attorney (and only the second female attorney) to join the storied NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF) in 1946 (after graduating from Columbia Law School), Motley was a legendary civil rights lawyer by the time she joined the […] Introduction Constance Baker Motley, the first female attorney of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF), was dedicated to reimagining the nature and scope of civil rights protections in American jurisprudence. Motley’s legal career chronicles the ways in which litigation served to bring about revolutionary social changes in our society. Motley, a staunch believer in the […]