Constitutional Law

This past term, the Supreme Court in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District (2022) formally overturned the notorious Lemon test that had governed Establishment Clause jurisprudence for more than a half-century.

Federal habeas corpus can appear to many as a convoluted minefield.

Imagine that a convicted felon in Illinois is pulled over by the police. He hasn’t smoked all day. Stuffed in his coat pocket, however, is a baggy containing marijuana residue—a remnant from several days prior.

In August 2021, the Honorable Miranda M. Du, Chief Judge for the district court of the District of Nevada, struck down 8 U.S.C § 1326, the federal criminal statute that addresses “illegal reentry” into the United States.

Content warning: discussion of suicide.

The substantive Fifth Amendment ideal of preventing the federal government from aiding systemic discrimination receded because of increasing challenges to its substance, judicial fatigue with institutional oversight, and the sweeping scope of the problem—along with collective amnesia regarding the prior decades of constitutional struggle. This Article reveals that forgotten constitutional history. After excavating the Fifth Amendment struggles, I argue that the no-aid norm, and the underlying reality of long-term federal participation in racial apartheid, should be remembered and debated once again.

This Comment responds to the equal protection challenge to merit selection. It argues that merit selection is constitutional by way of multiple exceptions, both recognized and implicit, to the “one person, one vote” principle. And though critics of merit selection often couch their arguments in prodemocratic terms, this Comment argues that merit selection—like the “one person, one vote” principle—promotes rather than thwarts the will of the people.

In the fall of 2019, John Bolton left his position as national security advisor to President Donald Trump after about seventeen months in the role.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, several state legislatures and executives limited the circumstances in which landlords could evict their tenants. Predictably, many of these moratoria were met with challenges under the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause, which prohibits the government from taking private property for public use without just compensation.