Severing Unconstitutional Amendments
Thanks to John Brinkerhoff, Abbe Gluck, Ted Lee, Daryl Levinson, Scott Levy, and Mike Showalter for helpful comments and conversations. Thanks also to the careful editors at the University of Chicago Law Review. All errors are our own.
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Thank you to Tyler Ashman and Liam Haffey for providing helpful feedback and assistance on this Case Note.
The Constitution’s Double Jeopardy Clause allows successive criminal prosecutions for the same conduct so long as they are pursued by separate sovereigns (such as two different states). This Case Note examines Illinois law to argue that state statutes are a useful, though imperfect, means of addressing the dual sovereignty doctrine. It argues further that the details of statutory language are highly consequential to whether states can scale back dual sovereignty in practice.
This Case Note offers some direction for handling competing interests in this developing body of law and other complex cases weighing intersecting constitutional rights against governmental interests. Parts I and II provide background information, describing the Sell test and the current state of constitutional and statutory religious protections. Part III critically analyzes how courts, including the Fifth Circuit, have considered religious objections in Sell determinations so far. Because such analysis remains underdeveloped in the courts, Part IV suggests frameworks for coherently integrating Free Exercise doctrine into Sell inquiries based on the “hybrid theory” of constitutional rights.
She thanks Henry Gilchrist, Timothy Burke, Kimberly Burke, and Alexis Berg for their support, and the University of Chicago Law Review Online team for all their hard work.
This Case Note explores the possibility that, in a world where TikTok is banned or heavily regulated, individual TikTok users could sue states under a Takings Clause theory. Any such cases would have to wrestle with two core questions (1) whether the account holders hold an actionable property interest in their accounts; and (2) if so, whether permanently and totally depriving users of access to their accounts constitutes a taking.