Print Issues

Volume 64, Issue 1


Article

The Right Not to Keep or Bear Arms

by  Joseph Blocher

Sometimes a constitutional right to do a particular thing is accompanied by a right not to do that thing. The First Amendment, for example, guarantees both the right to speak and the right not to speak. This Article asks whether the Second Amendment should likewise be read to encompass both the right to keep or…

Article

The Ghost That Slayed the Mandate

by  Kevin C. Walsh

Virginia v. Sebelius is a federal lawsuit in which Virginia has challenged President Obama’s signature legislative initiative of health care reform. Virginia has sought declaratory and injunctive relief to vindicate a state statute declaring that no Virginia resident shall be required to buy health insurance. To defend this state law from the preemptive effect of…

Article

State Sovereign Standing

Often Overlooked, but Not Forgotten
by  Kenneth T. Cuccinelli, II, E. Duncan Getchell, Jr. & Wesley G. Russell, Jr.

Critics of Virginia’s challenge to the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act have asserted that Virginia lacked standing to even raise the issue. Such criticism is inconsistent with foundational understandings of the role of states in providing a check on federal power and with the modern standing jurisprudence of the Supreme Court,…

Article

Establishing Official Islam?

The Law and Strategy of Counter-Radicalization
by  Samuel J. Rascoff

In the name of national security, federal and local governments have begun to intervene domestically in the religious lives of Muslims and into Islam itself. Taken together, these interventions form part of the emerging strategy of counter-radicalization, by which officials aim to diminish the pull of radical Islamic ideology in part by promoting more “mainstream”…

Article

Lobbying, Rent-Seeking, and the Constitution

by  Richard L. Hasen

Politicians across the political spectrum, from Barack Obama to Sarah Palin and Rand Paul, routinely castigate lobbyists for engaging in supposedly corrupt activities or having unequal access to elected officials. Since attaining office President Obama has imposed unprecedented new lobbying regulations, and he is not alone: both Congress and state and local legislative bodies have…

Note

Bringing a Judicial Takings Claim

by  Josh Patashnik

This Note seeks to answer a set of questions prompted by the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Stop the Beach Renourishment, Inc. v. Florida Department of Environmental Protection. In that case, six Justices recognized that the Constitution provides some protection against so-called judicial takings—court decisions that, like executive and legislative action, might be deemed to…