The Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law
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Religious Liberty at the Supreme Court
No full textOn October 27, 2020, the Center for Religious Liberty (the Center) at Catholic Law presented a virtual discussion of “Religious Liberty at the Supreme Court.” The discussion was aimed to provide an overview of the Supreme Court cases in the last term as well as to look at what is already on the docket for the current term and what might come up in the future. Catholic Law Professor Mark Rienzi, Director of the Center and President of Becket Fund, began by welcoming the group before turning the conversation over to the Center Co-Director, William Saunders
The Traditions of American Constitutional Law
Get PDFThis Article identifies a new method of constitutional interpretation: the use of tradition as constitutive of constitutional meaning. It studies what the Supreme Court means by invoking tradition and whether what it means remains constant across the document and over time. Traditionalist interpretation is pervasive, consistent, and recurrent across the Court\u27s constitutional doctrine. So, too, are criticisms of traditionalist interpretation. There are also more immediate reasons to study the role of tradition in constitutional interpretation. The Court\u27s two newest members, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, have indicated that tradition informs their understanding of constitutional meaning. The study of traditionalist interpretation seems all the more pressing to understand certain possible jurisprudential moves in the Court\u27s future.
This Article concludes that when the Court interprets traditionally, it signals the presumptive influence of political and cultural practices of substantial duration for informing constitutional meaning. Traditionalist interpretation is thus constituted of three elements: (1) a focus on practices, rather than principles, as informing constitutional meaning; (2) a practice\u27s duration, understood as a composite of its age and continuity; and (3) a practice\u27s presumptive, but defeasible, interpretive influence. Traditionalist interpretation\u27s emphasis on practices that are given tangible form in a people\u27s lived experiences suggests that it is preferable to speak about politically and culturally specific traditions rather than an abstracted concept of tradition. Hence, the traditions of American constitutional law. This Article identifies traditionalist interpretation as its own method; shows its prevalence and methodological consistency across the domains of constitutional interpretation; isolates and examines its constituent elements, comparing them against other prominent interpretive approaches; and infers and explains the justifications of traditionalist interpretation from the doctrinal deposit. While there may be some irony about a claim of novelty in an article about tradition, what this Article identifies as new is not the invocation of tradition as such, but the isolation of a recurrent and consistent method-traditionalist interpretation-adopted by the Court across its interpretive work. It aims to bring to light an overlooked and yet frequently used interpretive practice, and to understand its structure, situation, and purpose within the Court\u27s constitutional doctrine
How Can We End #CancelCulture—Tort Liability or Thumper’s Rule?
Get PDFIn the Disney film Bambi, when the young rabbit Thumper says that Bambi “is kinda wobbly” and “doesn’t walk too good,” Thumper’s mother tells him “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” The Des Moines Register seems to have forgotten Thumper’s Rule when it uncovered Carson King’s teenage tweets and canceled the relationship he had built with Busch Light while raising $3 million for the Stead Family Children’s Hospital. #CancelCulture is a social media phenomenon, where some people use their voices to cancel the platform enjoyed by others. It is the 2019 equivalent of the Scarlet Letter, where society takes it upon itself to punish others for perceived misdeeds. But when those attempting to cancel others go too far, they should be subject to tort liability
Re-Envisioning Law Student Scholarship
Get PDFThis Article recommends that we think more intentionally about how law students’ engagement in scholarship can promote their professional development. In so doing, we should recognize that legal scholarship plays a different role for law students than it does for law professors. Rather than trying to replicate law professors’ relationship with scholarship, the pedagogy of law student scholarship should focus more intentionally on the value of scholarship for law students—most of whom will not become law professors.
This Article suggests that much of the value of scholarship for law students lies in process, rather than product. Rather than thinking of process largely as a means to the end of students’ creation of a traditional scholarly paper, process should be appreciated for the valuable role that it can play in students’ professional development. The Article offers examples of ways to re-focus attention on the process of scholarship, with a particular focus on topic selection and reflection, to promote the role of scholarly engagement in students’ professional development.
In addition, the Article suggests taking advantage of the scholarly freedom that law students have to think creatively about the products of the scholarly process, in order to enable students to both devote more time to the process itself and engage in projects that have more meaning to them
Ethical Problems in the Practice of Law (5th ed.)
No full textThis problem-based book reflects the authors’ broad range of teaching, clinical, and policy-making experience. Ethical Problems in the Practice of Law’s carefully crafted ethical problems challenge students to engage in a deep analysis and participate in lively class discussion.https://scholarship.law.edu/fac_books/1135/thumbnail.jp
Data Privacy in the US: Where We Stand Today and Predictions for the Future
No full textOn December 2, 2020, the Contemporary Challenges in American & Global Law webinar series continued with a discussion of “Data Privacy in the US: Where We Stand Today and Predictions for the Future.” Breaking from the traditional speaker/commenter format utilized in previous events, this program was presented by co-speakers Justyna Regan, Ph.D. (LL.M. 2005), a senior attorney at Miller Canfield, and Douglas G. Bonner ’83, a partner for Potomac Law Group and Catholic Law Board of Visitors member. Professor Emerita Leah Wortham, director of the American Law Program and the LL.M. program in which Catholic University has partnered with Jagiellonian University, once again acted as moderator for the event
Artificial Intelligence and Intellectual Property
No full textOn December 9, 2020, Catholic Law and its partner, Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, concluded the fall lineup of events in the Contemporary Challenges in American & Global Law webinar series. Professor Emerita Leah Wortham, Director of the American Law Program and the LL.M. program, has led the series and once again acted as moderator for the discussion. This week’s webinar focused on Artificial Intelligence and Intellectual Property. Megan La Belle, Professor of Law and Co-Director of Catholic Law’s Law and Technology Institute (LTI), provided opening remarks, and comments were made by Tytus Cytowski (IBTSLP 2001), founding partner of Cytowski & Partners in New York City, New York
Privacy, Eavesdropping, and Wiretapping Across the United States: Reasonable Expectation of Privacy and Judicial Discretion
Get PDFOne-party consent and all-party consent eavesdropping and wiretapping statutes are two broad pathways for legislation to deal with the problem of secret taping and some states protect conversation under state constitutions. Whether a conversation is protected against being taped as a private conversation is often gauged by the reasonable expectation of privacy standard. Judges in both all-party consent and one-party consent jurisdictions have had to use their leeway under the reasonable expectation of privacy standard to arrive at what at the time seemed to be the most appropriate solution, perhaps in doing so creating a case law exception
