3722 research outputs found
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Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2026 Display 01
No full textCollection of books on display commemorating the celebration of MLK Day on top of case in Law Library.https://scholarship.law.tamu.edu/mlk-day-2026-photos/1000/thumbnail.jp
Hermeneutics in History
No full textLawyers sometimes ask about the place of history in legal or constitutional interpretation. Historians typically ask a different question. The historians’ inquiry is more often about the place of a phenomenon, like interpretation in history, not vice versa. Constitutional interpretation is itself a historical practice, with particular, changing, and contingent political structures. It is driven by relatively autonomous forces such as war, natural disaster, social mobilizations, migrations and exclusions, economic transformations, and more, all of which shape and condition lawyers’ interpretive projects. If we put interpretation in history, rather than the other way around, then interpretation and (by extension) constitutional meaning-making turn out to be many things. And here’s one virtue that observers from many different perspectives may be able to appreciate: putting interpretation in history offers us the chance to make sense of the fierce battles over immigration and citizenship that our present historical juncture seems to entail
Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2026 Display 07
No full textBook: Calvin Littlejohn Portrait of a Community in Black and White by Bob Ray Sanders Foreword by Don Carletonhttps://scholarship.law.tamu.edu/mlk-day-2026-photos/1006/thumbnail.jp
American Viticultural Areas
No full textThe Encyclopedia of Intellectual Property Law is quite simply the definitive reference work in the field. Bringing together over 300 authors from across the world, the Encyclopedia sheds light on the current global state of Intellectual Property Law, providing unique insights into the discipline and how it is affected by globalization and increased regional integration
Does It Matter What People Lie About?
No full textWe investigate whether people’s moral judgments of lies in pre-contractual negotiations differ from their views on whether such lies should give the deceived party a legal right to rescind the contract, and whether these judgments depend on the content of the lie. In a vignette study with 832 German students and 885 participants from Germany, Italy, and the United States, respondents evaluated a range of common negotiation lies. Across samples, participants were generally more likely to deem a lie immoral than to believe it should justify rescission, but the size of this gap varied depending on the lie’s subject. Lies about the subject matter of the contract or the reservation price tended to elicit similar moral and legal assessments. In contrast, lies about product availability or alternative offers were frequently judged immoral yet not seen as warranting rescission. These findings contribute to psychological research on normative beliefs and inform legal debates about the normative foundations of contract law
Memory and Authority of Failed Constitutional Amendments
No full textWhen the original public meaning of any constitutional provision is enforced, guarantees of rights that were adopted before women were included in legal rights may appear illegitimate and inadequate for a 21st-century democracy. Originalists have long pointed to Article V amendment as the legitimate path to changing the Constitution. Jack Balkin’s Memory and Authority points to the importance of expanding American constitutional memory if women and minorities are to be included in the transhistorical “We the People.” This Essay illustrates how the memory and authority of failed constitutional amendments can challenge originalists’ reliance on amendment as the path to democratically legitimate change. It looks closely at the history of how the Equal Rights Amendment (“ERA”) failed in light of ongoing contestation over whether it should be added to the Constitution’s text. The failure of the ERA should be remembered as antidemocratic because obstructive maneuvers in Congress and state legislatures produced the deadline and delayed ratification in a manner unconducive to determining the will of the people. Remembering the ERA’s failure as antidemocratic, courts should refrain from invalidating the amendment, even if they also refrain from treating it as part of the Constitution’s text
I Was Young and Dumb : Why Age Should Be Considered in the Military Discharge Upgrade Process
Full text linkApproximately 40% of the United States military is no older than 25. Despite the robust and continued prevalence of young people serving in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, and Space Force, no special consideration is explicitly given to a servicemember’s age when considering upgrades for those discharged under less-than-honorable conditions. These young people volunteer to risk their lives, expecting to be honorably discharged and eligible to receive the benefits promised to them during recruitment and enlistment; however, many instead find themselves with a less-than-honorable discharge, thereby barred from the benefits that motivated them to join in the first place. This Article is the first to explore the relationship between age, brain development, and the military discharge upgrade system. Using a juvenile criminal law lens, the Article looks at what psychologists and neurologists say about brain development in young people, before examining the impact of this research on the criminal law system. It then evaluates why and how this same type of analysis could and should apply in the military context. Ultimately, it shows that age should be factored into the discharge upgrade process as an explicit consideration and offers some proposals on ways to implement this consideration
Trespass to Chattel and the Fourth Amendment
Full text linkLike an adolescent maturing into adulthood, Fourth Amendment search doctrine has gone through phases. Scholars may debate the underlying principles that have governed each phase, but they agree that two Supreme Court decisions dominate the doctrine as it stands today: Katz v. United States and United States v. Jones. The younger of these two rivals, Jones, has caused its share of consternation. Courts have struggled to consistently apply its trespass-based test, despite the test’s seemingly simple formulation. This Note considers the Jones test in the context of personal property, or chattel, making two arguments: first, careful adherence to common-law principles will yield consistent, reasonable results, and second, the Supreme Court should adopt a rule that under Jones only an actionable trespass, as opposed to a harmless interference with chattel, is sufficient to establish an unconstitutional search
Flowing Justice: Quantifying Water Rights in the Wake of Arizona v. Navajo Nation—Navigating The Legal Oasis for Native American Water Sovereignty
Full text linkClimate change has spurred a meteoric rise in environmental disputes particularly in arid climates where water shortages have become increasingly commonplace. Water rights controversies rise to the fore of public discourse as awareness and acceptance of climate change—and its impact on scarce resources—have become a near universal norm. These water shortages impact everyone. However, Native American tribes are uniquely impacted as their water rights are not clearly defined in the treaties that established the various reservations. The Supreme Court decided in Winters v. United States (1908) that there is a fiduciary duty owed to Native American tribes by the federal government to protect and provide for necessary reservation resources and prevent outside actors from infringing upon the water rights of tribal reservations. This past year, in Arizona v. Navajo Nation, the Supreme Court decided it was not a breach of fiduciary duty by the United States to refuse to assess and quantify the water rights belonging to a tribal nation. Considering current water shortages and the disparate impact that water scarcity has on Native American reservations, the current method of addressing undefined water rights must change. This Comment will discuss the duty of quantification the federal government owes to federally recognized reservations, the need to modify current methods of quantification, and additional steps that the government could adopt beyond quantification to sustain and support the cultures of Native American populations in the United States. Additionally, this Comment will consider how foreign jurisdictions treat the water rights of their Indigenous communities and what the federal government could learn from these comparative systems. As climate change leads to greater water scarcity, quantification is necessary for the federal government to meet its fiduciary obligation; however, quantification alone—and as currently defined—is not sufficient to ensure the sustainability of tribal reservations