Abstract This Article utilizes Critical Dalit Feminism to uncover the intersectional impact of gender and caste hegemonies in cases of sexual violence in India. It challenges the conventional wisdom that doctrinal approaches that rely on punitive measures can solve the pervasive and imbricated issue of sexual violence. It also examines the sociolegal barriers influenced by a legacy of caste-based...
Standing’s Double Standard
Abstract In 303 Creative v. Elenis, the Supreme Court effectively exempted plaintiff Lorie Smith from Colorado’s LGBT-inclusive nondiscrimination law, allowing her to refuse service to same-sex couples if she opens a business designing wedding websites. The Court upended substantive nondiscrimination law, but the opinion also has important implications for standing doctrine. Although standing...
Fascist Government Speech
Abstract On the day he was sworn in for a second term, President Donald Trump issued pardons and commutations to all of his supporters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. This sweeping act of clemency gave legal effect to a longstanding grievance: since the attack, which disrupted congressional certification of his 2020 election defeat, President Trump has consistently glorified the...
Teaching in a Time of Retrenchment
Abstract Constitutional law is the lodestar for law teaching in the United States and is often referred to as the supreme law of the land. But how are this and related bodies of law to be taught? And what should law students learn when ideological shifts in the Supreme Court lead to radical shifts in Constitutional interpretation? This Essay uses the Dobbs case as the epitome of the Supreme...
Constitutional “Law” in a Lawless Court: Restoring the Sources and Methods of Principled Interpretation
Abstract The Fourteenth Amendment’s equality and liberty clauses have been subjected to more judicial review, and opining, than most others. In this still-ongoing interpretative process, successive generations of (mostly) white male federal judges have exploited the unenumerated review power based chiefly on their personal ideological predilections to dismantle reconstructive laws for more than a...
Legal Violence and 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis: A Partial, yet True, History of Public Accommodation Law in the U.S. Supreme Court
Abstract Law professors, particularly those who teach Property or Constitutional Law in the United States, should center public accommodation law in our pedagogy. In 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, 600 U.S. 570 (2023), the Supreme Court has provided new impetus and fresh material by which to guide our students to contemplate, and join in, the intergenerational struggle over law’s meaning and its...
Finding the Courage to Once Again “Enter”: Managing Faculty Classroom Dynamics in a Period of Doctrinal Upheaval
Abstract A recent shift in the constitution of the personnel on the U.S. Supreme Court has resulted in a “supermajority” of conservative justices that have significantly shifted key constitutional doctrines in a manner not seen in recent history. This shift is illustrated by at least three significant cases: Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 597 U.S. 215 (2022), Students for Fair...
Teaching Constitutional Law in Polarized Times: Rights and Structure
Abstract Teaching constitutional law today has been impacted by two trends reflecting a polarized electorate and politics: first, recent restrictions targeting education prohibiting the use of critical race theory, critical legal theory, feminist theories, intersectionality, and other critical legal perspectives in the classroom; and second, recent U.S. Supreme Court opinions abandoning well...