Conventional wisdom is that outside the Eighth Amendment, the Supreme Court does not engage in the sort of explicitly majoritarian state nose-counting for which the “evolving standards of decency” doctrine is famous. Yet this impression is simply inaccurate. Across a stunning variety of civil liberties contexts, the Court routinely—and explicitly—determines constitutional protection based on...
Volume 57, Issue 1
From Privacy To Liberty: The Fourth Amendment After Lawrence
This Article explores a conflict between the protections afforded interpersonal relations in Lawrence v. Texas and the vulnerability experienced under the Fourth Amendment by individuals who share their lives with others. Under the Supreme Court’s third-party doctrine, we have no constitutionally protected expectation of privacy in what we reveal to other persons. The effect of this doctrine is...
Who Can Sue Over Government Surveillance?
The nature and scope of new government electronic surveillance programs in the aftermath of September 11 have presented acute constitutional questions about executive authority, the Fourth Amendment, and the separation of powers. But legal challenges to these new surveillance programs have been stymied—and deci- sions on the merits of core constitutional questions avoided—by court rulings that...
Leverage in the Board Room: The Unsung Influence of Private Lenders in Corporate Governance
The influence of banks and other private lenders pervades public companies. From the first day of a lending arrangement, loan covenants and built-in contingency provisions affect managerial decisionmaking. Conventional corporate governance analysis has been slow to notice or account for this lender influence. Traditionally, corporate governance discourse has focused only on corporate law...
Evaluating The Public Interest: Regulation Of Industrial Hemp Under The Controlled Substances Act
Farmers throughout the industrialized world grow hemp legally as a source for a diverse range of products including foods, fabrics, plastic, cosmetics, and building materials. Although hemp was once widely grown in the United States, modern efforts to cultivate hemp have been frustrated by federal drug-control laws because the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) does not distinguish between...
Improving The Education Of California’s Juvenile Offenders: An Alternative To Consent Decrees
Access to public education is undeniably important, particularly in the context of the juvenile justice system. It is especially difficult for juvenile wards to receive an adequate education in California, which currently has one of the worst juvenile justice systems in the nation. This Comment examines the current legal responses to California’s state and local juvenile correctional facilities’...
The Right to Control One's Name
Is there a constitutionally protected right to choose one’s name? This Comment seeks to answer this question and to evaluate current government control over the name choices of adults. It first discusses the conflicting interests in names as identification and communication tools, as an expressive medium, and as a com- ponent of identity. It then summarizes the current law of name changes. Next...