Constitutional Law
Firearm Regionalism and Public Carry: Placing Southern Antebellum Case Law in Context
Griswold's Progeny: Assisted Reproduction, Procreative Liberty, and Sexual Orientation Equality
The Sum of All Delegated Power: A Response to Richard Primus, The Limits of Enumeration
Hall v. Florida and Ending the Death Penalty for Severely Mentally Ill Defendants
Citizenship, Passports, and the Legal Identity of Americans: Edward Snowden and Others Have a Case in the Courts
In this Essay, Professor Patrick Weil reexamines the constitutional function of the passport in relation to American citizenship. The State Department recently developed apolicy of passport revocation whereby some Americans are transformed into de facto stateless persons, like Edward Snowden, or are prohibited from living abroad as citizens, like dozens of Yemeni Americans. In the Yemeni Americans’ case, the State Department confuses the legality of passports and naturalization. Revoking Snowden’s passport violates the right for acitizen to possess a passport confirming his or her legal identity—including citizenship—while abroad. This passport function, recognized since 1835, is one of the privileges and immunities of American citizens protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. The Supreme Court has never authorized its suspension by the executive for national security reasons, unlike the other function of a passport—the right to travel. New technologies offer a way to distinguish between these two functions and to make effective a constitutional right.
A Conversation with Justice Sotomayor
On February 3, 2014, Justice Sonia Sotomayor delivered the James A. Thomas Lecture at Yale Law School. This transcript is adapted (with slight editing) from that lecture, which took the form of a conversation between Justice Sotomayor and Linda Greenhouse. The lecture touched on topics including Justice Sotomayor’s conception of her role and her jurisprudence, her agreements and disagreements with colleagues, and her outreach to the wider public.
Secrecy, Intimacy, and Workable Rules: Justice Sotomayor Stakes Out the Middle Ground in United States v. Jones
In this Essay, Professor Miriam Baer focuses on Justice Sotomayor’s concurrence in United States v. Jones, which has attracted widespread notice due to Justice Sotomayor’s suggestion that the Court reconsider its reasonable expectation of privacy test and the related third-party doctrine. Professor Baer argues that Justice Sotomayor’s opinion exemplifies an attempt to stake out a “middle ground” approach to Fourth Amendment debates over surveillance and technology, one which foregrounds intimacy and common-sense rules as guiding principles.