Congress Has the Power to Enforce the Bill of Rigths Against the Federal Government; Therefore FISA Is Constitutional and the President\u27s Terrorist Surveillance Program Is Illegal

The principal point of this Article is that Congress has plenary authority to enforce the Bill of Rights against the federal government. Although this precept is a fundamental one, neither the Supreme Court nor legal scholars have articulated this point in clear, simple, and direct terms. The Supreme Court does not have a monopoly on the Bill of Rights. Congress, too, has constitutional authority to interpret our rights and to enforce or enlarge them as against the actions of the federal government. Congress exercised its power to protect the constitutional rights of American citizens when it enacted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the federal law that requires the government to obtain a warrant from a special court before engaging in electronic eavesdropping for the purpose of obtaining foreign intelligence. In spite of this law, the National Security Agency has conducted a program of warrantless surveillance called the Terrorist Surveillance Program. The Attorney General made a nuanced and unique argument in support of the Terrorist Surveillance Program. He suggested that wiretapping for foreign intelligence is more central to the role of the President than it is to the role of Congress, and therefore FISA, the federal statute which requires the President to obtain warrants, is unconstitutional. In response to that argument, this Article contends that Congress has the power to enforce the Bill of Rights against the federal government and that FISA does represent an exercise by Congress of one of its core functions-to protect the rights of American citizens. The Attorney General also contended that FISA was amended by the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), adopted September 18, 2001. This point has been addressed by other legal scholars, and drawing upon their work, this Article identifies six principal reasons why the AUMF cannot be construed as either repealing or suspending the warrant requirements of FISA. Finally, the Attorney General argued that FISA is unconstitutional under a broad reading of executive power called the theory of the unitary executive. This Article contends that this theory was rejected by the four great Justices of the Roosevelt Court, Hugo Black, William Douglas, Felix Frankfurter, and Robert Jackson, in the case of Youngstown Sheet & Tube v. Sawyer. Justice Jackson, in particular, eloquently argued that the President is subject to the rule of law. This Article also suggests that the opinion of Anthony Kennedy in Clinton v. City of New York is relevant. In that case, Justice Kennedy made individual liberty the centerpiece of the separation of powers analysis. The Article concludes that both the rule of law and individual liberty are served by upholding the constitutionality of FISA

On the stabilizing influence of silt on sand beds

In marine environments, sediments from different sources are stirred and dispersed, generating beds that are composed of mixed and layered sediments of differing grain sizes. Traditional engineering formulations used to predict erosion thresholds are however, generally for unimodal sediment distributions, and so may be inadequate for commonly occurring coastal sediments. We tested the transport behavior of deposited and mixed sediment beds consisting of a simplified two-grain fraction (silt (D50  =  55 µm) and sand (D50 =  300 µm)) in a laboratory-based annular flume with the objective of investigating the parameters controlling the stability of a sediment bed. To mimic recent deposition of particles following large storm events and the longer-term result of the incorporation of fines in coarse sediment, we designed two suites of experiments: (1) “the layering experiment”: in which a sandy bed was covered by a thin layer of silt of varying thickness (0.2–3 mm; 0.5–3.7 wt %, dry weight in a layer 10 cm deep); and (2) “the mixing experiment” where the bed was composed of sand homogeneously mixed with small amounts of silt (0.07–0.7 wt %, dry weight). To initiate erosion and to detect a possible stabilizing effect in both settings, we increased the flow speeds in increments up to 0.30 m/s. Results showed that the sediment bed (or the underlying sand bed in the case of the layering experiment) stabilized with increasing silt composition. The increasing sediment stability was defined by a shift of the initial threshold conditions towards higher flow speeds, combined with, in the case of the mixed bed, decreasing erosion rates. Our results show that even extremely low concentrations of silt play a stabilizing role (1.4% silt (wt %) on a layered sediment bed of 10 cm thickness). In the case of a mixed sediment bed, 0.18% silt (wt %, in a sample of 10 cm depth) stabilized the bed. Both cases show that the depositional history of the sediment fractions can change the erosion characteristics of the seabed. These observations are summarized in a conceptual model that suggests that, in addition to the effect on surface roughness, silt stabilizes the sand bed by pore-space plugging and reducing the inflow in the bed, and hence increases the bed stability. Measurements of hydraulic conductivity on similar bed assemblages qualitatively supported this conclusion by showing that silt could decrease the permeability by up to 22% in the case of a layered bed and by up to 70% in the case of a mixed bed

Constitutional Jurisprudence of Sandra Day O\u27Connor: A Refusal to Foreclose the Unanticipated

Earlier this year, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor retired from the Supreme Court of the United States after 25 years of service. It would be difficult to overstate the impact that Justice O’Connor has had on the interpretation of the Constitution during her tenure on the Court. Her importance to the development of American constitutional law stems from her central position on the Supreme Court. Professor Erwin Chemerinsky has described her role in these terms: O’Connor is in control. In virtually every area of constitutional law, her key fifth vote determines what will be the majority’s position and what will be the dissent. Lawyers who argue and write briefs to the Court know they are, for all practical purposes, arguing to an audience of one. In order to understand the influence that Justice O’Connor has wielded within the Court and in order to appreciate the specific contributions that she has made to American law, it is appropriate to examine her judicial philosophy and to review the substantive principles that she has helped to create. The purpose of this essay is to briefly summarize the jurisprudence of Justice O’Connor in the field of Constitutional Law

Ten Questions on Gay Rights and Freedom of Religion

I have prepared a series of ten questions that will progressively narrow the issues concerning gay rights and free exercise rights until we come to the principal point upon which Professor Dent and I disagree – the definition and application of the principle of equality

Ohio\u27s Sacred Seal of Secrecy : The Rules of Spousal Incompetency and Martial Privilege in Criminal Cases

In the remainder of this essay the rules of spousal incompetency and marital privilege are compared and contrasted, the history of the rules in Ohio is traced, the underlying justifications for the rules are discussed, and a pitch is made for repeal of both rules, substituting the single rule of spousal immunity described above

The Impact of Justice Scalia\u27s Replacement on Gender Equality Issues

The last forty-six years may be accurately described as the era of the modern Republican Supreme Court. As a result of presidential elections, Republican presidents have nominated all ten of the Justices appointed to the United States Supreme Court between 1969 and 1991. Republicans have thus controlled the Court since 1970. During this period the right to gender equality was recognized and the right to marriage equality was realized. However, also during this period many Republican Justices staunchly opposed gender equality, and far more remains to be accomplished. Since Justice Scalia’s death, the Supreme Court has been deadlocked on a number of Constitutional questions. Accordingly, his replacement on the Supreme Court, now dictated by the 2016 presidential election, will have a dramatic effect on the interpretation of the Constitution, including a number of issues relating to gender equality. President Barack Obama nominated U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Merrick Garland to replace Justice Scalia on the Court, but Senate Republicans, fearing loss of control of the Court for perhaps both political and economic reasons refused to consider Judge Garland’s candidacy or to even hold hearings on his nomination. Newly-elected President Donald Trump has nominated U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Neil Gorsuch to fill Scalia’s position on the Court. The “swing justice” on the Supreme Court since 2006 has been Justice Anthony Kennedy. If a conservative justice like Judge Gorsuch is appointed to replace Justice Scalia, Justice Kennedy will remain the swing justice. If President Trump is given the opportunity to fill more than one vacancy on the Supreme Court, the balance will tip even further; the swing justice might be Chief Justice Roberts for the conservatives or Justice Elena Kagan for the liberals. Even in cases where changing the ideological balance of the Supreme Court would have no effect on the outcome of a case, it could have a dramatic effect on the Court’s reasoning, because it might change which justice would author the majority opinion. For example, in the marriage equality cases, if the vote had been 6-3 instead of 5-4, the author of the opinion might have been Ruth Bader Ginsburg instead of Anthony Kennedy, and the Court might have recognized sexual orientation as a suspect classification and declared that laws that intentionally disadvantage this group are subject to heightened scrutin

The Legacy of Slaughterhouse, Bradwell, and Cruikshank in Constitutional Interpretation

The conclusions that the Court drew about the meaning of the 14th Amendment shortly after its adoption were contrary to the intent of the framers of that Amendment and a betrayal of the sacrifices which had been made by the people of that period. In each case, the Court perverted the meaning of the Constitution in ways that reverberate down to the present day...In these cases the Court ruled upon several critical aspects of 14th Amendment jurisprudence, including (1) Whether the 14th Amendment prohibits the States from interfering with our fundamental rights; (2) How the equality of different groups should be determined; and (3) How much power Congress has to protect the civil and political rights of American citizens – in particular, whether the 14th Amendment authorizes Congress to enact legislation to prevent mobs or other private individuals from violating people’s fundamental rights. The Court narrowly construed the constitutional principles of liberty, equality, and the power of Congress to protect civil rights

Caracterização de acessos de cupuaçuzeiro através de caracteres bromatológicos da polpa do fruto.

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