Announcements

The Center for Law, Society, and Culture (http://www.law.indiana.edu/centers/lawsociety/) is sponsored by the Indiana University School of Law - Bloomington. The Center actively supports and promotes multidisciplinary understanding of law and legal problems through scholarship, teaching, and discussion. The Center is located in the School of Law on the Bloomington campus of Indiana University, but produces, presents and coordinates research conducted by more than 70 scholars from schools and departments across Indiana University. The Center's affiliated scholars hold appointments in African-American studies, business, criminal justice, journalism, history, economics, English, law, and gender studies, among others, and are dedicated to an interdisciplinary approach to the study of the role of law in society and culture. The Center supports research related to the law in a broad sense, including the cultural aspects of law expressed through political theory and scientific aspects of law expressed through technological advances in biotechnology, environmental science and information technology.


LAW & SOCIETY: PUBLIC LAW - CONSTITUTIONAL LAW ABSTRACTS
Sponsored by: Indiana University School of Law - Bloomington

"Justiciability and the Role of Courts in Adequacy Litigation: Preserving the Constitutional Right to Education" Free Download

ROBYNN K. STURM, Yale Law School
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JULIA ANN SIMON-KERR, Yale University - Law School
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In the first study of opinions handed down in education adequacy litigation between January 2005 and January 2008, this paper shows a marked shift away from outcomes favorable to adequacy plaintiffs. Following two decades in which courts spurred significant reforms in our nation's neediest schools by interpreting the education clauses of their state constitutions to guarantee an "adequate" education for all students, the years 2005 to 2008 have seen a dramatic change in the judicial response to adequacy litigation. Through an analysis of the latest body of cases, this paper shows that separation of powers concerns have begun to drive state courts out of this important avenue of education reform. These separation of powers concerns have become more salient as litigators pressure courts to mandate concrete remedies that would trump legislative discretion. The most problematic such remedy is one that would require courts to order the legislature to make specific budgetary allocations. This trend spans courts seeing adequacy claims for the first time and those presiding over a second round of adequacy litigation. This paper argues that despite this shift recent courts have not wholly disavowed their role in substantiating the state constitutional right to education. Courts remain willing to act as a constitutional check on the legislature's actions within the field of education if only plaintiffs can find a way to respond to concerns over remedies. This paper examines the nature of and reasons for courts' increasing separation of powers concerns and then briefly explores what lessons adequacy plaintiffs might take away for use in future litigation.

"Falwell v. Flynt Trial, 1984" Free Download

DOUGLAS LINDER, University of Missouri at Kansas City - School of Law
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Asked about his first sexual experience by an interviewer, Reverend Jerry Falwell said, "I never really expected to make it with Mom, but then after she showed all the other guys in town such a good time, I thought 'What the hell!'" Falwell went on to describe a a Campari-fueled sexual encounter with his mother in an outhouse near Lynchburg, Virginia. Neither the incestuous sex nor the interview ever happened, of course. They sprang from the imagination of a parody writer for Hustler Magazine. When the Campari parody ad appeared in the November 1983 issue of Hustler, the founder of the politically-engaged organization Moral Majority sued, alleging defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The trial and appeals that followed would provide great theater, produce a landmark Supreme Court ruling on the First Amendment, and eventually lead to one of the most unlikely of friendships.

"Brown and the Colorblind Constitution" Free Download
Cornell Law Review, Vol. 94, No. 1, 2008

CHRISTOPHER W. SCHMIDT, American Bar Foundation
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This Essay offers the first in-depth examination of the role of colorblind constitutionalism in the history of Brown v. Board of Education. In light of the recent Supreme Court ruling in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist. No. 1 (2007), such an examination is needed today more than ever. In this case, Chief Justice John Roberts drew on the history of Brown to support his conclusion that racial classifications in school assignment policies are unconstitutional. Particularly controversial was the Chief Justice's use of the words of the NAACP lawyers who argued Brown as evidence for his colorblind reading of the landmark school desegregation decision. I argue that while the historical record shows widespread faith in the claims of colorblind constitutionalism at the time of Brown, including among the lawyers for the NAACP and their allies, these claims were just one of many ways in which civil rights advocates challenged the constitutionality of school segregation. And, more importantly, any effort to claim Brown as a foundation stone for colorblind constitutionalism must confront the fact that the Supreme Court clearly rejected a sweeping anticlassification justification for its decision in Brown.

"Some Animals are More Equal than Others: The Rehnquist Court and 'Majority Religion'" Free Download
Washington University Journal of Law & Policy, Vol. 21, p. 323, 2006

GARRETT EPPS, University of Baltimore School of Law
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The Rehnquist court began a revolutionin the law of church and state that the Roberts Court may continue. This article analyzes Justice Scalia's rhetoric in dissents in Lee v. Weisman and McCreary County v. American Civil Liberties Union to suggest that the aim of the revolution, having been first enunciated as "equality" for religions values and expression, has now shifted to transformation of the Establishment Clause dialogue to permit a favored place in public life for "majority religion."

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Solicitation of Abstracts

LAW & SOCIETY: PUBLIC LAW - CONSTITUTIONAL LAW, edited by Kenneth Dau-Schmidt, is dedicated to the distribution of empirical or theoretical scholarship on constitutional law topics from any disciplinary perspective. Papers on the constitutional law of any state or nation, or that examine constitutional law questions from a comparative perspective are welcome. Covered topics include: governmental powers, individual rights, judicial review of statutes for constitutionality, constitutional amendment processes, and the drafting of constitutions.

To submit your research to SSRN, log in to the SSRN User HeadQuarters, and click on the My Papers link on the left menu, and then click on Start New Submission at the top of the page.

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Directors

LAW & SOCIETY JOURNALS

RONALD J. GILSON
Stanford Law School, Columbia Law School
Email: rgilson@leland.stanford.edu

A. MITCHELL POLINSKY
Stanford Law School, National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
Email: polinsky@stanford.edu

BERNARD S. BLACK
University of Texas at Austin - School of Law, McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin, European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI)
Email: bblack@law.utexas.edu

Please contact us at the above addresses with your comments, questions or suggestions for LSN-LS.

Advisory Board

Law & Society: Public Law - Constitutional Law

ALFRED C. AMAN
Director, Center for Advanced Studies, Roscoe C. O'Byrne Professor of Law, Indiana University School of Law-Bloomington, Dean Alfred C. Aman, Jr., Suffolk University Law School

JEANNINE BELL
Professor of Law, Indiana University School of Law-Bloomington

PETER CARSTENSEN
George H. Young-Bascom Professor of Law, University of Wisconsin Law School

KENNETH GLENN DAU-SCHMIDT
Co-Director, Center for Law, Society and Culture, Willard and Margaret Carr Professor of Labor and Employment Law, Indiana University School of Law-Bloomington

LAUREN B. EDELMAN
Director, Center for the Study of Law and Society, Agnes Roddy Robb Professor of Law and Professor of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley - Jurisprudence & Social Policy Program and Center for the Study of Law and Society

HOWARD S. ERLANGER
Voss-Bascom Professor of Law, Professor of Sociology, President, Law and Society Association, Review Section Editor - Law & Social Inquiry, Director - Institute for Legal Studies, University of Wisconsin Law School

LUIS E. FUENTES-ROHWER
Associate Professor of Law, Adjunct Professor of Latino Studies, Adjunct Professor of Political Science, Indiana University School of Law - Bloomington

MARC GALANTER
John & Rylla Bosshard Professor of Law, University of Wisconsin Law School, Madison

MICHAEL GROSSBERG
Co-Director, Center for Law, Society and Culture, Professor of History & Law, Indiana University School of Law - Bloomington

WILLIAM D. HENDERSON
Associate Professor of Law, Indiana University School of Law-Bloomington

ANNA-MARIA MARSHALL
Editorial Advisory Board, Law and Society Review, Assistant Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign - Department of Sociology

LYNN MATHER
Director - The Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy; Professor of Law and Political Science, University at Buffalo Law School, SUNY

SALLY ENGLE MERRY
Marion Butler McLean Professor in the History of Ideas, Wellesley College - Department of Anthropology

JOYCE STERLING
Professor of Law, University of Denver - Sturm College of Law

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