The University of Notre Dame has appointed NDLS Professor A.J. Bellia to serve as the inaugural O’Toole Professor of Constitutional Law.
This Endowed Chair is funded by a significant gift from Judge Thomas W. and Elaine S. O’Toole to support the study and teaching…
The Program on Constitutional Structure will host a conference, "The Common Law in an Age of Regulation" on February 6, 2015 at the Notre Dame London Law Centre…
The fall issue of the Constitutional Structure Program Newsletter is now available. This electronic newsletter is aimed at keeping you up-to-date on news items, announcements, upcoming events, and faculty and student accomplishments from the Program on Constitutional Structure.
This summer Notre Dame Law school students held over 50 federal and state summer clerkships or internships. Twenty-seven students worked in federal clerkships, with the rest working in state or local clerkships. Law students gained experience with judges throughout the country in district, circuit, appeals, trial, and bankruptcy courts.
In his new article, Reading Statutes in the Common Law Tradition (forthcoming Virginia Law Review), Professor Jeff Pojanowski examines the role common law tradition plays in statutory interpretation. Jurists and scholars concur that the common law points away from formalist interpretive approaches like textualism and toward a more creative, independent role for courts. Professor Pojanowski notes that they simply differ over whether the common law tradition is worth preserving. Contemporary debate offers a choice between continuing with common law tradition or formalist interpretation that breaks with that heritage.
In a forthcoming article, Professor A.J. Bellia examines important questions surrounding the powers of federal courts under the Constitution. The article—entitled The Process Acts and the Alien Tort Statute—confronts the question whether federal courts have power to adjudicate causes of action that neither Congress nor state law has created. Courts and scholars have long debated whether federal courts enjoy the power to hear such actions—commonly called “federal common law” causes of action—or whether they only have power to hear actions that Congress or a state has made through its regular lawmaking processes. In debating such questions, judges and scholars usually presume, as a historical matter, that early federal courts had power to find causes of action in general common law.
In an important recent decision, U.S. v. Cannon (2014 WL 1633160), the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit relied heavily upon the work of Notre Dame Law School Professor Jennifer Mason McAward in interpreting the scope of Congress’s power to enforce the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Section Two of the Thirteenth Amendment empowers Congress to enforce the prohibition on slavery and involuntary servitude by addressing the “badges and incidents of slavery.” The court used Professor Mason McAward’s article, Defining the Badges and Incidents of Slavery (published in the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law), to understand the scope of that constitutional provision.
Professor Randy Kozel has published a review essay, "Institutional Autonomy and Constitutional Structure," in the Michigan Law Review. The essay -- which discusses Paul Horwitz's book, "First Amendment Institutions" -- considers…
Gerry Bradley was quoted in the several news sources this week on the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court decision.
US News and World Report recently ranked Notre Dame Law School 8th among all law schools in the percentage of employed 2012 graduates who secured federal judicial clerkships.
NDLS Professor A.J. Bellia Jr. has been honored by the Virginia Law Review for co-authoring (with George Washington University Law Professor Bradford R. Clark) one of the most influential articles published by the Virginia Law Review in the past 100 years.
Bellia’s article, The Law of Nations as Constitutional Law, 98 Va. L. Rev. 729 (2012), explores the history and role of international law in U.S. courts under the Constitution.
U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. visited Notre Dame Law School April 10 as the Judge James J. Clynes Visiting Chair.
In the afternoon the Justice participated in a fireside chat with NDLS Professor William Kelley, an event that was sponsored by the NDLS Program on Constitutional Structure, the Federalist Society, and the Department of Political Science’s Potenziani Program in Constitutional Studies.
Welcome to the Constitutional Structure Program Newsletter. This new electronic newsletter is aimed at keeping you up-to-date on news items, announcements, upcoming events, and faculty and student accomplishments.
Shortly after taking the phone call from Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., Megan Dillhoff became the second NDLS graduate to accept a Supreme Court judicial clerkship for the October 2014 Supreme Court term. Earlier this term, G. Ryan Snyder accepted his clerkship offer from Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr.
Ryan and Megan are the third and fourth NDLS grads to be named Supreme Court judicial clerks in the past decade. Last year, according to data reported to the American Bar Association, Notre Dame stood in a tie for 10th place among all U.S. law schools for its rate of placing students in federal judicial clerkships.
