Suchergebnisse

1865 in Straelen geboren, arbeitete er sich aus den einfachen Verhältnissen einer kleinstädtischen Bäckerfamilie bis zum Reichspostminister hoch. Schon früh übernahm Giesberts Verantwortung, zuerst für die elterliche Familie, dann für die Arbeiterschaft, zu der er in Köln als Heizer gehörte. 1899 wurde er zum Redakteur der Westdeutschen Arbeiterzeitung berufen. In dieser Funktion und als christlicher Gewerkschafter vertrat er mit Nachdruck und Geschick die Interessen der Arbeiter, des Standes, mit dem er zeit seines Lebens Tuchfühlung hielt. Denn er blieb stets seinem Ziel treu, "die Arbeiterschaft aus dem Tiefstand des sozialen Lebens herauszuführen, sie gleichberechtigt in Staat und Gesellschaft hereinzustellen". Da er ein begabter Redner war und als ehrliche Haut galt, berief ihn die Zentrumsleitung in den Vorstand und sah ihn für wichtige Ämter vor. - - 1905 gewann er fürs Zentrum in Essen das Reichtagsmandat, 1918 wurde er Stadtverordneter in Mönchengladbach. 1919 übernahm er im ersten Weimarer Kabinett das Amt des Reichspostministers und behielt es über drei Jahre inne. So befindet sich seine Unterschrift sowohl unter der Weimarer Verfassung als auch unter dem Versailler Friedensvertrag. Als Politiker hat er in Reichstag und Reichskabinett die Aufgabe "jeweils praktische Kompromisse zu finden, mit beweglichem Geist, praktischem Sinn und großer Energie zu lösen versucht", so das Urteil der Historikerin Helga Grebing. Damit kann Giesberts noch heute als Vorbild für alle demokratischen Politiker gelten. - - Als Postminister wurde Giesberts Dienstherr über 500.000 Mitarbeiter. Er leitete das größte deutsche Unternehmen mit viel Erfolg. So führte er die Postreklame ein und beteiligte die Post an der Fernkabel- Gesellschaft. - - Zum ersten Mal sind Giesberts Leben und politisches Wirken exakt erforscht und in einer umfangreichen Studie dargestellt worden. ihr Vorzug erschließt sich dem Leser leicht in ihrer Verständlichkeit

The U.S. Supreme Court's decisions interpreting the U.S. Constitution in general and the Reconstruction Amendments in particular substantially constrain the ability of legislative and executive actors to address a variety of hot-button political issues, including abortion, gay rights, and affirmative action. So important are the Court's decisions that the ability to appoint Justices who will shift the Court's direction has been a central issue in recent presidential campaigns. Throughout history, decisive shifts in the Court's composition have resulted in correspondingly dramatic shifts in constitutional doctrine. Yet surprisingly, these dramatic shifts have occurred with the Court rarely overturning any precedent. Although others have identified selected instances of the Court engaging in stealth revision of precedent, this Article is both the first to provide a detailed taxonomy of the methods employed and to exhaustively consider their use in construing the Reconstruction Amendments. This stealth process, which this Article refers to as judicial reconstruction, occurs when the Court employs one or more of three different methods of transforming constitutional doctrine: selective quotation of precedent; re-characterization of precedent; and citations to "dissenting concurrences"—separate opinions in earlier cases that are concurrences in form but dissents in substance. Through the use of these methods, liberal and conservative justices alike have dramatically transformed constitutional law even when their decisions are unsupported by and at times diametrically at odds with the Court's earlier precedents. This Article concludes that U.S. Senators and commentators, with their almost laser-like focus on fidelity to stare decisis during the confirmation process, have overlooked—and perhaps even fostered—the opaque practice of reconstructing rather than the transparent process of overruling precedent. It further concludes that those examining judicial nominees' commitment to respecting precedent should examine not ...

The U.S. Supreme Court's decisions interpreting the U.S. Constitution in general and the Reconstruction Amendments in particular substantially constrain the ability of legislative and executive actors to address a variety of hot-button political issues, including abortion, gay rights, and affirmative action. So important are the Court's decisions that the ability to appoint Justices who will shift the Court's direction has been a central issue in recent presidential campaigns. Throughout history, decisive shifts in the Court's composition have resulted in correspondingly dramatic shifts in constitutional doctrine. Yet surprisingly, these dramatic shifts have occurred with the Court rarely overturning any precedent. Although others have identified selected instances of the Court engaging in stealth revision of precedent, this Article is both the first to provide a detailed taxonomy of the methods employed and to exhaustively consider their use in construing the Reconstruction Amendments. This stealth process, which this Article refers to as judicial reconstruction, occurs when the Court employs one or more of three different methods of transforming constitutional doctrine: selective quotation of precedent; re-characterization of precedent; and citations to "dissenting concurrences"—separate opinions in earlier cases that are concurrences in form but dissents in substance. Through the use of these methods, liberal and conservative justices alike have dramatically transformed constitutional law even when their decisions are unsupported by and at times diametrically at odds with the Court's earlier precedents. This Article concludes that U.S. Senators and commentators, with their almost laser-like focus on fidelity to stare decisis during the confirmation process, have overlooked—and perhaps even fostered—the opaque practice of reconstructing rather than the transparent process of overruling precedent. It further concludes that those examining judicial nominees' commitment to respecting precedent should examine not merely their formal fidelity to stare decisis but instead their history of and views on reconstructing precedent.

Each year, millions of Americans cast votes for specific candidates or on specific ballot measures. Each such vote generates potential "electoral evidence," the admissibility of which may be the subject of dispute in subsequent litigation. The evidence may take various forms, including the marked ballot itself, a voter's testimony regarding her vote, or her written or oral statements regarding her vote. Electoral evidence is most commonly offered in litigation over the election outcome itself, with the parties seeking to determine how certain individuals voted to resolve a close election. However, its potential relevance is not limited to such proceedings. It may also be substantively relevant in a case in which the voter is alleged to have discriminated against someone, or to prove potential juror or witness bias against a party. While election contests for specific candidates only provide insight into a voter's general political leanings that is only marginally relevant to prove discriminatory purpose or bias in most instances, votes cast in recent years on gay and transgender rights, affirmative action, religious freedom, tort reform, and abortion provide insight into a voter's views about discrete categories of persons that is far more probative of such matters. The admissibility of electoral evidence has been given piecemeal consideration in judicial opinions, but has not received comprehensive attention in any judicial opinion or in the scholarly literature. This Article is the first comprehensive examination of the evidentiary issues that arise when a party seeks to offer electoral evidence in judicial proceedings. It identifies three dangers associated with admitting electoral evidence: its trustworthiness; the individual and societal interests in protecting ballot secrecy; and the risk of unfair prejudice. It demonstrates that these dangers are addressed in a fragmentary and incomplete fashion by existing evidentiary rules. Relying on social science research about the veracity of voters in recounting ...

Many same-sex couples have been in committed relationships for years, even decades. Yet until 2004 no same-sex couples in the United States had the right to marry in any state and until the U.S. Supreme Court's 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges the right was unavailable to same-sex couples nationwide. Due to this longstanding denial of the right to marry, most same-sex relationships appear artificially short when measured solely by reference to the couple's civil marriage date. This circumstance has important legal consequences for many same-sex couples, as a number of rights associated with marriage are tied not merely to the fact of marriage, but also to its length measured either in absolute terms or relative to a legally significant event. These rights include social security benefits, immigration rights, the marital communications privilege, and the rights to division of property and awards of alimony on divorce. Moreover, a same-sex couple whose relationship ended before the legalization of same-sex marriage may not receive any rights associated with marriage. This Article is the first to explore the phenomenon of backdating marriages as a means to ensure that same-sex couples are made whole for the harms caused by their longstanding inability to legally marry. The Article demonstrates that the Obergefell decision applies not merely prospectively but also retroactively, and that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to have their marriages backdated to the date they would have married but for the existence of a legal barrier. Because such backdating can create significant short-term administrative challenges, the Article provides alternatives to actual backdating that are somewhat easier for government agencies to administer but that still provide same-sex couples with constitutionally mandated "make whole" relief. Administrative challenges notwithstanding, the Article concludes that actual backdating—or its functional equivalent—is constitutionally necessary to remedy constitutional harms to ...

Twenty-five years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court established a consistency principle in its race-based equal protection cases. That principle requires courts to apply the same strict scrutiny to racial classifications designed to benefit racial minorities—such as affirmative action policies—as they do to laws invidiously discriminating against them. The new consistency principle, under which discrimination against whites is subject to strict scrutiny, conflicted with the Court's established criteria for declaring a group to be a suspect or quasi-suspect class entitled to heightened scrutiny, which focused on such considerations as the history of discrimination against the group and its political powerlessness. As a result of this tension, the Court's line of precedents for identifying new suspect and quasi-suspect classes has gone dormant, and the Court has not since considered whether any additional such classes exist. Instead, when confronted with plausible candidates for heightened scrutiny, such as gays and lesbians, the Court has engaged in sporadic application of stealth rational basis review. In this Article, I use a hypothetical equal protection challenge to a sexual orientation-based affirmative action policy as a vehicle for proposing a roadmap for harmonizing these competing lines of precedent. I demonstrate that, in light of the consistency principle, an aggrieved heterosexual can bring a challenge to such a policy and seek heightened equal protection scrutiny even though the Court has yet to establish heightened scrutiny for laws discriminating against gays and lesbians. I conclude that such a harmonization of the Court's equal protection precedents will reinvigorate the Court's moribund precedents for identifying new suspect and quasi-suspect classes. Moreover, I conclude that announcing heightened scrutiny in such a case would present a particularly appealing vehicle to the Court's center, represented by Justice Kennedy, whose jurisprudence demonstrates both support for gay rights and hostility ...

In this essay, I invoke both versions of Dr. Seuss's The Sneetches as an allegory for the modern struggle for gay rights in the United States viewed through three different prisms. The first and most obvious of these prisms is the battle between the heterosexual majority and the gay minority represented by the two groups of Sneetches. Members of the majority seek to distinguish themselves with markers of social acceptance such as marriage, parenting, and military service, as well as access to certain other markers of social acceptance, including the ability to donate blood and become members in private organizations such as the Boy Scouts. The second prism is the struggle between two different minority groups—gays and African Americans—with members of the latter group rejecting the former's efforts to draw analogies to its own civil rights struggle. Finally, the third prism is the struggle between two different sub-groups within the gay minority: assimilationists and nonconformists. The latter is critical of what it views as the former's insecurity in seeking mere formal equality by erasing valuable differences that set gays apart. Indeed, in this last struggle, some non-conformists have come out against the rights of gays to marry or serve in the military. Part II of this essay provides an overview of Social Dominance Theory, which posits that humans are psychologically predisposed to develop and maintain group-based social hierarchies. Part Ill uses The Sneetches and the insights of Social Dominance Theory as a way of explaining the first prism—the struggle between the heterosexual majority and gay minority. Parts IV and V use these tools to explain, respectively, the second prism—the struggle between African Americans and the gay community, and the third prism—the struggle between assimilationists and nonconformists within the gay community. Part VI explores the question of who in the battle over gay rights is represented by Seuss's Sylvester McMonkey McBean. In this essay, I demonstrate that as one changes ...

In this Essay, I demonstrate that, with the extension of the right to marry to same-sex couples in Iowa, the District of Columbia, and New Hampshire (all states that recognize common law marriage), there now exists the possibility that—for the first time in the United States—a same-sex couple may enter into a legally recognized common law marriage. In the Essay, I first show, as a doctrinal matter, that same-sex couples have the right to enter into common law marriages in these three jurisdictions, and I explain and compare the criteria for entering into common law marriages in each of them. I then address the question whether it makes sense—as a policy matter—to expand the concept of common law marriage to include same-sex couples, including an analysis of whether being a closeted same-sex couple is consistent with being in a common law marriage. I conclude that the lack of consistent access to religious and public officials willing to perform same-sex marriages coupled with the libertarian spirit underlying both same-sex marriage and common law marriage militate in favor of recognizing common law same-sex marriages. I also demonstrate the advantages that common law marriage—with its lack of a paper trail—provides to same-sex couples who need to keep their relationships closeted, such as those in the military or foreign nationals with temporary visas. Finally, on the assumption that the U.S. Supreme Court may eventually hold that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry, I examine the criteria for entering into common law marriages in the remaining nine states that recognize common law marriage. With respect to these remaining states—nearly all of which have bans on same-sex marriage enshrined into their state constitutions and that thus will allow same-sex marriage only if ordered to do so by a federal court—I conclude that the policy arguments in favor of recognizing same-sex common law marriage are even more compelling than they are in jurisdictions that currently recognize same-sex common law ...