When conservative interest groups cheered Charles and Kathleen Moore’s suit against the government over a tax bill,1 they sought to “permanently put…to rest”2 progressive American lawmakers’ calls for a wealth tax.3 Instead, after the Supreme Court unexpectedly “changed the subject,”4 the justices reopened old wounds from the “most intense legal discourse” of an earlier era, […]

“Poverty and immorality are not synonymous,” the Supreme Court once observed. 1 A set of laws that would restrict where “the poor and the unpopular” are allowed to exist on public property “merely at the whim of any police officer”2 is bad, the Court said. 3 Such a regime “would provide a convenient tool for […]

The law of constitutional remedies is tightly coupled with the law of equity. In the early twentieth century, suits in equity became the “normal mechanism” through which constitutional rights were protected against violation by government officials.1 From the 1950s to the 1970s, the structural injunction — which emerged as a tool to combat segregation — […]

Marriage grants a couple a set of rights,1 and chief among them is the ability to live with his or her spouse.2 However, this right seems to disappear if one spouse is not a U.S. citizen. Sandra Muñoz, a U.S. citizen, learned this firsthand when her husband, Luis Asencio-Cordero, an immigrant from El Salvador, was […]

The substantive law under which defendants are prosecuted can vary from state to state.1 But regardless of jurisdiction, there are procedural barriers against successive prosecutions.2 States like Georgia have created their own barriers to criminal proceedings by passing laws and amending their own constitutions.3 The federal barrier, contained in the Double Jeopardy Clause of the […]