Due Process Liability in Personnel Records Management: Preserving Employee Liberty Interests

1992 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 523-532 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert A. Shearer

As public employers well know, the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution guarantee due process to protect property interests associated with workers' legitimate expectations of continued employment. Equally well-established, although probably less often the subject of litigation, are the due process rights of public employees whose liberty interests, i.e., their right to be free of unwarranted professional stigma, are jeopardized by employer conduct. This paper analyzes several recent cases in which public employees charged liberty interest violations as a result of their employers' placing adverse information in their personnel files. Public sector employers should evaluate their exposure to liability for such claims and develop strategies to alleviate their risk as well as to carry out their responsibility to preserve the due process rights of employees.

1986 ◽  
Vol 49 ◽  
pp. 16-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter Dellinger

The first part of the seminar examined a mystery that reverberates through two centuries: how does a constitutional system of government, itself born of revolution, properly provide for its own revision — provide literally for its own reconstitution? We first considered the political and intellectual assumptions against which Article V of the United States Constitution — the amendment article — was drafted, and then looked briskly at the historical context in which the Constitution's twenty-six amendments have been adopted. With this as background, we addressed a range of issues concerning the law and policy of constitutional change that are currently the subject of lively dispute in America.


Author(s):  
Derek W. Black

In this chapter, Derek W. Black surveys the various litigation, judicial, and scholarly theories through which courts might recognize a right to education under the United States Constitution. He begins by sorting those theories into their major doctrinal categories and subcategories and explaining their basic arguments, including substantive due process, equal protection, privileges and immunities, citizenship, and originalism. Black then critically evaluates those theories, examining both the positives and negatives of the leading theories. He concludes that while a number of theories are plausible, scholarly theories have tended toward originalism in recent years and are the most likely to be successful before the courts.


Author(s):  
Stefan D. Cassella

This report discusses the goals that asset forfeiture is intended to serve in the federal criminal justice system, the types of property that are subject to forfeiture, and the procedures that are used to initiate, litigate, and conclude asset forfeiture cases.  With respect to procedure, its focus is on non-conviction-based (NCB) forfeiture, and especially on the safeguards that protect the property interests and due process rights of property owners.


ICL Journal ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald Turner

AbstractIn its landmark decision in Obergefell v Hodges a five-Justice majority of the United States Supreme Court held that state laws depriving same-sex couples of the right to marry violate the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Four dissenting Justices - Chief Justice John G Roberts, Jr and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Anthony Alito, Jr - criticized the majority’s ruling and analysis. Calling for judicial self-restraint and deference to the outcomes of democratic decision-making, the dissenters argued that same-sex marriage bans enacted by state legislatures did not violate the Constitution. This essay argues and demonstrates that the Obergefell dissenters have not restrained themselves in other cases in which they voted to strike down legislative enactments and did not defer to democratic decision-making. This selective restraint reveals that the dissenters have not been unwaveringly committed to judicial self-restraint, and raises the central question of when should the Court defer to legislatures in cases presenting constitutional challenges to state or federal laws.


2004 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
James E. Goggin

Interest in the fate of the German psychoanalysts who had to flee Hitler's Germany and find refuge in a new nation, such as the United States, has increased. The ‘émigré research’ shows that several themes recur: (1) the theme of ‘loss’ of one's culture, homeland, language, and family; and (2) the ambiva-lent welcome these émigrés received in their new country. We describe the political-social-cultural context that existed in the United States during the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. Documentary evidence found in the FBI files of three émigré psychoanalysts, Clara Happel, Martin Grotjahn, and Otto Fenichel, are then presented in combination with other source material. This provides a provisional impression of how each of these three individuals experienced their emigration. As such, it gives us elements of a history. The FBI documents suggest that the American atmosphere of political insecurity and fear-based ethnocentric nationalism may have reinforced their old fears of National Socialism, and contributed to their inclination to inhibit or seal off parts of them-selves and their personal histories in order to adapt to their new home and become Americanized. They abandoned the rich social, cultural, political tradition that was part of European psychoanalysis. Finally, we look at these elements of a history in order to ask a larger question about the appropriate balance between a liberal democratic government's right to protect itself from internal and external threats on the one hand, or crossover into the blatant invasion of civil rights and due process on the other.


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