Article

Predictive Facts

December 01, 2020 | 95 Wash. L. Rev. 1621

Brent Ferguson

Abstract

A substantial portion of constitutional law rests on untested factual predictions made by the Supreme Court. Such forecasts have played a large role in a wide range of case outcomes, helping the Court decide questions such as whether corporations have the right to spend money on elections and what evidence may be used in criminal cases despite Fourth Amendment violations.

Scholars have not yet studied the frequency of such predictions, the problems they create, or the functions they serve. The literature has looked more closely at court decisions that depend on conclusions of legislative fact—facts not specific to a certain plaintiff or defendant but concerning the world more gene…

Article

Restoring Reasonableness to Workplace Religious Accommodations

December 01, 2020 | 95 Wash. L. Rev. 1673

Dallan F. Flake

Abstract

When Congress amended Title VII of the Civil Rights Act in 1972 to require employers to reasonably accommodate employees’ religious practices absent undue hardship to their business, it intended to protect employees from being forced to choose between their jobs and their religious beliefs. Yet in the decades since, courts have cut away at this right to the point it is practically nonexistent. Particularly concerning is the growing tendency of courts to read reasonableness out of the accommodation requirement, either by conflating reasonableness and undue hardship so that an accommodation’s reasonableness depends solely on whether it would cause the employer undue hardship, by sett…

Article

Suspects, Cars & Police Dogs: A Complicated Relationship

December 01, 2020 | 95 Wash. L. Rev. 1725

Brian R. Gallini

Abstract

Officers are searching and arresting vehicle occupants without a warrant with increasing regularity. For justification, this Article demonstrates, lower courts across the country unconstitutionally expand the scope of the Fourth Amendment’s automobile exception—often in the context of a positive dog alert. But Supreme Court jurisprudence specifically limits the scope of the automobile exception to warrantless searches of cars and their containers. In other words, the probable cause underlying the automobile exception allows police to search a vehicle and its containers—nothing more.

Despite that clear guidance, this Article argues that a growing number of lower courts nationwide u…