Tag: Jason Mazzone

Writing for Justia Verdict, UC Davis Law professor Vikram David Amar and Illinois Law professor Jason Mazzone discuss the federal lawsuit brought by former Illinois judge James Brown against the Justices of the Illinois Supreme Court following his removal from a temporary recall appointment. Professors Amar and Mazzone argue that while judicial immunity likely bars the plaintiff’s claims for monetary damages, the case presents complex, unresolved questions regarding the application of First Amendment speech protections to judicial appointments and the extent to which states may manage their own judiciaries.

Read the article at verdict.justia.com.

Read local coverage of the case at news-gazette.com.

Professor and constitutional law expert Jason Mazzone recently joined Jon Hansen on the WGN radio show Let’s Get Legal to break down how the Supreme Court makes decisions, how the emergency docket works, and how the court has decided national issues quickly and with limited briefings.

Listen to the episode.

Following oral arguments in Trump v. Barbara, most legal experts agreed that although the Supreme Court will most likely decide against the government, the justices’ treatment of the Trump administration’s position lends it respectability and could ultimately allow Congress to return to the question of birthright citizenship.

Professor Jason Mazzone, constitutional law expert, expected far more aggressive questioning of both sides. Speaking to the New York Times, he said, “I kept having to remind myself that I was listening to a Supreme Court oral argument rather than presentation of papers at an academic conference before a polite audience of scholars willing to engage with whatever eccentric idea was being presented.”

“My conclusion from the content and tone of the argument is that there is a majority — possibly even nine justices — already persuaded that the executive order violates the 1952 statute,” he said, “and so the 14th Amendment argument didn’t need the sort of probing that would be required in another case that turned solely on a constitutional issue.”

Read the full story at nytimes.com.

“There are few cases that are more important than this one,” Professor Jason Mazzone told the Chicago Tribune about the United States Supreme Court’s case deciding the constitutionality of President Donald Trump’s attempt to restrict birthright citizenship. In an extensive article about how the end of birthright citizenship would affect those in Chicago, Mazzone told the Tribune the Court must rule the effort unconstitutional. “If you read the president’s executive order and you match it to the language of the 14th Amendment I think most people will see the flat contradiction between those two texts,” he said.

Read the full article from the Chicago Tribune.

Holding Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents responsible for constitutional violations might lie with state legislatures. The New York Times, investigating legal mechanisms by which individuals could bring cases against ICE, cited Professor Jason Mazzone’s work examining the Illinois Bivens Act, which has promise according to Mazzone.

Read the full New York Times article.

For the first time in the 30-year history of the Sawyer Seminar Program, a team of Illinois faculty researchers have been awarded the prestigious grant, including College of Law Professor Jason Mazzone. The grant is given through Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to groups studying the challenges to democracy and academic freedom confronting US universities now. The Illinois initiative includes Susan Koshy (Asian American Studies and English), Rosalyn LaPier (History and American Indian Studies), Jason Mazzone (Law), and David Sepkoski (History).

The group’s work will examine risk and academic freedom through a series of case studies done in conjunction with a larger team of contributors from around the university. The Sawyer Seminar’s activities will span a two-year period, beginning in the spring of 2026.

Learn more about the Sawyer Seminar Program in the LAS news release.

Discover events and news about the Illinois initiative, A Risk U.

In terms of impact, the biggest case before the United States Supreme Court in its current term is Trump v. Barbara, Professor Jason Mazzone predicted in the News-Gazette. The case, which will consider the constitutionality of President Donald Trump’s executive order denying birthright citizenship to individuals born in the United States, is “plainly unconstitutional,” he states. “I expect that when the court rules in Trump v. Barbara, it will issue a strongly originalist decision that deploys constitutional text, structure and history to reject the president’s attempt to evade the plain words of the Fourteenth Amendment. That will be a fitting outcome in the year in which we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence,” he concludes.

Read the full article on the News-Gazette website.