FE-1 Constitutional Law cheat sheet

Judicial review: courts may invalidate legislative or executive acts that conflict with the Constitution (Marbury v. Madison, 1803); the Constitution is supreme over conflicting statutes and state law (Supremacy Clause, Art. VI).

Standing (Art. III "case or controversy"): plaintiff must show (1) concrete injury-in-fact, actual or imminent; (2) traceability to the defendant's conduct; (3) redressability by a favorable ruling. Third-party and generalized-grievance claims are generally barred.

Mootness and ripeness: a live controversy must exist at every stage; exceptions to mootness include voluntary cessation, capable-of-repetition-yet-evading-review, and collateral consequences. Ripeness asks whether the issue is fit for review and hardship from delay is substantial.

Political question doctrine: courts decline issues textually committed to a coordinate branch or lacking judicially manageable standards (e.g., recognition of foreign governments, impeachment trial procedures, military command decisions).

State action requirement: the Fourteenth Amendment and most individual-rights provisions constrain government, not private parties; exceptions include public functions, entanglement/encouragement, and cases where private actors exercise coercive power.

Levels of scrutiny: strict scrutiny (compelling interest, narrowly tailored, least restrictive means) for suspect classifications and fundamental rights; intermediate scrutiny (important interest, substantially related) for sex and illegitimacy; rational basis (legitimate interest, rationally related) for everything else, with a strong presumption of validity.

Due process: procedural due process uses the Mathews v. Eldridge balancing of private interest, risk of erroneous deprivation, and government interest; substantive due process protects fundamental liberty interests (e.g., marriage, procreation, contraception, family relations, bodily integrity) under strict scrutiny.

Equal protection tiers: suspect classes (race, national origin, alienage in some contexts) get strict scrutiny; quasi-suspect (sex, illegitimacy) get intermediate; poverty, age, and sexual orientation get rational basis (sexual orientation under heightened rational basis per Obergefell/Bostock line).

First Amendment: content-based restrictions get strict scrutiny; content-neutral time, place, and manner rules must serve a significant interest, be narrowly tailored, and leave open ample alternative channels. Prior restraints bear a heavy presumption of unconstitutionality; vagueness and overbreadth are facial challenges.

Enumerated powers: Congress may act only under Article I grants (tax/spend, commerce, war, naturalization, bankruptcy, patents/copyrights, postal, necessary and proper). The Necessary and Proper Clause is an auxiliary power, not a standalone source.

Commerce Clause: Congress may regulate channels of interstate commerce, instrumentalities and persons/things in interstate commerce, and intrastate activity that substantially affects interstate commerce (aggregation allowed for economic activity under Wickard/Raich).

Taxing and Spending: taxes must be for the general welfare and not merely penal; spending conditions must serve the general welfare, be unambiguous, relate to the federal interest, not induce unconstitutional acts, and not be coercive (NFIB v. Sebelius).

Dormant Commerce Clause: state laws discriminating against interstate commerce are per se invalid absent a legitimate local purpose that cannot be served by reasonable nondiscriminatory means; nondiscriminatory laws are upheld unless burdens clearly exceed local benefits. Market-participant and traditional government-function exceptions apply.

Preemption: federal law prevails under express preemption, field preemption (pervasive scheme), or conflict preemption (impossibility or obstacle to federal purpose); courts apply a presumption against preemption in areas of traditional state regulation.

Tenth Amendment and anti-commandeering: Congress may not compel states to enact or administer federal regulatory programs (New York v. United States; Printz) and may not commandeer state executive officials; conditional spending is the permissible alternative.

Separation of powers: legislative vetoes are invalid (INS v. Chadha); executive removal of officers-Congress may limit removal of independent agency heads but not of purely executive officers; Bowsher bars Congress from exercising executive functions.

Executive power: the President has express powers (commander-in-chief, pardon, treaty with Senate advice and consent, appointment), plus implied and inherent powers; Youngstown's three-zone framework turns on congressional authorization, silence, or prohibition.

Federal immunity and sovereign immunity: states are immune from suit in federal court by private parties under the Eleventh Amendment, subject to waiver and congressional abrogation under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Incorporation: the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause selectively incorporates most Bill of Rights provisions against the states (e.g., First Amendment, Fourth Amendment, most criminal procedure rights); the Second Amendment is incorporated (McDonald), but the grand jury indictment requirement is not.

Establishment Clause: Lemon test (secular purpose, primary effect neither advances nor inhibits religion, no excessive entanglement) applies to many aid and display cases; the Court has also used historical-practice and coercion analyses (Kennedy v. Bremerton), so evaluate both frameworks.

Free Exercise: neutral, generally applicable laws are not subject to strict scrutiny (Employment Division v. Smith); strict scrutiny applies where a law targets religious conduct or burdens religion through individualized exemptions (Church of Lukumi, Fulton).

Speech: unprotected categories include incitement to imminent lawless action (Brandenburg), true threats, fighting words, obscenity (Miller), and child pornography; commercial speech gets intermediate scrutiny (Central Hudson).

Voting and elections: equal protection requires one person, one vote; racial gerrymandering gets strict scrutiny; partisan gerrymandering is a nonjusticiable political question (Rucho). The Voting Rights Act Section 2 and Section 5 frameworks remain key statutory overlays.

Right to bear arms: District of Columbia v. Heller recognizes an individual right to keep and bear arms for self-defense in the home; Bruen requires the government to show a historical tradition of analogous regulation, replacing means-end scrutiny in Second Amendment cases.

Fundamental rights and abortion: Dobbs overruled Roe and Casey; abortion regulation is now evaluated under rational basis review unless a state constitutional provision supplies greater protection; other unenumerated rights (marriage, contraception, family integrity) remain protected.

Remedies and review: facial vs. as-applied challenges; severability analysis; overbreadth doctrine permits facial First Amendment challenges by third parties; stare decisis and tiers of precedent (constitutional decisions are not lightly overruled).

Exam technique: identify the government actor and the constitutional provision; state the applicable tier of scrutiny; apply each prong to the facts; address counterarguments and alternative holdings; conclude with the likely outcome and remedy.