Scholarly works by WMU-Cooley Law School professor are accepted in multiple prestigious law journals

WMU-Cooley Law School Constitutional Law Professor Brendan Beery has had five law review and journal articles accepted for publication this past summer. His scholarly writings will appear in such prestigious publications as the Syracuse Law Review, Albany Law Review, University of Kansas Journal of Law and Public Policy, the National Lawyers Guild Review, and the Quinnipiac Law Review.

“It is very important for law professors to use their knowledge to help develop a deeper understanding of legal issues among those practicing law,” said WMU-Cooley Associate Dean Ron Sutton.
“Most legal scholars work toward gaining acceptance in prestigious legal journals a few times throughout their lifetime, but what Professor Beery has done in the past year highlights his dedication to the practice of law.”

The Syracuse Law Review, ranked as a top-50 “flagship” law review by the ExpressO Law Review Submissions Guide, will publish Beery’s article, “Rational Basis Loses Its Bite: Justice Kennedy’s Retirement Removes the Most Lethal Quill from LGBT Advocates’ Equal-Protection Quiver” in 2019. The article addresses levels of judicial scrutiny and how the Supreme Court’s approach to certain equal-protection cases will likely change under a new court majority.

Albany Law Review, also ranked as a top-50 flagship law review, will publish “Prophylactic Free Exercise: The First Amendment and Religion in a Post-Kennedy World” in 2019 as well. The article explores the court’s approach to the Constitution’s religion clauses historically and suggests that the court will move in the direction of protecting religious believers from laws that offend their sincerely held beliefs.

Also in 2019, the University of Kansas Journal of Law and Public Policy, a top-10 journal in law and society, will publish “Tiered Balancing and the Fate of Roe v. Wade: How the New Supreme court Majority Could Turn the Undue-Burden Standard into a Deferential Pike Test.” The article suggests that the new court majority is likely to retain the framework that already exists for analyzing abortion cases, but may apply that framework in ways that permit more governmental regulation of abortion procedures.

The National Lawyers Guild Review will publish this year “How to Argue Liberty Cases in a Post-Kennedy World: It’s Not about Individual Rights, But State Power and the Social Compact.” The article suggests that under a new Supreme Court approach to individual rights, advocates for individual rights would be well advised to frame their arguments in terms of the limited jurisdiction of the state.

Finally, Beery co-authored an article with WMU-Cooley Professor Emeritus Daniel R. Ray. The article, “Five Different Species of Legal Tests — And What They All Have in Common,” will be published by Quinnipiac Law Review in 2019. Beery noted that this article should be especially interesting for current students, as it explains five different kinds of legal tests (elements, factors, means-ends tests, balancing tests, and categorical tests) and describes how each kind of test can be conceptualized and applied as an if-then proposition in a workable formula. The article builds heavily on the work of fellow WMU-Cooley Professor Barbara Kalinowski in her article, “Logic Ab Initio: A Functional Approach to Improve Law Students’ Critical Thinking Skills,” that was published in 2018.