Tag: Jason Mazzone

“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.

Although it was ultimately not included in the recently approved Chicago area transit bailout measure, Professor Jason Mazzone told the Cook County Record in late October that the proposed “billionaire’s tax” would face a stiff uphill battle in court.

“The sponsors of the (legislation), which would impose a tax on unrealized gains on assets owned by state residents with net assets exceeding $1 billion in value, contend that the proposed new tax is not a tax on personal property but on income,” Mazzone wrote in an email answer to questions from The Record.

“The Illinois courts will be very skeptical of this claim for the simple reason that a gain on paper, without any money ever being exchanged, does not obviously count as income within the ordinary meaning of the word or in the world of financial management or taxation,” Mazzone said.

“An increase in wealth is quite different from an increase in income. The state constitution distinguishes between the two. Courts will be inclined to keep the line between them sharp.”

Read the full article at legalnewsline.com.