Celestine McConville

Celestine McConville

Celestine Richards McConville is a Professor of Law at Chapman University, Dale E. Fowler School of Law. She teaches courses in constitutional law, federal courts, and wills & trusts. She researches and writes in the areas of constitutional law and capital punishment, with a particular focus on the need for counsel in state capital postconviction proceedings. While at Chapman, she has received the Professor of the Year award three times. She earned her B.A. from Boston University and her J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center, graduating magna cum laude from both schools. She was elected to Order of the Coif and served as an editor for the Georgetown Law Journal Criminal Procedure Project. After law school, Professor McConville served as a law clerk for the Honorable William H. Rehnquist, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. She also clerked for Judge Cynthia Holcomb Hall of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and for Judge Donald C. Nugent of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio.

Columns by Celestine McConville

Permalink to Is Demonstrated Animus Irrelevant After Trump v. Hawaii?

Is Demonstrated Animus Irrelevant After Trump v. Hawaii?

9 Jul 2018

Celestine McConville

Chapman University Fowler School of Law professor Celestine McConville considers whether the US Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. Hawaii establishes a new equal protection rule regarding when the presence of government animus will invalidate government action. McConville points out that under Trump, a stated nondiscriminatory justification will outweigh demonstrated animus, provided the means are “plausibly related” to that justification—a bar so low, she argues, it does a disservice to the integrity of equal protection doctrine.