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Which Constitution? Eleven Years Of Gunwall In Washington State, Hugh D. Spitzer

Seattle University Law Review

This Article studies the problem of choosing constitutions-particularly the choice between applying the national Bill of Rights or a state constitution's declaration of rights. Many others have presented arguments for and against the independent application of a state's rights guarantees' or have classified and analyzed the various theories of state constitutionalism in the shadow of the United States Supreme Court. This examination focuses on practice rather than theory: specifically, how the Washington State Supreme Court has applied its formal doctrine on the role of the State's Declaration of Rights' and how that court has characterized and applied six criteria it …