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The “Unwritten Constitution” And Unwritten Law, Stephen E. Sachs

Faculty Scholarship

America’s Unwritten Constitution is a prod to the profession to look for legal rules outside the Constitution’s text. This is a good thing, as outside the text there’s a vast amount of law—the everyday, nonconstitutional law, written and unwritten, that structures our government and society. Despite the book’s unorthodox framing, many of its claims can be reinterpreted in fully conventional legal terms, as the product of the text’s interaction with ordinary rules of law and language.

This very orthodoxy, though, may undermine Akhil Amar’s case that America truly has an “unwritten Constitution.” In seeking to harmonize the text with deep …

Considering Individual Religious Freedoms Under Tribal Constitutional Law, Kristen A. Carpenter

Publications

As American Indian nations revitalize their legal systems, there is renewed interest in "tribal law," that is, the law of each of the Indian nations. Today, there is a particular focus on the subject of "individual rights" under tribal law. In tribal contexts, people are highly interested in the legal institutions and rules that govern their lives, especially as many tribal communities are experiencing a period of great political, social, and economic change. At the national level, the Supreme Court repeatedly expresses concern about whether individuals, especially non-Indians, will be treated fairly in tribal court. For scholars, individual rights under …