Digital Commons Network^™

Approaching The Constitution, Don Herzog

Reviews

These are sumptuously produced, oversized volumes: one pictures them, as I suspect some shrewd accountant at the press did, decorating the shelves of lawyers' offices. Their pages are crammed full of primary texts, two columns on each page, in an alarmingly small but somehow readable typeface. Some texts are bare snippets; others wind on luxuriantly for many pages. The editors have set a cutoff point: no text from after 1835 appears. Like much else about these volumes, that decision reflects a set of theoretical commitments about the Constitution that I want to question. Not that these volumes are explicitly cast …

A Preface To Constitutional Theory, David B. Lyons

Faculty Scholarship

We have a plethora of theories about judicial review, including theories about theories, but their foundations require stricter scrutiny. This Essay presents some aspects of the problem through an examination of two important and familiar ideas about judicial review.

The controversy over "noninterpretive" review concerns the propriety of courts' deciding constitutional cases by using extraconstitutional norms. But the theoretical framework has not been well developed and appears to raise the wrong questions about judicial review. Thayer's doctrine of extreme judicial deference to the legislature has received much attention, but his reasoning has been given less careful notice. Thayer's rule rests …

Cannibal Moves: An Essay On The Metamorphoses Of The Legal Distinction, Pierre Schlag

Publications

No abstract provided.

The Authoritarian Impulse In Constitutional Law, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Should there be greater participation by legislators and citizens in constitutional debate, theory, and decision-making? An increasing number of legal theorists from otherwise divergent perspectives have recently argued against what Paul Brest calls the "principle of judicial exclusivity" in our constitutional processes. These theorists contend that because issues of public morality in our culture either are, or tend to become, constitutional issues, all political actors, and most notably legislators and citizens, should consider the constitutional implications of the moral issues of the day. Because constitutional questions are essentially moral questions about how active and responsible citizens should constitute themselves, we …