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Comparative Constitutional Law: Casebooks For A Developing Discipline, Donald P. Kommers

Journal Articles

Comparative constitutional law is a developing area of legal scholarship. One sign of this development is the recent appearance of two casebooks, both published in 1979. Comparative Constitutional Law: Cases and Materials by Mauro Cappelletti and William Cohen, focuses primarily on the procedural rights of defendants from the United States and nine European jurisdictions. Comparative Constitutional Law. Cases and Commentaries by Walter F. Murphy and Joseph Tanenhaus, examines the constitutional interpretation of a large number of substantive issues in six contemporary constitutional democracies. Reviewing the two books together provides an opportunity not only to compare them as teaching tools but …

Congress And The Supreme Court's Jurisdiction, Charles E. Rice

Journal Articles

When a ruling of the supreme court meets with Congressional disfavor there are several remedies available to Congress. If the decision is not on a constitutional level, a later statutory enactment will suffice to reverse or modify the ruling. If, however, the Court's decision is an interpretation of a constitutional mandate, such as the requirement of the fourteenth amendment that legislative districts be apportioned according to population, then a statute could not reverse the decision because the statute itself would be subject to that constitutional mandate as defined by the Court.

The obvious method of reversing a Supreme Court interpretation …

Article V And The Proposed Federal Constitutional Convention Procedures Bills, Kenneth F. Ripple

Journal Articles

Article V of the United States Constitution sets forth the respective powers of the states and Congress in the amendment process. At first blush, the amendment process outlined in article V appears uncomplicated and straightforward. Congress can propose amendments and determine whether ratification will be accomplished by state legislatures or state conventions. Three-fourths of the state legislatures or state conventions must ratify a proposed amendment before it becomes part of the Constitution. The history of the amendment process confirms the apparent simplicity of that provision of article V which empowers Congress to propose amendments. To date, all twenty-six amendments have …