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The Constitution's Forgotten Cover Letter: An Essay On The New Federalism And The Original Understanding, Daniel A. Farber

Daniel A Farber

At the end of the summer of 1787, the Philadelphia Convention issued two documents. One was the Constitution itself. The other document, now almost forgotten even by constitutional historians, was an official letter to Congress, signed by George Washington on behalf of the Convention. Congress responded with a resolution that the Constitution and "letter accompanying the same" be sent to the state legislatures for submission to conventions in each state.

The Washington letter lacks the detail and depth of some other evidence of original intent. Being a cover letter, it was designed only to introduce the accompanying document rather than …

Amending The Constitution, Erwen Chemerinsky

Erwin Chemerinsky

The ultimate measure of a constitution is how it balances entrenchment and change. On the one hand, a constitution differs from all other laws in that it is much more difficult to revise. For example, the next session of Congress can amend or repeal a statute, but altering the U.S. Constitution requires a complex process involving supermajorities of both houses of Congress and the states. A constitution thus reflects a desire to place a society's core values of governance - such as the structure of government and the rights of individuals - in a document that is hard to revise. …

How The United States Supreme Court Diminished Constitutional Protections Of The Right To Vote And What Congress Can Do About It, Henry Rose

Henry Rose

No abstract provided.

The Constitution As Poetry, Samuel J. Levine

Samuel J. Levine

Building upon a body of scholarship that compares constitutional interpretation to biblical and literary interpretation, and relying on an insight from a prominent nineteenth century rabbinic scholar, this Article briefly explores similarities in the interpretation of the Torah—the text of the Five Books of Moses—and the United States Constitution. Specifically, this Article draws upon Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehudah Berlin’s (“Netziv”) intriguing suggestion that the interpretation of the text of the Torah parallels the interpretation of poetry. According to Netziv, this parallel accounts for the practice of interpreting the Torah expansively in ways that derive substantive legal rules and principles far …

Gerrymandering And Conceit: The Supreme Court's Conflict With Itself, Mckay Cunningham

McKay Cunningham

In November 2016, a federal court struck as unconstitutional Wisconsin’s redistricting map under both the First Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause. The court’s decision in Whitford v. Gill marks the first time a federal court invalidated a redistricting map as unconstitutional for partisan gerrymandering in over thirty years. Wisconsin has appealed the decision to the United States Supreme Court, which recently granted review. The Supreme Court has long held that extreme partisan gerrymandering violates equal protection but has simultaneously refused to determine the merits of gerrymandering disputes, instead labeling them as non-justiciable political questions. In particular, the Court has …

Robocop Is Almost Here, Stewart L. Harris

Stewart L. Harris

No abstract provided.

Law Enforcement And Criminal Law Decisions, Erwin Chemerinsky

Erwin Chemerinsky

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Borrowing, Robert L. Tsai

Robert L Tsai

Borrowing from one domain to promote ideas in another domain is a staple of constitutional decisionmaking. Precedents, arguments, concepts, tropes, and heuristics all can be carried across doctrinal boundaries for purposes of persuasion. Yet the practice itself remains underanalyzed. This Article seeks to bring greater theoretical attention to the matter. It defines what constitutional borrowing is and what it is not, presents a typology that describes its common forms, undertakes a principled defense of borrowing, and identifies some of the risks involved. The authors' examples draw particular attention to places where legal mechanisms and ideas migrate between fields of law …

Democracy's Handmaid, Robert L. Tsai

Robert L Tsai

Democratic theory presupposes open channels of dialogue, but focuses almost exclusively on matters of institutional design writ large. The philosophy of language explicates linguistic infrastructure, but often avoids exploring the political significance of its findings. In this Article, Tsai draws from the two disciplines to reach new insights about the democracy enhancing qualities of popular constitutional language. Employing examples from the founding era, the struggle for black civil rights, the religious awakening of the last two decades, and the search for gay equality, he presents a model of constitutional dialogue that emphasizes common modalities and mobilized vernacular. According to this …

John Brown's Constitution, Robert L. Tsai

Robert L Tsai

It will surprise many Americans to learn that before John Brown and his men briefly captured Harper’s Ferry, they authored and ratified a Provisional Constitution. This deliberative act built upon the achievements of the group to establish a Free Kansas, during which time Brown penned an analogue to the Declaration of Independence. These acts of writing, coupled with Brown’s trial tactics after his arrest, cast doubts on claims that the man was a lunatic or on a suicide mission. Instead, they suggest that John Brown aimed to be a radical statesman, one who turned to extreme tactics but nevertheless remained …

Constitutional Conundrums, Alan E. Garfield

Alan E Garfield

No abstract provided.

Rlupia And The Limits Of Religious Institutionalism, Zachary A. Bray

Zachary Bray

What special protections, if any, should religious organizations receive from local land use controls? The Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (“RLUIPA”)—a deeply flawed statute—has been a magnet for controversy since its passage in 2000. Yet until recently, RLUIPA has played little role in debates about “religious institutionalism,” a set of ideas that suggest religious institutions play a distinctive role in developing the framework for religious liberty and that they deserve comparably distinctive deference and protection. This is starting to change: RLUIPA’s magnetic affinity for controversy has begun to connect conflicts over religious land use with larger debates about …

A Plea For Constitutional Balance, Stephen M. Feldman

Stephen M. Feldman

The Political Branches And The Law Of Nations, Bradford R. Clark, Anthony J. Bellia

Anthony J. Bellia

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the U.S. Supreme Court went out of its way to follow background rules of the law of nations, particularly the law of state-state relations. As we have recently argued, the Court followed the law of nations because adherence to such law preserved the constitutional prerogatives of the political branches to conduct foreign relations and decide momentous questions of war and peace. Although we focused primarily on the extent to which the Constitution obligated courts to follow the law of nations in the early republic, the explanation we offered rested on an important, …

A Sleeping Giant: §2 Of The Kentucky Constitution, Allison I. Connelly

Allison Connelly

In this newsletter article, Professor Connelly discusses Section 2 of the Kentucky Constitution which prohibits the exercise of arbitrary official power.

The Constitution Of Cádiz In Florida, M C. Mirow

M. C. Mirow

The article explores the vibrant constitutional community that existed in St. Augustine and the province of East Florida in the final decade of Spanish control of the area. Based on relatively unexplored primary sources, it reveals a great deal of unknown information about the importance of the Constitution in Florida immediately before the territory was transferred to the United States. The article provides full description of the Constitution's promulgation in 1812 and a second promulgation of the Constitution in 1820 (something unknown in the general literature). It also addresses the construction of the St. Augustine monument to the Constitution erected …

Pre-Constitutional Law And Constitutions: Spanish Colonial Law And The Constitution Of Cádiz, M C. Mirow

M. C. Mirow

This article contributes to the intellectual and legal history of this constitutional document. It also provides a close study of how pre-constitutional laws are employed in writing constitutions. It examines the way Spanish colonial law, known as "derecho indiano" in Spanish, was used in the process of drafting the Constitution and particularly the way these constitutional activities and provisions related to the Americas. The article asserts that this pre-constitutional law was used in three distinct ways: as general knowledge related to the Americas and their institutions; as a source for providing a particular answer to a specific legal question; and …

The Executive, Shubhankar Dam

Shubhankar Dam

India has a parliamentary system. The President is the head of the Union of India; the Prime Minister is the head of government.1 Along with his or her cabinet, the Prime Minister is responsible to the Lower House of Parliament.2 States have similar arrangements. They are formally headed by Governors. But chief ministers and their cabinets lead the governments. Executive power, ordinarily, is exercised by the Prime Minister, chief ministers and their respective councils of ministers. However, in keeping with India’s Westminster inheritance, such power often vests in the formal heads, and is exercised in their names. This chapter offers …

Holmes And Brennan, Howard M. Wasserman

Howard M Wasserman

Who’S The ‘We?’ Who’S ‘The People?’, Rodney A. Smolla

Rod Smolla

No abstract provided.

All American Citizens Fall Under ‘We The People,’ But Who Is Really Included?, Alan E. Garfield

Alan E Garfield

No abstract provided.

Categories, Tiers Of Review, And The Roiling Sea Of Free Speech Doctrine And Principle: A Methodological Critique Of United States V. Alvarez, Rodney A. Smolla

Rod Smolla

None available.

Academic Freedom, Hate Speech, And The Idea Of A University, Rodney A. Smolla

Rod Smolla

Not available.

Riding On The Ordinance Highway: Why The Supreme Court Should Step In, Shubhankar Dam

Shubhankar Dam

No abstract provided.

Saving Originalism, Robert J. Delahunty, John Yoo

John C Yoo

It is sometimes said that biographers cannot help but come to admire, even love, their subjects. And that adage seems to ring true of Professor Amar, the foremost “biographer” of the Constitution. He loves it not just as a governing structure, or a political system, but as a document. He loves the Constitution in the same way that a fan of English literature might treasure Milton’s Paradise Lost or Shakespeare’s Macbeth. He loves the Constitution not just for the good: the separation of powers, federalism, and the Bill of Rights. He also loves it for its nooks and crannies, idiosyncrasies, …

The Scope Of Precedent, Randy J. Kozel

Randy J Kozel

The scope of Supreme Court precedent is capacious. Justices of the Court commonly defer to sweeping rationales and elaborate doctrinal frameworks articulated by their predecessors. This practice infuses judicial precedent with the prescriptive power of enacted constitutional and statutory text. The lower federal courts follow suit, regularly abiding by the Supreme Court’s broad pronouncements. These phenomena cannot be explained by—and, indeed, oftentimes subvert—the classic distinction between binding holdings and dispensable dicta. This Article connects the scope of precedent with recurring and foundational debates about the proper ends of judicial interpretation. A precedent’s forward- looking effect should not depend on the …

Democracy Means That The People Make The Law, Gerald Torres

Gerald Torres

Gerald Torres delivered the Robert C. Wood lecture at the McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies at University of Massachusetts Boston in 2006. This is his talk.

Is The Filibuster Constitutional?, Josh Chafetz, Michael J. Gerhardt

Josh Chafetz

With the help of the President, Democrats in Congress were able to pass historic healthcare-reform legislation in spite of - and thanks to - the significant structural obstacles presented by the Senate’s arcane parliamentary rules. After the passage of the bill, the current political climate appears to require sixty votes for the passage of any major legislation, a practice which many argue is unsustainable. In this Debate, Professors Josh Chafetz and Michael Gerhardt debate the constitutionality of the Senate’s cloture rules by looking to the history of those rules in the United States and elsewhere. Professor Chafetz argues that the …

The Unconstitutionality Of The Filibuster, Josh Chafetz

Josh Chafetz

This Article, written for the Connecticut Law Review's 2010 "Is Our Constitutional Order Broken?" symposium, argues that the filibuster, as currently practiced, is unconstitutional.

After a brief introduction in Part I, Part II describes the current operation of the filibuster. Although the filibuster is often discussed in terms of "unlimited debate," this Part argues that its current operation is best understood in terms of a sixty-vote requirement to pass most bills and other measures through the Senate.

Part III presents a structural argument that this supermajority requirement for most Senate business is unconstitutional. This Part argues that the words "passed" …

Impeachment And Assassination, Josh Chafetz

Josh Chafetz

In 1998, the conservative provocateur Ann Coulter made waves when she wrote that President Clinton should be either impeached or assassinated. Coulter was roundly - and rightly - condemned for suggesting that the murder of the President might be justified, but her conceptual linking of presidential impeachment and assassination was not entirely unfounded. Indeed, Benjamin Franklin had made the same linkage over two hundred years earlier, when he noted at the Constitutional Convention that, historically, the removal of “obnoxious” chief executives had been accomplished by assassination. Franklin suggested that a proceduralized mechanism for removal - impeachment - would be preferable. …