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The Court-Packing Plan As Symptom, Casualty, And Cause Of Gridlock, Barry Cushman Dec 2013

The Court-Packing Plan As Symptom, Casualty, And Cause Of Gridlock, Barry Cushman

Barry Cushman

No abstract provided.


The Clerks Of The Four Horsemen, Barry Cushman Nov 2013

The Clerks Of The Four Horsemen, Barry Cushman

Barry Cushman

The names of Holmes clerks such as Tommy Corcoran and Francis Biddle, of Brandeis clerks such as Dean Acheson and Henry Friendly, and of Stone clerks such as Harold Leventhal and Herbert Wechsler ring down the pages of history. But how much do we really know about Carlyle Baer, Tench Marye, or Milton Musser? This article follows the interesting and often surprising lives and careers of the men who clerked for the Four Horsemen - Justices Van Devanter, McReynolds, Sutherland, and Butler. These biographical sketches confound easy stereotypes, and prove the adage that law, like politics, can make for strange …


Clerking For Scrooge, Barry Cushman Nov 2013

Clerking For Scrooge, Barry Cushman

Barry Cushman

During the Supreme Court’s memorable October,1936 term, a young man named John Knox clerked for Justice James Clark McReynolds. Knox kept a diary during the term, and between 1952 and 1963 converted the diary into a 978-page memoir. Yet his own efforts to publish the memoir came to naught. In 1978 he deposited all or a portion of the manuscript at a series of libraries. But there it languished until rescued from obscurity by David Garrow and Dennis Hutchinson, who in 2002 published an edition of the manuscript with the University of Chicago Press. This essay reviews Knox’s remarkable memoir …


Some Varieties And Vicissitudes Of Lochnerism, Barry Cushman Nov 2013

Some Varieties And Vicissitudes Of Lochnerism, Barry Cushman

Barry Cushman

This article is a contribution to the Lochner Centennial Symposium at Boston University School of Law. Until recently, a consensus appeared to be emerging among constitutional historians concerning how best to interpret Lochner-era decisions involving Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment challenges to state and federal economic regulation. After decades during which the Court's jurisprudence had been characterized as the product of a reactionary judiciary's commitments to Social Darwinism and laissez-faire economics, more recent scholars had come to see the Court's police powers decisions as animated by what Professor Howard Gillman has called the principle of neutrality. On this view, the Court's …


Formalism And Realism In Commerce Clause Jurisprudence, Barry Cushman Nov 2013

Formalism And Realism In Commerce Clause Jurisprudence, Barry Cushman

Barry Cushman

This Article attempts a reconceptualization of developments in Commerce Clause jurisprudence between the Civil War and World War II by identifying ways in which that jurisprudence was structurally related to and accordingly deeply influenced by the categories of substantive due process and dormant Commerce Clause doctrine. Antecedent dormant Commerce Clause jurisprudence set the terms within which Commerce Clause doctrine was worked out; coordinate developments in substantive due process doctrine set limits upon the scope of Commerce Clause formulations and thus played a critical and underappreciated role in maintaining the federal equilibrium. The subsequent erosion of those due process limitations vastly …


The Structure Of Classical Public Law, Barry Cushman Nov 2013

The Structure Of Classical Public Law, Barry Cushman

Barry Cushman

Duncan Kennedy's The Rise and Fall of Classical Legal Thought circulated in manuscript for three decades before it was formally published in 2006. This essay reviews the book's treatment of Classical public law, focusing on its two principal contributions to the historiography of the subject: the concept of legal consciousness, and the structural analysis of constitutional doctrine.


Headline Kidnappings And The Origins Of The Lindbergh Law, Barry Cushman Nov 2013

Headline Kidnappings And The Origins Of The Lindbergh Law, Barry Cushman

Barry Cushman

No abstract provided.


Lost Fidelities, Barry Cushman Nov 2013

Lost Fidelities, Barry Cushman

Barry Cushman

No abstract provided.


The Secret Lives Of The Four Horsemen, Barry Cushman Nov 2013

The Secret Lives Of The Four Horsemen, Barry Cushman

Barry Cushman

"Outlined against red velvet drapery on the first Monday of October, the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore they are known as Famine, Pestilence, Destruction, and Death. These are only aliases. Their real names are Van Devanter, McReynolds, Sutherland, and Butler. They formed the crest of the reactionary cyclone before which yet another progressive statute was swept over the precipice yesterday morning as a packed courtroom of spectators peered up at the bewildering panorama spread across the mahogany bench above." Or so Grantland Rice might have written, had he been a legal realist. For more than two generations scholars …