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Enduring Originalism, Kevin C. Walsh

Law Faculty Publications

If our law requires originalism in constitutional interpretation, then that would be a good reason to be an originalist. This insight animates what many have begun to call the "positive turn" in originalism. Defenses of originalism in this vein are "positive" in that they are based on the status of the Constitution, and constitutional law, as positive law. This approach shifts focus away from abstract conceptual or normative arguments about interpretation and focuses instead on how we actually understand and apply the Constitution as law. On these grounds, originalism rests on a factual claim about the content of our law: …

Commandeering And Constitutional Change, Jud Campbell

Law Faculty Publications

Coming in the midst of the Rehnquist Court’s federalism revolution, Printz v. United States held that federal commandeering of state executive officers is “fundamentally incompatible with our constitutional system of dual sovereignty.” The Printz majority’s discussion of historical evidence, however, inverted Founding-era perspectives. When Federalists such as Alexander Hamilton endorsed commandeering during the ratification debates, they were not seeking to expand federal power. Quite the opposite. The Federalists capitulated to states’ rights advocates who had recently rejected a continental impost tax because Hamilton, among others, insisted on hiring federal collectors rather than commandeering state collectors. The commandeering power, it turns …

The Status Of Constitutional Religious Liberty At The End Of The Millennium, Kurt T. Lash

Law Faculty Publications

I have the privilege of introducing the 1998 Bums Lecture Symposium- Religious Liberty in the Next Millennium: Should We Amend the Religion Clauses of the United States Constitution? My role in this Symposium is to acquaint you with the religion clauses of the Constitution- where they came from- where they've been- and where they seem to be today. Our Symposium contributors, Professors Kent Greenawalt and Robert George will discuss just where they think the religion clauses should go in the future.

The Second Adoption Of The Free Exercise Clause: Religious Exemptions Under The Fourteenth Amendment, Kurt T. Lash

Law Faculty Publications

This Article explores the proposition that the Free Exercise Clause was adopted a second time through its incorporation into the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and that the scope of the new Free Exercise Clause was intended to include protections un-anticipated at the Founding. Contrary to Jeffersonian notions of separate spheres, the nation by the time of Reconstruction had experienced decades of clashes resulting from the overlapping concerns of religion and government. In particular, the suppression of slave religion called into question the government's power to interfere, even indirectly, with legitimate religious exercise. Accordingly, the Privileges or …

Rejecting Conventional Wisdom: Federalist Ambivalence In The Framing And Implementation Of Article V, Kurt T. Lash

Law Faculty Publications

In 1787, the idea of placing an amending provision in a constitution was uncontroversial. Popular sovereignty was an assumed doctrine in the colonies; the people retained the unalienable right "to alter or abolish" their system of government whenever they so pleased. How this unquestionable right was to be incorporated into the new federal Constitution, however, was another matter. The delegates who faced each other at Philadelphia had very different views about which body should be entrusted with the power to propose amendments, when that power should be used, and how that power should be defined.

Article V, like the rest …