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Law Library Blog (October 2022): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Transnational Constitution-Making: The Contribution Of The Venice Commission On Law And Democracy, Paul Craig

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Commission for Democracy through Law, better known as the Venice Commission. While part of the Council of Europe, the Venice Commission is much less understood than the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), notwithstanding the existing literature. This chapter therefore seeks to explicate and evaluate. It begins by explicating the organizational foundations of the Venice Commission, followed by analysis of its remit and role. The focus then shifts to triggering and working methodology.

The remainder of the article is concerned with evaluation of the Commission’s role in relation to constitution-making as broadly conceived, the analysis being situated within the literature …

The Age Of Constitutions In The Americas, M C. Mirow

Faculty Publications

The late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have been aptly called the “Age of Codifications.” The same period was also the Age of Constitutions. Although a great deal is known about the migration of prenational and transnational legal sources and ideas that led to national codes of civil and criminal law in Europe and the Americas, much less is known about similar processes on the constitutional level. Constitutional historians have been more parochial than their private law counterparts, most likely because of the relationship between constitutions and nations. In the light of independence, nations immediately needed constitutions to solidify gains and …

Stealth Constitutional Change And The Geography Of Law, Jill M. Fraley

Scholarly Articles

Bruce Ackerman's recent book, The Decline and Fall of the American Republic, is a sudden shift from his previous scholarship on constitutional moments and the ability of social movements to generate minor revolutions. By acknowledging how constitutional change did not fit into his model of deliberate, deeply debated movements, Ackerman has shifted the scholarly lens to unintentional and unanticipated structural variations. Ackerman focuses his book on the political processes and events that have fostered potentially illegitimate constitutional remodeling. He acknowledges that certain features of legal scholarship have contributed to a lack of awareness of slow, structural drift, but he …

Introduction: International Review Of Constitutionalism Special Issue On Law, Poverty And Economic Inequality, Penelope Andrews, Frank W. Munger

Articles & Chapters

Editors introduction: This collection of articles by noted scholars examines what law and legal institutions can do to alleviate poverty and economic inequality in the new economic and political environment. The articles explore the contours of many struggles for distributive justice. They describe contemporary constitutional strategies, such as the incorporation of economic, social and cultural rights in constitutions in relation to grassroots anti-poverty campaigns in many parts of the world, including campaigns for rights in South Africa, and poor people's economic and human rights campaigns in the United States. Such campaigns face well-known disadvantages in contending with entrenched, powerful, and …

What Is A Twentieth-Century Constitution?, Peter E. Quint

Faculty Scholarship

At present, almost all of the constitutions in the world are twentieth-century constitutions; indeed, most of them were not adopted until the second half of the twentieth century. Accordingly, the eighteenth-century Constitution of the United States -- which includes the original constitution of 1787-89; the first ten amendments, adopted in 1791; and the Eleventh Amendment, adopted in 1798 -- antedates most other constitutions of the world by at least 150 years. Using the eighteenth-century Constitution of the United States as a form of base-line (a method that may be parochial, but one that I think also has a lot to …

Constitution-Making: A Process Filled With Constraint, Donald L. Horowitz

Faculty Scholarship

Constitutions are generally made by people with no previous experience in constitution making. The assistance they receive from outsiders is often less useful than it may appear. The most pertinent foreign experience may reside in distant countries, whose lessons are unknown or inaccessible. Moreover, although constitutions are intended to endure, they are often products of the particular crisis that forced their creation. Drafters are usually heavily affected by a desire to avoid repeating unpleasant historical experiences or to emulate what seem to be successful constitutional models. Theirs is a heavily constrained environment, made even more so by distrust and dissensus …

Institutional Structure: A Delicate Balance, Paul Craig

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Planned Constitution Never Got Written, But Israel Still Got Constitutional Law, Marcia R. Gelpe

Faculty Scholarship

Israel's development of constitutional law without a written constitution presents a fascinating picture of how a system, unable to develop a constitution in the usual manner, has developed one in another manner. It shows how innovative lawmaking can be - and sometimes must be - to maintain a democratic political system.

The Nomination Of Justice Brennan: Eisenhower's Mistake: A Look At The Historical Record, Stephen Wermiel

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

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Writing Supreme Court Biography: A Single Lens View Of A Nine-Sided Image, Stephen Wermiel

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Controlling Legislative Shortsightedness: The Effectiveness Of Constitutional Debt Limitations, Stewart E. Sterk, Elizabeth S. Goldman

Articles

In this article, Professor Sterk and Ms. Goldman examine the efficacy of constitutional debt limitations as a method of controlling the incurrence of public debt. In examining the historical development of such limitations, the authors conclude that they are responses to perceived deficiencies in the legislative process rather than reactions to specific instances of legislative abuse. The authors determine, however, that courts have transformed absolute constraints on legislative power to incur debt into more flexible limitations that leave the judiciary with a substantial role in determining the fate of proposed borrowing schemes. Moreover, the authors found that few states revised …

Statutes And Constitutions In An Age Of Common Law, Reed Dickerson

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

The Philippines: A Country In Crisis - A Report By Lawyers Committee For International Human Rights, Diane Orentlicher, Marvin E. Frankel, Jack Greenberg

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Constitution Making In 1935-1936, Hugh Evander Willis

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Power To Appoint To Office--Its Location And Limits, Floyd R. Mechem

Articles

At no other time in the judicial history of this country, if the evidence of the reported cases is to be relied upon, have there been so many and so bitter contests over all of the questions growing out of the title to public offices, as during the last ten or twelve years. This is undoubtedly largely accounted for by the fact that within that period a large number of the states have put in operation radically changed methods of conducting elections, based upon or practically incorporating what is popularly known as the Australian ballot system. In making these changes, …