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Full-Text Articles in Law
Laughing At Treaties, Carlos Manuel Vázquez
Laughing At Treaties, Carlos Manuel Vázquez
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
This article responds to two articles by Professor John Yoo appearing in the same volume. Professor Yoo maintains that treaties, either categorically or presumptively, have the same status in the United States as in the United Kingdom, where they lack the force of domestic law, and hence are not judicially enforceable, until implemented by statute. This response argues that Yoo's thesis contradicts the text of the Constitution, which declares treaties to be the 'law of the land.' The response notes, further, that Professor Yoo's reliance on the ratification debates to read the Supremacy Clause's reference to treaties out of the …
An Originalism For Nonoriginalists, Randy E. Barnett
An Originalism For Nonoriginalists, Randy E. Barnett
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
The received wisdom among law professors is that originalism is dead, having been defeated in intellectual combat sometime in the eighties. According to this story, Edwin Meese and Robert Bork proposed that the Constitution be interpreted according to the original intentions of its framers. Their view was trounced by many academic critics, perhaps most notably by Paul Brest in his widely-cited 1980 Boston University Law Review article, The Misconceived Quest for Original Understanding, and by H. Jefferson Powell in his 1985 Harvard Law Review article, The Original Understanding of Original Intent. Taken together, these and other articles represent …