Law Commons^™

Slavery's Constitution: Rethinking The Federal Consensus, Maeve Glass

Fordham Law Review

For at least half a century, scholars of the early American Constitution By recovering this genealogy and expanding our map of the founding, this Essay offers a more complete view of the origins of one of the oldest and most consequential rules of constitutional union. In doing so, it allows us to see the institution of racial slavery not simply as one confined to a single section of the South and upheld by its peculiar doctrine of states’ rights but as a fundamentally American institution, one upheld by a rule of federal and state inaction in the face of slavery’s …

Foreword: The Federalist Constitution, David S. Schwartz

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Without Doors: Native Nations And The Convention, Mary Sarah Bilder

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

President Madison's Living Constitution: Fixation, Liquidation, And Constitutional Politics In The Jeffersonian Era, Saul Cornell

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

In Search Of Nationhood At The Founding, Jonathan Ginenapp

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Federalist Constitution As A Project In International Law, David M. Golove, Daniel J. Hulsebosch

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Unwritten Constitution For Admitting States, Roderick M. Hills Jr.

Fordham Law Review

The United States has experimented with several different constitutions for adding states. Of all of these regimes, the shortest lived was also the one selected by the Federalist drafters of the Constitution. Under this regime, Article IV, Section 3 bestowed on Congress broad power to govern new territories as colonies of the original states, allowing Congress to place any conditions that they pleased on their admissions. This regime was created by Federalists, like Gouvernour Morris, who were suspicious of Scots-Irish frontiersmen and eager to settle western territory using land companies who would insure that new settlers were deferential to Federalist …

Article Ix, Article Iii, And The First Congress: The Original Constitutional Plan For The Federal Courts, 1787-1792, Thomas H. Lee

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Executive Power And The Rule Of Law In The Marshall Court: A Rereading Of Little V. Barreme And Murray V. Schooner Charming Betsy, Jane Manners

Fordham Law Review

This Essay uses two 1804 opinions by Chief Justice John Marshall to explicate a world in which understandings of executive power and the rule of law were very different from those that predominate today. Scholars have misread Little v. Barreme and Murray v. Schooner Charming Betsy, this Essay argues, because they apply modern assumptions about the balance of power between Congress and the executive that do not fit the Marshall Court’s constitutional vision. Contemporary interpretations read Little for the propositions that the president’s inherent wartime power may be limited by statute and that early American jurists rejected officers’ “good faith” …

Equal Footing And The States "Now Existing" Slavery And State Equality Over Time, James E. Pfander, Elena Joffroy

Fordham Law Review

This Essay reexamines the question whether the Constitution empowered Congress to ban slavery in the territories. We explore that question by tracking two proposed additions to the Constitution, one that would empower Congress to ban the migration and importation of enslaved persons to all new states and territories and one that would oblige Congress to admit new states on an equal footing with the old. We show that the Federalists supported and the Convention adopted the migration provision, enabling Congress to restrict slavery to the states “now existing.” But the Federalists opposed and the Convention rejected the equal footing doctrine. …

Reframing Article I, Section 8, Richard Primus

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Other Madison Problem, David S. Schwartz, John Mikhail

Fordham Law Review

The conventional view of legal scholars and historians is that James pursue a fresh and more accurate assessment of Madison and his constitutional legacy, particularly with respect to slavery. Madison was the “father” or “major architect” of the Constitution, whose unrivaled authority entitles his interpretations of the Constitution to special weight and consideration. This view greatly exaggerates Madison’s contribution to the framing of the Constitution and the quality of his insight into the main problem of federalism that the Framers tried to solve. Perhaps most significantly, it obstructs our view of alternative interpretations of the original Constitution with which Madison …

Presidential Removal: The Marbury Problem And The Madison Solutions, Jed Handelsman Shugerman

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Two Federalist Constitutions Of Empire, Gregory Ablavsky

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Common Law Of Choice Of Law, Lea Brilmayer, Daniel B. Listwa

Fordham Law Review

For more than a generation, choice of law has been the victim of a historical contingency. The “conflicts revolution” of the mid-twentieth century and its legal realist leaders bundled together three concepts that, although all typifying the traditional approach, are not inherently connected: the “scientific formalism” of Bealean territorialism, attention to “system values” like uniformity and predictability, and judicial activism. The revolutionaries tied an anchor to formalism, sinking the regard for system values and judge-led decision-making in the process. This Essay argues that the rejection of system values and judicial lawmaking in the choice-of-law context was a mistake—and it offers …

Substantive Due Process And A Comparison Of Approaches To Sexual Liberty, William Council

Fordham Law Review

Over 150 years ago, Congress passed and the states ratified the Fourteenth Amendment, banning states from passing or enforcing laws based on unconstitutional classifications and protecting persons in the United States from adjudication without due process. For over one hundred years, however, courts and commentators have been fighting over the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause’s controversial protections of substantive rights. The U.S. Supreme Court has applied inconsistent methodologies to these substantive due process claims, attempting to walk a tightrope between the Court’s power to subjectively announce new rights as “fundamental” and the traditional role of the states’ plenary police powers. …

“To Assemble Together For Their Common Good”: History, Ethnography, And The Original Meanings Of The Rights Of Assembly And Speech, Saul Cornell

Fordham Law Review

The Whiskey Rebellion is not generally a major focus in constitutional histories or casebooks. Given this fact, it is hardly surprising that the 1795 case Respublica v. Montgomery seldom figures as more than a minor footnote in scholarly writing about early American constitutional development, if it receives any attention at all. The case has little precedential value for modern First Amendment doctrine and only obliquely implicates larger jurisprudential questions about the rights of assembly and freedom of expression. In strictly doctrinal terms, Montgomery is primarily about the obligation of a justice of the peace to put down a riot, not …

Historians And The New Originalism: Contextualism, Historicism, And Constitutional Meaning, Martin S. Flaherty

Fordham Law Review

Toward that end, this Foreword addresses three matters. First, it considers why the use of history in constitutional interpretation is inescapable. Next, it suggests that the Essays in this forum do not go far enough in debunking the idea of “public meaning” originalism as a serious alternative to previous approaches. Finally, the balance of this Foreword reviews the also perhaps inescapable misuses of history that constitutional interpretation invites and considers the type of misuse that public meaning originalism represents.

Historicism And Holism: Failures Of Originalist Translation, Jonathan Gienapp

Fordham Law Review

For as long as the U.S. Constitution has existed, Americans have appealed to the history of its creation to interpret its meaning. But only since the advent of originalism—the well-known constitutional theory that requires interpreting the Constitution today in accordance with its original meaning—has historical study been so immediately implicated by constitutional interpretation. Despite potential, though, for meaningful exchange between originalists and historians, little has taken place. That originalism plays an ever-growing role in contemporary political culture only makes the lack of dialogue all the more unfortunate.

Outsourcing The Law: History And The Disciplinary Limits Of Constitutional Reasoning, Helen Irving

Fordham Law Review

Debates about the use of history in constitutional interpretation find their primary nourishment in the originalism debate. This has generated a vast amount of literature, but also narrowed the terms of the debate. Originalism is a normative commitment wrapped in a questionable methodological confidence. Regardless of the multiple forms originalism takes, originalists are confident that the meaning (in the sense of intention) that animated the framing of the Constitution can be ascertained and, indeed, that they can ascertain it. The debate has largely focused, then, on whether modern-day scholars and jurists can ascertain original historical meaning or, alternatively, whether they …

Tone Deaf To The Past: More Qualms About Public Meaning Originalism, Jack Rakove

Fordham Law Review

With some apologies for a vast degree of oversimplification, let us stipulate that there are two main forms of originalism. One is known as “semantic” or “public meaning” originalism. Its leading advocates include Lawrence Solum, Keith Whittington, and Randy Barnett (professional friends, all). The leading premise of semantic originalism is that the meaning of the constitutional text—or, more specifically, of its individual clauses—was fixed at the moment of its adoption. Under this view, the goal of constitutional interpretation is to recover that original meaning, and the best way to do that pivots on reconstructing how an informed reader, whether a …

The Problem Of Presidential Inability—Will Congress Ever Solve It?, John D. Feerick

Fordham Law Review

One of the most critical and intriguing constitutional questions ever presented for solution is: What happens when the President of the United States becomes incapable of discharging the powers and duties of his office? Does the Vice-President "become President" for the remainder of the term or does he merely "act as President" during the period of the inability? The Constitution is not explicit..

The Arduous Virtue Of Fidelity: Originalism, Scalia, Tribe, And Nerve, Ronald Dworkin

Fordham Law Review

Proper constitutional interpretation takes both text and past practice as its object: Lawyers and judges faced with a contemporary constitutional issue must try to construct a coherent, principled, and persuasive interpretation of the text of particular clauses, the structure of the Constitution as a whole, and our history under the Constitution—an interpretation that both unifies these distinct sources, so far as this is possible, and directs future adjudication. They must seek, that is, constitutional integrity. So fidelity to the Constitution's text does not exhaust constitutional interpretation, and on some occasions overall constitutional integrity might require a result that could …

Statutory Restrictions On Concealed Carry: A Five-Circuit Shoot Out, Justine E. Johnson-Makuch

Fordham Law Review

In District of Columbia v. Heller, the U.S. Supreme Court clarified a citizen’s core Second Amendment right to keep a firearm at home; however, the Court left open the question of how the Second Amendment applies beyond the home. Since Heller, lower courts have struggled to determine the constitutionality of concealed carry laws in light of this new understanding of the Second Amendment.

Many states have enacted laws that restrict a citizen’s ability to obtain a concealed carry permit, and some of the restrictions are not controversial, such as the requirements to be above a certain age and have a …

Anonymity In Cyberspace: Judicial And Legislative Regulations, Sophia Qasir

Fordham Law Review

Historically, the scope of constitutional protections for fundamental rights has evolved to keep pace with new social norms and new technology. Internet speech is on the rise. The First Amendment protects an individual’s right to speak anonymously, but to what extent does it protect a right to anonymous online speech? This question is difficult because the government must balance the fundamental nature of speech rights with the potential dangers associated with anonymous online speech, including defamation, invasion of privacy, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. While lower courts have held that there is a right to anonymous online speech, they …

Editors’ Foreword, Editors

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Night Of The Living Dead Hand: The Individual Mandate And The Zombie Constitution, Gary Lawson

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Presumption Of Constitutionality And The Individual Mandate, Gillian E. Metzger, Trevor W. Morrison

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Politics Of Obamacare: Health Care, Money, And Ideology, Richard Kirsch

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Federalism From Federal Statutes: Health Reform, Medicaid, And The Old-Fashioned Federalists’ Gamble, Abbe R. Gluck

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.