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Full-Text Articles in Law
Does The Federal Constitution Incorporate The Declaration Of Independence?, Thomas B. Mcaffee
Does The Federal Constitution Incorporate The Declaration Of Independence?, Thomas B. Mcaffee
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A standard view at the time of the adoption of the Constitution was that “a constitution does not in itself imply any more than a declaration of the relation which the different parts of the government have to each other, but does not imply security for the rights of individuals.” The drafters of the state constitutions had “assumed that government had all power except for specific prohibitions contained in a bill of rights.” When the federal Constitution was transmitted to the states by Congress, Nathaniel Gorham of Massachusetts defended the omission of a bill of rights based on the federal …
The Tenth Amendment Among The Shadows: On Reading The Constitution In Plato's Cave, Jay S. Bybee
The Tenth Amendment Among The Shadows: On Reading The Constitution In Plato's Cave, Jay S. Bybee
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In Plato's Allegory of the Cave, he describes a cavernous chamber in which men are imprisoned. Although a large fire lights the cave, the prisoners cannot see the light source. Instead, they can only make out figures that dance and parade in front of them illuminated by the fire. The prisoners cannot even see the figures directly, only their shadows. Everything that the prisoners know about reality they have learned from the distorted shapes of the shadows dancing about the cave's walls. Socrates wonders, if a prisoner were suddenly freed and could see the objects themselves and not merely their …
The Federal System As Bill Of Rights: Original Understandings, Modern Misreadings, Thomas B. Mcaffee
The Federal System As Bill Of Rights: Original Understandings, Modern Misreadings, Thomas B. Mcaffee
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In the modern era, we have almost completely lost track of the relationship that the Framers of the United States Constitution perceived between the structure of our federal system and the protection of popular rights. At least two obvious components of this confusion persist. First, as we have come to think of rights almost exclusively in terms of the claims of individuals against the government, we have lost the ability to hear the Framers' voices referring to rights held by the people in their collective capacity, including the rights of the people within each of the sovereign states to be …
A Critical Guide To The Ninth Amendment, Thomas B. Mcaffee
A Critical Guide To The Ninth Amendment, Thomas B. Mcaffee
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Since the Supreme Court's decision in Griswold v. Connecticut, thousands of law students each year have confronted a confusing debate over the meaning of the Ninth Amendment. Writing for the majority in Griswold, Justice Douglas included the Ninth Amendment among the sources for deriving the “penumbral” right of privacy. More central to this article, in a separate concurrence Justice Goldberg contended that the Amendment provided a basis for the discovery of fundamental human rights beyond those included in the text of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. In response, the dissenting Justices, Stewart and Black, argued that …
Book Review, Thomas B. Mcaffee
Book Review, Thomas B. Mcaffee
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Chief Justice Marshall's legendary opinion in Marbury v. Madison has always been the centerpiece of debate over the legitimacy and scope of the power of judicial review. Unsurprisingly, then, Robert Lowry Clinton's thesis that recent arguments about the judicial power reflect a modem revisionism centers on the claim that the famous opinion has been pervasively misunderstood in modem scholarly thought. Clinton's Marbury v. Madison and Judicial Review develops the view that Marbury was written to defend a very limited defensive power of courts to disregard statutes that conflict with constitutional provisions that directly govern the judicial function. The modem view …