Law Commons^™

The Supreme Court, Sexual Citizenship And The Idea Of Progress, Kendall Thomas

Faculty Scholarship

Is American Progressive Constitutionalism dead ... yet? I propose to seek the beginnings of an answer to this question in the pages of a recent decision by the United States Supreme Court. I do feel obliged to say this, not because I am committed to a court-centered adjudicative conception of American constitutionalism; to the contrary. But rather, because the decision on which I want to focus seems to me to offer a rich resource for critical reflection on the idea of self-government whose connections to Progressive Constitutionalism give us our topic this afternoon.

Progressive Constitutionalism: Conceptions Of Interpretation And The Religion Clauses, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

In this paper, I concentrate on the narrower, more typical topic of judicial interpretation. At least in regard to the religion clauses, this may be warranted because any progressive constitution would probably include something similar to the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses, and these would be judicially enforceable to some degree.

The first part of this essay explores relations between progressive values and interpretive approaches. When I asked myself how a judge, committed to progressive values, would interpret the Federal Constitution, I was troubled by whether a progressive approach would be activist or restrained in relation to legislative authority. I …