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Full-Text Articles in Law
Countersupermajoritarianism, Frederic M. Bloom, Nelson Tebbe
Countersupermajoritarianism, Frederic M. Bloom, Nelson Tebbe
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
How should the Constitution change? In Originalism and the Good Constitution, John McGinnis and Michael Rappaport argue that it ought to change in only one way: through the formal mechanisms set out in the Constitution’s own Article V. This is so, they claim, because provisions adopted by supermajority vote are more likely to be substantively good. The original Constitution was ratified in just that way, they say, and subsequent changes should be implemented similarly. McGinnis and Rappaport also contend that this substantive goodness is preserved best by a mode of originalist interpretation.
In this Review, we press two main arguments. …
Constitutional Borrowing, Nelson Tebbe, Robert L. Tsai
Constitutional Borrowing, Nelson Tebbe, Robert L. Tsai
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
Borrowing from one domain to promote ideas in another domain is a staple of constitutional decisionmaking. Precedents, arguments, concepts, tropes, and heuristics all can be carried across doctrinal boundaries for purposes of persuasion. Yet the practice itself remains underanalyzed. This Article seeks to bring greater theoretical attention to the matter. It defines what constitutional borrowing is and what it is not, presents a typology that describes its common forms, undertakes a principled defense of borrowing, and identifies some of the risks involved. Our examples draw particular attention to places where legal mechanisms and ideas migrate between fields of law associated …
Towards A Common Law Originalism, Bernadette Meyler
Towards A Common Law Originalism, Bernadette Meyler
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
Originalists' emphasis upon William Blackstone's "Commentaries on the Laws of England" tends to suggest that the common law of the Founding era consisted in a set of determinate rules that can be mined for the purposes of constitutional interpretation. This Article argues instead that disparate strands of the common law, some emanating from the colonies and others from England, some more archaic and others more innovative, co-existed at the time of the Founding. Furthermore, jurists and politicians of the Founding generation were not unaware that the common law constituted a disunified field; indeed, the jurisprudence of the common law suggested …
Towards A Common Law Originalism, Bernadette A. Meyler
Towards A Common Law Originalism, Bernadette A. Meyler
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
Originalists' emphasis upon William Blackstone's "Commentaries on the Laws of England" tends to suggest that the common law of the Founding era consisted in a set of determinate rules that can be mined for the purposes of constitutional interpretation. This Article argues instead that disparate strands of the common law, some emanating from the colonies and others from England, some more archaic and others more innovative, co-existed at the time of the Founding. Furthermore, jurists and politicians of the Founding generation were not unaware that the common law constituted a disunified field; indeed, the jurisprudence of the common law suggested …
A Nonoriginalist Perspective On The Lessons Of History, Michael C. Dorf
A Nonoriginalist Perspective On The Lessons Of History, Michael C. Dorf
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.