Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 4 of 4
Full-Text Articles in Law
Fundamental Questions About The Religion Clauses: Reflections On Some Critiques, Kent Greenawalt
Fundamental Questions About The Religion Clauses: Reflections On Some Critiques, Kent Greenawalt
Faculty Scholarship
This essay responds to some major critiques of my work on the religion clauses. The effort has seemed worth undertaking because many issues the critics raise lie at the core of one’s approach to free exercise and nonestablishment, and some of those issues matter greatly for constitutional adjudication more broadly. Like any author, perhaps, my reaction to reading some comments has been that I did not quite say that, but I shall not bore you with these quibbles about how well I explained myself in the past. Rather, I shall try to confront the genuinely basic questions that many of …
Guns, Originalism, And Cultural Cognition, Jamal Greene
Guns, Originalism, And Cultural Cognition, Jamal Greene
Faculty Scholarship
In a legal regime whose canonical text is Marbury v. Madison, it should be unremarkable that the Supreme Court's actions are bounded rather severely by public opinion. What makes the proposition remarkable – enough to be well worth Barry Friedman's time – is also what makes Marbury remarkable: namely, that judges so often go out of their way to deny it. Though not unheard of, it is rare for a judge to advertise that the content of a constitutional rule she is announcing is motivated by public opinion. Such an admission would be self-defeating, since it invites the charge …
Justice Stevens' Temperance, Jamal Greene
Justice Stevens' Temperance, Jamal Greene
Faculty Scholarship
On the last opinion day of the last of his 35 Terms on the Supreme Court, Justice John Paul Stevens issued his valedictory opinion, a 57-page dissent in McDonald v. City of Chicago. Justice Stevens laid out an expansive vision of constitutional interpretation that Justice Alito aptly called "eloquent" in his plurality opinion. Not one for sentimental farewells, Justice Scalia was less generous: "Justice Stevens' approach," he wrote in the last line of his concurring opinion," puts democracy in peril."
Louis Henkin: Courage And Convictions, Lori Fisler Damrosch
Louis Henkin: Courage And Convictions, Lori Fisler Damrosch
Faculty Scholarship
Louis Henkin was a man of courage and of convictions. His students at Columbia, who engaged with him inside and outside the classroom during the course of five decades, had many opportunities to learn of his convictions, which were manifest in his teaching, writing and activism. But Henkin would not have spoken in the classroom of his own acts of courage, exemplified by (but not limited to) his combat service in the Second World War, nor would he have drawn attention to other personal virtues. This brief tribute (complementary to others being written by colleagues at Columbia for publication here …