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Full-Text Articles in Law

Stevens, J., Dissenting: The Legacy Of Heller, Joseph Blocher, Darrell A. H. Miller Jan 2019

Stevens, J., Dissenting: The Legacy Of Heller, Joseph Blocher, Darrell A. H. Miller

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Dying Constitutionalism And The Fourteenth Amendment, Ernest A. Young Jan 2019

Dying Constitutionalism And The Fourteenth Amendment, Ernest A. Young

Faculty Scholarship

The notion of a “living Constitution” often rests on an implicit assumption that important constitutional values will “grow” in such a way as to make the Constitution more attractive over time. But there are no guarantees: What can grow can also wither and die. This essay, presented as the 2018 Robert F. Boden Lecture at Marquette University Law School, marks the sesquicentennial of the Fourteenth Amendment’s ratification as a powerful charter of liberty and equality for black Americans. But for much of its early history, the Fourteenth Amendment’s meaning moved in reverse, overwhelmed by the end of Reconstruction, the gradual …


The Imaginary Constitution, Suzanna Sherry Jan 2019

The Imaginary Constitution, Suzanna Sherry

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

How many ways can conservatives spin an originalist tale to support their deregulatory, small-government vision? The answer is apparently infinite. In a new book, Gary Lawson and Guy Seidman are the latest in a long line of scholars who insist that the real original meaning of the Constitution demands unwinding the regulatory state and substantially limiting the power of the federal government. They argue that the Constitution is a fiduciary instrument, specifically a power of attorney. After summarizing the book, this essay turns to three of its most important failings, each of which serves to make the book a work …


A Computational Analysis Of Constitutional Polarization, David E. Pozen, Eric L. Talley, Julian Nyarko Jan 2019

A Computational Analysis Of Constitutional Polarization, David E. Pozen, Eric L. Talley, Julian Nyarko

Faculty Scholarship

This Article is the first to use computational methods to investigate the ideological and partisan structure of constitutional discourse outside the courts. We apply a range of machine-learning and text-analysis techniques to a newly available data set comprising all remarks made on the U.S. House and Senate floors from 1873 to 2016, as well as a collection of more recent newspaper editorials. Among other findings, we demonstrate (1) that constitutional discourse has grown increasingly polarized over the past four decades; (2) that polarization has grown faster in constitutional discourse than in nonconstitutional discourse; (3) that conservative-leaning speakers have driven this …


The Emergence Of The American Constitutional Law Tradition, H. Jefferson Powell Jan 2019

The Emergence Of The American Constitutional Law Tradition, H. Jefferson Powell

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.