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Full-Text Articles in Law
Constitutional Fidelity And The Commerce Clause: A Reply To Professor Ackerman, Elizabeth Price Foley, Elizabeth C. Price
Constitutional Fidelity And The Commerce Clause: A Reply To Professor Ackerman, Elizabeth Price Foley, Elizabeth C. Price
Faculty Publications
Can the Constitution be legitimately, albeit implicitly, amended by the Supreme Court? The possibility of implicit constitutional amendment - most forcefully advocated by Professor Bruce Ackerman as "transformative" Supreme Court decisions - has been articulated to justify, legitimate, and entrench various radical reinterpretations of the Constitution, most notably the New Deal Court's vast expansion of the power to regulate commerce. The article concludes that such implicit constitutional amendments are theoretically illegitimate and provide strong disincentives for "We the People" to become politically active in order to "correct" flaws in the original Constitution or interpretations thereof that are deemed no longer …
A Matter Of Power: Structural Federalism And Separation Doctrine In The Present, Frances Howell Rudko
A Matter Of Power: Structural Federalism And Separation Doctrine In The Present, Frances Howell Rudko
Faculty Publications
Public reaction to the 1823 Supreme Court decision in Green v. Biddle prompted John Marshall’s letter to Henry Clay, who had argued the case as amicus curiae for the defendant. The letter is significant because Marshall, who had been a legislator himself, candidly expresses not only his personal dissatisfaction with the congressional assault on the 1823 decision but also the constitutional basis for his opinion. The significance of Marshall’s extrajudicial opinion becomes more apparent when it is considered in the aftermath of the recent tug-of-war between Congress and the Court which culminated in the decision in City of Boerne v. …
The Constitutionalization Of Law In The United States, William B. Fisch, Richard S. Kay
The Constitutionalization Of Law In The United States, William B. Fisch, Richard S. Kay
Faculty Publications
The constitution is that the federal courts and a majority of state court systems will only entertain a constitutional claim in the context of a concrete dispute involving adversary parties with a specific stake in the outcome, and abstract review in these systems is unknown.
Unenumerated Constitutional Rights And Unenumerated Biblical Obligations: A Preliminary Study In Comparative Hermeneutics, Samuel J. Levine
Unenumerated Constitutional Rights And Unenumerated Biblical Obligations: A Preliminary Study In Comparative Hermeneutics, Samuel J. Levine
Scholarly Works
In his 1986 Yale Law Journal article, Robert Cover wrote of an explosion of legal scholarship placing interpretation at the crux of the enterprise of law. As part of the continuing emphasis on hermeneutics in constitutional interpretation, a body of literature has emerged comparing constitutional textual analysis to Biblical hermeneutics. This scholarship has been based on the recognition that, like the Constitution, the Bible functions as an authoritative legal text that must be interpreted in order to serve as the foundation for a living community. Levine looks at a basic hermeneutic device common to both Biblical and constitutional interpretation, the …
United States Supreme Court: 1998 Term, Paul C. Giannelli
United States Supreme Court: 1998 Term, Paul C. Giannelli
Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.
Does New York's Death Penalty Statute Violate The New York Constitution? (Symposium: New York State Constitutional Law: Trends And Developments), Richard Klein, Hon. Stewart F. Hancock, Jr., Christopher Quinn
Does New York's Death Penalty Statute Violate The New York Constitution? (Symposium: New York State Constitutional Law: Trends And Developments), Richard Klein, Hon. Stewart F. Hancock, Jr., Christopher Quinn
Scholarly Works
No abstract provided.
Protecting Basic Rights Of Citizens, Ellen Catsman Freidin, Ann C. Mcginley
Protecting Basic Rights Of Citizens, Ellen Catsman Freidin, Ann C. Mcginley
Scholarly Works
Revision 9 suggests three important changes to the basic rights provision of the Florida Constitution. First, it would add “female and male alike” to define “natural persons who are equal before the law.” This change expressly recognizes equality of the sexes. Second, it would prohibit the government from depriving a person of any right because of the person’s national origin. Finally, the revision prohibits the government from depriving a person of any right because of “physical disability,” replacing the currently existing protection for “physical handicap.”
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
Scholarly Works
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 …
Defining And Punishing Abroad: Constitutional Limits On The Extraterritorial Reach Of The Offenses Clause Note, Zephyr Teachout
Defining And Punishing Abroad: Constitutional Limits On The Extraterritorial Reach Of The Offenses Clause Note, Zephyr Teachout
Faculty Scholarship
The Offenses Clause of the United States Constitution gives Congress the authority to "define and punish... Offences against the Law of Nations." This Note considers whether Congress must conform to the jurisdictional rules of customary international law when legislating pursuant to the Offenses Clause.