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Full-Text Articles in Constitutional Law
A Law Professor’S Guide To Natural Law And Natural Rights, Randy E. Barnett
A Law Professor’S Guide To Natural Law And Natural Rights, Randy E. Barnett
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Law professors nowadays mention natural law and natural rights on a regular basis, and not just in jurisprudence. Given that the founding generation universally subscribed to the idea of natural rights, this concept regularly makes a prominent appearance in discussions of constitutional law. One simply cannot avoid the concept if one is to explain Justice Samuel Chase's well-known claim in Calder v. Bull that "[t]here are certain vital principles in our free Republican governments, which will determine and over-rule an apparent and flagrant abuse of legislative power .... An ACf of the Legislature (for I cannot call it a law) …
Making Constitutional Doctrine In A Realist Age, Victoria Nourse
Making Constitutional Doctrine In A Realist Age, Victoria Nourse
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
In this article the author considers three examples of modern constitutional doctrine that show how judges have stolen bits and pieces from popularized skepticisms about the job of judging and have molded this stolen rhetoric into doctrine. In the first example, she asks whether constitutional law's recent penchant for doctrinal rules based on "clear law" could have existed without the modern age's obsession with legal uncertainty. In the second, the author considers whether our contemporary rhetoric of constitutional "interests" and "expectations" reflects modern critiques of doctrine as failing to address social needs. In the third, she asks how an offhand …
Integrity And Universality: A Comment On Dworkin's Freedom's Law, Robin West
Integrity And Universality: A Comment On Dworkin's Freedom's Law, Robin West
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Ronald Dworkin has done more than any other constitutional lawyer, past or present, to impress upon us the importance of integrity to constitutional law, and hence to our shared public life. Far from being merely a private virtue, Dworkin has shown that integrity imposes constraints upon and provides guidance to the work of judges in constitutional cases: Every constitutional case that comes before a court must be decided by recourse to the same moral principles that have dictated results in relevant similar cases in the past. Any group or individual challenging the constitutionality of legislation which adversely affects his or …