Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Keyword
-
- Originalism (3)
- Constitution (2)
- Constraint (2)
- Interpretation (2)
- Ambiguity (1)
-
- Communicative content (1)
- Constitutional construction (1)
- Constitutional theory (1)
- Construction (1)
- Deference (1)
- Economic dragooning (1)
- Education (1)
- Federal education funding (1)
- Global health (1)
- Governance strategies (1)
- Interpretation-construction distinction (1)
- Legal moralists (1)
- Libertarianism (1)
- Liberty (1)
- Non-communicable diseases (1)
- Original methods (1)
- Originalist theory (1)
- Philosophy of law (1)
- Plain meaning (1)
- Pragmatics (1)
- Regulation (1)
- Semantics (1)
- Social justice (1)
- Spending clause (1)
- Tobacco endgames (1)
Articles 1 - 8 of 8
Full-Text Articles in Constitutional Law
Tackling The Global Ncd Crisis: Innovations In Law And Governance, Bryan P. Thomas, Lawrence O. Gostin
Tackling The Global Ncd Crisis: Innovations In Law And Governance, Bryan P. Thomas, Lawrence O. Gostin
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
35 million people die annually of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), 80% of them in low- and middle-income countries—representing a marked epidemiological transition from infectious to chronic diseases and from richer to poorer countries. The total number of NCDs is projected to rise by 17% over the coming decade, absent significant interventions. The NCD epidemic poses unique governance challenges: the causes are multifactorial, the affected populations diffuse, and effective responses require sustained multi-sectorial cooperation. The authors propose a range of regulatory options available at the domestic level, including stricter food labeling laws, regulation of food advertisements, tax incentives for healthy lifestyle choices, …
Construction And Constraint: Discussion Of Living Originalism, Lawrence B. Solum
Construction And Constraint: Discussion Of Living Originalism, Lawrence B. Solum
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Jack Balkin's Living Originalism raises many important questions about contemporary constitutional theory. Can and should liberals and progressives embrace originalism? Can the New Deal expansion of national legislative power be given originalist foundations? Is there a plausible originalist case for a right to reproductive autonomy and hence for the Court's decision in Roe v. Wade? Is the fact of theoretical disagreement among originalists evidence for the thesis that the originalist project is in disarray?
Tobacco Endgame Strategies: Challenges In Ethics And Law, Bryan P. Thomas, Lawrence O. Gostin
Tobacco Endgame Strategies: Challenges In Ethics And Law, Bryan P. Thomas, Lawrence O. Gostin
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
There are complex legal and ethical tradeoffs involved in using intensified regulation to bring smoking prevalence to near-zero levels. The authors explore these tradeoffs through a lens of health justice, paying particular attention to the potential impact on vulnerable populations. The ethical tradeoffs explored include the charge that heavy regulation is paternalistic; the potentially regressive impact of heavily taxing a product consumed disproportionately by the poor; the simple loss of enjoyment to heavily addicted smokers; the health risks posed by, for example, regulating nicotine content in cigarettes—where doing so leads to increased consumption. Turning to legalistic concerns, the authors explore …
Communicative Content And Legal Content, Lawrence B. Solum
Communicative Content And Legal Content, Lawrence B. Solum
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
This essay investigates a familiar set of questions about the relationship between legal texts (e.g., constitutions, statutes, opinions, orders, and contracts) and the content of the law (e.g., norms, rules, standards, doctrines, and mandates). Is the original meaning of the constitutional text binding on the Supreme Court when it develops doctrines of constitutional law? Should statutes be given their plain meaning or should judges devise statutory constructions that depart from the text to serve a purpose? What role should default rules play in the interpretation and construction of contracts? This essay makes two moves that can help lawyers and legal …
Conditional Spending After Nfib V. Sebelius: The Example Of Federal Education Law, Eloise Pasachoff
Conditional Spending After Nfib V. Sebelius: The Example Of Federal Education Law, Eloise Pasachoff
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
In NFIB v. Sebelius, the Supreme Court’s recent case addressing the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, the Court concluded that the expansion of Medicaid in that Act was unconstitutionally coercive and therefore exceeded the scope of Congress’s authority under the Spending Clause. This was the first time that the Court treated coercion as an issue of more than mere theoretical possibility under the Spending Clause. In the wake of the Court’s decision, commentators have expressed either the concern or the hope that NFIB’s coercion analysis may lead to the undoing of much of the federal regulatory state, …
Originalism And Constitutional Construction, Lawrence B. Solum
Originalism And Constitutional Construction, Lawrence B. Solum
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Constitutional interpretation is the activity that discovers the communicative content or linguistic meaning of the constitutional text. Constitutional construction is the activity that determines the legal effect given the text, including doctrines of constitutional law and decisions of constitutional cases or issues by judges and other officials. The interpretation-construction distinction, frequently invoked by contemporary constitutional theorists and rooted in American legal theory in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, marks the difference between these two activities.
This article advances two central claims about constitutional construction. First, constitutional construction is ubiquitous in constitutional practice. The central warrant for this claim is conceptual: …
Afterword: The Libertarian Middle Way, Randy E. Barnett
Afterword: The Libertarian Middle Way, Randy E. Barnett
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Libertarianism is sometimes portrayed as radical and even extreme. In this Afterword to a symposium on "Libertarianism and the Law" in the Chapman Law Review, I explain why, though it may be radical, libertarianism is far from extreme in comparison with its principal alternatives: the social justice of the Left or legal moralism of the Right. Social justice posits that everyone should get a certain amount of stuff; legal moralism posits that everyone should act in a certain way. But because there is no consensus about how much stuff each person should have or how exactly everyone should act, …
Originalism And The Unwritten Constitution, Lawrence B. Solum
Originalism And The Unwritten Constitution, Lawrence B. Solum
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
In his book, America’s Unwritten Constitution, Akhil Reed Amar contends that to properly engage the written Constitution, scholars and laymen alike must look to extratextual sources: among them America’s founding documents, institutional practices, and ethos, all of which constitute Amar’s “unwritten Constitution.” In this article, the author argues that contemporary originalist constitutional theory is consistent with reliance on extraconstitutional sources in certain circumstances. He establishes a framework for revaluating the use of extratextual sources. That framework categorizes extratextual sources and explains their relevance to constitutional interpretation (the meaning of the text) and constitutional construction (elaboration of constitutional doctrine and …