Constitutional Law Commons^™

The Constitution's Congress, Gary S. Lawson

Faculty Scholarship

In order to know whether Congress is (as the title of this panel wonders)1 "the broken branch,"'2 one needs a baseline describing how a normallyfunctioning Congress would look.3 Congress is a creation of the Constitution, and so the Constitution seems to be the obvious place to look for this baseline: what sort of people does the Constitution expect to serve in Congress and how does it expect those people to behave once they arrive?

Full Faith And Credit In The Early Congress, Stephen E. Sachs

Faculty Scholarship

After more than 200 years, the Full Faith and Credit Clause remains poorly understood. The Clause first issues a self-executing command (that "Full Faith and Credit shall be given"), and then empowers Congress to prescribe the manner of proof and the "Effect" of state records in other states. But if states must accord each other full faith and credit-and if nothing could be more than full-then what "Effect" could Congress give state records that they wouldn't have already? And conversely, how could Congress in any way reduce or alter the faith and credit that is due?

This Article seeks to …