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Jurisprudence Commons

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Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Constitution – interpretation and construction

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Full-Text Articles in Jurisprudence

Constitutional Culture Or Ordinary Politics: A Reply To Reva Siegel, Robin West Jan 2006

Constitutional Culture Or Ordinary Politics: A Reply To Reva Siegel, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Reva Siegel's lecture, ‘Constitutional Culture, Social Movement Conflict and Constitutional Change: The Case of the de Facto ERA,’ explores the interaction between the courts and social movements in creating constitutional meaning. In the primary part of this response I focus my comments on Siegel's three major contributions: First, the historical explanation of the source of the Court's authority in the development of the so-called de facto ERA; second, the articulation of a general, jurisprudential thesis regarding social contestation as a source of constitutional authority apart from text, history, and principle; and third, the quasi-sociological descriptive account of the form social …


Cook V. Gralike: Easy Cases And Structural Reasoning, Vicki C. Jackson Jan 2001

Cook V. Gralike: Easy Cases And Structural Reasoning, Vicki C. Jackson

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In Cook v Gralike, the Court - unanimous as to result - struck down a Missouri initiative amending the state constitution to require that the failure of candidates for U.S. Congress to support a particular term-limits amendment to the United States Constitution be noted on the ballot. In an opinion joined by seven Justices, the Court held that the Missouri law exceeded the scope of states' powers to regulate the "time, place and manner" of holding congressional elections . . . The opinions are analyzed preliminarily in Part I. Part II below suggests that even if there were no Elections …


Impeachment As Congressional Constitutional Interpretation, Neal K. Katyal Jan 2000

Impeachment As Congressional Constitutional Interpretation, Neal K. Katyal

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Constitutionalists have assumed, too quickly in my view, that symmetry should exist between the interpretive styles of the courts and Congress. This assumption, which I shall call the myth of interpretive symmetry, slights the many reasons why an interpretive method may work well in one area and not work as well in another. Instead of mapping out all these possible divergences, I illustrate the point with three examples: the roles of history, precedent, and moral philosophy. I show how, in each instance, arguments can be made to suggest that divergent institutional roles should be taken into account in formulating a …