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Full-Text Articles in Jurisprudence
The Most Sacred Text: The Supreme Court's Use Of The Federalist Papers, James G. Wilson
The Most Sacred Text: The Supreme Court's Use Of The Federalist Papers, James G. Wilson
Law Faculty Articles and Essays
In interpreting the Constitution the Supreme Court has increasingly referred to The Federalist papers, a series of essays written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay during the struggle to ratify the Constitution. This article describes in narrative form how the Court has incorporated The Federalist into its opinions, and summarizes how constitutional historians and political scientists have evaluated The Federalist and the Constitution. This format highlights the limited nature of the Court's historical inquiry by demonstrating that the Court and constitutional scholars have been traveling in parallel universes. Either the Court has ignored or been unaware of the …
From Sovereignty To Process: The Jurisprudence Of Federalism After Garcia, Andrzej Rapaczynski
From Sovereignty To Process: The Jurisprudence Of Federalism After Garcia, Andrzej Rapaczynski
Faculty Scholarship
On February 19, 1985, the Supreme Court, in Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority, overruled its 1976 decision in National League of Cities v. Usery. Although the continued vitality of National League of Cities had been in question in recent years, the Court's abrupt repudiation of the very principle announced in that case is an event of considerable significance, beyond showing, one more time, that the rule of stare decisis has a limited application in the Court's modern constitutional adjudication. Garcia's importance lies, above all, in revealing the absence of anything approaching a well elaborated theory of federalism that …