Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility Commons^™

Fiduciary Constitutionalism: Implications For Self-Pardons And Non-Delegation, Ethan J. Lieb, Jed Handelsman Shugerman

Faculty Scholarship

The idea that public servants hold their offices in trust for subject-beneficiaries and that a sovereign's exercise of its political power must be constrained by fiduciary standards-like the duties of loyalty and care-is not new. But scholars are collecting more and more evidence that the framers of the U.S. Constitution may have sought to constrain public power in ways that we would today call fiduciary. In this article, we explore some important legal conclusions that follow from fiduciary constitutionalism.

After developing some historical links between private fiduciary instruments and state and federal constitutions, we opine on what a fiduciary constitution …

Hardball Vs. Beanball: Identifying Fundamentally Antidemocratic Tactics, Jed Handelsman Shugerman

Faculty Scholarship

The “constitutional hardball” metaphor used by legal scholars and political scientists illuminates an important phenomenon in American politics, but it obscures a crisis in American democracy. In baseball, hardball encompasses legitimate tactics: pitching inside to brush a batter back but not injure, hard slides, hard tags. Baseball fans celebrate hardball. Many of the constitutional hardball maneuvers previously identified by scholars have been legitimate, if aggressive, constitutional political moves. But the label “hardball” has been interpreted too broadly to include illegitimate, fundamentally undemocratic tactics. I suggest a different baseball metaphor for such tactics: beanball, pitches meant to injure and knock out …