Legal History Commons^™

Charles Reich And The Legal History Of Privacy, Sarah Seo

Faculty Scholarship

Historians’ interest in Reich offers a case study of the relationship between historical and legal studies. What can legal scholars learn from historians, and what can historians learn from legal scholarship? This Essay will explore these two questions by focusing on Igo’s The Known Citizen since she encountered Reich not with the dual citizenship of a legal historian but as an intellectual historian. I will first highlight what legal scholars can learn from historians by summarizing the main arguments in The Known Citizen. Then, I will provide an alternative legal account to Igo’s history of privacy, which may clear …

Copyright As Legal Process: The Transformation Of American Copyright Law, Shyamkrishna Balganesh

Faculty Scholarship

American copyright law has undergone an unappreciated conceptual transformation over the course of the last century. Originally conceived of as a form of private law – focusing on horizontal rights, privileges and private liability – copyright law is today understood principally through its public-regarding goals and institutional apparatus, in effect as a form of public law. This transformation is the result of changes in the ideas of law and law-making that occurred in American legal thinking following World War II, manifested in the deeply influential philosophy of the Legal Process School of jurisprudence which shaped the modern American copyright landscape. …

Text Over Intent And The Demise Of Legislative History, Thomas W. Merrill, Michael S. Paulsen, Saikrishna Prakash, Lawrence B. Solum, Sandra Segal Ikuta

Faculty Scholarship

The following is the transcript of a 2016 Federalist Society panel entitled: Text Over Intent and the Demise of Legislative History. The panel originally occurred on November 17, 2016 during the National Lawyers Convention in Washington, D.C. The participants were: Prof. Thomas W. Merrill, Charles Evans Hughes Professor of Law, Columbia Law School; Prof. Michael S. Paulsen, Distinguished University Chair and Professor, University of St. Thomas School of Law; Prof. Saikrishna Prakash, James Monroe Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law; Prof. Lawrence B. Solum, Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center. The moderator was …

The Original Theory Of Constitutionalism, David Singh Grewal, Jedediah S. Purdy

Faculty Scholarship

The conflict between various versions of “originalism” and “living constitutionalism” has defined the landscape of constitutional theory and practice for more than a generation, and it shows no sign of abating. Although each camp has developed a variety of methodological approaches and substantive distinctions, each one also returns to a core concern: the democratic authority of constitutional review. The late Justice Scalia crystallized the originalist concern in his dissent in Obergefell v. Hodges: “It is of overwhelming importance … who it is that rules me. Today’s decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, …

Overcoming The Great Forgetting: A Comment On Fishkin And Forbath, Jedediah S. Purdy

Faculty Scholarship

Fishkin and Forbath’s (F&F’s) manuscript is a project of recovery. It portrays the present as a time marked by a “Great Forgetting” of a tradition of constitutional political economy. F&F name what has been forgotten the “democracy of opportunity” tradition. Recovering it would mean again treating the following three principles as linked elements at the core of our Constitution: (1) an anti-oligarchy principle that works to prevent wealth from producing grossly unequal political power; (2) a commitment to a broad middle class with secure, respected work; and (3) a principle of inclusion that opens participation in both citizenship and the …

The Development Of The Nineteenth-Century Consensus Theory Of Contract, Philip A. Hamburger

Faculty Scholarship

The consensus theory is well known. According to consensus theory, contract is the product of the consensus or "meeting of the minds" of contracting parties; if there is no consensus, there is no contract. Today, even after repeated challenges, consensus theory continues to be important and even essential in many approaches to contract.

The role of the parties' consensus was not always apparent in case law. Until well into the nineteenth century, the most important remedy for breach of contract in both England and America was the action for breach of promise known as "assumpsit." As a result, lawyers typically …