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Full-Text Articles in Legal History

James Madison’S Celebrated Report Of 1800: The Transformation Of The Tenth Amendment, Kurt T. Lash Jan 2006

James Madison’S Celebrated Report Of 1800: The Transformation Of The Tenth Amendment, Kurt T. Lash

Law Faculty Publications

It has become commonplace to describe the Rehnquist Court as having staged a "Federalism Revolution." Although the current status of the Revolution is in dispute, historical treatment of the Supreme Court's jurisprudence under Chief Justice Rehnquist no doubt will emphasize a resurgence of federalism and limited construction of federal power. Cases like Gregory v. Ashcroft, New York v. United States, United States v. Lopez, Printz v. United States, Alden v. Maine, and United States v. Morrison all share a common rule of interpretation: Narrow construction of federal power to interfere with matters believed best left under state control. The textual …


Constitutional Texting, Lawrence B. Solum Jan 2006

Constitutional Texting, Lawrence B. Solum

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

"Constitutional Texting" introduces an account of constitutional meaning that draws on Paul Grice's distinction between "speaker's meaning" and "sentence meaning." The constitutional equivalent of speaker's meaning is "framer's meaning," the meaning that the author of the constitutional text intended to convey in light of the author's beliefs about the reader's beliefs about the author's intentions. The constitutional equivalent of sentence meaning is "clause meaning," the meaning that an ordinary reader would attribute to the text at the time of utterance without any beliefs about particular intentions on the part of the author. Clause meaning is possible because the words and …