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Full-Text Articles in Legal History
The Warren Court, Legalism And Democracy: Sketch For A Critique In A Style Learned From Morton Horwitz, William H. Simon
The Warren Court, Legalism And Democracy: Sketch For A Critique In A Style Learned From Morton Horwitz, William H. Simon
Faculty Scholarship
Morton Horwitz's Transformation books developed a critical approach that elaborates the underlying premises of legal doctrine and compares them to suppressed or ignored alternative perspectives. However, Horwitz's Warren Court book is largely an appreciation of the Court's doctrine that accepts at face value its underlying premises and the judges' claim to vindicate democratic values. In this essay, I speculate on what a Transformation-style critique of the Warren Court might look like and suggest that the Court is vulnerable to criticisms analogous to those the Transformation books make of earlier doctrine. I suggest that book ignores an alternative perspective on social …
A Convenient Constitution? Extraterritoriality After Boumediene, Christina Duffy Ponsa-Kraus
A Convenient Constitution? Extraterritoriality After Boumediene, Christina Duffy Ponsa-Kraus
Faculty Scholarship
Questions concerning the extraterritorial applicability of the Constitution have come to the fore during the "war on terror." In Boumediene v. Bush, the Supreme Court held that noncitizens detained in Guantánamo have the right to challenge their detention in federal court. To reach this conclusion, the Court used the "impracticable and anomalous" test, also known as the 'functional" approach because of its reliance on pragmatic or consequentialist considerations. The test first appeared in a concurring opinion over fifty years ago; in Boumediene, it garnered the votes of a majority.
This Article argues that the Boumediene Court was right …
Guns As Smut: Defending The Home-Bound Second Amendment, Darrell A. H. Miller
Guns As Smut: Defending The Home-Bound Second Amendment, Darrell A. H. Miller
Faculty Scholarship
In District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment guarantees a personal, individual right to keep and bear arms. But the Court left lower courts and legislatures adrift on the fundamental question of scope. While the Court stated in dicta that some regulation may survive constitutional scrutiny, it left the precise contours of the right, and even the method by which to determine those contours, for 'future evaluation."
This Article offers a provocative proposal for tackling the issue of Second Amendment scope, one tucked in many dresser drawers across the nation: Treat the Second Amendment …