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Constitution

Law and Politics

University of Michigan Law School

Articles 1 - 6 of 6

Full-Text Articles in Legal History

The Republic In Long-Term Perspective, Richard Primus Aug 2018

The Republic In Long-Term Perspective, Richard Primus

Michigan Law Review Online

Every system of government eventually passes away. That's a feature of the human condition. The United States has been an unusually stable polity by the standards of world civilizations, and for that stability Americans should be deeply grateful. But no nation is exempt from the basic forces of history. It is not reasonable to think that the constitutional republic we know will last forever. The question is when it will meet its end-in our lifetimes, or in our grandchildren's, or centuries later. Given the stable conditions that living Americans were socialized to expect, the dominant intuition is probably something like …


Chief Justice Hughes' Letter On Court-Packing, Richard D. Friedman Jan 1997

Chief Justice Hughes' Letter On Court-Packing, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

After one of the great landslides in American presidential history, Franklin D. Roosevelt took the oath of office for the second time on January 20, 1937. As he had four years before, Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, like Roosevelt a former governor of New York, administered the oath. Torrents of rain drenched the inauguration, and Hughes’ damp whiskers waved in the biting wind. When the skullcapped Chief Justice reached the promise to defend the Constitution, he “spoke slowly and with special emphasis.” The President responded in kind, though he felt like saying, as he later told his aide Sam Rosenman: …


Empty History, Erwin Chermerinsky Mar 1983

Empty History, Erwin Chermerinsky

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Politics and the Constitution in the History of the United States, Volume 3: The Political Background of the Federal Convention by William Winslow Crosskey and William Jeffrey, Jr.


The Distrust Of Politics, Terrance Sandalow Jan 1981

The Distrust Of Politics, Terrance Sandalow

Articles

In this Article, Dean Sandalow considers the justifications advanced by those who favor the removal of certain political issues from the political process by extending the reach of judicial review. He begins by examining the distrust of politics in a different context, discussing the proposals made by the Progressives for reforming municipal government, as a vehicle to expose the assumptions underlying the current debate. His comparison of the two historical settings reveals many similarities between the Progressives' reform proposals and the contemporary justiflcations.[or the displacement of politics with constitutional law. Dean Sandalow concludes that the distrust of politics rests not …


Crosskey And The Constitution: A Reply To Goebel, Sylvester Petro Dec 1954

Crosskey And The Constitution: A Reply To Goebel, Sylvester Petro

Michigan Law Review

The immediate purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the inadequacies of the most embittered of the reviews of Crosskey's book which I have read, "Ex Parte Clio,'' written by Professor Goebel (hereinafter sometimes referred to as "the reviewer"). Demonstrating these things will involve repeated reference to the thesis and the methodology of the book, and comparison of the book with the contentions advanced by the reviewer. The reading will probably be as tedious as the writing has been, but that cannot be helped, for the longer aim of this paper cannot be achieved in any other manner. That aim …


The Method Of Electing The President, Thomas M. Cooley, Abram S. Hewitt Dec 1877

The Method Of Electing The President, Thomas M. Cooley, Abram S. Hewitt

Articles

Twice in the history of the United States the nation has been brought to the verge of civil war by difficulties growing out of presidential elections. And yet no system was ever devised with more care to preclude any reasonable complaint.