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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Law

2014

Duke Law

Constitutional law

Articles 1 - 3 of 3

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Treaty Termination And Historical Gloss, Curtis A. Bradley Jan 2014

Treaty Termination And Historical Gloss, Curtis A. Bradley

Faculty Scholarship

The termination of U.S. treaties provides an especially rich example of how governmental practices can provide a “gloss” on the Constitution’s separation of powers. The authority to terminate treaties is not addressed specifically in the constitutional text and instead has been worked out over time through political-branch practice. This practice, moreover, has developed largely without judicial review. Despite these features, Congress and the President—and the lawyers who advise them—have generally treated this issue as a matter of constitutional law rather than merely political happenstance. Importantly, the example of treaty termination illustrates not only how historical practice can inform constitutional understandings …


Federalism As A Way Station: Windsor As Exemplar Of Doctrine In Motion, Neil S. Siegel Jan 2014

Federalism As A Way Station: Windsor As Exemplar Of Doctrine In Motion, Neil S. Siegel

Faculty Scholarship

This Article asks what the Supreme Court’s opinion in United States v. Windsor stands for. It first shows that the opinion leans in the direction of marriage equality but ultimately resists any dispositive “equality” or “federalism” interpretation. The Article next examines why the opinion seems intended to preserve for itself a Delphic obscurity. The Article reads Windsor as an exemplar of what judicial opinions may look like in transition periods, when a Bickelian Court seeks to invite, not end, a national conversation, and to nudge it in a certain direction. In such times, federalism rhetoric—like manipulating the tiers of scrutiny …


None Of The Laws But One, Neil S. Siegel Jan 2014

None Of The Laws But One, Neil S. Siegel

Faculty Scholarship

This Symposium contribution explores differences in how congressional Republicans responded to Medicare and how they responded to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). Given the narrowness of the constitutional challenges to the ACA that congressional Republicans promoted and the many federal taxes, expenditures, and regulations that they support, this Article rejects the suggestion that today's Republicans in Congress generally possess a narrow view of the constitutional scope of federal power. The Article instead argues that congressional Republicans then and now-and the two parties in Congress today-fracture less over the constitutional expanse of congressional authority and more over the …