Digital Commons Network^™

Originalism And Loving V. Virginia, Steven G. Calabresi, Andrea Matthews

Faculty Working Papers

This article makes an originalist argument in defense of the Supreme Court's holding in Loving v. Virginia that antimiscegenation laws are unconstitutional. This article builds on past work by Professor Michael McConnell defending Brown v. Board of Education on originalist grounds and by Professor Calabresi defending strict scrutiny for gender classifications on originalist grounds. Professor Calabresi's work in this area was defended and praise recently by Slate magazine online. The article shows that Loving v. Virginia is defensible using the public meaning originalism advocated for by Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. This article shows that the issue in Loving …

Discretion, Delegation, And Defining In The Constitution's Law Of Nations Clause, Eugene Kontorovich

Faculty Working Papers

Never in the nation's history has the scope and meaning of Congress's power to "Define and Punish. . . Offenses Against the Law of Nations" mattered as much. The once obscure power has in recent years been exercised in broad and controversial ways, ranging from civil human rights litigation under the Alien Tort Statue (ATS) to military commissions trials in Guantanamo Bay. Yet it has not yet been recognized that these issues both involve the Offenses Clauses, and indeed raise common constitutional questions.First, can Congress only "Define" offenses that clearly already exist in international law, or does it have discretion …

Respect And Contempt In Constitutional Law, Or, Is Jack Balkin Heartbreaking?, Andrew M. Koppelman

Faculty Working Papers

How many constitutions have we? Part of what we hope for from constitutional law is that we be united, despite our political differences, by a unifying political charter. John Rawls speaks for many when he writes that a well-ordered society "is a society all of whose members accept, and know that the others accept, the same principles (the same conception) of justice."

Jack Balkin argues that we have to give up on the Rawlsian aspiration, and learn to live in a world where, at a fundamental level, our fellow citizens are strange to us. They believe in different principles than …