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Articles 1 - 26 of 26
Full-Text Articles in History
The Runaway Presidential Power Over Diplomacy, Jean Galbraith
The Runaway Presidential Power Over Diplomacy, Jean Galbraith
All Faculty Scholarship
The President claims exclusive control over diplomacy within our constitutional system. Relying on this claim, executive branch lawyers repeatedly reject congressional mandates regarding international engagement. In their view, Congress cannot specify what the policy of the United States is with respect to foreign corruption, cannot bar a technology-focused agency from communicating with China, cannot impose notice requirements for withdrawal from a treaty with Russia, cannot instruct Treasury officials how to vote in the World Bank, and cannot require the disclosure of a trade-related report. And these are just a few of many examples from recent years. The President’s assertedly exclusive …
Burying Mcculloch?, David S. Schwartz
Burying Mcculloch?, David S. Schwartz
Arkansas Law Review
Kurt Lash is a superb constitutional historian trapped inside the body of an originalist. He is one of the few originalists bold enough to acknowledge that McCulloch v. Maryland needs to be ejected from the (conservative) originalist canon of great constitutional cases. While he attributes to me an intention “not to praise the mythological McCulloch, but to bury it,” it is Lash who seeks to bury McCulloch, which he views as a fraudulent “story of our constitutional origins.”
Mcculloch V. Madison: John Marshall's Effort To Bury Madisonian Federalism, Kurt Lash
Mcculloch V. Madison: John Marshall's Effort To Bury Madisonian Federalism, Kurt Lash
Arkansas Law Review
In his engaging and provocative new book, The Spirit of the Constitution: John Marshall and the 200-Year Odyssey of McCulloch v. Maryland, David S. Schwartz challenges McCulloch’s canonical status as a foundation stone in the building of American constitutional law. According to Schwartz, the fortunes of McCulloch ebbed and flowed depending on the politics of the day and the ideological commitments of Supreme Court justices. Judicial reliance on the case might disappear for a generation only to suddenly reappear in the next. If McCulloch v. Maryland enjoys pride of place in contemporary courses on constitutional law, Schwartz argues, then this …
Does Importance Equal Greatness? Reflections On John Marshall And Mcculloch V. Maryland, Sanford Levinson
Does Importance Equal Greatness? Reflections On John Marshall And Mcculloch V. Maryland, Sanford Levinson
Arkansas Law Review
David S. Schwartz’s The Spirit of the Constitution: John Marshall and the 200-Year Odyssey of McCulloch v. Maryland, is a truly excellent book, for which I was happy to contribute the following blurb appearing on the back jacket: "David Schwartz has written an indispensable study of thesingle most important Supreme Court case in the canon. As such, he delineates not only the meaning and importance of the case in 1819, but also the use made of it over the next two centuries as it became a central myth and symbol of the very meaning of American constitutionalism.”
The Poverty Law Education Of Charles Reich, Felicia Kornbluh, Karen Tani
The Poverty Law Education Of Charles Reich, Felicia Kornbluh, Karen Tani
All Faculty Scholarship
This essay, written for a symposium on the life and legacy of Charles Reich, explores how Reich came to be interested in the field of poverty law and, specifically, the constitutional rights of welfare recipients. The essay emphasizes the influence of two older women in Reich’s life: Justine Wise Polier, the famous New York City family court judge and the mother of one of Reich’s childhood friends, and Elizabeth Wickenden, a contemporary of Polier’s who was a prominent voice in social welfare policymaking and a confidante of high-level federal social welfare administrators. Together, Polier and Wickenden helped educate Reich about …
Our Administered Constitution: Administrative Constitutionalism From The Founding To The Present, Sophia Z. Lee
Our Administered Constitution: Administrative Constitutionalism From The Founding To The Present, Sophia Z. Lee
All Faculty Scholarship
This article argues that administrative agencies have been primary interpreters and implementers of the federal Constitution throughout the history of the United States, although the scale and scope of this "administrative constitutionalism" has changed significantly over time as the balance of opportunities and constraints has shifted. Courts have nonetheless cast an increasingly long shadow over the administered Constitution. In part, this is because of the well-known expansion of judicial review in the 20th century. But the shift has as much to do with changes in the legal profession, legal theory, and lawyers’ roles in agency administration. The result is that …
James Wilson As The Architect Of The American Presidency, Christopher S. Yoo
James Wilson As The Architect Of The American Presidency, Christopher S. Yoo
All Faculty Scholarship
For decades, James Wilson has been something of a “forgotten founder.” The area where commentators generally recognize Wilson’s influence at the Convention is with respect to Article II, which establishes the executive and defines its powers. Most scholars characterize him as a resolute advocate of an independent, energetic, and unitary presidency, and a particularly successful one at that. In this regard, some scholars have generally characterized Wilson’s thinking as overly rigid. Yet a close examination of the Convention reveals Wilson to be more flexible than sometimes characterized. With respect to many aspects of the presidency, including the appointment power, the …
Foreword: Abolition Constitutionalism, Dorothy E. Roberts
Foreword: Abolition Constitutionalism, Dorothy E. Roberts
All Faculty Scholarship
In this Foreword, I make the case for an abolition constitutionalism that attends to the theorizing of prison abolitionists. In Part I, I provide a summary of prison abolition theory and highlight its foundational tenets that engage with the institution of slavery and its eradication. I discuss how abolition theorists view the current prison industrial complex as originating in, though distinct from, racialized chattel slavery and the racial capitalist regime that relied on and sustained it, and their movement as completing the “unfinished liberation” sought by slavery abolitionists in the past. Part II considers whether the U.S. Constitution is an …
The Loving Story: Using A Documentary To Reconsider The Status Of An Iconic Interracial Married Couple, Regina Austin
The Loving Story: Using A Documentary To Reconsider The Status Of An Iconic Interracial Married Couple, Regina Austin
All Faculty Scholarship
The Loving Story (Augusta Films 2011), directed by Nancy Buirski, tells the backstory of the groundbreaking U.S. Supreme Court case, Loving v. Virginia, that overturned state laws barring interracial marriage. The article looks to the documentary to explain why the Lovings should be considered icons of racial and ethnic civil rights, however much they might be associated with marriage equality today. The film shows the Lovings to be ordinary people who took their nearly decade long struggle against white supremacy to the nation’s highest court out of a genuine commitment to each other and a determination to live in …
Intersectionality And The Constitution Of Family Status, Serena Mayeri
Intersectionality And The Constitution Of Family Status, Serena Mayeri
All Faculty Scholarship
Marital supremacy—the legal privileging of marriage—is, and always has been, deeply intertwined with inequalities of race, class, gender, and region. Many if not most of the plaintiffs who challenged legal discrimination based on family status in the 1960s and 1970s were impoverished women, men, and children of color who made constitutional equality claims. Yet the constitutional law of the family is largely silent about the status-based impact of laws that prefer marriage and disadvantage non-marital families. While some lower courts engaged with race-, sex-, and wealth-based discrimination arguments in family status cases, the Supreme Court largely avoided recognizing, much less …
Marriage (In)Equality And The Historical Legacies Of Feminism, Serena Mayeri
Marriage (In)Equality And The Historical Legacies Of Feminism, Serena Mayeri
All Faculty Scholarship
In this essay, I measure the majority’s opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges against two legacies of second-wave feminist legal advocacy: the largely successful campaign to make civil marriage formally gender-neutral; and the lesser-known struggle against laws and practices that penalized women who lived their lives outside of marriage. Obergefell obliquely acknowledges marriage equality’s debt to the first legacy without explicitly adopting sex equality arguments against same-sex marriage bans. The legacy of feminist campaigns for nonmarital equality, by contrast, is absent from Obergefell’s reasoning and belied by rhetoric that both glorifies marriage and implicitly disparages nonmarriage. Even so, the history …
The President's Wartime Detention Authority : What History Teaches Us, Anirudh Sivaram
The President's Wartime Detention Authority : What History Teaches Us, Anirudh Sivaram
Harvey M. Applebaum ’59 Award
This thesis examines the extent of the President’s wartime detention authority over citizens (in particular, detention authority pursuant to Article II of the U.S. Constitution) through a legal-historical lens. Some Presidents (Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, George W. Bush) have historically relied on Article II authority for detention, while others (Ulysses Grant, Barack Obama) have disclaimed the notion that such authority exists. Clarifying the scope and source of the Presidential detention authority over citizens bears both theoretical and real-world relevance. Theoretically, it lies at the confluence of two central American constitutional traditions – the separation of powers, and the protection of …
A Revolution At War With Itself? Preserving Employment Preferences From Weber To Ricci, Sophia Z. Lee
A Revolution At War With Itself? Preserving Employment Preferences From Weber To Ricci, Sophia Z. Lee
All Faculty Scholarship
Two aspects of the constitutional transformation Bruce Ackerman describes in The Civil Rights Revolution were on a collision course, one whose trajectory has implications for Ackerman’s account and for his broader theory of constitutional change. Ackerman makes a compelling case that what he terms “reverse state action” (the targeting of private actors) and “government by numbers” (the use of statistics to identify and remedy violations of civil rights laws) defined the civil rights revolution. Together they “requir[ed] private actors, as well as state officials, to . . . realize the principles of constitutional equality” and allowed the federal government to …
America's Forgotten Constitutions: Defiant Visions Of Power And Community, Robert Tsai
America's Forgotten Constitutions: Defiant Visions Of Power And Community, Robert Tsai
Robert L Tsai
The U.S. Constitution opens by proclaiming the sovereignty of all citizens: "We the People." Robert Tsai's gripping history of alternative constitutions invites readers into the circle of those who have rejected this ringing assertion--the defiant groups that refused to accept the Constitution's definition of who "the people" are and how their authority should be exercised. America's Forgotten Constitutions is the story of America as told by dissenters: squatters, Native Americans, abolitionists, socialists, internationalists, and racial nationalists. Beginning in the nineteenth century, Tsai chronicles eight episodes in which discontented citizens took the extraordinary step of drafting a new constitution. He examines …
The Origins And Meaning Of “Vacancies That May Happen During The Recess” In The Constitution’S Recess Appointments Clause, Robert G. Natelson
The Origins And Meaning Of “Vacancies That May Happen During The Recess” In The Constitution’S Recess Appointments Clause, Robert G. Natelson
Robert G. Natelson
There has been longstanding uncertainty about the meaning of “the Recess” and “Vacancies that may happen” in the Constitution’s Recess Appointments Clause. This Article finds that both “the Recess” and close variants of “Vacancies that may happen” were standard terms in Founding-Era legislative practice, and appear copiously in legislative records. Those records inform us that “the Recess” means only the intersession recess and that a vacancy “happens” only when it first arises.
Introduction To The Workplace Constitution From The New Deal To The New Right, Sophia Z. Lee
Introduction To The Workplace Constitution From The New Deal To The New Right, Sophia Z. Lee
All Faculty Scholarship
Today, most American workers do not have constitutional rights on the job. As The Workplace Constitution shows, this outcome was far from inevitable. Instead, American workers have a long history of fighting for such rights. Beginning in the 1930s, civil rights advocates sought constitutional protections against racial discrimination by employers and unions. At the same time, a conservative right-to-work movement argued that the Constitution protected workers from having to join or support unions. Those two movements, with their shared aim of extending constitutional protections to American workers, were a potentially powerful combination. But they sought to use those protections to …
"Displaced By A Force To Which They Yielded And Could Not Resist": A Historical And Legal Analysis Of Mayor And City Counsel Of Baltimore V. Charles Howard Et. Al, Matthew Kent
Legal History Publications
The experience of the Baltimore Police Commissioners is instructive in understanding the state of affairs in Baltimore during the Civil War era. The removal of the commissioners by the Union Army and the subsequent civil trial, The Mayor and City Council of Baltimore v. Charles Howard, provides a window through which one may examine the historical, legal and political circumstances of the time. The legal status of the commissioners also sheds light on modern legal doctrine related to the detention of American citizens as “enemy combatants” without the benefit of certain constitutional guarantees. By analyzing the Howard case with a …
The Federalist Papers As Reliable Historical Source Material For Constitutional Interpretation, Seth Barrett Tillman
The Federalist Papers As Reliable Historical Source Material For Constitutional Interpretation, Seth Barrett Tillman
West Virginia Law Review
No abstract provided.
The Idea Of The Common Law In West Virginia Jurisprudential History: Morningstar V. Black & Decker Revisited, James Audley Mclaughlin
The Idea Of The Common Law In West Virginia Jurisprudential History: Morningstar V. Black & Decker Revisited, James Audley Mclaughlin
West Virginia Law Review
No abstract provided.
The Jurisprudence Of Tradition And Justice Scalia's Unwritten Constitution, J. Richard Broughton
The Jurisprudence Of Tradition And Justice Scalia's Unwritten Constitution, J. Richard Broughton
West Virginia Law Review
No abstract provided.
Exclusion To Emancipation: A Comparative Analysis Of Women's Citizenship In Australia And The United States 1869-1921, Linda J. Kirk
Exclusion To Emancipation: A Comparative Analysis Of Women's Citizenship In Australia And The United States 1869-1921, Linda J. Kirk
West Virginia Law Review
No abstract provided.
Speech Of Hon. William A. Howard Of Michigan, William Alanson Howard
Speech Of Hon. William A. Howard Of Michigan, William Alanson Howard
Civil War Text
Speech of Hon. William A. Howard of Michigan, in the house of representatives, March 23, 1858. Consisting of 8 pages. 1 large page, printed front & back, folded to make 8 pages.
Charge Of Chief Justice Durfee, Job Durfee
Charge Of Chief Justice Durfee, Job Durfee
Pamphlets: Contemporary Assessments of the Dorr Rebellion
No abstract provided.
To The Members Of The General Assembly Of Rhode Island, John Pitman
To The Members Of The General Assembly Of Rhode Island, John Pitman
Pamphlets: Contemporary Assessments of the Dorr Rebellion
No abstract provided.
Address On The Right Of Suffrage, Seth Luther
Address On The Right Of Suffrage, Seth Luther
Pamphlets: Contemporary Assessments of the Dorr Rebellion
No abstract provided.
Extension Of Suffrage, B. Hazard
Extension Of Suffrage, B. Hazard
Pamphlets: Contemporary Assessments of the Dorr Rebellion
No abstract provided.