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Full-Text Articles in Law
Slavery's Constitution: Rethinking The Federal Consensus, Maeve Glass
Slavery's Constitution: Rethinking The Federal Consensus, Maeve Glass
Faculty Scholarship
For at least half a century, scholars of the early American Constitution have noted the archival prominence of a doctrine known as the “federal consensus.” This doctrine instructed that Congress had no power to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it existed. Despite its ubiquity in the records, our understanding of how and why this doctrine emerged is hazy at best. Working from a conceptual map of America’s founding that features thirteen local governments coalescing into two feuding sections of North and South, commentators have tended to explain the federal consensus either as a vestige of …
In Search Of Skidmore, Peter L. Strauss
In Search Of Skidmore, Peter L. Strauss
Faculty Scholarship
Ever since 1827, the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly observed that when a court is interpreting a statute that falls within the authority of an administrative agency, the court in reaching its own judgment about the statute's meaning should give substantial weight to the agency's view. Repeated again and again over the years in varying formulations, this proposition found its apotheosis in Skidmore v. Swift & Co., a unanimous opinion authored by Justice Jackson in 1944. His opinion took the proposition to be so obvious that no citation was required. Justice Jackson's typically incisive and memorable formulation stuck. It …
The Presumption Of Constitutionality And The Individual Mandate, Gillian E. Metzger, Trevor W. Morrison
The Presumption Of Constitutionality And The Individual Mandate, Gillian E. Metzger, Trevor W. Morrison
Faculty Scholarship
Every American law student learns that there is a difference between a statute's meaning and its constitutionality. A given case might well present both issues, but law students are taught that the questions are distinct and that their resolution requires separate analyses. This is all for good reason: the distinction between statutory meaning and constitutional validity is both real and important. But it is not complete. Any approach to statutory interpretation depends on a view about the appropriate role of the judiciary (or other institutional interpreter) in our constitutional system; "[a]ny theory of statutory interpretation is at base a theory …
Presidential Popular Constitutionalism, Jedediah S. Purdy
Presidential Popular Constitutionalism, Jedediah S. Purdy
Faculty Scholarship
This Article adds a new dimension to the most important and influential strand of recent constitutional theory: popular or democratic constitutionalism, the investigation into how the U.S. Constitution is interpreted (1) as a set of defining national commitments and practices, not necessarily anchored in the text of the document, and (2) by citizens and elected politicians outside the judiciary. Wide-ranging and ground-breaking scholarship in this area has neglected the role of the President as a popular constitutional interpreter, articulating and revising normative accounts of the nation that interact dynamically with citizens' constitutional understandings. This Article sets out a "grammar" of …
Public Support And The Sectarian University, Walter Gellhorn, Kent Greenawalt
Public Support And The Sectarian University, Walter Gellhorn, Kent Greenawalt
Faculty Scholarship
In mid-1968 we undertook to advise Fordham University concerning steps that might be appropriate to establish its eligibility for public assistance. As part of that task we tried to determine the extent to which present law requires official differentiation between Church-related and other institutions of higher learning. Since the University sought a wholly detached consideration of its legal posture, our conclusions in this article represent our best judgment of the present state of the law and its probable development. We have avoided indicating our own personal position on debatable legal and ethical issues.