Law Commons^™

The Case For Including Marks V. United States In The Canon Of Constitutional Law, Maxwell L. Stearns

Faculty Scholarship

In this essay, I would like to suggest adding a single case, with appropriate commentary, to the canon of constitutional law, as presented in introductory casebooks. Specifically, I suggest including Marks v. United States, as a principal case, or in the form of a detailed summary, immediately before or after the first major plurality decision. I should note that the case is rather short – nine pages in the U.S. Reports – and that it nominally involves obscenity doctrine. I would suggest, counterintuitively perhaps, that the case is more fruitfully presented toward the beginning of an introductory course in constitutional …