Law Commons^™

The Common Law And The Constitution: John Locke And The Missing Link In Law, Steve Sheppard

Steve Sheppard

Locke's concept of rights influenced the Framers of the Constitution, which has increased the stakes in later interpretation of what Locke’s model of rights entailed. “Lockean rights” now suggests a perfect right unlimitable by the state in the public interest. Such a right is theoretically interesting, but it is not what Locke had in mind, and it was not the model of rights Madison, Jefferson, Hamilton, and other inherited from Locke's Second Treatise.

This paper was an initial reconstruction of Locke's model of a right, locating it within the legal culture of his time and place. His model of what …

Beyond The Conventional Establishment Clause Narrative, Richard Albert

Seattle University Law Review

The article reviews of jurisprudence offers a systematic look at every Establishment Clause case to have reached the docket of the United States Supreme Court since 1947. That year is of particular significance, for it marks the incorporation of the Establishment Clause, which the Court articulated in its influential establishment case, Everson v. Board of Education. Through the intervening years there have been a total of forty-six other cases-forty-seven in total-in which establishment issues constituted the core legal quandary. The article poses two questions as it reviews the Court's opinion in each suit: (1) In contemplating the meaning of …