Law Commons^™

Environmental Federalism As Forum Shopping, Cale Jaffe

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

Public policy advocates of all stripes—litigators, politicians, or newspaper columnists—invoke principles of federalism when they are imploring Congress to respect limits imposed by Article I, and when they are insisting that a state legislature accede to the supremacy of a duly enacted national law, invoking Article VI. Yet historically, application of the term, “federalism,” at least in the context of environmental law, has been driven far more by pragmatic considerations than constitutional ones.

This pragmatic approach should not be surprising because, at its core, federalism simply asks what is the right level of government to solve a given problem. After …

A Narrowing Field Of View: An Investigation Into The Relationship Between The Principles Of Treaty Interpretation And The Conceptual Framework Of Canadian Federalism, Joshua Ben David Nichols

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

In its recent decisions in Tsilhqot’in Nation and Grassy Narrows, the Supreme Court of Canada has significantly altered the position of Indigenous peoples within the structure of Canadian federalism. This article sets out to investigate the basis for the Court’s jurisdiction to change this structure. Its approach is historical, as it covers judicial treaty interpretation from St Catherine’s Milling to Grassy Narrows. By contextualizing the most recent change in light of the last 250 years of treaty making, we can see how the notion of Crown sovereignty has become entangled with the Westphalian model of the state (i.e., the state …

Historical Gloss, Madisonian Liquidation, And The Originalism Debate, Curtis A. Bradley, Neil S. Siegel

Faculty Scholarship

The U.S. Constitution is old, relatively brief, and very difficult to amend. In its original form, the Constitution was primarily a framework for a new national government, and for 230 years the national government has operated under that framework even as conditions have changed in ways beyond the Founders’ conceivable imaginations. The framework has survived in no small part because government institutions have themselves played an important role in helping to fill in and clarify the framework through their practices and interactions, informed by the realities of governance. Courts, the political branches, and academic commentators commonly give weight to such …

Disuniformity Of Federal Constitutional Rights, Joseph Blocher

Faculty Scholarship

Judge Jeffrey Sutton’s 51 Imperfect Solutions describes and celebrates the crucial role of state constitutional law in “making” American constitutional law. The fact that states do not speak with one voice in doing so is, in Sutton’s account, a feature rather than a bug. The diversity in their approaches permits experimentation and tailoring, and ultimately produces a stronger and more supple constitutional fabric.

Sutton’s enthusiasm for the diversity and dynamism of state constitutional law is entirely convincing. But is the federal alternative quite so flat? Although federal constitutional rights are undoubtedly more uniform than those of states, they are not …