Law Commons^™

A Failed Critique Of State Constitutionalism, David Schuman

Michigan Law Review

James A. Gardner begins The Failed Discourse of State Constitutionalism with a story describing "the experience of a great many lawyers in this country." The protagonist is an attorney whose client has an unlawful discrimination claim that for some reason cannot succeed under the U.S. Supreme Court's current equal protection jurisprudence. The attorney decides to present an argument based on her state constitution's equality guarantee, only to discover that the universe of material from which a plausible argument, not to mention a rich discourse, might emerge - existing case law and scholarship, "useful tidbits" of constitutional history and philosophy from …