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The Puzzle Of State Constitutions, Jim Rossi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In a series of groundbreaking articles published over the past fifteen years, James Gardner has led the charge to make state constitutionalism a part of the constitutional law discussion more generally. His new book, Interpreting State Constitutions: A Jurisprudence of Function in a Federal System, steps beyond his study of specific issues in state constitutionalism to lay out an ambitious theory about how state constitutions should be interpreted based on their function within a federal system. Gardner's book is a significant scholarly effort to take state constitutions seriously, in a way that transcends any one jurisdiction or constitutional provision. Gardner's …