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Articles 1 - 11 of 11
Full-Text Articles in Law
James Wilson And The Moral Foundations Of Popular Sovereignty, Ian C. Bartrum
James Wilson And The Moral Foundations Of Popular Sovereignty, Ian C. Bartrum
Ian C Bartrum
This paper explores the moral philosophy underlying the constitutional doctrine of popular sovereignty. In particular, it focuses on the Scottish sentimentalism that informed James Wilson’s understanding of that doctrine. Wilson, a transplanted Scotsman, was perhaps the nation’s preeminent lawyer in the middle 1780s. He was one of the most important delegates to the Constitutional Convention, one of the nation’s first law professors, and served as Associate Justice on the first Supreme Court. In these capacities, he developed the most sophisticated and coherent account of popular sovereignty among the founding generation. My initial effort is to enrich our understanding of Wilson’s …
Two Dogmas Of Originalism, Ian C. Bartrum
Two Dogmas Of Originalism, Ian C. Bartrum
Ian C Bartrum
In the early 1950s, Willlard Quine’s Two Dogmas of Empiricism offered a devastating critique of logical positivism and the effort to distinguish “science” from “metaphysics”. Quine demonstrated that positivists relied on dogmatic oversimplifications of both the world and human practices, and, in the end, suggested that our holistic natural experience cannot be reduced to purely logical explanations. In this piece, I argue that constitutional originalism—which, too, seeks to define a constitutional “science”—relies on similar dogmatisms. In particular, I contend that the “fixation thesis,” which claims that the constitutional judge’s first task is to fix the text’s semantic meaning at a …
The Ministerial Exception And The Limits Of Religious Sovereignty, Ian C. Bartrum
The Ministerial Exception And The Limits Of Religious Sovereignty, Ian C. Bartrum
Ian C Bartrum
This paper explores the scope of independent religious sovereignty in the context of the ministerial exception.
The Modalities Of Constitutional Argument: A Primer, Ian C. Bartrum
The Modalities Of Constitutional Argument: A Primer, Ian C. Bartrum
Ian C Bartrum
This piece is a contribution to Linda Edwards upcoming book Readings In Persuasion: Briefs That Changed the World (forthcoming Wolters Kluwer). In it I offer a short primer on the modalities of constitutional argument, as Philip Bobbitt has described them. As someone who teaches Constitutional Law with the primary goal of educating future practitioners, I have always brought Bobbitt’s very practical (while also very theoretical) work into my classroom discussions. I have regularly used the first chapter of Bobbitt’s Constitutional Interpretation as introductory text on the subject, but I have sometimes found the reading to be too long and/or theoretical …
Constitutional Value Judgments And Interpretive Theory Choice, Ian C. Bartrum
Constitutional Value Judgments And Interpretive Theory Choice, Ian C. Bartrum
Ian C Bartrum
Philip Bobbitt’s remarkable work describing the ‘modalities’ of constitutional argument is an immense contribution to the study of constitutional law. He describes a typology of six forms of argument alive in our interpretive practice, and offers a limited account of how these modalities interact, and sometimes conflict, in actual constitutional decisions. One of the persistent puzzles Bobbitt’s description leaves open, however, is how we should account for the choice between conflicting modalities in cases where that choice is likely outcome-determinative. Because the modalities are ‘incommensurable’—a term’s meaning in one modality may not be fully translatable into another—there is no internal …
Nonpublic Reasons And Political Paradigm Change, Ian C. Bartrum
Nonpublic Reasons And Political Paradigm Change, Ian C. Bartrum
Ian C Bartrum
This article was a contribution to the 2010 Religious Legal Theory symposium held at St. John's Law School.
John Rawls famously argued that citizens in a just democracy have a moral duty to ensure that “the principles and policies they advocate and vote for can be supported by the political values of public reason.” This so-called “duty of civility” obligates us to cast our votes on “constitutional questions and matters of basic justice” for reasons that we can explain in terms of the public good and the “ideals and principles expressed by society’s conception of political justice.” Rawls contrasts these …
Constitutional Rights And Judicial Independence: Lessons From Iowa, Ian C. Bartrum
Constitutional Rights And Judicial Independence: Lessons From Iowa, Ian C. Bartrum
Ian C Bartrum
Iowa held its 2010 judicial retention elections in the shadow of Varnum v. Brien, the 2009 Supreme Court opinion recognizing same sex marriage. As the result of highly politicized campaign, three talented jurists lost their seats on the Court.
This commentary examines that election and offers a structural solution that might better protect constitutional rights against majoritarian intimidation.
Religion And Race: The Ministerial Exception Reexamined, Ian C. Bartrum
Religion And Race: The Ministerial Exception Reexamined, Ian C. Bartrum
Ian C Bartrum
This Colloquy piece explores the constitutional relationship between religious exercise and racial discrimination in the context of the "ministerial exception" and the Court's decision to hear arguments in Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC.
Salazar V. Buono: Sacred Symbolism And The Secular State, Ian C. Bartrum
Salazar V. Buono: Sacred Symbolism And The Secular State, Ian C. Bartrum
Ian C Bartrum
This short piece discusses some doctrinal and theoretical implications of the Court's recent decision.
Constructing The Constitutional Canon: The Metonymic Evolution Of Federalist 10, Ian C. Bartrum
Constructing The Constitutional Canon: The Metonymic Evolution Of Federalist 10, Ian C. Bartrum
Ian C Bartrum
This paper is part of larger symposium convened for the 2010 AALS annual meeting. In it I adapt some of my earlier constitutional theoretical work to engage the topic of that symposium: the so-called “interpretation/construction distinction”. I make two related criticisms of the distinction: (1) it relies on a flawed conception of linguistic meaning, and (2) while these flaws may be harmless in the “easy” cases of interpretation, they are much more problematic in the difficult cases of most concern. Thus, I doubt the ultimate utility of the distinction as part of a “true and correct” model of constitutional theory. …
The Constitutional Canon As Argumentative Metonymy, Ian C. Bartrum
The Constitutional Canon As Argumentative Metonymy, Ian C. Bartrum
Ian C Bartrum
This article builds on Philip Bobbitt's Wittgensteinian insights into constitutional argument and law. I examine the way that we interact with canonical texts as we construct arguments in the forms that Bobbitt has described. I contend that these texts serve as metonyms for larger sets of associated principles and values, and that their invocation usually is not meant to point to the literal meaning of the text itself. This conception helps explain how a canonical text's meaning in constitutional argument can evolve over time, and hopefully offers the creative practitioner some insight into the kinds of arguments that might accomplish …