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Full-Text Articles in Law
Practice-Driven Changes To Constitutional Structures Of Governance, James A. Gardner
Practice-Driven Changes To Constitutional Structures Of Governance, James A. Gardner
Journal Articles
Among the methods of informal constitutional change, perhaps the least studied or understood is change resulting from alterations in the way governance is practiced. Such changes, typically initiated by political actors in the executive and legislative branches, is probably the most common kind of constitutional change, and is almost certainly the most common source of informal change to structural provisions. In the United States, the best known instances of practice-driven changes to constitutional structure come from the federal level – the rise of a formal party system, for example, or the dramatic twentieth-century expansion of presidential power. Yet by far …
Autonomy And Isomorphism: The Unfulfilled Promise Of Structural Autonomy In American State Constitutions, James A. Gardner
Autonomy And Isomorphism: The Unfulfilled Promise Of Structural Autonomy In American State Constitutions, James A. Gardner
Journal Articles
In the American system of federalism, states have almost complete freedom to adopt institutions and practices of internal self-governance that they find best-suited to the needs and preferences of their citizens. Nevertheless, states have not availed themselves of these opportunities: the structural provisions of state constitutions tend to converge strongly with one another and with the U.S. Constitution. This paper examines two important periods of such convergence: the period from 1776 through the first few decades of the nineteenth century, when states were inventing institutions of democratic governance and representation; and the period following the Supreme Court’s one person, one …
Redressing Deprivations Of Rights Secured By State Constitutions Outside The Shadow Of The Supreme Court's Constitutional Remedies Jurisprudence, Gary S. Gildin
Redressing Deprivations Of Rights Secured By State Constitutions Outside The Shadow Of The Supreme Court's Constitutional Remedies Jurisprudence, Gary S. Gildin
Journal Articles
The second generation of state constitutionalism is now emerging. With the methodology of autonomous state constitutional protection more clearly defined, courts and legislatures are turning to the task of determining when, and from whom, they should award damages to citizens deprived of their state constitutional rights. State courts, as well as legislatures contemplating statutes authorizing damage actions, will be tempted to borrow United States Supreme Court interpretations of 42 U.S.C. §1983 in shaping civil relief for infringement of state constitutional rights. This article argues that the Supreme Court’s Section 1983 remedies doctrine is a product of statutory, structural and institutional …
Foreword: Representation Without Party: Lessons From State Constitutional Attempts To Control Gerrymandering, James A. Gardner
Foreword: Representation Without Party: Lessons From State Constitutional Attempts To Control Gerrymandering, James A. Gardner
Journal Articles
Since the founding, all gerrymandering of election districts, at both the state and congressional levels, has been accomplished by state actors operating almost exclusively under state law. State constitutions have often served as a first line of defense against publicly disfavored practices, and the treatment of gerrymandering is no exception. The state constitutional record reveals a gradual introduction, diffusion, and evolution of a wide variety of provisions intended to control gerrymandering, including requirements of contiguity, compactness, respect for local political boundaries, and preservation of communities of interest, among others. Indeed, such provisions have been validated by the U.S. Supreme Court …
Whose Constitution Is It? Why Federalism And Constitutional Positivism Don't Mix, James A. Gardner
Whose Constitution Is It? Why Federalism And Constitutional Positivism Don't Mix, James A. Gardner
Journal Articles
It is frequently argued that state constitutions ought to be interpreted using a methodology of constitutional positivism, a familiar and commonplace theory of interpretational legitimacy that requires courts to treat a constitution as an authoritative expression of the will of the people who made it. I argue, contrary to this view, that orthodox constitutional positivism is not a viable interpretational methodology for subnational constitutions in a federal system. Although constitutional positivism makes sense for national constitutions, which furnish the paradigm case, subnational constitutions pose important problems for the political theory upon which constitutional positivism relies. According to that theory, the …
State Constitutional Rights As Resistance To National Power: Toward A Functional Theory Of State Constitutions, James A. Gardner
State Constitutional Rights As Resistance To National Power: Toward A Functional Theory Of State Constitutions, James A. Gardner
Journal Articles
In the American legal order, constitutional rights are conventionally understood to apply to and restrain the level of government created by the constitution in which those rights appear. Thus, individual rights in a lower-order constitution are understood to apply solely to the lower level government and to have no relevance to the actions of any higher level of government. This article challenges the conventional understanding by arguing that individual rights appearing in state constitutions can in many circumstances play a meaningful role in restraining the exercise of national power. Specifically, the identification and enforcement of state constitutional rights can serve …
State Courts As Agents Of Federalism: Power And Interpretation In State Constitutional Law, James A. Gardner
State Courts As Agents Of Federalism: Power And Interpretation In State Constitutional Law, James A. Gardner
Journal Articles
In the American constitutional tradition, federalism is commonly understood as a mechanism designed to institutionalize a kind of permanent struggle between state and national power. The same American constitutional tradition also holds that courts are basically passive institutions whose mission is to apply the law impartially while avoiding inherently political power struggles. These two commonplace understandings conflict on their face. The conflict may be dissolved for federal courts by conceiving their resistance to state authority as the impartial consequence of limitations on state power imposed by the U.S. Constitution. But this reconciliation is unavailable for state courts, which, by operation …