Law Commons^™

Lawrence's Republic, James E. Fleming

Faculty Scholarship

I am delighted and honored to participate in this symposium critiquing and celebrating the remarkable scholarship of Frank Michelman. I was a student of Frank-but of course we all are students of Frank. I also have had the good fortune to be a colleague of Frank-he has been a distinguished visiting professor at Fordham and has generously participated in a number of our conferences there. The only problem I had in preparing for the symposium is that Frank's scholarship is so rich and wide-ranging that it was difficult to decide what to write about. I initially planned to write a …

Securing Deliberative Democracy, James E. Fleming

Faculty Scholarship

The brochure for the conference frames the questions for our panel on The Constitutional Essentials of Political Liberalism as "What are the implications of Rawls's conceptions of justice as fairness and political liberalism for constitutional theory? Might his account of constitutional essentials provide a useful guiding framework for conceiving the scheme of basic liberties embodied in the American Constitution? How thin are the commitments of our Constitution as compared with our richer commitments to constitutional justice and political justice? What are the implications of Rawls's work for theory of judicial review and for enforcement of constitutional rights and obligations outside …

Making A Federal Case Of It: Sabri V. United States And The Constitution Of Leviathan, Gary S. Lawson

Faculty Scholarship

The popular expression “Don't make a federal case out of it!” only makes sense if federal involvement is something unusual or special that is reserved for matters of urgent national interest. It assumes that a “federal case” is, or at least ought to be, something relatively rare and noteworthy.

For the founding generation, federal involvement in people's affairs, especially through the criminal law, was in fact a relatively rare and noteworthy event. In The Federalist, James Madison told the citizens of New York that the powers of the proposed new national government “will be exercised principally on external objects, as …

Interpretative Equality As A Structural Imperative (Or 'Pucker Up And Settle This!'), Gary S. Lawson

Faculty Scholarship

To serious students of the Constitution, Chief Justice Marshall's discussion of judicial review in Marbury v. Madison was about judicial equality-the power of the courts, co-equal to the similar powers of the legislative and executive departments, to construe and apply the Constitution in the course of their duties. To less serious students of the Constitution, Marbury was about judicial supremacy-the supposedly paramount power of courts to interpret and apply the Constitution in a fashion that binds other legal actors, including the legislative and executive departments and state officials.

Parks As Gyms? Recreational Paradigms And Public Health In The National Parks, Jay D. Wexler

Faculty Scholarship

When scholars and policymakers think about the relationship between public health and environmental law and policy, they likely think first about controlling pollution and other toxic substances. As other articles have amply demonstrated, water pollution, air pollution, and other environmental toxins can have significant deleterious effects on the public's health. Scholars rightly pay serious attention to these relationships, and policymakers wisely devise methods and strategies to ameliorate the public health risks posed by these polluting substances.

Although pollution control might be the most obvious and important intersection between environmental policy and public health, legal and policy decisions regarding the management …

Fire, Metaphor, And Constitutional Myth-Making, Robert L. Tsai

Faculty Scholarship

From the standpoint of traditional legal thought, metaphor is at best a dash of poetry adorning lawyerly analysis, and at worst an unjustifiable distraction from what is actually at stake in a legal contest. By contrast, in the eyes of those who view law as a close relative of ordinary language, metaphor is a basic building block of human understanding. This article accepts that metaphor helps us to comprehend a court's decision. At the same time, it argues that metaphor plays a special role in the realm of constitutional discourse. Metaphor in constitutional law not only reinforces doctrinal categories, but …