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Series

Columbia Law School

Cornell Law Review

1977

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Law

Of "Liberty" And "Property", Henry Paul Monaghan Jan 1977

Of "Liberty" And "Property", Henry Paul Monaghan

Faculty Scholarship

After a century of experience, we are now thoroughly accustomed to viewing the fourteenth amendment as imposing upon the experimentation otherwise permitted in our fifty separate "laboratories" limitations that do not materially differ from those fastened upon the national government by the bill of rights. The history of this evolution is far too well known to justify rehearsing here even in the barest outline. But it bears noting that few, if any, observers believe that the language of the amendment has played a significant role in this historical evolution. Here, as elsewhere, "[b]ehind the words ... are postulates which limit …


Government By Judiciary: The Transformation Of The Fourteenth Amendment, Gerard E. Lynch Jan 1977

Government By Judiciary: The Transformation Of The Fourteenth Amendment, Gerard E. Lynch

Faculty Scholarship

As its title suggests, Raoul Berger's Government by Judiciary states an extreme version of a familiar thesis: The Supreme Court has abandoned its proper role as interpreter of the Constitution and has usurped the power to act as a third legislative chamber. Like kadis under a tree, the Court creates law from mere personal predilections. The main instrument of this judicial coup has been the fourteenth amendment. Government by Judiciary is an historian's book, strongest when using the historian's tools to illuminate the past. Underlying this research, however, is a remarkably simplistic theory of constitutional interpretation, a theory that forms …