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Full-Text Articles in Law
District Of Columbia V. Heller And Originalism, Lawrence B. Solum
District Of Columbia V. Heller And Originalism, Lawrence B. Solum
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
On June 26, 2008, the United States Supreme Court handed down its 5-4 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, striking a District of Columbia statute that prohibits the possession of useable handguns in the home on the ground that it violated the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. Justice Scalia's majority opinion drew dissents from Justice Stevens and Justice Breyer. Collectively, the opinions in Heller represent the most important and extensive debate on the role of original meaning in constitutional interpretation among the members of the contemporary Supreme Court.
This article investigates the relationship between originalist constitutional …
Incorporation And Originalist Theory, Lawrence B. Solum
Incorporation And Originalist Theory, Lawrence B. Solum
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Does the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution incorporate the Bill of Rights contained in the first eight amendments? And how should an originalist answer that question? This paper focuses on the latter question--the issues of originalist theory that are raised by judicial and scholarly debates over what is called "incorporation."
The inquiry proceeds in six parts. Part I answers the questions: "What is incorporation?" and "What is originalism?" Part II examines the theoretical framework for an investigation of incorporation that operates within the narrow confines of interpretation of the linguistic meaning text based on the assumption that the …
Originalism And The Natural Born Citizen Clause, Lawrence B. Solum
Originalism And The Natural Born Citizen Clause, Lawrence B. Solum
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
The enigmatic phrase "natural born citizen" poses a series of problems for contemporary originalism. New originalists, like Justice Scalia, focus on the public meaning of the constitutional text, but the notion of a "natural born citizen" was likely a term of art, derived from the idea of a "natural born subject" in English law--a category that most likely did not extend to persons, like John McCain, who were born outside sovereign territory. But the constitution speaks of "citizens" and not "subjects," introducing uncertainties and ambiguities that might (or might not) make McCain eligible for the presidency.
What was the original …
The Supreme Court In Bondage: Constitutional Stare Decisis, Legal Formalism, And The Future Of Unenumerated Rights, Lawrence B. Solum
The Supreme Court In Bondage: Constitutional Stare Decisis, Legal Formalism, And The Future Of Unenumerated Rights, Lawrence B. Solum
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
This essay advances a formalist conception of constitutional stare decisis. The author argues that instrumentalist accounts of precedent are inherently unsatisfying and that the Supreme Court should abandon adherence to the doctrine that it is free to overrule its own prior decisions. These moves are embedded in a larger theoretical framework--a revival of formalist ideas in legal theory that he calls "neoformalism" to distinguish his view from the so-called "formalism" caricatured by the legal realists (and from some other views that are called "formalist").
In Part II, The Critique of Unenumerated Constitutional Rights, the author sets the stage by …