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The Unfulfilled Promise Of The Constitution In Executive Hands, Cornelia T. Pillard
The Unfulfilled Promise Of The Constitution In Executive Hands, Cornelia T. Pillard
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Many leading constitutional scholars now argue for greater reliance on the political branches to supplement or even supplant judicial enforcement of the Constitution. Responding to our national preoccupation with the judiciary as the mechanism of constitutional enforcement, these scholars stress that the executive and legislature, too, bear responsibility to think about the Constitution for themselves and to take steps to fulfill the Constitution's promise. Joining a debate that goes back at least as far as Marbury v. Madison, current scholars seek to reawaken the political branches to their constitutional potential, and urge the Supreme Court to leave the other branches …
Trumping Precedent With Original Meaning: Not As Radical As It Sounds, Randy E. Barnett
Trumping Precedent With Original Meaning: Not As Radical As It Sounds, Randy E. Barnett
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Originalism was thought to be buried in the 1980s with critiques such as those by Paul Brest and Jeff Powell. Brest charged that originalism was unworkable, while Powell maintained that originalism was inconsistent with the original intentions of the Founders. Others raised the moral challenge of why we should be ruled by the "dead hand" of the past. Yet an originalist approach to interpretation has-like a phoenix from the ashes or Dracula from his grave, depending on your point of view-survived into the Twenty-first Century as an intellectual contender. Indeed, it has thrived like no other approach to interpretation.
Foreword: What's So Wicked About Lochner?, Randy E. Barnett
Foreword: What's So Wicked About Lochner?, Randy E. Barnett
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
In this brief Foreword to a forthcoming symposium on Lochner v. New York, Professor Randy Barnett asks the question, What's So Wicked About Lochner? Modern Progressives cannot complain about its protection of so-called substantive due process, since they favor just that. Nor can they claim that Lochner violates the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment, since these legal analysts by and large reject originalism altogether. This leaves only today's judicial conservatives to adhere to a purified Roosevelt New Deal jurisprudence of disdain for Lochner.
The author answers that Lochner is objectionable precisely because its reliance on the Due …