Law Commons^™

Book Review: We The People: The Fourteenth Amendment And The Supreme Court, S. I. Strong

Faculty Publications

Never one to shirk a challenge, Michael Perry has taken on the difficult task of investigating whether, as charged by a number of prominent social and legal commentators, "the modern Supreme Court, in the name of the Fourteenth Amendment [to the US Constitution], [has] usurped prerogatives and made choices that properly belong to the electorally accountable representatives of the American people," and if so, to what extent (p. 8). Perry makes no attempt to address every facet of Fourteenth Amendment doctrine, but instead focuses his discussion on some of the most controversial topics: racial segregation, affirmative action, discrimination on the …

On The Evolution Of The Canonical Dissent, Anita S. Krishnakumar

Faculty Publications

Legal theorists increasingly have come to recognize and study the existence of a constitutional canon composed of highly authoritative legal texts that command special reverence in the law. Among these highly authoritative texts are a series of dissenting opinions—e.g., Justice Holmes's in Lochner v. New York, and Justice Harlan's in Plessy v. Ferguson—that ironically are more famous than the majority opinions in most other cases. This Article examines the evolution of the dissenting canon, seeking to explain both the methods by which various dissenting opinions became canonized and the motivating factors behind these canonizations.

Specifically, the Article argues that the …