Constitutional Law Commons^™

The Death Penalty And The Interstate Agreement On Detainers Act: A Proposal For Change, 29 J. Marshall L. Rev. 499 (1996), Edward G. Hild

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Struggle Over The Past, Robert W. Gordon

Cleveland State Law Review

History supplies a set of basic ground rules; the "traditional principles of the common law," from which much modem law, both judge-made and statutory law, is seen as having improperly deviated. As the New Right ideology spreads among elite decision-makers and intellectuals, it poses a serious challenge to the Progressive-liberal consensus about the legal meanings of history that had previously dominated American legal thought for a very long time. The historical claims of New Right ideology in particular have touched off a number of fierce debates among Old (Progressive) Liberal, New Right, and radical legal intellectuals. In Section II, the …

The Court And The Changing Constitution: A Discussion, Carl Sividorski, James Gardner, Barry Latzer, Peter Galie

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Term Limits On Original Intent--An Essay On Legal Debate And Historical Understanding, Polly J. Price

Faculty Articles

This Essay is divided into five Parts. Part I sets the stage for the historical debate by evaluating the text of the Qualifications Clauses as well as the limited evidence of what the Framers and the ratifiers thought about these provisions. Part II shows that many states, immediately after the federal Constitution was ratified, behaved as though the Qualifications Clauses did not prevent them from adding qualifications for congressional office-holding. Part III compares this early evidence of state behavior with a debate in Congress after the Civil War concerning the meaning of the Qualifications Clauses. Part IV returns to the …

Cabining The Constitutional History Of The New Deal In Time, G. Edward White

Michigan Law Review

A Review of William E, Leuchtenburg, The Supreme Court Reborn: The Constitutional Revolution in the Age of Roosevelt

The Relevance Of The Framers’ Intent, Randy E. Barnett

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Ever since the revival of interest in originalism that occurred in the 1980s, critics have 'charged that for a variety of reasons it is impractical, if not impossible, to determine the Framers' intentions. In addition, they argue that we today should not be bound by the intentions of a few men who lived and died over two-hundred years ago. In sum, adherence to original intent is rejected as being impractical, unjust, or both.

In this article, the author argues that we cannot assess either the practicality or the justice of discerning original intent without first asking why it is we …

Conquering The Cultural Frontier: The New Subjectivism Of The Supreme Court In Indian Law, David H. Getches

Publications

For a century and a half, the Supreme Court was faithful to a set of foundation principles respecting Indian tribal sovereignty. Though the United States can abrogate tribal powers and rights, it can only do so by legislation. Accordingly, the Court has protected reservations as enclaves for Indian self-government, preventing states from enforcing their laws and taxes, and holding that even federal laws could not be applied to Indians without congressional permission. Recently, however, the Court has assumed the job it formerly conceded to Congress, considering and weighing cases to reach results comporting with the Justices' subjective notions of what …

Constitutional Fictions And Meritocratic Success Stories, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

L.H. LaRue demonstrates in his book, Constitutional Law as Fiction, that, at least in the realm of constitutional law, there is no simple correspondence between fiction and falsehood, or fact and truth. Partial or fictive accounts of our constitutional history, even when they are riddled with inaccuracies, may state deep truths about our world, and accurate recitations of historical events may be either intentionally or unintentionally misleading in the extreme. According to LaRue, the Supreme Court engages in a form of storytelling or myth-making that goes beyond the inevitably partial narratives of fact and precedent. The Supreme Court also tells …

A Nonoriginalist Perspective On The Lessons Of History, Michael C. Dorf

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Specific Agreements About Race: A Response To Professor Sunstein, Sheri Johnson

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Tragic Irony Of American Federalism: National Sovereignty Versus State Sovereignty In Slavery And In Freedom, The Federalism In The 21st Century: Historical Perspectives, Robert J. Kaczorowski

Faculty Scholarship

A plurality on the Supreme Court seeks to establish a state-sovereignty based theory of federalism that imposes sharp limitations on Congress's legislative powers. Using history as authority, they admonish a return to the constitutional "first principles" of the Founders. These "first principles," in their view, attribute all governmental authority to "the consent of the people of each individual state, not the consent of the undifferentiated people of the Nation as a whole." Because the people of each state are the source of all governmental power, they maintain, "where the Constitution is silent about the exercise of a particular power-that is, …

Dutch Treats: The Lessons The U.S. Can Learn From How The Netherlands Protects Lesbians And Gays, Astrid A.M Mattijssen, Charlene L. Smith

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

California’S Proposition 187--Does It Mean What It Says? Does It Say What It Means? A Textual And Constitutional Analysis, Lolita K. Buckner Inniss

Publications

No abstract provided.

Government Lawyers And The New Deal, Neal Devins

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Michigan's Proposed Prenatal Protection Act: Undermining A Woman's Right To An Abortion, Mark S. Kende

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Theorists' Belief: A Comment On The Moral Tradition Of American Constitutionalism, Jospeh Vining

Articles

The Moral Tradition of American Constitutionalism is one of those rare works that leads us to face, at the center of law and legal thought, the largest questions about human life and human purpose. There is a special reader's shudder, a certain gestural shift in the chair, reserved for that moment of realizing where one is being led-not to the edge, but to the center, so that the questions become insistent, and whatever we and others say and do in the face of them becomes our response to them.

The Constitution's Forgotten Cover Letter: An Essay On The New Federalism And The Original Understanding, Daniel A. Farber

Michigan Law Review

At the end of the summer of 1787, the Philadelphia Convention issued two documents. One was the Constitution itself. The other document, now almost forgotten even by constitutional historians, was an official letter to Congress, signed by George Washington on behalf of the Convention. Congress responded with a resolution that the Constitution and "letter accompanying the same" be sent to the state legislatures for submission to conventions in each state.

The Washington letter lacks the detail and depth of some other evidence of original intent. Being a cover letter, it was designed only to introduce the accompanying document rather than …

Constitutional Justice And Democracy, Michel Troper

Cardozo Law Review

The issue of the compatibility of constitutional justice and democracy is considered in a particular way in France, for reasons relating both to the history of the legal culture and tothe peculiarities of the Constitutional Council, the institution which reviews the constitutionality of legislation.

The Constitutionality Of Legislative Supermajority Requirements: A Defense, John O. Mcginnis, Michael B. Rappaport

Articles

No abstract provided.

Oregon Constitution: A Survey Of Significant State Provisions, Oregon Law Institute, Susan M. Leeson, William F. Gary, Glenn Klein, Madelyn F. Wessel, Timothy J. Sercombe, W. Michael Gillette, David Schuman, David A. Ernst, Rex Armstrong, Jacob Tanzer, George A. Van Hoomissen, Charles F. Hinkle, Hans A. Linde

Oregon Law Institute, 1995

Course Materials from the October 13, 1995 Program in Portland

History's Stories, Stephan Landsman

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Stories of Scottsboro by James Goodman

Institutions And Linguistic Conventions: The Pragmatism Of Lieber's Legal Hermeneutics, Guyora Binder

Journal Articles

This article presents Francis Lieber’s 1839 treatise “Legal and Political Hermeneutics” as a surprisingly modern and pragmatic account of interpretation. It first explicates the two most important influences on Liber’s thought, the romantic philology of Friedrich Schleiermacher, and the institutional positivism of Whig jurists Story and Kent. It shows that both of these sources frankly acknowledged that interpretation is an institutional practice, organized by the evolving aims and customs of the institutions within which it took place. Both tended to view the writing and reading of texts as the deployment of linguistic conventions. Both movements thereby viewed meaning for all …

William Gardiner Hammond And The Lieber Revival, Paul D. Carrington

Cardozo Law Review

Francis Lieber's Legal and Political Hermeneutics was first published in serial form in 1837. Jacksonian populism was then at high water and American judges and lawyers were acknowledged as politicians. Interpretation of legal texts was seen as a political activity. His work was so well received that a hard cover edition was published in 1839.

The edition presented in this issue was prepared by William Gardiner Hammond in 1880. Jacksonian politics were then in retreat before a rising tide of technocratic professionalism. Many lawyers and judges were disowning the political mission of American law and aspiring to be technocrats. To …

"Fetch Some Soupmeat", William N. Eskridge Jr.

Cardozo Law Review

Although first published over 150 years ago, Francis Lieber's Legal and Political Hermeneutics remains broadly influential, and the soupmeat hypothetical in particular has been reproduced in the most widely read twentieth-century legal texts for teaching statutory interpretation. The directive, "fetch some soupmeat," seems straightforward in most situations, because the housekeeper and the servant are operating under the same assumptions, and because their shared assumptions are borne out as the servant goes about his task. Lieber's project-and the project of any sophisticated theoretical treatment of statutory interpretation-was to explore the many ways in which "fetch some soupmeat" proves susceptible to surprising …

Reinventing The Russian State: Problems Of Constitutional Implementation, 28 J. Marshall L. Rev. 775 (1995), Robert Sharlet

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Minutemen, The National Guard And The Private Militia Movement: Will The Real Militia Please Stand Up, 28 J. Marshall L. Rev. 959 (1995), Chuck Dougherty

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Last Centrifugal Force, Robert F. Nagel

Publications

No abstract provided.

Reflections On From Slaves To Citizens Bondage, Freedom And The Constitution: The New Slavery Scholarship And Its Impact On Law And Legal Historiography, Robert J. Kaczorowski

Faculty Scholarship

The thesis of Professor Donald Nieman's paper, "From Slaves to Citizens: African-Americans, Rights Consciousness, and Reconstruction," is that the nation experienced a revolution in the United States Constitution and in the consciousness of African Americans. According to Professor Nieman, the Reconstruction Amendments represented "a dramatic departure from antebellum constitutional principles,"' because the Thirteenth Amendment reversed the pre-Civil War constitutional guarantee of slavery and "abolish[ed] slavery by federal authority." The Fourteenth Amendment rejected the Supreme Court's "racially-based definition of citizenship [in Dred Scott v. Sandford4], clearly establishing a color-blind citizenship” and the Fifteenth Amendment "wrote the principle of equality into the …

The Nomination Of Justice Brennan: Eisenhower's Mistake: A Look At The Historical Record, Stephen Wermiel

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

That The Laws Shall Bind Equally On All: Congressional And Executive Roles In Applying Laws To Congress, Harold H. Bruff

Publications

No abstract provided.