Constitutional Commentary articles from December 1995

Constitutional Commentary archives from December 1995

Rock 'n' roll law school.
December 22, 1995... ROCK 'N' ROLL LAW SCHOOL This is an article about rock `n' roll.(1) (It started out as an article about federalism,(2) but the devil fools with the best laid plans.(3)) You must be asking yourself, why would anyone try to write the...

A moot court exercise: debating judicial review prior to Marbury v. Madison.
December 22, 1995... On August 31, 1797, student members of the Moot Court Society at Tapping Reeve's law school in Litchfield, Connecticut suspended a rule requiring issues for argument to be put in hypothetical cases, to permit their debating in the abstract a...

The dangers of the union. (part 2)(includes reprints of articles by Henry Wheaton in The American, Aug. 2-16, 1821)
December 22, 1995... In our last issue, we published the first four of Wheaton's essays defending the Supreme Court's decision in Cohens v. Virginia.(1) The remaining four essays follow. Professor Pfander has retained the somewhat anachronistic spellings and modest...

Dualist constitutional theory and the Republican revolution of 1800.
December 22, 1995... American constitutional development, Bruce Ackerman argues in his recent book, should be understood in terms of three regime-transformative moments: the Constitutional Founding, Reconstruction, and the New Deal.(1) The first moment, Professor...

Incidental restrictions of speech and the First Amendment: motive-based rationalization of the Supreme Court's jurisprudence.
December 22, 1995... When does the application of a law raise a First Amendment concern? Though seemingly an elementary question, the answer often turns out to be quite ambiguous. If a law's application does implicate the First Amendment, courts employ various tests...

Hugo Black: A Biography.
December 22, 1995... Hugo Black was one of the most enigmatic of a notably enigmatic generation of New Deal Southern Democrats that rose to national power in the thick of this century. Lyndon Johnson had his towering contradictions, but even those did not surpass...

Reclaiming the Federal Courts.
December 22, 1995... The 1960's and 1970's are gone, and with them that brief period in which a progressive Supreme Court expanded the protections of the Constitution in the face of contrary majority views. Increasingly, scholars question whether this description is...