Constitutional Commentary articles from March 1996

Constitutional Commentary archives from March 1996

Anecdotage.(about U.S. Supreme Court justices)
March 22, 1996... Justice Felix Frankfurter was probably the foremost influence on my thinking about the Supreme Court. In 1953, as a young instructor at Brandeis University, I had published several articles lambasting judicial decisions that sustained Jim Crow...

Constitutional wish granting and the property rights genie.
March 22, 1996... Finally, in Dolan v. City of Tigard,(2) a recent Takings Clause case, Chief Justice Rehnquist seemed to suggest that the long sought after wish was about to be granted. In rejecting Justice Stevens' dissenting argument that business regulations...

Punishment and procedure: a different view of the American criminal justice system.(response to Louis Michael Seidman, Constitutional Commentary, vol .207, p. 207, 1995)
March 22, 1996... In a recent issue of this journal, Professor Michael Seidman notes that while we have "the most elaborate and detailed constitutional protections for criminal defendants of any country in the world," we also have "the second highest incarceration...

Banning hate speech and the sticks and stones defense.
March 22, 1996... Black college students are the targets of racial epithets from fellow students. Members of the American Nazi Party march through the heavily Jewish Chicago suburb of Skokie, wearing brownshirts and swastikas. Female employees encounter various...

Jurisprudence without moral consensus: constitutional arguments in Idd for driving on the right or left side of the road.
March 22, 1996... The same laws cannot suit so many diverse provinces with different customs, situated in the most various climates, and incapable of enduring a uniform government. Conventional wisdom was that Iddians should drive on the right side of the road....

The political implications of amending clauses.
March 22, 1996... Imagine two written constitutions.(1) One sets out pofitical structures and governmental empowerments and limitations; it concludes with a clause saying: "Anything in this constitution may be changed by the passage of ordinary legislation as...

Responding to Imperfection: The Theory and Practice of Constitutional Amendment.
March 22, 1996... Eric Grant(3) In this collection of essays, Sanford Levinson has brought together an impressive group of constitutional theorists and political scientists to discuss the theory and practice of amending constitutions. Nine of the volume's...