Constitutional Commentary articles from March 1997

Constitutional Commentary archives from March 1997

Congressional self-discipline: the constitutionality of supermajority rules.
March 22, 1997... Congress needs to be more disciplined. It has at times become sloppy and even cavalier. When, for example, Congress enacted the federal Gun-Free School Zone Act of 1990,(2) it was asking for trouble. Neither the legislation nor the legislative...

Counting heads on RFRA. (Religious Freedom Restoration Act)
March 22, 1997... The Supreme Court has granted certiorari to decide the constitutionality of "RFRA" -- the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.(1) What will they decide? The issue is of great interest and importance for many reasons including the fact that I...

RFRA-vote gambling: why Paulsen is wrong, as usual. (Religious Freedom Restoration Act) (response to article by Michael Stokes Paulsen in this issue, p. 7)
March 22, 1997... Supreme Court currents are no less treacherous to navigators than are river currents -- and, as Michael Paulsen himself has previously pointed out, RFRA shares more than a linguistic resonance with a river.(1) Unfortunately, this time Paulsen...

The global dimension of RFRA. (Religious Freedom Restoration Act)
March 22, 1997... A multi-faceted controversy is currently raging over the constitutionality of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA),(1) the federal legislative response to the Supreme Court's decision in Employment Division v. Smith.(2) In...

Types. (the importance of certain classification systems to constitutional law reasoning)
March 22, 1997... The doctrines elaborating the many provisions of the Constitution and its amendments show certain similarities. For instance, government action must submit to three levels of scrutiny: strict, intermediate, and rational basis; its goals are...

Musings on a constitutional mystery: missing Presidents and "headless monsters"?
March 22, 1997... On Monday afternoon, January 20, the nation celebrated the second inauguration of William Jefferson Clinton as President of the United States. As a throng of thousands clustered tightly around the congressional dome, no one seemed concerned...

Campaign finance, the parties and the court: a comment on Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee v. Federal Elections Commission.
March 22, 1997... Last term, in Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee v. Federal Election Commission,(1) the Supreme Court considered a direct attack on the constitutionality of the Federal Election Campaign Act's ("FECA") limits on political party...

The concept of corruption in campaign finance law.
March 22, 1997... In Buckley vs. Valeo,(1) the Supreme Court put the concept of corruption at the center of campaign finance law. The Court held that only society,s interest in preventing "corruption and the appearance of corruption" outweighed the limits on...

Interpretation and philosophy: Dworkin's Constitution.
March 22, 1997... "Holmes wrote like a dream," Ronald Dworkin observes in Freedom's Law, his new collection of essays on constitutional interpretation. (p. 360, n.16) The same thing, of course, can be said of Dworkin himself. He is a master wordsmith, and these...

Who's afraid of Henry Hart? (casebooks on federal courts law)
March 22, 1997... No law book has enjoyed greater acclaim from distinguished commentators over a sustained period than has Hart & Wechsler's The Federal Courts and the Federal System.(1) Indeed, the praise seems to escalate from one edition to the next....

American Constitutionalism: From Theory to Politics.
March 22, 1997... According to Professor Stephen M. Griffin, contemporary constitutional theory has focused too narrowly on the Supreme Court's elaboration of constitutional law and, in so doing, it has neglected the political dimension of American...

Religion in Public Life: A Dilemma for Democracy.
March 22, 1997... It is ironic, but not entirely surprising, that our constitutional jurisprudence of religion has substantially evolved to date without the serious influence of those, such as theologians and clergy, who are most learned in the nature and...

To Secure These Rights: The Declaration of Independence and Constitutional Interpretation.
March 22, 1997... For some time, Constitutional interpretation in the American courts and academy has been borrowing from other disciplines. At the height of the Warren Court's adventures in Constitutional law-making, for example, sociology and social...

Learned Hand: The Man and the Judge.
March 22, 1997... Like countless other students, I got my first serious exposure to the intricacies of American constitutionalism through the pages of Gerald Gunther's Constitutional Law, the leading casebook in the field. At the time, I thought it strange...