Constitutional Commentary articles from March 2006

Constitutional Commentary archives from March 2006

Is St. Paul unconstitutional?
March 22, 2006... Imagine my shock, and that of my colleagues, when a major constitutional controversy arose just a stone's throw across the river from the offices of Constitutional Commentary, threatening to shake the very foundations of the republic (that is,...

Federalist no. 78 and Brutus' neglected thesis on judicial supremacy.
March 22, 2006... Just three years ago the United States marked the bicentennial of Marbury v. Madison, the celebrated case that established the principle of judicial review in 1803. The novelty of a court asserting authority to declare laws unconstitutional was...

Judicial interpretive finality and the constitutional text.
March 22, 2006... Elephants leave traces when they pass by. (1) That is true about the Constitution as it is elsewhere. For example, once the Federal Convention had made the basic decision to propose a national government of three independent branches, it...

Originalism as a legal enterprise.
March 22, 2006... The reasonable person is an important and ubiquitous figure in the law. Despite the seeming handicap of being a hypothetical construct assembled by lawyers rather than a flesh-and-blood person, he (for most of Western legal history) or she (in...

Revolution by Judiciary: The Structure of American Constitutional Law.(Book review)
March 22, 2006... REVOLUTION BY JUDICIARY: THE STRUCTURE OF AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONAL LAW. By Jed Rubenfeld. (1) Cambridge, Harvard University Press. 2005. Pp. ix + 241. $39.95. INTRODUCTION Jed Rubenfeld's Revolution by Judiciary is an ambitious search...

Rhetoric and the Rule of Law: A Theory of Legal Reasoning.(Book review)
March 22, 2006... RHETORIC AND THE RULE OF LAW. A THEORY OF LEGAL REASONING. By Neil MacCormick. (1) Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Pp. xvi + 287. $74.00. I. INTRODUCTION Neil MacCormick first put forward his thoughts on legal reasoning in a...