Constitutional Commentary articles from September 2007

Constitutional Commentary archives from September 2007

The second convention movement, 1787-1789.
September 22, 2007... The delegates at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 created an extraordinary document. The issues they confronted during that difficult summer in Philadelphia were complex and divisive. They had to decide the best way to balance power...

Common law, civil law, and the administrative state: from Coke to Lochner.
September 22, 2007... In... most [states] on the Continent of Europe, the... rules... stand, to a large extent, in the form of positive statutes, or Codes, enacted by the arbitrary power of the sovereign, or by the authority of the legislative assembly, where...

Scalia's poker: puzzles and mysteries in constitutional interpretation.(U.S. Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia)
September 22, 2007... Howard Hawks had some trouble directing The Big Sleep, the 1946 Humphrey Bogart/Lauren Bacall film noir based on Raymond Chandler's classic novel. He once convened a story conference with the film's three screenwriters, a group headed by Nobel...

Constitution Day is unconstitutional.
September 22, 2007... As violations of constitutional law go, this one might seem harmless or insignificant at first. No branch of the U.S. government is seeking to upset the tri-partite balance of power, no person's physical life, liberty or property is being...

Umpires at bat: on integration and legitimation.
September 22, 2007... INTRODUCTION During his confirmation hearings, Chief Justice Roberts captured the public's imagination when he offered an interpretation of the role that judges play in our society when interpreting the Constitution. "Judges and Justices...

Overcoming Dred: a counterfactual analysis.
September 22, 2007... I. INTRODUCTION Could anything have been done about Dred Scott (1) in its own day, in a Supreme Court remade by Abraham Lincoln? That is, was Dred Scott vulnerable to overrule, even in its own day, even in advance of the Thirteenth and...

Dred Scott and the Problem of Constitutional Evil.(Book review)
September 22, 2007... DRED SCOTT AND THE PROBLEM OF CONSTITUTIONAL EVIL. By Mark A. Graber. (1) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Pp. xiii + 264. $40.00. I. INTRODUCTION Mark Graber's Dred Scott and the Problem of Constitutional Evil will strike...

Constitutional Democracy: Creating and Maintaining a Just Political Order.(Book review)
September 22, 2007... CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACY: CREATING AND MAINTAINING A JUST POLITICAL ORDER. By Walter F. Murphy. (1) The Johns Hopkins University Press. 2007. Pp. xviii-547. $55.00. In The Federalist, No. 1, Alexander Hamilton, noting that the people were...