No Way
Recent postings on this blog suffice to tick off the Good Humor man and to compel my emergence from whatever the summer equivalent of hibernation may be. (I am kidding. Frank and fun exchange is what...
View ArticleThe State of the States
What are states, and what are they good for? Brother Rappaport had a very good law review article some years ago, arguing that for constitutional purposes, the word “state” means something close to...
View ArticleOnce More: Taxes, Obamacare, and the End of the Constitution
Earlier this week, Mike Rappaport replied to Mike Paulsen’s defense of Chief Justice Robert’s opinion upholding Obamacare’s individual mandate as an exercise of the taxing power. It’s taken me a...
View ArticleExcess of Recess: Grammar, History, and Institutions
A few more comments on the D.C. Circuit’s recess appointments decision and on Mike R’s post/reply to yours truly: I’d criticized Judge Sentelle’s opinion (not Mike’s article, which I’ve read with great...
View ArticleThe Judicial Power Permits only Interpretation, not Construction
The most import current debate in originalism is between those who believe that judiciary in the course of judicial review can engage only in interpretation and those who believe it can also fill in a...
View ArticlePublic Meaning Originalism Is Not Indifferent to Evidence About the Intent of...
On this site Frank Buckley yesterday made a series of puzzling assertions about originalism. First, he says that “original meaning originalism” (which I believe most people call “public meaning...
View ArticleDo Historians Understand Originalism?
I just returned from a conference of law-department and history-department legal historians discussing the Thirteenth Amendment (well done, Randy Barnett). As I listened to historian after historian...
View ArticleJurisdiction, Old Style and New
Mike Rappaport argues that Mike Ramsey is correct that, “it was a bedrock principle of nineteenth-century international law that sovereigns had complete jurisdiction (that is, authority to prescribe...
View ArticleThinking about “General Welfare” in the Preamble
My L&L colleague Mike Rappaport mused last week “On the Relevance of the Preamble to Constitutional Interpretation.” I have a couple of thoughts in response. First, I agree entirely preambles do...
View ArticleThe Many Flavors of “Originalism”
Commenting on a piece I wrote for American Greatness, my colleague Mike Rappaport agrees with me in certain respects but chides me for being a proponent of “the old originalism,” which he regards as...
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