The Life & Legacy of John Jay

[We have the following announcement.  DRE]John Jay (NYPL)The John Jay Papers Project, Columbia University Libraries, and Columbia University's Office of the Provost are proud to present In Service to the New Nation: The Life & Legacy of John Jay, a  two-day virtual conference (January...

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Cromwell Dissertation Prize to Tycko

We have word that the William Nelson Cromwell Dissertation Prize, awarded by the trustees of the William Nelson Cromwell Foundation on the recommendation of the Advisory Committee on the Cromwell Prizes of the American Society for Legal History, has gone to Dr. Sonia Tycko, Oxford University,  for “Captured Consent: Bound Freedom of Contract in Early Modern England and English America.” ...

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Peterson on "Expounding the Constitution"

Farah Peterson, University of Chicago Law School, has posted Expounding the Constitution, which appears in the Yale Law Journal 230 (2020): 2-84:Judges and statesmen of the early Republic had heated exchanges over the importance of hewing to the text in constitutional interpretation, and they advanced dueling interpretive prescriptions. That is why contemporary theorists of all persuasions can find...

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Campbell on Natural Rights, Positive Rights and the Second Amendment

Jud Campbell, University of Richmond School of Law, has posted Natural Rights, Positive Rights, and the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, which appears in Law and Contemporary Problems 32 (2020): 31The first judicial opinions interpreting the right to bear arms embraced vastly divergent views of the right, leading scholars to perceive these decisions as being in disarray. This article argues that these...

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Phillips and Yoo on Originalism and Impeachment

James Cleith Phillips, Chapman University, The Dale E. Fowler School of Law, and John Yoo, University of California at Berkeley School of Law have posted Your Fired: The Original Meaning of Presidential Impeachment, which is forthcoming in the Southern California Law Review 94 (2021):With just the third impeachment of a President in the nation’s history, questions about the Constitution’s original...

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Balkin on Lawyers, Historians, and the Constitution

Jack M. Balkin, Yale Law School, has posted Lawyers and Historians Argue About the Constitution, which is forthcoming in Constitutional Commentary 35 (2020):Lawyers and historians often quarrel about how to use history in constitutional interpretation. Although originalists are often involved in these disputes today, the disagreements predate the rise of conservative originalism. Lawyers attempt to...

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Green on the Three Commerce Powers

Christopher R. Green, University of Mississippi School of Law, has posted Tribes, Nations, States: Our Three Commerce Powers:This Article argues that one aspect of the power to regulate “Commerce with foreign Nations … and with the Indian Tribes” is broader than the power over “Commerce … among the several States.” If “Tribes” and “Nations” consist of people, but “States” of territory, then “Commerce...

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Hamburger on Delegation and the Vesting Clauses

Philip Hamburger, Columbia Law School, has posted Delegating or Divesting? on the website of the Northwestern University Law Review:A gratifying feature of recent scholarship on administrative power is the resurgence of interest in the Founding. Even the defenders of administrative power hark back to the Constitution’s early history—most frequently to justify delegations of legislative power. But...

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Weekend Roundup

Julia Rose Kraut, the Judith S. Kaye Fellow for the Historical Society of the New York Courts, will speak on her book Threat of Dissent: A History of Ideological Exclusion and Deportation in the United States in the Washington History Seminar of the National History Center of the American Historical...

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Bowie on the Constitutional Right to Self-Government

 Nikolas Bowie, Harvard Law School, has posted The Constitutional Right of Local Self-Government, which is forthcoming in the Yale Law Journal:The Assembly Clause is the ugly duckling of the First Amendment. Brooding in the shadow of the heralded Free Speech Clause and the venerated Religion Clauses, the Assembly Clause has been described even by its advocates as “forgotten,” a “historical footnote...

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Moore on Anti-Federalists and Implementing Article III

Tyler Moore, a 2011 graduate of the Georgetown University Law Center and a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Notre Dame, has posted Trimming the Least Dangerous Branch: the Anti-Federalists and the Implementation of Article III, which is forthcoming in the Tulsa Law Review:The traditional narrative of events following the ratification debates has connected the Bill of Rights with the Anti-Federalists...

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Ramsey on Originalism and Birthright Citizenship

Michael D. Ramsey, University of San Diego School of Law, has posted Originalism and Birthright Citizenship, which is forthcoming in volume 109 of the Georgetown Law Journal:The first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment provides: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” This...

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Parrillo on Delegated Rulemaking and Federal Taxation in the 1790s

Nicholas R. Parrillo, Yale Law School, has posted A Critical Assessment of the Originalist Case Against Administrative Regulatory Power: New Evidence from the Federal Tax on Private Real Estate in the 1790s, which is forthcoming in volume 121 of the Yale Law Journal (2021):The Supreme Court is poised...

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