The Parts We Skip: A Taxonomy of Constitutional Irrelevancy
Peter Beck
A “Version” of the Constitution On January 6, 2011, for the first time in the history of Congress, the Constitution was read out loud on the House floor.[1] “We hope,” said Rep. Bob Goodlatte, who organized the event, “this will inspire many more Americans to read the Constitution.”[2] There are millions of pocket-sized Constitutions in…
McCulloch v. Marbury
Heath Khan, Kermit III Roosevelt
Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. —William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, II.V Introduction: Marbury’s Greatness Marbury v. Madison is a great case.[1] That much is undeniable. It is “widely regarded today as the most important case in American constitutional history.”[2] Some enthusiasts go farther; in 1901, an Arkansas…
Originalism Off the Ground: A Response to Professors Baude and Sachs
Eric J. Segall
Eric J. Segall* Professors Will Baude and Stephen Sachs are a legal realist’s worst nightmare. In their Northwestern Law Review essay “Grounding Originalism,”[1] they continue their Arthurian quest to convince the legal world that originalism has been and currently is our law. They denote this effort a “positivist” account of our legal practices and claim…
How “Commerce Among the Several States” Became “Interstate Commerce,” and Why it Matters
Conrad J. Weiler Jr.
Conrad J. Weiler, Jr.* Introduction Outline This Introduction briefly discusses the significance of the Constitutional “[p]ower . . . [t]o regulate [c]ommerce . . . among the several states” and argues that this, the actual language of the Constitution, was understood to have and has a broader meaning than the nearly universally accepted but quite unoriginal substitute language, “interstate…
