Professor Mitchell’s characteristically thoughtful and incisive comment makes many important points. I also agree with Professor Mitchell that a modernization approach gives political actors an incentive to behave strategically… Read More »
The Supreme Court is frequently accused of declaring laws unconstitutional based on little more than the justices’ ideological preferences. This is an especially common criticism of the Court’s capital-punishment, equal-protection, and substantive-due-process jurisprudence, where the justices have made little effort to tie their decisions to anything resembling a neutral principle.
In… Read More »
Constitutional interpretation looks to the past: to an old text, to old precedents, to the views of the founding generations, to tradition. That is the conventional wisdom, at least. Judicial review, as it’s usually conceived, is a matter of using principles rooted in these sources to limit current popular majorities.… Read More »