Foreword: Testing the constitution Lee Epstein; Barry Friedman; Geoffrey R Stone
New York University law review (1950),
10/2015, Volume:
90, Issue:
4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
We live in the age of empiricism, and in that age, constitutional law is a relative backwater. Although quantitative methods have transformed entire fields of scholarly inquiry, reshaping what we ask ...and what we know, those who write about the Constitution rarely resort to quantitative methodology to test their theories. That seems unfortunate, because empirical analysis can illuminate important questions of constitutional law. Or, at least, that is the question to be tested in this Symposium.
How does the Supreme Court serve the "common good"? What is the Court's responsibility, as the ultimate interpreter of the Constitution, in our constitutional system of government? This essay ...explores that question with an eye on the recent performance of the Court in highly controversial and divisive cases. What explains the Court's decisions in cases involving such issues as campaign finance regulation, gun control, abortion, affirmative action, health care reform, voting rights, and even the 2000 presidential election? This essay argues that there is a right and a wrong way for the Supreme Court to interpret and apply the Constitution; and whereas the Warren Court properly understood its responsibilities, the Court in more recent decades has adopted a less legitimate and more troubling mode of constitutional interpretation.
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3.
Ronald Coase’s First Amendment Stone, Geoffrey R.
The Journal of law & economics,
11/2011, Volume:
54, Issue:
S4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Among his many interests, Ronald Coase was curious about how commercial advertising fit into First Amendment jurisprudence. Noting that the First Amendment protects “the freedom of speech,” Coase ...puzzled over why most jurists and scholars assumed that commercial advertising was not entitled to the same constitutional protection as other forms of expression. Indeed, invoking the standard justifications for the constitutional protection of free speech, Coase could discern no principled basis for the lesser degree of protection traditionally accorded commercial advertising. In his writings, Coase speculated that this doctrine could not be justified in terms of the standard reasons for protecting free expression, but was more likely the product of the particular values and biases of those who made the law. This article examines Coase’s thinking about the First Amendment to test both the wisdom of the insights and how the Court itself evolved over time in its understanding of First Amendment doctrine.
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In The Behavior of Federal Judges, Lee Epstein, William Landes, and Richard Posner offer an illuminating analysis of judicial decision making. That column of data led the author to consider the ...behavior of the justices who have served on the Court in recent years -- specifically, the behavior of the 13 justices who have served on the Court since 2000. According to conventional wisdom, five of these justices (Alito, Rehnquist, Roberts, Scalia, and Thomas) are generally thought to be very conservative; two (Kennedy and O'Connor) are thought to be moderately conservative, and six (Breyer, Ginsburg, Kagan, Sotomayor, Souter, and Stevens) are considered moderately liberal. When all the dust settled, then, from 2000 to 2013 both the very conservative justices and the moderately liberal justices were in the majority in 10 of the 20 cases.
Conventional wisdom says that the confirmation process for Supreme Court Justices is now terribly broken. The prevailing assumption is that the process has become so polarized and so politicized that ...nominees feel they must mask their views from members of the Senate in a way that makes informed consideration impossible. Here, Stone explores a broad range of factors, including ethics, ideology, competence, polarization, media, and politics, that have shaped the modern Supreme Court confirmation process.
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In early 1985, President Ronald Reagan appointed then- Professor Frank Easterbrook to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. A few months later, the freshly robed Judge ...Easterbrook confronted one of the most controversial constitutional issues of the day. In his opinion in 'American Booksellers Association, Inc v Hudnut', one of the most celebrated and oft-cited opinions of his illustrious career, Easterbrook single-handedly put that issue to rest.
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How should judges approach deciding cases that involve the constitutionality of measures taken by the executive and legislative branches of government to protect the national security? As a matter of ...first principle, logic suggests that judges addressing such cases should start with a healthy dose of deference to military and executive officials.
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9.
The NSA report Clarke, Richard A; Clarke, Richard A; Morell, Michael J ...
2014., 20140331, 2014, 2014-03-31
eBook
"We cannot discount the risk, in light of the lessons of our own history, that at some point in the future, high-level government officials will decide that this massive database of extraordinarily ...sensitive private information is there for the plucking. Americans must never make the mistake of wholly 'trusting' our public officials."--The NSA Report
This is the official report that is helping shape the international debate about the unprecedented surveillance activities of the National Security Agency. Commissioned by President Obama following disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward J. Snowden, and written by a preeminent group of intelligence and legal experts, the report examines the extent of NSA programs and calls for dozens of urgent and practical reforms. The result is a blueprint showing how the government can reaffirm its commitment to privacy and civil liberties--without compromising national security.
FREE SPEECH ON CAMPUS Levi, David F; Stone, Geoffrey R
Judicature,
01/2024, Volume:
107, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Examining the campus speech debate throuah a First Amendment lens FREE SPEECH ENJOYS AN INTERESTING DUALITY ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES: it is both abstractly academic, forming the basis of numerous classes ...(especially in law schools), as well as practically concrete, coming to life in campus discourse and university policies. To better understand the challenges universities face and the role of the First Amendment on campus, DAVID F. LEVI, president of the American Law Institute (ALI) and founding director of the Boleh Judicial Institute at Duke Law School, spoke with constitutional law expert GEOFFREY R. STONE, the Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School, who was previously provost to the university and dean of the law school. From its very founding, the University of Chicago has been committed to free, open discourse and to academic freedom. ...the problem with that, which the Kalven Report fully addresses, is that it has a powerful chilling effect on the willingness of students, faculty, and others to take a different position.
