Our new book—How Constitutional Rights Matter—tries to answer a difficult empirical question: do constitutional rights actually change government behavior? We theorize that constitutional rights that protect individuals often fail to constrain governments, but that constitutional rights that protect organizations can be powerful tools to push back against repression.
Comparative constitutional law (CCL) is a diverse field employing multiple different methods.
Aright to legal representation has recently been introduced in some Chinese provinces but not in others.
Some constitutions promise paradise on earth. It is, therefore, not surprising that in many countries constitutional reality does not keep pace with constitutional promise.
Ensuring compliance with laws that constrain the state is one of public law’s central challenges.
I recall vividly a flight that I took about ten years ago. As my wife and I boarded the plane, the pilot greeted us at the threshold—a nice touch. I couldn’t help but notice his necktie, and maybe that was the point. It was emblazoned with “Second Amendme
Professors Adam Chilton and Mila Versteeg’s How Constitutional Rights Matter is simply a game changer.
Chilton and Versteeg tell an interesting story. I use the word “story” deliberately, to locate the genre of the work in narrative—in their terms, qualitative—analysis, rather than in the scientistic genre.
For centuries, mixed-race Americans have felt a sense of isolation as unique as their racial makeup. Whether society perceived a multiracial person as White or non-White could determine everything from whom they could marry to which jobs they could work to which areas and homes they could live in.
In May 2019, the Supreme Court attempted to clarify the long-disputed standard for First Amendment retaliatory arrest claims. Nieves v Bartlett holds that, as a threshold matter, a plaintiff must prove a lack of probable cause for their arrest, but that a “narrow qualification”—an exception to the probable cause burden—“is warranted for circumstances where officers have probable cause to make arrests, but typically exercise their discretion not to do so.”
