Constitutional Law

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Book review
81.3
The Text, the Whole Text, and Nothing but the Text, So Help Me God: Un-Writing Amar’s Unwritten Constitution
Michael Stokes Paulsen
Distinguished University Chair and Professor of Law, University of St. Thomas School of Law.

My thanks to Gary Lawson, Larry Solum, and Sherif Girgis for comments on fragments of early drafts. (Do not blame them for what I say.)Akhil Amar is an old and dear friend. We were roommates and constitutional law sparring partners as students at Yale Law School in the early 1980s. We disagreed wildly and occasionally vehemently—yet somehow still cheerfully—over many things. We continue to disagree over a great many things today—including (as this review demonstrates) nearly everything in his recent book. As noted below, I have reviewed two of Akhil’s other books highly favorably. See note 3. I hope he will forgive me this unfavorable— but still cheerful—review, which I offer in the same spirit as our dorm-room screaming matches thirty years ago. (You told me I could let you have it, if I thought you deserved it, Akhil. Well, here it is!)

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Article
81.3
Constitutional Outliers
Justin Driver
Professor of Law and Herbert and Marjorie Fried Research Scholar, The University of Chicago Law School

I received insightful feedback on this project from Mitchell Berman, Laura Ferry, Kim Forde-Mazrui, Brandon Garrett, Jacob Gersen, Julius Getman, Michael Gilbert, Risa Goluboff, Pratheepan Gulasekaram, Aziz Huq, Jennifer Laurin, Sanford Levinson, Charles Mackel, John Manning, Martha Minow, Melissa Murray, Lucas Powe, David Pozen, Saikrishna Prakash, Richard Primus, David Rabban, Benjamin Sachs, Richard Schragger, Jordan Steiker, Matthew Stephenson, and faculty workshop participants at the University of Texas. I also received exemplary research assistance from Patrick Leahy, Trevor Lovell, Liam McElhiney, Jim Powers, and Brian Walsh. I completed various portions of this Article when I was a visiting assistant professor at The University of Chicago Law School during Fall 2012 and a visiting assistant professor at the University of Virginia School of Law during Spring 2013.

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Book review
84.4
The Nefarious Intentions of the Framers?
Paul Finkelman
President, Gratz College in Melrose Park, Pennsylvania. Also currently serves as Fulbright Chair in Human Rights and Social Justice, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada, and John E. Murray Visiting Professor, University of Pittsburgh School of Law

The timing of Professor Michael Klarman’s The Framers’ Coup is fortuitous. Under a never-used constitutional provision, twenty-eight states have asked for a convention to write a balanced budget amendment.

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Article
84.4
From Treaties to International Commitments: The Changing Landscape of Foreign Relations Law
Jean Galbraith
Assistant Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania Law School

For comments, I am grateful to Kristen Boon, Curt Bradley, Stephen Burbank, Cary Coglianese, Bill Ewald, Oona Hathaway, Sophia Lee, Zach Price, Beth Simmons, the editors of the University of Chicago Law Review, and participants at the 2016 Yale-Duke Foreign Relations Law Roundtable, the University of Pennsylvania Law School faculty retreat, and the Seton Hall University School of Law faculty workshop. For assistance with sources, I thank Gabriela Femenia of the Penn Law Library.

In his farewell address, George Washington urged that “[t]he great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is . . . to have with them as little political connection as possible.”

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Comment
84.3
Making Mistakes about the Law: Police Mistakes of Law between Qualified Immunity and Lenity
Lael Weinberger
BA 2009, Thomas Edison State University; MA 2013, Northern Illinois University; JD Candidate 2018, The University of Chicago Law School; PhD Candidate, Department of History, The University of Chicago

While patrolling one night in 2014, police officer Jeff Packard noticed a car with a hole in one of its red taillights.