Originalism

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Comment
Volume 92.8
Pardoning Corporations
Brandon Stras
B.A. 2021, the University of Michigan; J.D. Candidate 2026, The University of Chicago Law School.

I would like to thank Professors William Baude and Eugene Volokh, as well as Owen Hoepfner, Hank Minor, Quinten Rimolde, and David Stras, for early readthroughs and helpful conversations. I would also like to thank the editors and staff of The University of Chicago Law Review for their great edits.

In 1977, a company convicted of conspiring with the mob asked President Carter for a pardon. The government speculated that the President could so exercise the pardon power, but ultimately no pardon ever issued. Nearly fifty years later, President Trump has pardoned a company convicted of violating the Bank Secrecy Act. People are again speculating that the pardon power covers companies, but few can offer evidence either way. History shows that the pardon power covers companies. Before the Founding, the King would often pardon corporations. Both the city of London and the Massachusetts Bay Company were pardoned before the Founders were even born. This tradition was the background against which the Pardon Clause and many of its state analogs were drafted. That the President can pardon companies might feel surprising or even unsettling. But the prerogative fits comfortably into the nation's separation of powers. Congress can make exercising the power less attractive by withholding refunded fines or shifting crimes to civil infractions. These checks come with more tradeoffs when exercised int he context of human beings, which might explain why Congress has not exercised them so far.

Constitutional Law Originalism Presidential Power
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Essay
84.1
Originalist Methodology
Lawrence B. Solum
Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center

I owe thanks to the participants in The University of Chicago Law Review Symposium on “Developing Best Practices for Legal Analysis,” which led to the Symposium Issue in which this Essay appears, and to participants at a faculty workshop at Georgetown University Law Center. I owe special thanks to Gregory Klass and Louis Michael Seidman for the their very helpful suggestions and criticisms. My thanks as well to Johanna Schmidt for valuable research assistance. © 2017 by Lawrence B. Solum.

I.  The Theoretical Framework

The development of an originalist methodology requires a theoretical framework, the elaboration of which can begin with the idea of meaning itself.

A.    The Meaning of “Meaning”

Best Practices Linguistics Originalism Statutory Interpretation
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Article
83.4
Working Themselves Impure: A Life Cycle Theory of Legal Theories
Jeremy K. Kessler
Associate Professor of Law, Columbia Law School.
David E. Pozen
Professor of Law, Columbia Law School.

. For valuable comments on an earlier draft, we thank Will Baude, Seyla Benhabib, Jessica Bulman-Pozen, Josh Chafetz, Robert Ferguson, Joey Fishkin, David Fontana, Willy Forbath, Barry Friedman, Jeff Gordon, Bernard Harcourt, Olati Johnson, Laura Kalman, Jody Kraus, Daryl Levinson, Anna Lvovsky, Gillian Metzger, Henry Monaghan, Sarah Rajec, Steve Sachs, Fred Schauer, Pierre Schlag, Ian Shapiro, Ganesh Sitaraman, Larry Solum, James Stern, Peter Strauss, Cass Sunstein, Katie Tabb, Eric Talley, Calvin TerBeek, and Mark Tushnet, as well as workshop participants at Columbia Law School and William & Mary Law School. For helpful research assistance, we thank Kendall Collins and Mickey DiBattista.

I.  The Object of the Life Cycle Theory

Cost-Benefit Analysis Originalism Textualism
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Article
83.3
The Original Fourth Amendment
Laura K. Donohue
Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center.

Special thanks to Randy Barnett, Morgan Cloud, Julie Cohen, William Cuddihy, Jennifer Daskal, Thomas Davies, Daniel Ernst, Erin Kidwell, Martin Lederman, John Mikhail, Paul Ohm, James Oldham, Julie O’Sullivan, Michel Paradis, Brad Snyder, Geoff Stone, William Treanor, and Peter Winn, who provided thoughtful comments on earlier versions of the Article. Ladislas Orsy kindly helped to verify the meaning of the original Latin texts. My appreciation extends to participants at the Georgetown Law faculty workshop, Georgetown Law’s Constitutional Law Seminar, the 2015 Berkeley-GW 8th Annual Privacy Law Scholars Conference, the Washington, DC National Security Law Roundtable, and the Retired Partners Group at Arnold & Porter LLP for their critiques. Jeremy McCabe, Thanh Nguyen, Ellen Noble, and Morgan Stoddard kindly assisted in helping to obtain many materials. Betsy Kuhn copyedited the penultimate text, which is reflected in part in chapters four and five of my recently published book, The Future of Foreign Intelligence: Security and Privacy in a Digital Age (Oxford 2016). The editors at The University of Chicago Law Review dedicated time and effort to ensuring the quality of the final Article. It is much appreciated.

I.  Inherited Discourse

Fourth Amendment Freedom from Unreasonable Search and Seizure Legal History Originalism Privacy

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