In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, several state legislatures and executives limited the circumstances in which landlords could evict their tenants. Predictably, many of these moratoria were met with challenges under the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause, which prohibits the government from taking private property for public use without just compensation.
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.
