Responding to Imperfection: The Theory and Practice of Constitutional AmendmentSanford Levinson An increasing number of constitutional theorists, within both the legal academy and university departments of government, are focusing on the conceptual and political problems attached to the notion of constitutional amendment. Amendments are, among other things, recognitions of the imperfection of existing schemes of government. The relative ease or difficulty of amendment has significant implications for the ways that governments respond to problems that call either for new structures of governance or new powers for already established structures. This book brings together essays by leading legal authorities and political scientists on a range of questions from whether the U.S. Constitution is subject to amendment by procedures other than those authorized by Article V to how significant change is conceptualized within classical rabbinic Judaism. Though the essays are concerned for the most part with the American experience, other constitutional traditions are considered as well. |
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... Authority of Interpretive Communities (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980), pp. 322, 357; Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric, and the Practice of Theory in Literary and Legal Studies (Durham, N.C.: Duke ...
... authority to Congress. Surely one of the most famous quotations, not only in McCulloch but in our entire corpus of judicial writings, is Marshall's emphasis that he is expounding “a constitution intended to endure for ages to come, and ...
... authority of constitutional interpreters, whether judges or others. It was Marshall, of course, who in Marbury v. Madison had defined the importance of a written constitution—the “greatest improvement on political institutions” put ...
... authority. It should be obvious, though, that one could describe the result in Blaisdell, and its justification by Hughes, in the terms White applied to Marshall's opinion in McCulloch. So how do we—should we—describe the opinions in ...
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Responding to Imperfection: The Theory and Practice of Constitutional Amendment Sanford Levinson No preview available - 1995 |
Responding to Imperfection: The Theory and Practice of Constitutional Amendment Sanford Levinson No preview available - 1995 |