Vol. 132 No. 1 Rights are more than mere interests, but they are not absolute. And so two competing frames have emerged for adjudicating conflicts over rights. Under...
Vol. 130 No. 1 During periods of apparent social dissolution the traditionalists, the true believers, the defenders of the status quo, turn to the past with an interest...
Vol. 125 No. 2 Argument from the “anticanon,” the set of cases whose central propositions all legitimate decisions must refute, has become a persistent but curious feature of American constitutional law. These cases, Dred Scott v. Sandford, Plessy v. Ferguson, Lochner v. New York, and Korematsu v. United States, are consistently cited in Supreme Court opinions, in constitutional law casebooks, and at confirmation hearings as prime examples of weak constitutional analysis. Upon reflection, however, anticanonical cases do not involve unusually bad reasoning, nor are they uniquely morally repugnant. Rather, these cases are held out as examples for reasons external to conventional constitutional argument. This Article substantiates that claim and explores those reasons.