Constitutional Commentary was founded in 1984 and is one of the few faculty-edited law journals in the country. It enjoys a wide following among legal scholars, historians, political scientists and others interested in constitutional law and history. Part of its popularity is due to the editors’ preference for “shorter and less ponderous articles” as opposed to the more lengthy and heavily footnoted articles found in traditional law reviews.

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Submissions from 2002

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Compelling Lessons in the First Amendment. Book Review Of: Free Speech, "The People's Darling Privilege": Struggles for Freedom of Expression in American History. by Michael Kent Curtis, Wilson Huhn

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The King & I. Book Review Of: Theodore Rex. by Edmund Morris, Jonathan Kahn

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Carnival of Mirrors: Laurence Tribe's "Unbearable Wrongness", Nelson Lund

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"Equal Protection, My Ass!"? Bush V. Gore and Laurence Tribe's Hall of Mirrors, Nelson Lund

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Certain Illusions About Speech: Why the Free-Speech Critique of Hostile Work Environment Harassment Is Wrong, Miranda Oshige McGowan

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Voter's Intent and Its Discontents. Book Review Of: Understanding the 2000 Election: A Guide to the Legal Battles that Decided the Presidency. by Abner Greene, John Copeland Nagle

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How Many Judges Does It Take to Make a Supreme Court?, John V. Orth

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Youngstown Goes to War, Michael Stokes Paulsen

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Keeping Legal History Meaningful, Richard H. Pildes

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Searching for the False Shout of "Fire", L. A. Scot Powe

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The Smug Satisfaction of the Media Mentioned. Book Review Of: Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline. by Richard A. Posner, Stephen Presser

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Separation Rhetoric and Its Relevance. Book Review Of: Separation of Church and State. by Philip Hamburger, Adam M. Samaha

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Constitutionalism in an Age of Speed, William E. Scheuerman

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The Price of Experience: The Constitution After September 11, 2001, J. Gregory Sidak

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Desperately Seeking Serenity. Book Review Of: Desperately Seeking Certainty: The Misguided Quest for Constitutional Foundations. by Daniel A. Farber and Suzanna Sherry, Steven D. Smith

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An Analysis of the Federal Constitutional Right to Same-Sex Marriage. Book Review Of: The Gay Rights Question in Contemporary American Law. by Andrew Koppelman, Mark Strasser

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The Republican Monarchy Revisited. Book Review Of: The English Constitution. by Walter Bagehot. Edited by Paul Smith, Adam Tomkins

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Lost at the Equal Protection Carnival: Nelson Lund's Carnival of Mirrors, Laurence H. Tribe

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The Unbearable Wrongness of Bush V. Gore, Laurence H. Tribe

Submissions from 2001

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The Supreme Nonet. Book Review Of: "The Supremes": Essays on the Current Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. by Barbara A. Perry, Thomas E. Baker

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The Marbury Mystery: Why Did William Marbury Sue in the Supreme Court?, Susan Low Bloch

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What Does the Second Amendment Restrict? a Collective Rights Analysis, Carl T. Bogus

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The Virtues of Presidential Government: Why Professor Ackerman Is Wrong to Prefer the German to the U.S. Constitution, Steven G. Calabresi

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Why the Supreme Court Should Not Have Decided the Presidential Election of 2000, Jesse H. Choper

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"Uniform Throughout the United States": Limits on Taxing as Limits on Spending, Laurence Claus

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E Pluribus Unum? Book Review Of: States' Rights and the Union: Imperium in Imperio, 1776-1876. by Forrest McDonald, Daniel A. Farber

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"Nor Long Remember". Book Review Of: Our Secret Constitution: How Lincoln Redefined American Democracy. by George P. Fletcher, Daniel A. Farber

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"Another Thing Needful": Exploring Emotions in Law. Book Review Of: The Passions of Law. Edited by Susan A. Bandes, Neal Feigenson

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Requiem for Hercules. Book Review Of: Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality. by Ronald Dworkin, Edward B. Foley

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Book Review: Brandeis and the Progressive Constitution: Erie, the Judicial Power, and the Politics of the Federal Courts in Twentieth- Century America. by Edward A. Purcell, Jr., Tony A. Freyer

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The Supreme Court and the Brethren, David J. Garrow

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Economic Activity as a Proxy for Federalism: Intuition and Reason in United States V. Morrison, Allan Ides

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Of Judicial Supremacy and Academic Inadequacy, Scott C. Idleman

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Controlling Precedent: Congressional Regulation of Judicial Decision-Making, Gary Lawson

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Rating the Presidents of the United States, 1789-2000: A Survey of Scholars in Political Science, History, and Law, James Lindgren and Steven G. Calabresi

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Making Sense of Dale, David McGowan

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The Warren Court and American Politics: An Impressionistic Appreciation. Book Review: The Warren Court and American Politics. by Lucas A. (Scot) Powe, Jr., Roger K. Newman

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The "Bermuda Triangle?" the Cert Pool and Its Influence Over the Supreme Court's Agenda, Barbara Palmer

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Lawson's Awesome (Also Wrong, Some), Michael Stokes Paulsen

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Book Review: Division and Discord: The Supreme Court Under Stone and Vinson, 1941-1953. by Melvin I. Urofsky, L. A. Scot Powe

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Bush V. Gore: Looking at Baker V. Carr in a Conservative Mirror, Robert J. Pushaw Jr.

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The Commerce Clause, the Political Question Doctrine, and Morrison, Ronald D. Rotunda

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True God of the Next Justice, J. Gregory Sidak

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Why the Eleventh Amendment Always Matters, Even When Transaction Costs Are Zero; a Reply to Professor Farber, Neil S. Siegel

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Green Eggs and Legislation, Michael Stokes Paulsen

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Getting to Know Harlan: A New Approach to Judicial Biography? Book Review: The Republic According to John Marshall Harlan. by Linda Przybyszewski, James A. Thomson

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Were There Adequate State Grounds in Bush V. Gore?, Michael L. Wells

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Michelman, Brennan, and Democratic Theory. Book Review: Brennan and Democracy. by Frank I. Michelman, David Lay Williams

Submissions from 2000

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Sovereignty Studies in Constitutional Law: A Comment, T. Alexander Aleinikoff

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Defending Judicial Supremacy: A Reply, Larry Alexander and Frederick Schauer

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The Canon and the Constitution Outside the Courts, Sotirios A. Barber and James E. Fleming

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Capturing the Canon, Jerome A. Barron

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The Integration of Theory and Practice in Teaching Structural Issues in Constitutional Law, Daan Braveman and William Banks

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The Limits of Gaylaw: A Review Essay Of: Gaylaw; Challenging the Apartheid of the Closet. William N. Eskridge, Jr., Dale Carpenter

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Necromancing the Equal Rights Amendment, Brannon P. Denning and John R. Vile

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On Case Books and Canons or Why Bob Jones University Will Never Be Part of the Constitutional Law Canon, Neal Devins

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Fictional Documentaries and Truthful Fictions: The Death Penalty in Recent American Film, David R. Dow

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Is the Miranda Caselaw Really Inconsistent? a Proposed of Fifth Amendment Synthesis, Donald Dripps

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Liberalism Lost. Book Review Of: The Trouble with Principle. by Stanley Fish, Daniel A. Farber

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A Comparative Constitutional Law Canon?, John E. Finn and Donald P. Kommers

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The Canons of Constitutional Law: Teaching with a Political- Historical Framework, Louis Fisher

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Aim Globally, Martin S. Flaherty

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Essay: The Parsimony of Libertarianism., James E. Fleming

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Brown's Promise, Blaine's Legacy: A Review Essay Of: Choosing Equality: School Choice, the Constitution, and Civil Society. Joseph P. Viteritti, Richard W. Garnet

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Dworkin as an Originalist, Jeffrey Goldsworthy

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Book Review: Has the Hour of Democracy Come Round at Last? the New Critique of Judicial Review; a Book Review Of: One Case at a Time: Judicial Minimalism on the Supreme Court. by Cass R. Sunstein; Taking the Constitution Away from the Courts. by Mark Tushnet., Stephen M. Griffin

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The Day After: Do We Need a "Twenty-Eighth Amendment?", Joel B. Grossman and David A. Yalof

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Shrink Missouri, Campaign Finance, and "The Thing that Frederick Schauer Wouldn't Leave", Richard L. Hasen

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Unnatural Born Citizens and Acting Presidents, James C. Ho

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'The Canon' of Constitutional Law for Undergraduate Teaching: The Melding of Constitutional Theory, Law, and Interpretive/ Empirical Political Science, Ronald Kahn

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The People's Forest and Levy's Trees: Popular Sovereignty and the Origins of the Bill of Rights. Book Review Of: Origins of the Bill of Rights. by Leonard W. Levy, Brian C. Kalt

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Book Review: Rights and Responsibilities. by Leon Trakman and Sean Gatien, Evan Tsen Lee

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Why the Canon Should Be Expanded to Include the Insular Cases and the Saga of American Expansionism, Sanford Levinson

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Constitutional Law's Loose Canon: Are We Running Software Without an Operating System?, Donald E. Lively

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That Sick Chicken Won't Hunt: The Limits of a Judicially Enforced Non-Delegation Doctrine, George I. Lovell

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Book Review: Outsider Voices on Gun and the Constitution; a Book Review Of: Freedmen, the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Right to Bear Arms, 1866-1876. by Stephen P. Halbrook, Nelson Lund

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The Fourteenth Amendment and Native American Citizenship, Earl M. Maltz

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Chasing the Canon: A Tail's View Of, and Requests To, the Dog, John E. Nowak

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Presidential Impeachment: The Original Misunderstanding, John V. Orth

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Democracy, Anti-Democracy, and the Canon, Richard H. Pildes

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The Ordinary, the Exceptional, the Corrupt, and the Moral: What Did the Impeachment of Bill Clinton Mean for America and Americans? Book Review Of: An Affair of State: The Investigation, Impeachment, and Trial of President Clinton. by Richard A. Posner, Stephen B. Presser

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The Black Holes of American Constitutional Law. Book Review Of: American Constitutional Law, Third Edition, Volume 1. by Laurence H. Tribe, Eric J. Segall

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The Case for Including Marks V. United States in the Canon of Constitutional Law, Maxwell L. Stearns

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The Constitutional Canon: The Challenge Posed by a Transitional Constitutionalism, Ruti Teitel

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The Canon(S) of Constitutional Law: An Introduction, Mark Tushnet

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Does "Practicality" Have a Place in the "Canon of Constitutional Law"?, Russell L. Weaver

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Is There a Canon of Constitutional History?, William M. Wiecek

Submissions from 1999

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The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing but the Truth About "High Crimes and Misdemeanors" and the Constitution's Impeachment Process. Book Review Of: High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton. by Ann Coulter, Vikram David Amar

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Clear and Present Dangers: The Importance of Ideas and the Bowels in the Cosmos, Thomas E. Baker

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Terry V. Ohio in Hindsight: The Perils of Predicting the Past, Susan Bandes

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Book Review: Presidential Defiance of "Unconstitutional" Laws: Reviving the Royal Prerogative. by Christopher N. May, J. Randy Beck

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Suicide Pact: New Readings of the Second Amendment, Michael A. Bellesiles

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Alternative Maps for Navigating the First Amendment Maze: A Review Essay Of: The First Amendment. by Daniel Farber, Alan E. Brownstein

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Defunis, Defunct, Jim Chen

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Midnight in the Courtroom of Good and Evil, Jim Chen

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Commonplace or Anachronism: The Standard Model, the Second Amendment, and the Problem of History in Contemporary Constitutional Theory, Saul Cornell

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Be Careful What You Wish For, Michael C. Dorf

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What the Wall Separates: A Debate on Thomas Jefferson's "Wall of Separation" Metaphor, Daniel L. Dreisbach and John D. Whaley

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The Variola Variation, Donald Dripps

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The Apparent Inevitability of Mixed Government, John Hart Ely