The Law of the Land: A Grand Tour of Our Constitutional Republic. By Akhil Reed Amar. New York: Basic Books, 2015. 357 pp. $29.99 hardcover.

Popular Accountability and State Constitutional Law

Open a course catalog at most law schools in the country, and you will find a course called "Constitutional Law."If you happen to take that course, as indeed you must at most of these law schools, you will find one thing more-that it teaches just one side of the story, focusing on the Federal Constitution, rarely mentioning, if mentioning at all, the constitutions of the fifty states.Why is that?In one sense, the most essential sense, state constitutional law is no less a form of American constitutional law than federal constitutional law.State constitutions, like the Federal Constitution, provide a blueprint for government, allocating authority among the branches of power, establishing the terms of office, and defining the terms of consent.State constitutions, no less than the Federal Constitution, thus establish charters of government that simultaneously empower and constrain: that set forth the rules for regulating the people of a state and limit this authority through liberty, property, structural, and other guarantees.In this sense, state constitutional law parallels federal constitutional law, doing everything the Federal Constitution does, just on a smaller scale.Just?The difference between the size of the territories covered by the one constitution and the other fifty no doubt helps to explain why state constitutional law is taken less seriously, why some might even ask whether state constitutional law amounts to "constitutional law" at all.But does scale alone provide the answer?Some state constitutions after all cover massive territories and populations themselves.In population, California would be the thirty-fourth largest country in the world, 1 and

Can a State Legislature Give Itself the Power After Election Day to Appoint a Slate of Presidential Electors for Its State?

State Constitutional Law in the New Deal Period

Introduction by Joel K. Goldstein Preface to the Third Edition Acknowledgments from the 1992 Edition Foreword to the 1976 Edition Preface to the 1976 Edition I The Problems 1. Presidential Inability 2. Vice-Presidential Vacancy 3. Succession Beyond the Vice Presidency II The Solution 4. Early Steps to Solve the Inability Problem 5. Senate Passage of S. J. Res. 139 6. Congress Acts 7. Ratification 8. An Analysis of Sections 1, 2, 3, and 4 of the Amendment III Implementations of the Solution 9. The Resignation of Spiro T. Agnew 10. The Substitution of Gerald R. Ford 11. The Resignation of Richard M. Nixon and Succession of Gerald R. Ford 12. The Installation of Nelson A. Rockefeller 13. The Uses and Non-Uses of Section 3 IV Continued Interest and Efforts to Change 14. Congressional Action 15. Symposia, Scholarship, and Commissions 16. Representation of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment in Popular Culture V An Evaluation 17. Appraisal 18. Recommendations Appendixes A. Section-by-Section Development of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment B. Constitutional Provisions on Succession C. Statutory Succession Laws D. Presidential and Vice-Presidential Vacancies E. Times During Which the Speaker, the President pro tempore, or Both Were from a Party Different from the President's F. Rule Number 9 of the Republican Party 317 G. Selected Sections of the Charter and Bylaws of the Democratic Party H. Letter from President Lyndon B. Johnson to House Speaker John W. McCormack I. Schedule of Gerald Ford for August 9, 1974 J. Twenty-Fifth Amendment Memo Prepared for President Gerald R. Ford Notes Bibliography Index

State constitutionalism has undergone a certain revitalization in recent decades due to the efforts of state electorates and officials to reform and modernize state government, the willingness of many state high courts to redevelop state constitutional law as an independent body of law, and the expansion of federal constitutional law requiring adjustments in state constitutional law. State constitutions remain important as instruments of local self-government even though the field of state constitutional choice has been circumscribed by federal constitutional law. A basic distinguishing characteristic of state constitutions is their reliance on direct popular consent and control. This characteristic is a matter of conflict in state constitutional change because it produces long and detailed constitutions subject to easy popular amendment. Despite reform efforts to streamline state constitutions and limit majoritarian influences, most state electorates continue to prefer more consent and control of government under state constitutions than are available under the U.S. Constitution.

Using Article 20

The idea that public employees are able to assert any constitutional rights against their government employers is a relatively recent development in American law. Federal constitutional law no longer permits the wholesale invasion of public employee rights to free speech, though it still reflects a tendency to treat public employees as second-class citizens. State constitutional law is just beginning to make contributions to the public employee's rights of privacy, equality, and free speech. State constitutional guarantees that protect these three interests tend to be more explicit and, therefore, potentially more protective of employee liberties than federal law. Enforcement of these state guarantees, however, is seriously hampered by lack of legislative enthusiasm. State legislators should fulfill their solemn oath to protect and defend the state constitution by enacting laws that provide compensation for victims of unconstitutional acts.

Constitutional Law: A Survey of Michigan Cases

Part IV surveys the range of interpretation issues that arise in state constitutional law, with a specific focus on those that arise from the unique nature of state constitutions. There are, of course, similarities to other forms of textual interpretation, particularly statutory interpretation. This part highlights the contrasts with federal constitutional law and refers to judicial opinions to illustrate various interpretation approaches, relying upon decisions that allow readers to study the specific contexts of the cases and compare them to the context with which they are currently concerned. This part reflects cases discussing interpretation techniques from the past three decades and highlights relatively recent cases, as the goal is to present current techniques. Through these more recent cases, readers can elaborate the specific technique, in a particular state, by tracing the judicial decisions on the point back through time.

Monopolies and the Constitution: A History of Crony Capitalism

The bicentennial of the United States Constitution has prompted renewed attention to the nation's constitutional heritage. However, no reexamination of this heritage is complete without an appreciation of the contributions that state constitutions and state constitutional law have made-and continue to make-to American constitutionalism. The initial state constitutions antedated the federal Constitution, and the delegates meeting in Philadelphia in 1787 found in those charters both features to emulate and elements to reject. When the First Congress framed the U.S. Bill of Rights, it too looked to the state constitutions for guidance. Since this early period, state constitutional developments have continued to influence federal constitutional law, just as federal developments have affected the course of state constitutionalism. Even more important, the existence of a federal system has ensured that important governmental decisions remain in the hands of the states, and state constitutions have profoundly influenced both the processes by which those decisions are made and the substance of those decisions. The past two decades have witnessed important developments in state constitutionalism and state constitutional law, such as the rediscovery of state bills of rights as independent protections for individual rights (the so-called new judicial federalism), the rise and fall of the legislative veto in several states, and the increased use of the initiative to amend state constitutions. The essays in this special issue of Publius explore these and other recent developments in state constitutional law in relation to both the operation of state politics and the dynamics of American federalism. In addition, the essays, taken together, reveal the important theoretical and practical issues posed by a system of dual constitutionalism. However, to understand both recent developments in state constitutional law and the broader issues they

This chapter explores state court adoption of federal constitutional doctrine and the forms of lockstepping state and federal constitutional analyses. It addresses judicial approaches to the adoption of federal constitutional doctrine as a matter of state constitutional law, including examination of the phenomena of unreflective adoptionism; reflective, case-by-case adoptionism; and varieties of prospective lockstepping. The chapter looks specifically at efforts to lockstep equality doctrine by focusing on state constitutional equality provisions and the interpretation of these provisions by state courts. The chapter critiques the practice of prospective lockstepping and concludes by asking whether the practice reflects a considered judicial strategy.

This chapter discusses the practice — adopted by a number of state courts — of stating that state constitutional rights provisions will be interpreted identically to, or in “lockstep” with, similar or identical federal constitutional rights provision. State courts do this in a variety of ways, ranging from cases where they do not seem to acknowledge the possible difference between state and federal rights protections; to case-by-case adoption of federal constitutional interpretations; to “prospective lockstepping” where they announce that in the future the state and federal rights provisions will be interpreted identically or according to some other similar formulation. The chapter gives examples of these different approaches, as well as variations on them. It includes a specific focus on the wide range of state constitutional equality provisions, which, according to many state courts, are to be interpreted the same way as the federal Equal Protection Clause. These various forms of prospective lockstepping are criticized, on the grounds that they cannot actually represent “holdings” and are therefore not binding on future courts.

This encyclopedia entry provides an overview of law governing the police. As it notes, police officers are granted immense authority by the state to impose harm. The problem of policing the police is how to regulate police officers and departments to protect individual liberty and minimize the social costs the police impose while allowing them to do what is necessary to achieve the ends of policing: reducing fear, promoting civil order, and pursuing criminal justice. Constitutional law provides the most well-known check on police conduct. In addition, many other federal, state, and local statutes, constitutional provisions, court decisions, and administrative regulations also govern the police. Since federal constitutional law cannot alone ensure that the benefits of policing are worth the harms it imposes, this participation by other government actors is essential to ensure adequate regulation of the police. However, the laws that presently govern the police are not tailored to balance the individual and societal interests at stake when police officers act, they lack coordination, and responsibility for regulating the police is haphazardly allocated. As a result, the present array of laws that polices American policing does not promote law enforcement that is maximally effective and protective of civil rights.