William Baude: Marbury Now
Michael Ramsey
William Baude (University of Chicago Law School) has posted Marbury Now (Liberties, Volume 6, Issue 2, pp. 7-26 (Winter 2026)) (33 pages) on SSRN. Here is the abstract Consider a showdown between an institutionalist Chief Justice of the United States and an ambitious and opportunistic President of the United States — a showdown in which the Chief […]
Abbe Gluck on the Continuing Importance of Legislative History
Michael Ramsey
At SCOTUSblog, Abbe Gluck: Legislative history lives on – in secret. From the introduction: Rumors of the textualist triumph over legislative history have been greatly exaggerated. A debate has raged among lawyers and judges for decades about the changes the Supreme Court’s textualists have wrought in statutory interpretation. One of textualism’s key moves has been […]
Judge Edith Jones: No Federal Power over Home Distilleries
Michael Ramsey
McNutt v. US Department of Justice, recently decided by a panel of the Fifth Circuit, holds that a federal law imposing fines on home distilleries is beyond the federal taxing power. From Judge Edith Jones’ opinion for the panel: For more than 150 years, Congress has prohibited home distilleries as an adjunct to the law […]
Ashraf Ahmed: Historical Practice Theories
Michael Ramsey
Ashraf Ahmed (Columbia Law School) has posted Historical Practice Theories (127 Colum. L. Rev. __ (forthcoming 2027)) (55 pages) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Contemporary constitutional law and theory is preoccupied with the question of practice. Over the last decade, across a range of issues—from gun rights to elections to school prayer to the […]
Aaron Nielson on Richard Re on Scalia
Michael Ramsey
At Civitas Outlook, Aaron Nielson: Getting Right With Scalia. From the introduction: At SCOTUSBlog, Richard Re offers the provocative take that the Supreme Court is not true to the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s legacy [ed.: noted here]. He acknowledges that Scalia is invoked favorably by all the Justices, and that “[l]egal culture remains transformed by the […]
New Book: “Sam Alito and the Triumph of the Conservative Legal Movement” by Peter Canellos
Michael Ramsey
Recently published, Revenge for the Sixties – Sam Alito and the Triumph of the Conservative Legal Movement, by Peter S. Canellos (Simon & Schuster 2026). Here is the book description from the publisher: The first-ever biography of the most pivotal Justice on the Supreme Court whose decisions, like the overturning of Roe, will drive the reshaping of […]
Laurence Claus: Courts Against Constitutional Capture
Michael Ramsey
Laurence Claus (University of San Diego School of Law) has posted Courts Against Constitutional Capture (20 Vienna Journal on International Constitutional Law (forthcoming, 2026)) (50 pages) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: How can courts best help keep constitutional democracy alive? When institutions of constitutional democracy are being captured and turned to creating a different […]
Citizenship and Domicile of Smuggled Slaves
Andrew Hyman
During the oral arguments in the birthright citizenship case, Trump v. Barbara, Justice Barrett posed the following interesting question: General, you said in your reply brief that the children of slaves who were brought here unlawfully, you know, in defiance of laws forbidding the slave trade, would, in fact, be citizens….And you can imagine that […]
New Book: “The Legal Foundations of Religious Freedom” by John Witte and Andrea Pin
Michael Ramsey
Recently published, The Legal Foundations of Religious Freedom: Human Rights in the United States and Europe, by John Witte Jr. (Emory) and Andrea Pin (Padua) (Univ. of Notre Dame Press 2026). Here is the book description from Amazon: The Legal Foundations of Religious Freedom documents the essential interdependence of human rights and religious freedom in the […]
Divided Argument on Historical Practice
Michael Ramsey
At Divided Argument, Will Baude: A Scholarly Roundtable on History and Practice (with Christian Burset, Jonathan Green and Ryan Snyder). From the introduction: [Will Baude:] I’ve been very interested in a recent round of scholarship on history and tradition in legal interpretation, and I hosted a written roundtable discussion with the authors of three of […]