Constitutional Law – The Supreme Court (Offices) Act 1997: Loss of a constitutional safeguard

Constitutional Law: Supreme Court Holds Pennsylvania Statute Imposing Costs on an Acquitted Defendant Void for Vagueness

In sustaining the defendant's vagueness challenge, the Supreme Court rejected the State's contention that since the statute was "civil" in character, it did not have to meet the due process standard of certainty required of criminal statutes. The Court's language is susceptible of varying interpretations which, in turn, give rise to possibilities for novel applications of the void-forvagueness ...

The Warren Court : Constitutional Decision

The appointment in 1953 of Earl Warren as Chief Justice of the United States marked the beginning of a new era in the development of constitutional law. In the ensuing years changes of vast dimension and historic impact have taken place. Few men are better qualified to assess the significance of the decisions of the Warren Court than Archibald Cox, student of law, teacher of law and, from 1961 ...

Constitutional Law

Congress, the Supreme Court, and Judicial Review: Testing a Constitutional Separation of Powers Model

Recent scholarship suggests that the U.S. Supreme Court might be constrained by Congress in constitutional cases. We suggest two potential paths to Congressional influence on the Court’s constitutional decisions: a rational-anticipation model, in which the Court moves away from its preferences in order to avoid being overruled, and an institutional-maintenance model, in which the Court protects...

The Canons of Constitutional Law

Academic and political debates about what texts are canonical in the liberal arts have been occurring for some time. In this Commentary, Professors Balkin and Levinson discuss canons and canonicity in the study of law in general and of constitutional law in particular. Canons, they contend, are not simply collections of texts. Skills, approaches, forms of argument, standard examples, and even s...