US Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito said his withdrawal from a high-stakes climate change case involving the oil and gas industry was a “difficult judgment call” he made even after the court’s legal office said he didn’t have to disqualify himself.

The Postal Service’s rule is illegal.

by Michael Dorf In Fallback Law, a 2007 article in the Columbia Law Review , I explored (among other things) the limits, if any, on coerc...

Every case the Supreme Court is asked to hear, what it asks, and the odds it is granted — rebuilt three times a day from the Court's own docket.

Long presumed obsolete after Erie Railroad v. Tompkins, the "general common law" has reemerged as a subject of serious inquiry in recent scholarship i

This Article addresses an overlooked aspect of the history of legal interpretation: the early emergence of "legislative interpretive directives," enac

The Summer 2026 issue of the Journal of American Constitutional History is now online: Recovering the Lost Pragmatist Promise of Legal Process by Emily F. RegierLegal Process Theory, a process-focused jurisprudential framework that predominated in the American legal academy in the 1950s with lasting influence on American constitutional development, has for decades since been depicted as a complacent and relativistic jurisprudence, designed to evade controversial value judgments by seeking substantively neutral determinacy in matters of process. I upend this wrongful narrative by recovering the inspiration that Legal Process thinkers took from John Dewey’s democratizing approach to pragmatism, and in particular, from Dewey’s commitments to the interconnection of fact and value and the moral productivity of deliberative and collaborative processes. I argue that Dewey’s rightful influence on Legal Process Theory has been obscured by prominent left-leaning academic accounts that erroneously attribute to him value relativism and a depoliticizing relativist theory of democracy, which Legal Process thinkers supposedly repurposed for the legal domain. But Dewey rejected ethical and intellectual relativism; he also rejected absolutism. I argue that the Legal Process thinker Lon Fuller followed Dewey’s democratizing pathway through these extremes and adapted it to legal theory. I further connect Fuller’s Deweyan jurisprudence to the canonical mid-century Legal Process text written by Henry Hart and Albert Sacks, and to the legal pragmatism espoused by former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. Following Dewey, Legal Process thinkers mounted a compelling and synthetic yet underappreciated response to the difficult questions raised by Legal Realism about moral and legal relativism and the relationship between judicial and democratic decision making. “Perpetuate the Union, and Redeem the Honor of the Republican Name”: Monarchy, Empire, and James Madison’s Negative on State Laws by Zachary BrownIn 1787, James Madison proposed that Congress should wield a “negative” over state laws. Historians, legal scholars, and political theorists have long argued that this veto was the linchpin of his plan for constitutional reform: the mechanism through which the federal government would suppress irresponsible state legislation, especially laws that infringed on individual and minority rights. According to the standard account, Madison’s support for the negative as a check on majoritarianism is emblematic of his deepest constitutional commitments. While other leading nationalists focused primarily on creating a strong federal government, Madison was chiefly concerned with rescuing democracy within the states by curbing the vices of local legislatures. My article argues that this conventional story about the negative—and Madison’s constitutional thought more broadly—is incomplete. Throughout the spring and summer of 1787, Madison’s principal interest was reconciling national power and stability with republican government. His research on confederal and imperial models suggested that only the prerogatives of monarchs had protected federations against the centrifugal force of their parts. Madison came to believe that without these prerogatives, even a strong general government would become impotent and the confederation it governed would dissolve. The negative was his attempt to find an equivalent power to harmonize the union without adopting a monarchy. Madison’s celebrated theories on minority rights and faction developed as he worked out why a national republic could exercise both the negative and its other powers responsibly. Yet the Convention ultimately rejected both the veto and the Madisonian vision of federalism it underpinned. As a result, Madison left Philadelphia convinced that the delegates had created a “feudal system of republics” lacking a replacement for the unifying power of kings. The Birth of Compact Theory by David S. SchwartzFor claims about constitutional interpretation that hinge on the Constitution’s “original meaning,” it matters whether members of the Philadelphia Convention, or the state ratifying conventions, or the early post-ratification congresses, asserted that the Constitution was a compact of the states; or whether, instead, compact theory was a novelty that gained adherents only much later. --Dan Ernst 

[We have the following Call for Proposals.  DRE] The American Journal of Legal History is a well-established, quarterly publication covering all facets and periods of legal history. We are now accepting Special Issue proposals for 2027.  Deadline: November 30th, 2026 A Special Issue is a peer-reviewed collection of articles centred on a specific theme. Ideally, the theme should focus on a new or distinctive area of inquiry that has not been sufficiently explored in previous AJLH work, holds broad relevance, and aligns with the Journal's aims and scope. This provides an opportunity to collectively explore a new topic, potentially developing insightful new lines of research and practice through interdisciplinary dialogue. A proposal should contain the following information: * The names, contact details, and positions of the proposed Guest Editor(s) together with brief biographical details.  * The title of the proposed special issue.  * A one-page “call for papers” indicating the main theme, key topics, and methodological foci for submissions to the Special Issue (500 words maximum).   * A description of the rationale behind the proposal, its planned scope, innovative nature in relation to existing published work, and likely relevance for readers of the American Journal of Legal History (500 words maximum).  * A list containing titles and short abstracts of any potential contributions, information about the authors and indication of their commitment.  Guest editors are also encouraged to write a substantive introductory article developing the state of the art around the topic.  * A detailed timetable, including a deadline for the first submission, a period for review and resubmission (done by the Guest editors), and a deadline for final papers. Key information.  The team of Guest Editors for the Special Issue will handle all manuscripts from their initial submission; they assign reviewers, and they make decisions (reject, revise, conditionally accept) and communicate those decisions to the authors. Guest Editors are encouraged to use a mix of invited and open submissions for the Special Issue, working to actively solicit quality submissions.  However, all manuscripts for the Special Issue must undergo double-anonymised peer review and revisions according to normal AJLH review process. Final acceptance of papers is done in consultation with the Editors of the American Journal of Legal History.  A special issue typically has 5-6 regular length papers, plus editors’ introduction. Ready to send proposal?  Proposals and queries may be sent to ajlh.editorialoffice@theeditorialhub.com by November 30th, 2026

YouTube video by Richard Heppner Jr

How did the English parliament become a legislature—an assembly that deliberates, makes law, and represents a nation? In this wide-ranging and carefully argued reinterpretation, Matthew Steilen retrac...

ORDER by Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin in case 4:26-cv-03790-AMO; granting (169) Stipulation Not to Close in case 4:26-cv-07116-AMO; granting (71) Stipulation Not to Close in case 4:26-cv-07212-AMO. (...

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