The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, on March 4, 1789. Originally including seven articles, the Constitution delineates the national frame and constrains the powers of the federal government. The Constitution's first three articles embody the doctrine of the separation of powers, in which the federal government is divided into three branches: the legislative, consisting of the bicameral Congress ; the executive, consisting of the president and subordinate officers ; and the judicial, consisting of the Supreme Court and other federal courts. Article IV, Article V, and Article VI embody concepts of federalism, describing the rights and responsibilities of state governments, the states in relationship to the federal government, and the shared process of constitutional amendment. Article VII establishes the procedure subsequently used by the 13 states to ratify it. The Constitution of the United States is the oldest and longest-standing written and codified national constitution in force in the world.
The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies (FedSoc) is an American conservative and libertarian legal organization that advocates for a textualist and originalist interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., it has chapters at more than 200 law schools and features student, lawyer, and faculty divisions; the lawyers division comprises more than 70,000 practicing attorneys in ninety cities. Through speaking events, lectures, and other activities, it provides a forum for legal experts of opposing conservative views to interact with members of the legal profession, the judiciary, and the legal academy. It is one of the most influential legal organizations in the United States.
Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944), was a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that upheld the internment of Japanese Americans from the West Coast Military Area during World War II. The decision has been widely criticized, with some scholars describing it as "an odious and discredited artifact of popular bigotry", and as "a stain on American jurisprudence". The case is often cited as one of the worst Supreme Court decisions of all time. Chief Justice John Roberts repudiated the Korematsu decision in his majority opinion in the 2018 case of Trump v. Hawaii.
Originalism is a method of constitutional and statutory interpretation. Originalists assert that legal text should be interpreted based on the original understanding at the time of adoption. Originalists object to the idea of the significant legal evolution being driven by judges in a common law framework and instead favor modifications of laws through the Legislature or through Constitutional amendment.
Akhil Reed Amar is an American legal scholar known for his expertise in constitutional law. He holds the position of Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University, where he is a leading scholar of originalism, the U.S. Bill of Rights, and criminal procedure.
The Living Constitution, or judicial pragmatism, is the viewpoint that the U.S. constitution holds a dynamic meaning even if the document is not formally amended. The Constitution is said to develop alongside society's needs and provide a more malleable tool for governments. The idea is associated with views that contemporary society should be considered in the constitutional interpretation of phrases. The Constitution is referred to as the living law of the land as it is transformed according to necessities of the time and the situation. Some supporters of the living method of interpretation, such as professors Michael Kammen and Bruce Ackerman, refer to themselves as organists.
David E. Bernstein is a law professor at the George Mason University School of Law in Arlington, Virginia, where he has taught since 1995. His primary areas of scholarly research are constitutional history and the admissibility of expert testimony. Bernstein is a contributor to the legal blog The Volokh Conspiracy. Bernstein is a graduate of the Yale Law School, where he was a John M. Olin Fellow in Law, Economics and Public Policy, a Claude Lambe Fellow of the Institute for Humane Studies, and a senior editor of the Yale Law Journal. He received his undergraduate degree from Brandeis University.
Mark Victor Tushnet is an American legal scholar. He specializes in constitutional law and theory, including comparative constitutional law, and is currently the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Tushnet is identified with the critical legal studies movement.
Jack M. Balkin is an American legal scholar. He is the Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment at Yale Law School. Balkin is the founder and director of the Yale Information Society Project (ISP), a research center whose mission is "to study the implications of the Internet, telecommunications, and the new information technologies for law and society." He also directs the Knight Law and Media Program and the Abrams Institute for Free Expression at Yale Law School.
Constitutional theory is an area of constitutional law that focuses on the underpinnings of constitutional government. It overlaps with legal theory, constitutionalism, philosophy of law and democratic theory. It is not limited by country or jurisdiction.
The "rights of Englishmen" are the traditional rights of English subjects and later English-speaking subjects of the British Crown.
Cornelius Adrian Comstock Vermeule is an American legal scholar who is currently the Ralph S. Tyler Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School. He is an expert on constitutional and administrative law, and, since 2016, has voiced support for Catholic integralism. He has articulated this into his theory of common-good constitutionalism.
Bruce Fein is an American lawyer who specializes in constitutional and international law. Fein has written numerous articles on constitutional issues for The Washington Times, Slate.com, The New York Times, The Huffington Post and Legal Times, and is active on civil liberties issues. He has worked for the American Enterprise Institute and The Heritage Foundation, both conservative think tanks, as an analyst and commentator.
Pamela Susan Karlan is an American legal scholar who was the principal deputy assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice from February 8, 2021 until July 1, 2022. She is a professor at Stanford Law School. A leading legal scholar on voting rights and constitutional law, she previously served as U.S. Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Voting Rights in the DOJ's Civil Rights Division from 2014 to 2015.
Steven Gow Calabresi is an American legal scholar and the Clayton J. and Henry R. Barber Professor of Law at Northwestern University. He is the co-chairman of the Federalist Society. He is the nephew of Guido Calabresi, a U.S. Appellate judge and former dean of the Yale Law School.
Charles Howard McIlwain was an American historian and political scientist. He won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1924. He was educated at Princeton University and Harvard University and taught at both institutions, as well as the University of Oxford, Miami University, and Bowdoin College. Though he trained as a lawyer, his career was mostly academic, devoted to constitutional history. He was a member of several learned societies and served as president of the American Historical Association in 1935–1936.
Constitutionalism is "a compound of ideas, attitudes, and patterns of behavior elaborating the principle that the authority of government derives from and is limited by a body of fundamental law".
The Constitutional Accountability Center(CAC) is a non-profit think tank located in Washington, D.C., that seeks to advance a progressive interpretation of the Constitution of the United States. The group has filed numerous lawsuits against former President Donald Trump.
An unconstitutional constitutional amendment is a concept in judicial review based on the idea that even a properly passed and properly ratified constitutional amendment, specifically one that is not explicitly prohibited by a constitution's text, can nevertheless be unconstitutional on substantive grounds—such as due to this amendment conflicting with some constitutional or even extra-constitutional norm, value, and/or principle. As Israeli legal academic Yaniv Roznai's 2017 book Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendments: The Limits of Amendment Powers demonstrates, the unconstitutional constitutional amendment doctrine has been adopted by various courts and legal scholars in various countries throughout history. While this doctrine has generally applied specifically to constitutional amendments, there have been moves and proposals to also apply this doctrine to original parts of a constitution.
Keith E. Whittington is an American political scientist and legal scholar. He has been the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics at Princeton University since 2006. In July 2024, he will join the Yale Law School faculty. Whittington's research focuses on American constitutionalism, American political and constitutional history, judicial politics, the presidency, and free speech and the law.
