Academic

Albert on the Next Constitutional Revolution & Justice Thomas

By Lawrence Solum

Richard Albert (Boston College - Law School) has posted The Next Constitutional Revolution (University of Detroit Mercy Law Review, Vol. 88, No. 4, 2011) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

In these brief reflections presented at the University of Detroit Mercy Law Review?s March 2011 Symposium on ?Celebrating an Anniversary: A Twenty-Year Review of Justice Clarence Thomas? Jurisprudence and Contributions as an Associate Justice on the United States Supreme Court,? I advance the view that the history of the United States is a series of constitutional revolutions that have defined and redefined the nation and its people. I illustrate how constitutional revolutions have shaped the United States using three different examples of revolution leadership: legislative, presidential, and judicial. My objective is to suggest that America may now find itself on the cusp of yet another constitutional revolution ? a modern conservative constitutional revolution that could change much of what lies at the foundation of the United States Constitution.

The constitutional revolutionary leading this transformative movement is neither a president nor a legislator nor an amorphous aggregation of political interests. It is instead a single, and indeed singular, individual who currently sits on the Supreme Court of the United States: Clarence Thomas. His judgments have come to constitute the intellectual core of a persistent movement to return the United States to its founding confederate design. The battle pitting nation-centric federalism versus state-centric confederalism may be the next frontier in American constitutional law.

Recommended.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on March 25, 2011 (boomark / email).