Positive and Negative Constitutionalism: The Right to Government Action
Why some constitutions only limit government while others command it to act—and what this reveals about constitutional design.
Constitutional Conventions: The Unwritten Rules That Make Written Constitutions Work
Written constitutions work only because unwritten rules fill their silences—and those rules are more fragile than we assumed
Originalism's Paradox: Can Dead Hands Bind Living Citizens?
Democratic self-governance demands consent, but originalism binds us to meanings fixed by generations who could never ask our permission.
Dignity: Constitutional Law's Contested Foundation
How constitutional law's most powerful concept remains its most philosophically contested
Rights Against the State, Rights Against Each Other: Constitutional Architecture of Private Power
When corporations govern like states, should constitutions constrain them like states?
Precommitment and Constitution: Ulysses, the Mast, and Democratic Self-Binding
Can a democratic people legitimately bind their future selves, and how do you design institutions to enforce such self-constraint?
Comparative Constitutional Reasoning: Learning from Legal Strangers
How constitutional courts can learn from foreign decisions without betraying democratic authorization or mistaking particular choices for universal requirements
Federalism's Hidden Logic: Why Central and Peripheral Powers Collide
How constitutional architecture transforms inevitable sovereignty conflicts into productive tensions that drive federal systems forward
The Constitutional Politics of Time: Entrenchment, Amendment, and Sunset
How constitutions bind future generations—and whether they legitimately can—shapes fundamental questions of democratic authority and constitutional design.
Judicial Review Without Supremacy: Alternative Models of Constitutional Enforcement
Why courts need not hold monopoly power over constitutional meaning, and how democracies worldwide distribute interpretive authority differently.
The Countermajoritarian Difficulty Reconsidered: Is Judicial Review Anti-Democratic?
How generations of constitutional theorists have grappled with unelected judges overruling democratic majorities—and why the answer depends on what democracy means.
Why Constitutions Fail: The Hidden Fragility of Supreme Law
Understanding why most constitutional orders collapse reveals what separates enduring frameworks from magnificent failures.
Constitutional Moments: How Fundamental Change Happens Outside Article V
Discover how transformative constitutional change actually occurs through extraordinary popular mobilization rather than formal amendment processes.
Representation Paradoxes: Who Speaks for the People?
Unraveling the constitutional tensions between delegates and trustees, preference transmission and transformative deliberation, in democratic governance.