Faculty Bibliography
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This brief Essay examines the relationship between so-called first, second, and third generation rights. It is often thought that second and third generation rights supplement and deepen the commitments to human flourishing that underlie first generation rights. The Essay argues that the generations of rights have rather different conceptual underpinnings and that there may be serious conflicts among particular realizations of first, second, and third generation rights. An optimization strategy of the sort suggested by Robert Alexy, suitably adapted, might provide some ad hoc solutions, but it may be that the generations of rights ultimately are irreconcilable (in the large, though of course not in many particular instances).
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This chapter considers some aspects of the Indian Constitution and its judicial interpretation, as seen from abroad. To this end, it discusses a number of topics that compare India’s constitutional experience with those of other countries, beginning with unconstitutional constitutional amendments and the ‘Basic Structure’ doctrine. It then explores public interest litigation, affirmative action and reservations, and finally the mechanisms by which judicial independence has been secured in India. It also comments on the contentious relationship between constitutional courts and political elites in other institutions. The chapter concludes by noting how constitutional developments, including the growth of constitutional doctrine, are intertwined with a nation’s overall political system, especially the party system in place.
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Traditionally, two general methods have been used to make constitutional law. The first involves creating a constitutional text, and has been done by constituent assemblies convened especially for that purpose or by legislatures either proposing replacement constitutions or more limited constitutional amendments. The second involves interpreting existing constitutional texts, and has been done by specialized constitutional courts or generalist courts. After describing briefly what we know about how constitutional law is made by these traditional methods, this essay turns to some recent innovations in making constitutional law, which I describe generically as involving substantially higher levels of public participation than in the traditional methods: the process of drafting a proposed new constitution for Iceland, and the practice of "public hearings" in the Brazilian Supreme Federal Court. My aim is to identify some features of these newer methods that might be of interest to scholars of comparative constitutional law. For that reason, the essay paints in deliberately broad strokes, isolating features that may point in the direction of a more general understanding of constitution-making processes while ignoring features that may play crucial roles in the two specific processes on which I focus.
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What are the rights of religious institutions? Should those rights extend to for-profit corporations? Houses of worship have claimed they should be free from anti-discrimination laws in hiring and firing ministers and other employees. Faith-based institutions, including hospitals and universities, have sought exemptions from requirements to provide contraception. Now, in a surprising development, large for-profit corporations have succeeded in asserting rights to religious free exercise. The Rise of Corporate Religious Liberty explores this "corporate" turn in law and religion. Drawing on a broad range perspectives, this book examines the idea of "freedom of the church," the rights of for-profit corporations, and the implications of the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby for debates on anti-discrimination law, same-sex marriage, health care, and religious freedom. -- Back cover.
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Mark Tushnet, Tocqueville’s Nightmare: Institutional and Intellectual, 129 Harv. L. Rev. 122 (2016) (response to Jeremy K. Kessler, The Struggle for Administrative Legitimacy, 129 Harv. L. Rev. 718 (2016)).
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Mark Tushnet, Politics as Rational Deliberation or Theater: A Response to ‘Institutional Flip-Flops’, 94 Tex. L. Rev. See Also 82 (2016).
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Approaching the concept of Islamic constitutionalism from a comparative perspective, this thought-provoking study by Antoni Abat i Ninet and Mark Tushnet uses traditional Western political theory as a lens to develop a framework for analyzing the events known as the 'Arab Spring'. Writing with clarity and insight, the authors place Western and Arabic traditions into a constructive dialogue. They focus on whether we can develop a 'theory of revolutions' that helps us understand events occurring at divergent times at geographically separate locations. This question is meticulously analyzed through the detailed examination of specific developments relevant to the ideas of revolution and constitutionalism in several nations affected by the Arab Spring. Case studies focus on Morocco and Libya as examples of unsuccessful revolutions, as well as Tunisia and Egypt. These lead the authors to consider the nature of constitutionalism itself and the concept of illiberal but non-authoritarian constitutions: a particularly pressing concern given the prominent contemporary discussions of the role of shari'a in post-Arab Spring constitutions. The Arab Spring will offer new insights to scholars, researchers and students of law and the political sciences, in particular those focusing on theories of revolution, democracy, constitutional law, Islamic constitutionalism and legal theory.
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Although the field of constitutional law has become increasingly comparative in recent years, its geographic focus has remained limited. South Asia, despite being the site of the world's largest democracy and a vibrant if turbulent constitutionalism, is one of the important neglected regions within the field. This book remedies this lack of attention by providing a detailed examination of constitutional law and practice in five South Asian countries: India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Bangladesh. Identifying a common theme of volatile change, it develops the concept of 'unstable constitutionalism', studying the sources of instability alongside reactions and responses to it. By highlighting unique theoretical and practical questions in an underrepresented region, Unstable Constitutionalism constitutes an important step toward truly global constitutional scholarship.
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"This is the second edition of Professor Mark Tushnet's excellent short critical introduction to the history and current meaning of the United States' Constitution. It is organized around two themes: first, the US Constitution is old, short, and difficult to amend. These characteristics have made constitutional 'interpretation' - especially by the US Supreme Court - the primary mechanism for adapting the Constitution to ever-changing reality. Second, the Constitution creates a structure of political opportunities that allows political actors, including political parties, to pursue the preferred policy goals, even to the point of altering the very structure of politics. Politics, that is, often gives meaning to the Constitution. Deploying these themes to examine the structure of the national government, federalism, judicial review, and individual rights, the book provides basic information about, and deeper insights into, the way the US constitutional system has developed and what it means today." --Amazon
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The Oxford Handbook of the U.S. Constitution offers a comprehensive overview and introduction to the U.S. Constitution from the perspectives of history, political science, law, rights, and constitutional themes, while focusing on its development, structures, rights, and role in the U.S. political system and culture. This Handbook enables readers within and beyond the U.S. to develop a critical comprehension of the literature on the Constitution, along with accessible and up-to-date analysis. The historical essays included in this Handbook cover the Constitution from 1620 right through the Reagan Revolution to the present. Essays on political science detail how contemporary citizens in the United States rely extensively on political parties, interest groups, and bureaucrats to operate a constitution designed to prevent the rise of parties, interest-group politics, and an entrenched bureaucracy. The essays on law explore how contemporary citizens appear to expect and accept the exertions of power by a Supreme Court, whose members are increasingly disconnected from the world of practical politics. Essays on rights discuss how contemporary citizens living in a diverse multi-racial society seek guidance on the meaning of liberty and equality from a Constitution originally designed for a society in which all politically relevant persons shared the same race, gender, religion, and ethnicity. Lastly, the essays on themes explain how in a "globalized" world, people living in the United States can continue to be governed by a constitution originally meant for a society geographically separated from the rest of the "civilized world." Whether a return to the pristine constitutional institutions of the founding or a translation of these constitutional norms in the present is possible remains the central challenge of U.S. constitutionalism today
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Mark Tushnet, Peasants with Pitchforks, and Toilers with Twitter, 13 Int'l. J. Const. L. 639 (2015).
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This essay argues that invoking the concept of the “constituent power” clarifies some persistent puzzles about the constitutional and legal status of purportedly unconstitutional constitutional amendments. It argues that in some circumstances such amendments should be understood as exercises of the constituent power, effecting revolutionary transformations in a nation’s constitutional identity but—sometimes—through the forms of legality. The essay distinguishes between a purely conceptual version of the constituent power and a more sociological or real-world version, and argues that the former is superior to the latter.
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"The first paperback edition of a classic of American constitutional theory. The book is divided into two parts. In Part I Professor Tushnet appraises the five major competing "grand theories" of constitutional law and interpretation, and, argues that none of them satisfy their own requirements for coherence and judicial constraint. In Part II the author offers a descriptive sociology of constitutional doctrine and raises critical questions as to whether a grand theory is necessary, is it possible to construct a coherent, useful grand theory, and is construction of an uncontroversial grand theory possible? Professor Tushnet's new Afterword is organized in parallel fashion to the original text. Part I offers a new survey of the contemporary terrain of constitutional interpretation. Part II provides an extended discussion of the most prominent of contemporary efforts to provide an external analysis of constitutional law, the idea of regime politics. This includes discussion of major court decisions, including Bush v. Gore and Citizens United"-- Provided by publisher.
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Traditionally, two general methods have been used to make constitutional law. The first involves creating a constitutional text, and has been done by constituent assemblies convened especially for that purpose or by legislatures either proposing replacement constitutions or more limited constitutional amendments. The second involves interpreting existing constitutional texts, and has been done by specialized constitutional courts or generalist courts. After describing briefly what we know about how constitutional law is made by these traditional methods, this essay turns to some recent innovations in making constitutional law, which I describe generically as involving substantially higher levels of public participation than in the traditional methods: the process of drafting a proposed new constitution for Iceland, and the practice of "public hearings" in the Brazilian Supreme Federal Court. My aim is to identify some features of these newer methods that might be of interest to scholars of comparative constitutional law. For that reason, the essay paints in deliberately broad strokes, isolating features that may point in the direction of a more general understanding of constitution-making processes while ignoring features that may play crucial roles in the two specific processes on which I focus.
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This essay offers an overview of US civil rights policy from the nineteenth century to the present. The expansion of the range of substantive interests covered by the term “civil rights” has been accompanied by an increasing emphasis on the connection between equality and civil rights. From the late nineteenth century through the first half of the twentieth, the term referred to racial equality with respect to whatever fit into the category, whether property rights, the right to vote, or social rights. Starting roughly in the middle of the twentieth century, “civil rights” began to be connected to other categories, such as gender, religion, sexual orientation, and by the twenty-first century quite a bit more. After examining the history of the idea and its implementation, the essay concludes with a discussion of contemporary controversies over disparate impact versus disparate treatment, affirmative action, and accommodation mandates.
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This brief essay serves as an introduction to a volume of studies by Latin American scholars of constitutional law and theory responding to themes in my work. It outlines the jurisprudential and historical-political background against which my work developed, stressing the important roles played by American Legal Realism and the politics of the 1960s in shaping my thinking. The essay explains how my interest in populist constitutional law and dialogic forms of constitutional review emerged from the same background, but was strengthened by an interest in comparative constitutional law that I developed in the 1990s.
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The author discusses the special kind of presidential power called imperial presidency termed by American historian Arthur Schlesinger that led U.S. into war on the president's terms. He states that the position of the imperial presidency in international affairs will be secure as long as U.S. foreign policymakers preserves the nation's harmonic role in the world and its position can be dangerous as the world is in stake of war. He also mentions Stephen Griffin's authored book "Long Wars and the Constitution" that discusses the creation of the National Security State in the U.S. during the Cold War.
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Mark Tushnet, "Accommodation of Religion" Thirty Years On, 38 Harv. J.L. & Gender 1 (2015).
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Legal scholars and political theorists interested in constitutionalism as a normative concept tend to dichotomize the subject. There is liberal constitutionalism of the sort familiar in the modern West, with core commitments to human rights and self-governance implemented by means of varying institutional devices, and there is authoritarianism, rejecting human rights entirely and governed by unconstrained power-holders. This Article explores the possibility of forms of constitutionalism other than liberal constitutionalism. The Article focuses on what I call authoritarian constitutionalism. That discussion is connected to recent literature in political science on hybrid regimes. Drawing on these literatures, this Article outlines some characteristics of authoritarian constitutionalism understood normatively. The reason for such an exploration parallels that for the analysis of hybrid regimes. For a period those regimes were described as transitional, on the assumption that they were an intermediate point on a trajectory from authoritarianism to liberal democracy. Scholars have come to understand that we are better off seeing these regimes as a distinct type (or as several distinct types), as stable as many democracies. In short, they have pluralized the category of regime types. Similarly, I suggest, pluralizing the category of constitutionalism will enhance understanding by allowing us to draw distinctions between regimes that should be normatively distinguished. I begin with a brief description of three forms of constitutionalism other than liberal constitutionalism. In absolutist constitutionalism, a single decision-maker motivated by an interest in the nation’s well-being consults widely and protects civil liberties generally, but in the end decides on a course of action in the decision-maker’s sole discretion, unchecked by any other institutions. In mere rule-of-law constitutionalism, the decision-maker conforms with some general procedural requirements and implements decisions through, among other things, independent courts, but is not constrained by any substantive rules regarding, for example, civil liberties. Finally, in authoritarian constitutionalism liberal freedoms are protected at an intermediate level and elections are reasonably free and fair. The Article proceeds by describing in Part II Singapore’s constitutionalism, to motivate the later consideration of a more generalized account of authoritarian constitutionalism. Beginning the effort to pluralize the idea of constitutionalism, Part III examines the role of constitutions and courts in absolutist nations and in nations with mere rule-of-law constitutionalism. Part IV is deflationary, arguing against some political scientists’ instrumental or strategic accounts of constitutions, courts, and elections in nations with fully authoritarian systems, where liberal freedoms are not generally respected. The Part implicitly suggests that whatever semblance of true constitutionalism there is in such nations results from normative commitments by authoritarian rulers. Part V lays out some general characteristics of authoritarian constitutionalism, again with the goal of suggesting that authoritarian constitutionalism may best be defined by attributing moderately strong normative commitments to constitutionalism – not strategic calculations – to those controlling these nations. The upshot of Parts III through V is that either (a) the commitment to constitutionalism in all authoritarian regimes is a sham, or (b) at least some of them – the ones I label “authoritarian constitutionalist” – might have a normative commitment to constitutionalism. Part VI concludes with the suggestion that authoritarian constitutionalism has some normative attractions, at least in nations where the alternative of authoritarianism is more likely than that of liberal democracy.
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Mark Tushnet, Observations on the Politics of “Best Practices” in Constitutional Advice Giving, 50 Wake Forest L. Rev. 843 (2015).
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This volume is the product of a collaborative project by multiple authors, most of whom are affiliated with academic institutions in Germany. The book's chapters examine the culture of constitutionalism in France, Germany, the United States, and Mexico, with some glances at other nations in Latin America, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, again with some glances at later periods.
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"Mark Tushnet, a world-renowned scholar of constitutional law, presents an introduction to comparative constitutional law through an analysis of topics at the cutting-edge of contemporary scholarship. His authoritative study investigates constitution making, including the problem of unconstitutional constitutional amendments; recent developments in forms of constitutional review, including 'the battle of the courts'; proportionality analysis and its alternatives; and the emergence of a new 'transparency' branch in constitutions around the world. Throughout, the book draws upon examples from a wide range of nations, demonstrating that the field of comparative constitutional law now truly encompasses the world." -- Publisher's description.
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Vicki C. Jackson & Mark Tushnet, Comparative Constitutional Law (Found. Press 3d ed. 2014).
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Mark Tushnet, New York Times v. Sullivan Around the World, 66 Ala. L. Rev. 337 (2014).
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Mark Tushnet, The Affordable Care Act and American Constitutional Development, 62 Drake L. Rev. 1079 (2014).
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This article uses the Supreme Court's recent decision in Crosby v. National Foreign Trade Council as the vehicle for examining the constitutional law of federalism in the context of a globalized economy. After arguing that globalization carries with it no necessary implications for federalism, so that different federal systems can develop different responses to globalization, it examines the U.S. constitutional law of federalism and preemption. Its analysis of preemption law as articulated in Crosby suggests that there is an as-yet unresolved tension between the Court's neutral approach to preemption law and its new doctrines of federalism. It argues that preemption can be seen as a form of negative commandeering analogous to the affirmative commandeering that the Court found constitutionally impermissible in Printz, and that prior efforts to resolve that tension are unsuccessful. The article concludes that globalization does require some sort of preemption law in a federal system where the basic laws of contract and property are developed by a nation's component units, but that a doctrine giving some sort of immunity to states from preemption could be compatible with globalization and, arguably, more compatible with Printz than a doctrine, seemingly endorsed in Crosby, that gives states no such immunity at all.