Posts by Akhil Rajasekar
Publisher’s Note: Election Issue
An underappreciated comfort of being elected Publisher for a presidential election year lies in the certitude that one of the year’s issues will concern the election, which in turn makes for one less issue theme to be brainstormed by the editorial team. If this observation approaches the stature of a rule, it is because elections…
Read MoreThe Lawsplainer: The Definitive Nature of the Federal Judicial Power
The following is an opinion contribution and reflects the author’s views alone. The Great Chief Justice, John Marshall, is so reverently titled for a variety of reasons. While his intellectual fortitude and analytical rigor have been nearly unmatched in the centuries since his service, his greatest impact on the Court is not found in these…
Read MoreThe Lawsplainer: John Marshall and the Jurisprudence of Necessity
The following is an opinion contribution and reflects the author’s views alone. It is a common grievance of the modern political era that too much of American law is too deeply entangled with politics. We routinely accuse judges of harboring ulterior political motives, chastise legal interest groups for attempting to circumvent the political process, and…
Read MoreThe Lawsplainer: The Case Against Birthright Citizenship
Courtesy of Jeff Turner via Flickr.com The following is an opinion contribution and reflects the author’s views alone. It is no controversial assertion that the Trump Administration’s words and actions have raised serious questions about constitutional provisions and principles long believed to be settled. The Administration has faced perhaps the greatest resistance in its approach…
Read MoreThe Lawsplainer: A Matter of Nondelegation
The following is an opinion contribution and reflects the author’s views alone. The doctrine of nondelegation has in recent years increasingly become a mainstay of conservative and libertarian jurisprudence. This counterrevolution against the bureaucratic hedonism of the federal administrative state crescendoed most recently with the appointment of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court of the…
Read MoreThe Case Against D.C. Statehood
The following is an opinion contribution and reflects the author’s views alone. In the latest episode of let’s-reshape-institutions-that-make-us-lose, Democrats have turned on the “insufficiently democratic” Senate. The new brand of complaint has now evolved into an argument for District of Columbia statehood. The argument runs like this: D.C. has a population of about 700,000 people.…
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