This article considers absolute majority rules, which require the affirmative vote of a majority of all those eligible to vote in the institution. I compare absolute majority rules to simple majority rules under which only ...

What is the connection, if any, between the external perspective of the historian or political scientist and the internal perspective of lawyers and judges? That is the puzzle for constitutional law posed by Charles Beard’s ...

In Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., the Supreme Court created a new framework for judicial deference to agency interpretations of law: courts should defer to an agency interpretation unless ...

Chevron, U.S.A. v. Natural Resources Defense Council lays out a two-step process that courts must follow when they review a federal agency's construction of a federal statute. We argue that Chevron, rightly understood, has ...

This paper identifies two distinctive features of ancient constitutional design that have largely disappeared from the modern world: constitution-making by single individuals and constitution-making by foreigners. We ...

In the Commonwealth nations, a constitutional “convention” denotes an unwritten but obligatory constitutional custom or norm. The question I will address is whether public law in the United States should be understood to ...

Legal and constitutional theory has focused chiefly on the risk that voters and legislators will trust an ill-motivated executive. This paper addresses the risk that voters and legislators will fail to trust a well-motivated ...

In the textbooks, procedural due process is a strictly judicial enterprise; although substantive entitlements are created by legislative and executive action, it is for courts to decide independently what process the ...

An axiom of institutional design is known as the ally principle: all else equal, voters, legislators or other principals will rationally delegate more authority to agents who share their preferences (“allies”). The ally ...