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Keith E. Whittington

Bio: Keith E. Whittington is an academic researcher from Princeton University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Supreme court & Politics. The author has an hindex of 17, co-authored 120 publications receiving 1627 citations. Previous affiliations of Keith E. Whittington include University Press of Kansas & The Catholic University of America.


Papers
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TL;DR: The authors examines the causes and dimensions of early twentieth century centralization in changing beliefs about government administration, the political response to economic consolidation, and perceptions of the moral value and political efficacy of local government.
Abstract: The constitutional concept of federalism has often been tied to nineteenth century judicial doctrine. When those doctrines were abandoned by the Roosevelt Court, federalism effectively lost constitutional meaning. Theories of federalism focusing on questions of constitutional authority were replaced with theories of intergovernmental relations focusing on the pragmatic administration of public policy. This paper illuminates our understanding of the "political constitution" through a reconsideration of twentieth century changes in federalism. At both a descriptive and a normative level, the overall structure of federalism responds to broad social and ideological forces. Centralizing and decentralizing political practices are structured and constrained by such forces. The paper examines the causes and dimensions of early twentieth century centralization in changing beliefs about government administration, the political response to economic consolidation, and perceptions of the moral value and political efficacy of local government. The paper then examines recent changes in each of these variables and their likely importance for American federalism. Fundamental constitutional changes need not be linked to doctrinal changes or emerge from mobilized popular deliberation, but can be the gradual response to other social and political decisions.

9 citations

Posted Content
TL;DR: The U.S. Supreme Court was more active in exercising the power to interpret the Constitution and limit the legislative authority of Congress than is conventionally recognized as discussed by the authors, and made itself available as a forum for resolving constitutional disputes and enforcing constitutional limits in low salience cases in the course of ordinary litigation, establishing judicial review of Congress as a regular if politically minor feature of the constitutional system.
Abstract: There is a standard story about the exercise of the power of judicial review by the U.S. Supreme Court before the Civil War. In this story, judicial review of Congress was exceptional and idiosyncratic, with Marbury and Dred Scott and little else. The standard story is wrong. This paper shows that the U.S. Supreme Court was more active in exercising the power to interpret the Constitution and limit the legislative authority of Congress than is conventionally recognized. In doing so, Court made itself available as a forum for resolving constitutional disputes and enforcing constitutional limits in low salience cases in the course of ordinary litigation, establishing judicial review of Congress as a regular if politically minor feature of the constitutional system. Uncovering this history not only corrects the historical records, but it contributes to our understanding of the politics of judicial review and the ways in which the Court often acts in partnership with political leaders.

9 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Waldron examined les fondements normatifs de la legislation comme forme du droit and inscrit celle-ci au sein d'une theorie generale de la politique and de la jurisprudence as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Presentation de deux ouvrages de J. Waldron consacres a la defense du corps legislatif : «La loi et le desaccord» (1992) et «La dignite de la legislation» (1999). Developpant une conception de la democratie liberale separee du modele constitutionnel americain, Waldron examine les fondements normatifs de la legislation comme forme du droit et inscrit celle-ci au sein d'une theorie generale de la politique et de la jurisprudence.

8 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, Whittington argued that ambiguities in the constitutional text and changes in the political situation push political actors to construct their own constitutional understanding, which is a necessary part of the political process and a regular part of American history.
Abstract: This text argues that the Constitution has a dual nature. The first aspect, on which legal scholars have focused, is the degree to which the Constitution acts as a binding set of rules that can be neutrally interpreted and externally enforced by the courts against government actors. This is the process of constitutional interpretation. But according to Keith Whittington, the Constitution also permeates politics itself, to guide and constrain political actors in the very process of making public policy. In so doing, it is also dependent on political actors, both to formulate authoritative constitutional requirements and to enforce those fundamental settlements in the future. Whittington characterizes this process, by which constitutional meaning is shaped within politics at the same time that politics is shaped by the Constitution, as one of construction as opposed to interpretation. Whittington goes on to argue that ambiguities in the constitutional text and changes in the political situation push political actors to construct their own constitutional understanding. The construction of constitutional meaning is a necessary part of the political process and a regular part of American history, how a democracy lives with a written constitution. The Constitution both binds and empowers government officials.

8 citations


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Book
01 Jan 1996
TL;DR: A review of the collected works of John Tate can be found in this paper, where the authors present two volumes of the Abel Prize for number theory, Parts I, II, edited by Barry Mazur and Jean-Pierre Serre.
Abstract: This is a review of Collected Works of John Tate. Parts I, II, edited by Barry Mazur and Jean-Pierre Serre. American Mathematical Society, Providence, Rhode Island, 2016. For several decades it has been clear to the friends and colleagues of John Tate that a “Collected Works” was merited. The award of the Abel Prize to Tate in 2010 added impetus, and finally, in Tate’s ninety-second year we have these two magnificent volumes, edited by Barry Mazur and Jean-Pierre Serre. Beyond Tate’s published articles, they include five unpublished articles and a selection of his letters, most accompanied by Tate’s comments, and a collection of photographs of Tate. For an overview of Tate’s work, the editors refer the reader to [4]. Before discussing the volumes, I describe some of Tate’s work. 1. Hecke L-series and Tate’s thesis Like many budding number theorists, Tate’s favorite theorem when young was Gauss’s law of quadratic reciprocity. When he arrived at Princeton as a graduate student in 1946, he was fortunate to find there the person, Emil Artin, who had discovered the most general reciprocity law, so solving Hilbert’s ninth problem. By 1920, the German school of algebraic number theorists (Hilbert, Weber, . . .) together with its brilliant student Takagi had succeeded in classifying the abelian extensions of a number field K: to each group I of ideal classes in K, there is attached an extension L of K (the class field of I); the group I determines the arithmetic of the extension L/K, and the Galois group of L/K is isomorphic to I. Artin’s contribution was to prove (in 1927) that there is a natural isomorphism from I to the Galois group of L/K. When the base field contains an appropriate root of 1, Artin’s isomorphism gives a reciprocity law, and all possible reciprocity laws arise this way. In the 1930s, Chevalley reworked abelian class field theory. In particular, he replaced “ideals” with his “idèles” which greatly clarified the relation between the local and global aspects of the theory. For his thesis, Artin suggested that Tate do the same for Hecke L-series. When Hecke proved that the abelian L-functions of number fields (generalizations of Dirichlet’s L-functions) have an analytic continuation throughout the plane with a functional equation of the expected type, he saw that his methods applied even to a new kind of L-function, now named after him. Once Tate had developed his harmonic analysis of local fields and of the idèle group, he was able prove analytic continuation and functional equations for all the relevant L-series without Hecke’s complicated theta-formulas. Received by the editors September 5, 2016. 2010 Mathematics Subject Classification. Primary 01A75, 11-06, 14-06. c ©2017 American Mathematical Society

2,014 citations

Posted Content
TL;DR: McQueen et al. as mentioned in this paper presented a special symposium issue of Social Identities under the editorship of Griffith University's Rob McQueen and UBC's Wes Pue and with contributions from McQueen, Ian Duncanson, Renisa Mawani, David Williams, Emma Cunliffe, Chidi Oguamanam, W. Wesley Pue, Fatou Camara, and Dianne Kirkby.
Abstract: Scholars of culture, humanities and social sciences have increasingly come to an appreciation of the importance of the legal domain in social life, while critically engaged socio-legal scholars around the world have taken up the task of understanding "Law's Empire" in all of its cultural, political, and economic dimensions. The questions arising from these intersections, and addressing imperialisms past and present forms the subject matter of a special symposium issue of Social Identities under the editorship of Griffith University's Rob McQueen, and UBC's Wes Pue and with contributions from McQueen, Ian Duncanson, Renisa Mawani, David Williams, Emma Cunliffe, Chidi Oguamanam, W. Wesley Pue, Fatou Camara, and Dianne Kirkby. This paper introduces the volume, forthcoming in late 2007. The central problematique of this issue has previously been explored through the 2005 Law's Empire conference, an informal but vibrant postcolonial legal studies network.

1,813 citations

MonographDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine three constitutional courts in Asia: Taiwan, Korea and Mongolia, and argue that the design and functioning of constitutional review are largely a function of politics and interests.
Abstract: New democracies around the world have adopted constitutional courts to oversee the operation of democratic politics. Where does judicial power come from, how does it develop in the early stages of democratic liberalization, and what political conditions support its expansion? This book answers these questions through an examination of three constitutional courts in Asia: Taiwan, Korea, and Mongolia. In a region that has traditionally viewed law as a tool of authoritarian rulers, constitutional courts in these three societies are becoming a real constraint on government. In contrast with conventional culturalist accounts, this book argues that the design and functioning of constitutional review are largely a function of politics and interests. Judicial review - the power of judges to rule an act of a legislature or national leader unconstitutional - is a solution to the problem of uncertainty in constitutional design. By providing 'insurance' to prospective electoral losers, judicial review can facilitate democracy.

737 citations