Preface.

AuthorProctor, Ryan M.

Over the past two years, the federal judiciary has increasingly come into public view. From the travel ban to the 2020 census to DACA, warring political factions have turned to the courts to settle their disagreements on fundamental national questions. The nominations of both Journal alumnus Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court turned into highly publicized partisan political struggles, with both Justices being confirmed by narrow, nearly party-line votes. In such times, a proper understanding of the Constitution, the principles motivating it, and the role of judges in interpreting it is especially worthy of study. Scholars and judges from around the country addressed these issues and more in the Thirty-Seventh Annual Federalist Society Student Symposium in March 2018.

This Issue of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy includes eight Essays from the Symposium. Justice Clint Bolick of the Arizona Supreme Court and Mr. Edward Whelan debate the merits of the presumption of constitutionality in statutory interpretation. Professors Randy Barnett, John Mikhail, and Lee Strang discuss what role, if any, the Declaration of Independence should have in interpreting the Constitution. Professor John Yoo examines the President's power to reverse the actions of his predecessors. Professor Kurt Lash makes the case that the Fourteenth Amendment did not, as is commonly argued, disrupt the basic principles of federalism originally enshrined in the Constitution. Lastly, Professor John McGinnis reflects on the amendment process established by Article V.

The first Article of this Issue, by Professor Craig Lerner, continues the Symposium's theme of examining the first principles of the Constitution and judges' role in interpreting it. He considers Justice Scalia's Eighth Amendment jurisprudence, arguing that the late Justice's "sake-of-argument" originalism failed to reconcile original meaning with nonoriginalist...

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