Who Decides? States as Laboratories of Constitutional Experimentation.

• Date: 01 January 2023
• Author: Logue, Thomas
• Published date: 01 January 2023
• Author: Logue, Thomas

Who Decides? States as Laboratories of Constitutional Experimentation

By Jeffrey S. Sutton

This book delightfully surprises for both its message and its messenger. In it, one of our most prominent federal judges, Jeffrey Sutton, chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, reminds us that the U.S. Constitution represents only half of our constitutional tradition: The overlooked other half consists of state constitutions. Judge Sutton delves into what the structural differences between the federal and state constitutions mean for judicial review.

State constitutions are not just mini-U.S. constitutions. In a word, state constitutions are much more democratic. Sutton attributes this democratic trend as a reaction to the time most states spent as U.S. territories when their governors and judges were...