Michael Stokes Paulsen

Jan 10, 2025 | harvardlawreview.org | William Baude |Michael Stokes Paulsen

“Great cases,” the saying goes, “like hard cases make bad law.” The aphorism, from Justice Holmes’s dissent in the Northern Securities case, came with an explanation:Great cases like hard cases make bad law. For great cases are called great, not by reason of their real importance in shaping the law of the future, but because of some accident of immediate overwhelming interest which appeals to the feelings and distorts the judgment.

Jul 22, 2024 | thepublicdiscourse.com | Michael Stokes Paulsen

Someone should have told Richard Nixon. The president is above the law! A president can do anything he wants, as long as he is using his “core” constitutional powers to do what he is doing. This is true even if the president is deliberately misusing—even intentionally abusing—the powers of office.

Dec 4, 2023 | yalelawjournal.org | Michael Stokes Paulsen |Marc O. DeGirolami

Traditionalism is a constitutional theory that focuses on concrete political and cultural practices, and the endurance of those practices before, during, and after the ratification of the Constitution, as the presumptive determinants of constitutional meaning and constitutional law. The Supreme Court has long interpreted traditionally but now says explicitly that it uses a method of “text, history, and tradition” in several areas of constitutional law.