The Constitution's Political Economy

Catalog description

Can be taken concurrently by LLM, JSD, or other non-JD students with permission from the instructor. Since the so-called New Deal Settlement of the late 1930s, courts have largely adhered to the view expressed by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. in his dissent in Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45, 75 (1905), that the Constitution does not embody a particular economic theory, whether of paternalism and the organic relation of the citizen to the State or of laissez faire. Nonetheless, issues of economic regulation remain fundamental to constitutional law-both within and outside the courts. This seminar explores some of those issues, with an emphasis on the relation between economics, the Constitution, and politics.