William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal
Repository Citation
Neal Devins, The Political Dynamics of Constitutional Law, 34 Wm. & Mary Bill Rts. J. 469 (2025), https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmborj/vol34/iss2/11
COinS
Comments
Robert Bork’s nomination to the Supreme Court and his defeat highlight the defining role that the President and Congress frequently play in shaping the Constitution’s meaning. It was a pivotal moment in my career; it convinced me and my mentor, Lou Fisher, that we should put together a book highlighting how elected government plays a pivotal role in shaping the real-world meaning of the Constitution. In 1992, West published that book—Political Dynamics of Constitutional Law. The Bork confirmation saga was one of forty-four case studies in that book. In 2019, we published the sixth edition of Political Dynamics.
Over the years, Lou and I repeatedly made the case for expanding the Constitutional Law course to take political context into account. In this Essay, I want to revisit that argument. In so doing, I will (yet again) make the case for expanding the Constitutional Law class to better understand the workings of elected government and how it is that Supreme Court decisions cannot be fully understood in an ahistorical bubble. I will also argue that the supposed crisis in teaching constitutional law is somewhat (but not completely) overblown. In critical respects, we have traveled this road before; at the same time, the partisan divide that dominates our understanding of today’s Court distinguishes today’s rebooting from previous “regime changes.”
This abstract has been taken from the author's introduction.