William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal
Abstract
This Essay argues that constitutional law cannot (and should not) be an autonomous subject within the legal curriculum. This argument echoes a long-standing debate about whether law itself is an autonomous scholarly discipline. The answer to that question is surely, as Allan Farnsworth put it, “sometimes YES and sometimes NO.” But this Essay does not focus on law’s autonomy from other disciplines, such as political science, psychology, or economics. Rather, I consider the extent to which constitutional law should overlap with other legal subjects, such as legal history, administrative law, or statutory interpretation. My conclusion is that, at least in a broad introductory course, Constitutional Law should pull in a great deal of those other legal topics. I do not claim that this is a particularly revolutionary insight—I am, in fact, profoundly suspicious of revolutionary insights. But I don’t think we have always adequately considered why this is so, or the extent to which Constitutional Law can offer a unique perspective on those subjects.
The first two Parts of this Essay correspond to my two arguments for why Constitutional Law must incorporate other legal disciplines—that is, constitutional law’s particular connection to time and change and its almost inevitable incompleteness with respect to its central objects of creating institutions and defining rights. The last Part focuses on why those other legal disciplines may look different when considered in conjunction with constitutional law.
This abstract has been taken from the author's introduction.