William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal
Abstract
This collection of essays is the product of a conversation between the two co-authors of this Introduction. It occurred toward the conclusion of a very illuminating Symposium at William & Mary Law School in March 2024 on Jack Balkin’s latest book, Memory and Authority, on the role that memory plays in our notions of law. Caroline was the incoming Editor-in-Chief of the William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal, which had sponsored the Symposium. Sandy was a participant in the Symposium. Jack is a very close friend with whom he has coauthored at least two dozen articles and a book. But their most enduring collaboration has been as co-editors of a casebook, Processes of Constitutional Decisionmaking, whose ninth edition, in 2026, will mark a full half-century since its initial publication under the sole editorship of Paul Brest (a friend and teacher of Sandy at the Stanford Law School).
Sandy suggested to Caroline that an appropriate follow-up to the rich discussions about the importance—and contingency—of memory would be the close examination of the vehicles that account for the process of memory creation in legal education: casebooks. Anyone with even a minimal connection with legal education knows that there is a plethora of casebooks that differ from one another in interesting ways. Casebook editors inevitably (and properly) have agendas of their own with regard to what among the vast array of potential materials should actually be brought to the attention of students. And, of course, students have their own hopes and desires as to what they might be presented to learn (and to be bestowed upon).
This foreword traces the further development of the Symposium's themes, as evidenced in the issue's essays and dedicates the Symposium to Professors Fred Schauer and Richard Fallon, both recently deceased American constitutional law scholars.
This abstract has been taken from the text of the article.