External links
- Mike Seidman's Georgetown University Law Center page
- Roberts, Russ (February 4, 2013). "Seidman on the Constitution". EconTalk . Library of Economics and Liberty.
- Appearances on C-SPAN
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Louis Michael Seidman | |
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| Born | 1947 (age 76–77) [1] |
| School | Critical Theory |
Main interests | Legal philosophy |
Notable ideas | Critical Legal Studies, theory of constitutional unsettlement |
Louis Michael Seidman (born 1947) is the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Constitutional Law at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C.. He is a constitutional law scholar and major proponent of the critical legal studies movement. Seidman's 2012 work is On Constitutional Disobedience, [2] where Seidman challenges the viability of political policy arguments made in reference to constitutional obligation.
Seidman received an A.B. from University of Chicago and a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1971. After graduation, he clerked for D.C. Circuit Judge Skelly Wright and later clerked for Justice Thurgood Marshall. Following his clerkship, Seidman joined the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia. [3]
Seidman is known for his contributions to constitutional legal theory, principally his theory of unsettlement put forward in his book Our Unsettled Constitution: A New Defense of Constitutionalism and Judicial Review (Yale 2001). [4] Drawing from the critical legal studies indeterminacy thesis, Seidman argues that because constitutional law cannot settle fundamental political disputes, constitutional legal discourse and judicial review instead act to "unsettle" them. Rather than resolving conflicts definitively, the temporary resolution of any controversy in constitutional law through judicial review leaves open the possibility that the losing side may make an equally plausible alternative constitutional argument. In this way, both the prevailing and losing sides in a dispute recognize their positions as unstable and subject to revision within the recognized standards of legal argument. As a result, both winners and losers have reasons to continue their debate within the framework of constitutional law, thereby keeping all parties at the table and consolidating the legal system.
Seidman's defense of judicial review provided a counterpoint within the critical legal studies school to his colleague and sometime collaborator Mark Tushnet's attack on judicial review as undemocratic.
In addition to Seidman's theory of judicial review, he is also known for his constitutional law casebook, co-authored with Pamela Karlan, Mark Tushnet, Geoffrey Stone and Cass Sunstein. [4] Seidman is also noted for his work in criminal law and his book Silence and Freedom. [5]
In 2009, Seidman was interviewed on Fora tv about healthcare policy in the United States, defending the constitutionality of the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act against right-wing and pro-corporate criticism. [6]
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