Sanford Levinson | |
---|---|
![]() Levinson in 2017 | |
Born | |
Alma mater | Duke University (BA) Harvard University (PhD) Stanford University (JD) |
Known for | Our Undemocratic Constitution |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Constitutional law |
Institutions | University of Texas |
Sanford Victor Levinson (born June 17, 1941) is an American legal scholar known for his writings on constitutional law. A professor at the University of Texas Law School, Levinson is notable for his criticism of the United States Constitution as well as excessive presidential power [1] and has been widely quoted on such topics as the Second Amendment, gay marriage, nominations to the Supreme Court, and other legal issues. He has called for a Second Constitutional Convention of the United States.
Levinson was born in 1941 in Hendersonville, North Carolina. [2] He is Jewish. [3] Levinson graduated from Duke University with an A.B. in 1962, then earned a Ph.D. in government from Harvard University in 1969. He then attended the Stanford Law School, graduating with a J.D. in 1973. [4] [5] [6]
Levinson was a member of the department of Politics at Princeton. [4] [7] Levinson taught law at Georgetown, Yale, Harvard, New York University, Boston University, [4] Central European University in Budapest[ dubious ], Panthéon-Assas University, the Hebrew University in Jerusalem., [6] [8] Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem [9] London, Auckland and Melbourne. [5] In 2001, Levinson was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. [7] In 2010, he was given the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Law and Courts Section of the American Political Science Association. [5] In 1980, he joined the University of Texas School of Law at Austin, Texas, where he is also a professor of government. He holds the W. St. John Garwood and W. St. John Garwood Jr. Centennial Chair in Law. [7]
Levinson is quoted often in publications about numerous topics involving law. [10] [11] Levinson has described himself as "a card-carrying A.C.L.U. member who doesn't own a gun" and has argued that the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution limits the government's authority to regulate private gun ownership. [12] [13] Levinson's opinions on Constitutional Law have been reported in the media including his opinions about Second Amendment cases. [14] Levinson has been a panelist on programs sponsored by the Association of American Law Schools and has spoken on topics alongside prominent lawyers such as Kenneth W. Starr. [15] Levinson has been identified as a "prominent liberal law professor" [16] and been grouped with other professors including Laurence H. Tribe of Harvard and Akhil Reed Amar of Yale. [17] Levinson's opinion has been cited during the nominating process for Supreme Court nominees. [11]
Levinson has been critical of Supreme Court justices who have stayed in office despite medical deterioration stemming from age; for example, Levinson criticized Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist for a "degree of egoistic narcissism" by declaring six weeks before his death his intention to stay on. [18] Levinson has called for term limits for Supreme Court justices, as has a growing list of "scholars across the ideological spectrum." [18] He has published comments critical of life tenure for Supreme Court justices. [19]
Levinson is particularly noted for his 1989 "seminal article" in the Yale Law Journal entitled The Embarrassing Second Amendment. [17] [20] He argued that the Second Amendment doesn't offer either gun rights or gun control advocates a refuge. [21] He argued "society must decide the issue of gun control on practical as well as on constitutional grounds ... the issue is to what extent does the Second Amendment permit the Government to do what it wants in controlling firearms, just as we have to establish the extent to which it can limit speech or break into your house without a warrant. [21] Levinson has criticized liberal lawyers as treating "the Second Amendment as the equivalent of an embarrassing relative whose mention brings a quick change of subject." [21] He has argued that the Constitution protects some personal ownership of firearms but admits that "courts are likely to rule that Congress can do almost anything short of an outright prohibition of owning guns." [22] Levinson's article was cited in Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' concurring opinion in Printz v. United States .
Levinson taught a course called Torture, Law and Lawyers at Harvard Law School in 2005. [23] Levinson has written essays in The New York Times . [24] Levinson edited Torture: A Collection (2005). [25] A reviewer commented: "What's most striking about these essays is that despite their abstract and theoretical content, they generally do not contradict the depiction of actual interrogators described by Mackey and Miller. The wall between the liberal campus and a conservative, utilitarian-minded military breaks down because the questions are so serious that few of this book's contributors want to engage in polemics, and few – to their credit – ever seem completely comfortable with their own conclusions." [25]
Levinson has been a critic of the unitary executive and excessive presidential power. In the magazine Dissent , he argued that "constitutional dictators have become the American norm." [26] Presidents "have an incentive to declare emergencies" and assume "quasi-dictatorial powers," wrote Levinson. [26] Levinson was highly critical of president George W. Bush who he regarded as possibly the "absolutely worst president." [26] Levinson notes that President Obama seems likely to repeat the pattern of expansive presidential power. [26] He wrote an essay titled "The Decider Can Become a Dictator" in which he criticized a system which allows presidents to make dictatorial decisions of great consequence without providing ways to discipline those who display bad judgment. [27] [28] Levinson commented about a ban on gay marriage proposed by former President George W. Bush in legal terms as a Constitutional issue. [29]
Levinson has criticized the Constitution (invoking comparisons to Thomas Jefferson) for what he considers to be its numerous failings, including an inability to remove the President despite lack of confidence by lawmakers and the public, the President's veto power as being "extraordinarily undemocratic", the difficulty of enacting Constitutional amendments through Article 5 and a lack of more representation in the Senate for highly populated states such as California. [30] He also criticizes the primary process in which important states which aren't considered "battleground states" are ignored by presidential candidates. [30] He's often called for a Second Constitutional Convention: "We ought to think about it almost literally every day, and then ask, 'Well, to what extent is government organized to realize the noble visions of the preamble?' That the preamble begins, 'We the people.' It's a notion of a people that can engage in self-determination." [8] Levinson's book Our Undemocratic Constitution: Where the Constitution Goes Wrong (and How We the People Can Correct It) calls for "wholesale revision of our nation's founding document." [31]
Levinson appeared on the Bill Moyers television program in 2007. [8] Levinson's research interests include American Constitutional development, Constitutional design, law, religion, multiculturalism, society, and theories of Constitutional interpretation. [5] Levinson participates in a blog called Balkinization which focuses on constitutional, First Amendment, and other civil liberties issues [4] as well as a blog called Our Undemocratic Constitution. With Jeffrey K. Tulis, he is co-editor of the Johns Hopkins Series in Constitutional Thought and also of a new series, Constitutional Thinking at University Press of Kansas.
The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, on March 4, 1789. Originally including seven articles, the Constitution delineates the national frame and constrains the powers of the federal government. The Constitution's first three articles embody the doctrine of the separation of powers, in which the federal government is divided into three branches: the legislative, consisting of the bicameral Congress ; the executive, consisting of the president and subordinate officers ; and the judicial, consisting of the Supreme Court and other federal courts. Article IV, Article V, and Article VI embody concepts of federalism, describing the rights and responsibilities of state governments, the states in relationship to the federal government, and the shared process of constitutional amendment. Article VII establishes the procedure subsequently used by the 13 states to ratify it. The Constitution of the United States is the oldest and longest-standing written and codified national constitution in force in the world.
The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution protects the right to keep and bear arms. It was ratified on December 15, 1791, along with nine other articles of the Bill of Rights. In District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), the Supreme Court affirmed for the first time that the right belongs to individuals, for self-defense in the home, while also including, as dicta, that the right is not unlimited and does not preclude the existence of certain long-standing prohibitions such as those forbidding "the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill" or restrictions on "the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons". In McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010) the Supreme Court ruled that state and local governments are limited to the same extent as the federal government from infringing upon this right. New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen (2022) assured the right to carry weapons in public spaces with reasonable exceptions.
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that turn on questions of U.S. constitutional or federal law. It also has original jurisdiction over a narrow range of cases, specifically "all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party." The court holds the power of judicial review: the ability to invalidate a statute for violating a provision of the Constitution. It is also able to strike down presidential directives for violating either the Constitution or statutory law.
McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. 316 (1819), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that defined the scope of the U.S. Congress's legislative power and how it relates to the powers of American state legislatures. The dispute in McCulloch involved the legality of the national bank and a tax that the state of Maryland imposed on it. In its ruling, the Supreme Court established firstly that the "Necessary and Proper" Clause of the U.S. Constitution gives the U.S. federal government certain implied powers necessary and proper for the exercise of the powers enumerated explicitly in the Constitution, and secondly that the American federal government is supreme over the states, and so states' ability to interfere with the federal government is restricted. Since the legislature has the authority to tax and spend, the court held that it therefore has authority to establish a national bank, as being "necessary and proper" to that end.
Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620 (1996), is a landmark United States Supreme Court case dealing with sexual orientation and state laws. It was the first Supreme Court case to address gay rights since Bowers v. Hardwick (1986), when the Court had held that laws criminalizing sodomy were constitutional.
The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies (FedSoc) is an American conservative and libertarian legal organization that advocates for a textualist and originalist interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., it has chapters at more than 200 law schools and features student, lawyer, and faculty divisions; the lawyers division comprises more than 70,000 practicing attorneys in ninety cities. Through speaking events, lectures, and other activities, it provides a forum for legal experts of opposing conservative views to interact with members of the legal profession, the judiciary, and the legal academy. It is one of the most influential legal organizations in the United States.
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