National constitutions codify provisions on a wide range of topics, ranging from presidential term limits to the country’s flag. But are all constitutional provisions equally important? Some are likely to be particularly consequential for how governments function, while others are likely to be largely symbolic. To date, there has been little research on the relative importance of constitutional provisions. To explore current thinking on this subject, we assembled a group of twelve comparative constitutional scholars to rate the relative importance of 340 constitutional provisions to the functioning of a country’s government. These aggregate ratings make three contributions to constitutional studies: (1) provide evidence on the current state of academic thought on the comparative importance of constitutional provisions; (2) establish an index of constitutional importance to be used in future research projects; and (3) offer a roadmap that could help direct research to provisions that may be more likely to have significant impacts on governance-related outcomes.
During times of crisis, governments often consider policies that may promote safety, but that would require overstepping constitutionally protected...
For the over half-million people currently homeless in the United States, the U.S. Constitution has historically provided little help: it is strongly...
This essay considers the future of public-private collaboration in the wake of the Murthy v. Missouri litigation, which cast doubt on the...
This Article develops a new way of understanding the law in order to address contemporary debates about judicial practice and reform. The...
Citation rankings have emerged as a popular approach to ranking the scholarly impact of law faculties. This paper develops a statistical approach for...
It has been a big moment for court reform. President Biden has proposed a slate of important if vaguely defined reforms, including a new ethics regime...
For the Balkinization Symposium on Neil S. Siegel, The Collective-Action Constitution (Oxford University Press, 2024)
Neil Siegel has written a grand...
In New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, the Supreme Court acknowledged the difficulties in applying its constitutional originalism to the...
In an earlier article titled The Executive Power of Removal, we contended that Article II gives the President a constitutional power to remove...
Annotation and classification of legal text are central components of empirical legal research. Traditionally, these tasks are often delegated to...
Large language models (LLMs) now perform extremely well on many natural language processing tasks. Their ability to convert legal texts to data may...
Assessing the legitimacy of any legal system is hard, but especially if the system in question is the volatile and contested field of international...
The Supreme Court has overruled Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, finally interring a doctrine of statutory interpretation that it had...
Celebrating Charles Ogletree, Jr. comes naturally to so many people because he served not only as a tireless champion of equality and justice, but...
The use of autonomy to initiate force, which states may begin to view as necessary to protect against hypersonic attacks and other forms of ‘hyperwar...
After two years of debate in Congress and the broader world over forfeiting the frozen assets of the Russian Central Bank for the benefit of Ukraine...
In recent years, several popularly elected leaders have moved to consolidate their power by eroding checks and balances. Courts are commonly the...
Does the U.S. Constitution protect the affirmative right to vote? Those focusing on the Constitution’s text say no. Yet, the Supreme Court has treated...