Contact information

Georgetown University Law Center

600 New Jersey Ave NW

Washington, DC  20001

(314) 266-9698

E-mail is the fastest way to contact me.  My e-mail address is davidlaw [at] wustl [dot] edu.

About “The Declining Influence of the U.S. Constitution”

If you are looking for the study entitled “The Declining lnfluence of the United States Constitution” that was discussed in The New York Times, the study itself can be downloaded here.  (Look for the blue button above the summary of the article that says “Download This Paper”.)  It was also published in volume 87, issue 3 (October 2011) of the New York University Law Review and can be downloaded from their website.

INTERVIEWS:

A half-hour interview about the article that aired on St. Louis Public Radio can be downloaded here. 

A shorter segment that aired on Southern California Public Radio’s Patt Morrison Show can be downloaded here. 

We have recently completed a follow-up study entitled “Sham Constitutions,” which can be downloaded here and will appear in volume 101 of the California Law Review.

Justice Scalia aptly observes, “every banana republic in the world has a bill of rights. ... Of course, it’s just words on paper, what our framers would have called a ‘parchment guarantee.’” “Sham Constitutions” focuses on precisely this issue: which constitutions in the world are not worth the paper they are written on, and which countries are prone to having sham constitutions?

Publications & works in progress

You can download the following papers in PDF format by clicking on the links below.  Comments are highly welcome, especially on works-in-progress.

“Sham Constitutions,” 101 California Law Review ___ (forthcoming 2013), co-authored with Mila Versteeg.  This is a work-in-progress.

“The Declining Influence of the United States Constitution,” 87 NYU Law Review 762 (2012), co-authored with Mila Versteeg.  Earlier versions of this article were presented at Seoul National University School of Law’s Foreign Authority Forum; the 2010 International Symposium on Legal Protection of Human Rights at Yeungnam University Institute of Legal Studies in Daegu, Korea; and the 2010 annual meeting of the Southeastern Association of Law Schools.

“The Evolution and Ideology of Global Constitutionalism,” 99 California Law Review 1163 (2011), co-authored with Mila Versteeg.  Earlier versions of this article were presented at the 2010 annual meetings of the Law & Society Association in Chicago and the American Political Science Association in Washington, D.C.

This article is being translated into Chinese by Xiaofei Xu for publication in the Tsinghua Rule of Law Forum.

“The Limits of Global Judicial Dialogue,” 86 Washington Law Review 523 (2011), co-authored with Wen-Chen Chang.  This article was presented and published as part of a symposium on “Global Law and Its Exceptions” held at the University of Washington in Seattle earlier this year.  It reflects numerous confidential interviews that I conducted in Taiwan with current and former members of the Taiwanese Constitutional Court and their law clerks.

“Why Has Judicial Review Failed in Japan?,” 88 Washington University Law Review 1425 (2011).  This article was written for a conference on “Decision Making on the Japanese Supreme Court” that John Haley and I hosted at Washington University in St. Louis in September of 2010.  The papers presented at that conference, including two essays authored by retired justices of the Japanese Supreme Court, will appear in a symposium issue of the Washington University Law Review.

“How to Rig the Federal Courts,” 99 Georgetown Law Journal 779 (2011).

Early versions of this article were presented at Northwestern University School of Law’s Searle Law and Political Economy Colloquium, and at Michigan State University College of Law as part of their Distinguished Speakers Series, and the 2010 annual meeting of the Western Political Science Association in San Francisco.

“Judicial Independence,” 5 International Encyclopedia of Political Science 1369 (Bertrand Badie et al. eds., 2011).  This essay identifies recurring sources of confusion over the meaning of “judicial independence” and deconstructs the concept into four component questions.  It has been translated into Romanian (click here).

“Constitutions,” from The Oxford Handbook of Empirical Legal Research (Peter Cane & Herbert M. Kritzer eds., 2010).  This book chapter offers an overview and critical assessment of the empirical literature on constitutions (both quantitative and qualitative).  Written with an international audience in mind, it addresses current topics of interest in comparative constitutional law and comparative judicial politics, and it argues in favor of increased methodological pluralism and innovation. 

“Law Versus Ideology: The Supreme Court and the Use of Legislative History” (with David Zaring), 51 William & Mary Law Review 1653 (2010).

We presented a much earlier version of this paper under a different title at the 2008 Conference on Empirical Legal Studies.  This version incorporates over a year of additional data collection, recoding, and extensive revisions.  For an abstract, please click here.

“The Anatomy of a Conservative Court: Judicial Review in Japan,” 87 Texas Law Review 1545 (2009).

Translated into Japanese by Shin-ichi Nishikawa and reprinted in Seikei-Ronso [The Review of Economics and Political Science], Vol. 79, No. 1 (2010).  Japanese version available here. 

This is a substantially abridged version of a paper that was presented at the symposium on constitutional design held at the University of Texas School of Law, and at the 2009 comparative constitutional law roundtable at George Washington University.  This shorter version was presented at the 2009 annual meeting of the Law and Society Association in Denver.

“What Is Judicial Ideology, and How Should We Measure It?” 29 Washington University Journal of Law & Policy 133 (2009).

Please click here for an abstract.

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Third Annual Conference on Empirical Legal Studies at Cornell Law School, and at a workshop on “Empirical Research on Decision Making in the Federal Courts” held at Washington University. 

“A Theory of Judicial Power and Judicial Review,” 97 Georgetown Law Journal 723 (2009). 

Please click here for an abstract.

I presented earlier versions of this paper at the 2008 annual meetings of the Midwest Political Science Association and American Political Science Association, the Joint Conference of the Western Law Teachers of Color and Conference of Asian Pacific American Law Faculty, and the Harvard Public Law and Political Economy Conference.

“Globalization and the Future of Constitutional Rights,” 102 Northwestern University Law Review 1277 (2008).

Please click here for an abstract.

This paper was presented at the Junior International Law Scholars Roundtable at Yale Law School.  It is a substantially revised and streamlined version of a much longer paper that was presented at Duke's University Seminar on Global Governance and Democracy (by kind invitation of the Duke University Center for International Studies), a University of Texas School of Law Faculty Colloquium, USD's own law school faculty colloquium, and the 2006 Hawaii International Conference on the Social Sciences.

“There Is Nothing Pragmatic About Originalism” (with David McGowan) (2007).

This essay appeared in the Colloquy section of the Northwestern University Law Review and is a response to John McGinnis & Michael Rappaport, “A Pragmatic Defense of Originalism.”

“Judicial Selection, Appointments Gridlock, and the Nuclear Option” (with Lawrence B. Solum), 15 Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues 51 (2006).

Please click here for an abstract.

This article is a revised version of a paper that Larry Solum and I presented at the 2005 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association. 

“Introduction: Positive Political Theory and the Law,” 15 Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues 1 (2006).

“The Paradox of Omnipotence: Courts, Constitutions, and Commitments,”

40 Georgia Law Review 407 (2006).

Please click here for an abstract.

Earlier versions of this article were presented at the 2005 Annual Conference of the Midwest Political Science Association, and at the Sovereignty Symposium held at the University of Texas Law School, April 2005.

“Judicial Ideology and the Decision to Publish: Voting and Publication Patterns in Ninth Circuit Asylum Cases,” which appeared in the January-February 2006 issue of Judicature.

“Generic Constitutional Law,” 89 Minnesota Law Review 652 (2005). 

“Strategic Judicial Lawmaking: Ideology, Publication, and Asylum Law in the Ninth Circuit,” 73 University of Cincinnati Law Review 817 (2005).

“Appointing Federal Judges: The President, the Senate, and the Prisoner's Dilemma,”

26 Cardozo Law Review 479 (2005).

“Why Nuclear Disarmament May Be Easier to Achieve than an End to Partisan Conflict over Judicial Appointments” (with Sanford Levinson), 39 University of Richmond Law Review 923 (2005).

“Executive Revision of Judicial Decisions,” 109 Harvard Law Review 2020 (1996).

"And Now, A Word From Our Sponsor," 108 Harvard Law Review 489 (1994)

(reviewing C. Edwin Baker, Advertising and a Democratic Press (1994)).

About me

I am Professor of Law and Professor of Political Science at Washington University in St. Louis and, for the 2012-13 academic year, Visiting Professor at Georgetown University Law Center.  Prior to joining the faculty at Washington University, I taught at the University of San Diego School of Law.  I am also an adjunct member of the UCSD Department of Political Science.  I hold a J.D. from Harvard Law School, a B.C.L. in European and Comparative Law from the University of Oxford, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Political Science from Stanford University, where I also studied as an undergraduate in the Public Policy Program.

During the 2010-11 academic year, I was a scholar in residence at the NYU School of Law.  I spent the fall of 2010 and part of winter 2011 as a visiting professor and Fulbright Scholar at the National Taiwan University College of Law, where I conducted research on constitutional politics in Taiwan and the globalization of constitutional law.  Over the summer of 2011, I was also a visiting professor at Seoul National University School of Law, where I taught comparative constitutional law and performed fieldwork on the Korean Constitutional Court.  I have also been a visiting professor and Hitachi Fellow in the Faculty of Law at Keio University in Tokyo, where I studied the internal politics of the Japanese Supreme Court.  I am grateful to the Council on Foreign Relations for awarding me the Hitachi Fellowship, which made possible my research in Japan.  

My research combines the interdisciplinary study of law and political science with the transnational study of public law and constitutional theory.  In the area of law and political science, I have written on the politics and strategy of judicial appointments, the strategic and ideological behavior of federal judges, and the relationship between electoral politics and judicial politics.  In the areas of constitutional theory and comparative public law, I have published articles on the emergence of constitutional similarities across countries, the impact of constitutional law on the credibility of sovereign commitments, and the potential effects of global investment and migration patterns on the protection of constitutional rights.  For a brief profile of me in which I discuss my research interests in the area of comparative public law, please click here.  The picture that accompanies the article was taken at a Shinto shrine in Shinjuku.  Kudos to Washington University School of Law for arranging for a photographer in Tokyo!

At Washington University, I usually teach Constitutional Law I, a required first-year course; Federal Jurisdiction, an advanced course; and Comparative Judicial Politics, a cross-listed seminar that enrolls both upper-year law students and graduate students in political science.  In the past, I have also taught Administrative Law, and Law and Political Science.  At Seoul National University, I taught comparative constitutional law in a lecture format to a class of approximately 50 students.  At National Taiwan University, I co-taught (with Professor Wen-Chen Chang) a seminar entitled “Comparative Constitutional Law and Politics in East Asia.”

Although I don’t have any photos of myself on this webpage, you can catch a glimpse of me on CNN in this video clip, in which I discuss the “states’ rights” movement.  I also appear in this footage discussing the future of constitutional theory at the “Constitution in 2020” conference that was held this past October at the Yale Law School.

Curriculum vitae

Please click here for a current CV.