Confronting Modern Case Law, Part 2 (LAW-CONST2)
This lecture defends most Warren Court rulings, including school-prayer decisions, but critiques the exclusionary rule of Mapp v. Ohio for its departure from lived practice and for freeing the guilty. It traces 'one person, one vote' from Reynolds v. Sims to the Republican Government clause, evaluating the Court's overall fidelity to the Constitution's spirit.
Akhil Reed Amar argues the Warren Court got most things right, then singles out the exclusionary rule as the place it genuinely made law up.
Continuing the case-law prism, this lecture defends the school-prayer decisions as protecting religious liberty and equality, criticizes the exclusionary rule of Mapp v. Ohio for freeing the guilty and departing from lived practice, and traces one person, one vote from Reynolds v. Sims back to the Republican Government clause and Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment. Amar closes by weighing the Warren Court as a whole: faithful to the Constitution's spirit, even when it reached for the wrong clause.
Confronting Modern Case Law, Part 1 (LAW-CONST2)
Next · Lecture 9Putting Precedent in Its Place, Part 1 (LAW-CONST2)