Successful democracies throughout history--from ancient Athens to Britain on the cusp of the industrial age--have used the technology of their time to gather information for better governance. Our challenge is no different today, but it is more urgent because the accelerating pace of...

This essay offers some lessons from the history of the United States Constitution for constitutions for emerging democracies in Eastern Europe. The United States Constitution declined in efficacy over time because special interests eroded its restraints on rent-seeking. This essay seeks to...

Originalism is often thought, by both its advocates and its critics, to be inconsistent with precedent. This Article challenges this common view of originalism and argues that nothing in the Constitution forbids judges from following precedent. First, the Constitution as a matter of judicial...

This brief essay, written as part of a symposium on Jack Balkin's article on Abortion and Original Meaning, critiques Professor Balkin's conception of originalism. We argue that Balkin presents a false dichotomy - either embrace abstract principles whose meaning is almost infinitely malleable or...

Modern law makes currency a creature of the state and ultimately the value of its currency depends on the public's trust in that state. While some nations are more capable than others at instilling public trust in the stability of their monetary institutions, it is nonetheless impossible for any...

The undemocratic origin of most international human rights law greatly reduces the desirability of allowing it to change the domestic law of democratic states. Most international law is made through highly undemocratic procedures. Thus, on average, the quality of what we call raw international...

The Supreme Court and the Federal Reserve, twin pillars of the liberal market order, have never been systematically compared. Yet, as elite institutions in a democratic political world, they face parallel problems in carrying out similar functions of maintaining the precommitments to a stable...

Given the rise of globalization and the need for international governance of problems of the commons, the delegation of binding domestic authority to international agents is likely to be an issue of growing importance. This essay considers the extent to which U.S. law imposes constraints on such...