Questions and Topics We Can Help You To Answer:
Paper Instructions:

Every student in the class will read two entire books on the subject of constitutional interpretation—one by one of the nation’s most influential legal thinkers, Cass Sunstein, entitled, RADICALS IN ROBES: WHY EXTREME RIGHT WING COURTS ARE WRONG FOR AMERICA (2005), and a second book by a prominent federal judge, J. Harvie Wilkinson, entitled Cosmic CONSTITUTIONAL THEORY: WHY AMERICANS ARE LOSING THEIR INALIENABLE RIGHT TO SELF‐GOVERNANCE (2012). In these books, Sunstein and Wilkinson describe, analyze and criticize many different approaches to constitutional decision‐making.
You must read both of these books in their entirety. You cannot write an “A” paper without fully using both books.

Subject of the Paper: After reading the two books listed above, you will explore the strengths and weaknesses of one method of constitutional interpretation. You must choose from: (1) minimalism; (2) originalism (what Sunstein terms “fundamentalism”); or (3) living constitutionalism (closely related to Sunstein’s “perfectionism”). No other theory may be the subject of your paper.
Thus, your paper will be both descriptive and normative. It will be descriptive because you will explain to the reader what the approaches entail. Your paper will also be normative or prescriptive because you will explain the advantages and disadvantages of that theory. Your paper should use actual, controversial cases to illustrate or support your positions. In other words, use matters involving abortion, the death penalty, gay marriage,1 affirmative action or national security (among many other subjects) to show the strengths and weaknesses of your theory. You do not need to explain how your approach would decide every possible type of important case. That is impossible to do in a short paper.
Avoid using segregation (Brown v. Board of Education), or birth control (Griswold v. Connecticut), as the key cases to support your thesis.

Length: The final paper must be no more than 2500 words long, including footnotes and the cover page. Please use your word processing program’s word count feature to guarantee compliance with this limit. Your final paper grade will be reduced if you exceed 2500 words. There is no minimum length, though it would be very difficult to write a thorough paper in less than 2000 words.

Introduction and Conclusion: There is no need for a formal introduction to this paper. Your paper will start with a section that summarizes the theory that you will be analyzing in the paper. Most students also want to summarize the rival theories in this section.
Your paper should end with a conclusion should be less than one page long and it should bear the simple heading “Conclusion.” You can start with language like the following: “This paper has described” or “this paper has reviewed...” The conclusion will briefly summarize what you have covered in your paper. This is also your last chance to share any ideas that you have about the subject that you discussed in your paper.

Headings: Your paper should use headings and subheadings. These headings should appear in the body of the paper itself. Here are two examples:

Ben Chen, The Strengths and Weaknesses of Originalism
- Theories of Constitutional Interpretation
A. Originalism
B. Living Constitutionalism
C. Minimalism
-The Strengths of Originalism
A. Subheading Written by the Student
B. Student’s Subheading
C. Student’s Subheading
- The Flaws of Originalism
A. Subheading
B. Subheading
- Conclusion

Ben Chen, The Strengths and Weaknesses of Minimalism
-Three Theories of Constitutional Interpretation
A. Minimalism
B. Originalism
C. Living Constitutionalism
-The Strengths of Minimalism
A. Subheading Written by the Student
B. Subheading
C. Subheading
-The Weaknesses of Minimalism
A. Subheading
B. Subheading
-Conclusion

General Citation Rules
· All citations go into footnotes at the bottom of the page—not in the text, parentheticals or endnotes. (This is not MLA‐style citation.) Use the automatic “insert footnote” function associated with your word processing program to create footnotes.2 Do not manually number footnotes.
· No bibliography, list of sources or “works cited” is required since all of the relevant information will be provided in the footnotes.
· Punctuation in the text of the paper precedes the footnote number marker. Like this.3
· Every legal or factual assertion must be supported by a citation to a reliable authority.
· Every quote or paraphrase must be supported by a citation to a reliable authority.
· A quote within a quote uses a single quote mark. For example: Grinzhauf explained that that the “exercise of personal jurisdiction by the trial court was an ‘astonishing violation of federalism principles’ according to the Supreme Court.”
· Quotes of more than 50 words should be single‐spaced and indented by .5” on both sides.4 This is known as a “block quote.” A single blank line should precede and follow the block quote. The reader will know that the block quote is a quote, so there is no need for quotation marks at the start and end of a block quote. However, quotes within a block quote can be indicated with quotation marks.

What is a Source?
Throughout a paper, an author will make various factual and legal assertions. For example:
· Factual: Over 200,000 people were left homeless by an earthquake in San Francisco in 1906.
· Legal: The Supreme Court has held that Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act applies only to transactions in securities listed on domestic exchanges and domestic transactions in other securities.
All such factual and legal claims must be supported by a reliable authority. The point is that the reliable authority (whether it is an article, a book, a movie, or any form of media), provides direct substantiation for the specific claim that is made in the text. A document that provides evidence to support a claim is a source.
Moreover, we want our sources to be reliable, so that we can trust the information provided therein. Obviously, this does not mean that we accept every assertion uncritically. A source can be challenged. But the proper way to challenge a source is with other reliable sources, not merely one’s own intuitions about the validity of a claim.

Footnotes
· As noted above, all citations go into footnotes at the bottom of the page—not in the text, parentheticals or endnotes. Use the automatic “insert footnote” function associated with your word processing program to create footnotes.
· Footnotes should be 10‐point, single‐spaced text, with some blank space after each footnote (6 point is sufficient).
· Different sources within the same footnote are separated by a semicolon (“;”) and then a space. The end of the footnote is punctuated with a period.5
· All footnotes end with a period (not some—all).

Full Cites, Short Cites, Supra and Id.
The first time a source is cited, you use what is known as a full cite. Subsequent cites to the same source use what is known as a short cite form. The short cite form is an abbreviated citation form that saves space. Be careful, though, because short cite forms differ for books, articles and cases.
The word “supra” just means above. After the first time that a book or article is cited, you use a short citation form with supra that tells the reader to look above to the footnote where the book or article was first cited. You should not use supra with cases (don’t ask why).
“Id.” is used if you are citing the exact same source that is cited in the immediately preceding footnote. (Legal scholars do not usually use “ibid.”) You can use Id. with cases, books or articles. If the source is the same, but the page number has changed, you should add the page number to your cite. For example a series of footnotes might go as follows:
30 Williams, 128 S. Ct. at 1850. 
31 Id..
32 Id. at 1854‐55.
You should not use Id. if there are two sources in the previous footnote (because then you cannot tell which source is being cited). Thus, this would be incorrect:
30 Williams, 128 S. Ct. at 1850; Sunstein, supra note 5, at 207. 
31 Id. at 1854‐55.

Citing Cases
· Underline or italicize case names, but not the cite information. Correct: United States v. Williams, 128 S. Ct. 1830 (2008). Incorrect: United States v. Williams, 128 S. Ct. 1830 (2008).
· Although cites to cases go in footnotes, you may have a case name in the text if you are discussing the case. E.g., In United States v. Williams, the Supreme Court addressed the constitutionality of the PROTECT Act.6
· Every cite to a case should have a page number from a reporter (the books that contain the cases), even if you locate the case online. For U.S. Supreme Court cases, you can cite to either the official U.S. Reports (published by the government) or the Supreme Court Reporter (published by West).7 For example, United States v. Williams, 128 S. Ct. 1830 (2008), is the same case as United States v. Williams, 553 U.S. 285 (2008). The case was published in two different sets of “reporters”—series of books that contain Supreme Court opinions.
· If you are citing a dissenting or concurring opinion, you should indicate parenthetically the name of the judge who is dissenting or concurring. You do not need to include a parenthetical for a majority opinion. For example:
Full Cite: Jones v. Smith, 595 U.S. 240, 293 (2007) (Scalia, J., concurring).
Short Cite: Callandro, 595 U.S.at 308 (Breyer, J., dissenting).

Parentheticals
Sometimes you want to tell the reader more about a source that you are citing or you want to provide a quote from the source without discussing the source fully in the text of your paper. One mechanism for accomplishing this goal is what is known as a “parenthetical.” Rather than trying to explain the concept of parentheticals, here are several examples.
Cass R. Sunstein, RADICALS IN ROBES: WHY EXTREME RIGHT‐WING COURTS ARE WRONG FOR AMERICA 54 (2005) (“Fundamentalists often think that their approach is the only way to ensure that the Constitution is really law. They think that those who reject fundamentalism are wrongly substituting their own views for those enshrined in the Constitution.”).
Sunstein, supra note 1, at 56 (conceding that “sophisticated fundamentalists do not ask anything about ‘original intent’”).
Sunstein, supra note 1, at 247‐48 (discussing Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954)).
United States v. Grubbs, 547 U.S. 90, 97 (2006) (discussing the Fourth Amendment’s particularity requirement).
Id. at 99 (“The Constitution protects property owners not by giving them license to engage the police in a debate over the basis of the warrant but by . . . providing ex post, a right to suppress evidence improperly obtained and a cause of action for damages.”).
Grubbs, 547 U.S. at 100‐01 (noting that the Supreme Court has not resolved the question of whether a homeowner has a constitutional right to see the search warrant prior to the search) (Souter, J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgment).