Volume 22
Issue
1

Letter from the Editor

by JERRY BLAKE BLEVINS
Dear Reader: The Georgetown Journal of Law & Public Policy proudly presents the first issue of Volume 22. This issue features a selection of articles on pressing, timely legal and […]

“The Pound of Flesh, but Not One Drop of Blood”: Frederick Douglass’s Antislavery Constitutionalism

by PETER C. MYERS
When Frederick Douglass became an abolitionist lecturer in 1841, he joined a movement that had grown radical and militant. “Let us glory in the name of revolutionists,” declared the flagship […]

Frederick Douglass, Common Good Constitutionalism, and Civil Society

by GREGORY M. COLLINS
Debates over common good constitutionalism often revolve around the question of whether the empowerment of government agencies or the protection of individual rights is the more effective means to attain […]

Arriving at an Answer to “The QUESTION OF QUESTIONS”: How Lysander Spooner’s Legal Education Influenced His (and Frederick Douglass’s) Belief that Slavery Was Unconstitutional

by HELEN J. KNOWLES-GARDNER
In May 1851, downtown Syracuse bore witness to many dramatic events that would help to shape the course of slavery from thereon out, not just in that one city in […]

Douglass’s Constitutional Citizenship

by BRADLEY REBEIRO
“We the People of the United States . . .” This ostensibly trivial phrase was the main source of Frederick Douglass’s hope for the future of blacks in the Union. […]

Frederick Douglass: The Constitution Militant

by DIANA J. SCHAUB
In an action almost as momentous as his original escape from enslavement, Frederick Douglass adopted an anti-slavery interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. That 1851 decision took Douglass from a platform […]

Appellate Court Mandates: An Introduction and Proposed Reform

by JACK BUCKLEY DISORBO
After an appellate court announces its opinion and judgment, it issues the “mandate,” returning jurisdiction to the lower court and commanding it to implement the judgment. In the time between […]

Camping and the Constitution

by Paul J. Larkin
Legal protection for private property owners against trespass has an ancient lineage in Anglo-American common law, a principle that retains its vitality today. Indeed, a property owner’s right to exclude […]

Political Unions, Free Speech, and the Death of Voluntarism: Why Exclusive Representation Violates the First Amendment

by ALEX MACDONALD
Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employee’s International Union (SEIU), was fired up. In May 2023, she gave an interview to Restaurant Dive.1 Her union was then embroiled in […]

State Attorneys General, You’re My Only Hope: How to Fill the Enforcement Gap in Federal Consumer Protection Law with Parens Patriae Litigation

by BENNETT CHO-SMITH
Annoying robocalls, the sharing of personal health information, polluted water, the misleading marketing of credit rates by financial institutions. These are issues nearly every American faces. To its credit, Congress […]

The Crisis of Minority Rule in American Democracy

by GRAYSON KUEHL
America was principally designed to operate under a majoritarian government, administered by the will of the majority of its citizens with safeguards erected to protect the rights of minority populations. […]

Sentencing Economic Espionage in an Era of Great Power Competition

by JENNA LIFHITS
Intellectual property (IP) theft costs the United States hundreds of billions of dollars a year, a figure that has only grown since the passage of the Economic Espionage Act (EEA) […]