The Origin And Scope Of The American Doctrine Of Constitutional Law

The Origin And Scope Of The American Doctrine Of Constitutional Law is an 1893 Harvard Law Review article by James Bradley Thayer (1831-1902), the Harvard Law School professor whose work on the doctrine of judicial review of legislation has shaped American constitutional thought for more than a century. The article argues that an American court should hold an act of the legislature unconstitutional only when the legislature has made a clear mistake, not whenever the court would itself have decided the question differently. Thayer’s doctrine of clear-error judicial review influenced Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Felix Frankfurter, Learned Hand, and the wider tradition of judicial restraint in twentieth-century American constitutional law. The piece remains a standard reading in American law school constitutional courses. Free PDF download available on BDeBooks.