New Books In Law

What areas of our lives are governed by constitutional law? When asked about what constitutional law is, Americans tend to think of notable Supreme Court cases such as the abortion law case Roe v. Wade or the Civil Rights landmark of Brown v. Board of Education. But vast swaths of our lives are governed by, of all things, the Commerce Clause of the US Constitution, which gives Congress the power “to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes.” This is just one of the fascinating facts that we learn from H. Jefferson Powell's book The Practice of American Constitutional Law (Cambridge UP, 2022). Powell robustly, movingly argues that those Americans who feel that the Supreme Court and constitutional law itself have become so politicized that justice is now unattainable and that raw power has replaced dispassionate legal analysis in our polity are mistaken. He contends that those who dwell in the world of the actual practice of constitutional law are people o