In his latest Justia blog post, Illinois Law dean and professor Vikram David Amar considers the implications of legislative proposals in various states that seek to give legislatures increased power to interpret and implement the Constitution in the face of judicial rulings with which the legislators may disagree.

"Any first-year law student who sees headlines describing such efforts might be inclined to shudder; anyone remotely learned in the law knows that the idea of judicial review—the authority of courts to rule on the constitutional validity of legislative and executive enactments, and to have those rulings respected at least to some extent by the other branches—is a bedrock in our system of constitutional democracy.

"Some of these legislative proposals are troubling indeed. But for some others, there is less than meets the eye. And still others, while potentially problematic, serve as helpful reminders that states have some flexibility to structure relationships between governmental organs in ways that seem foreign to people who view the world only through the federal governmental lens."

Read the full post at verdict.justia.com