While July Fourth gets more fanfare than September 17th (Constitution Day), Rutgers Law–Camden Distinguished Professor Robert Williams thinks all 50 state constitutions are worth celebrating.
The way a legal scholar celebrates though isn’t with barbecues or fireworks, it’s by reading, analyzing, and publishing innovative articles on state constitution law by the world’s top researchers for a quarter of a century. Now that’s a party.
On Friday, Oct. 18, Williams and colleagues will commemorate 25 years of publishing a State Constitutional Law Issue of the Rutgers Law Journal at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. A 4:30 p.m. free public lecture will feature Sanford Levinson, author of the book Framed: America’s 51 Constitutions and the Crisis of Governance (Oxford, 2012). At 6 p.m., a free public reception will also honor Williams' longtime efforts on the journal and at Rutgers Law–Camden. Shuttle service from the Camden campus to and from the event will be provided. To register for the free lecture and reception, visit here.
According to Williams, the Garden State is widely lauded for its concise constitution and efficient Supreme Court, but the law journal issue’s scope includes scholarship on the nation’s other state constitutions as well as other federalism-structured countries. Williams calls these entities “comparative subnational constitutional laws,” a term he coined with Rutgers-Camden Distinguished Professor of Political Science Alan Tarr to describe the approximately 15 other countries comprised of smaller subsidiaries that might be called something other than states.
Tarr directs the Center for State Constitutional Studies, where Williams serves as associate director. Formed in 1997, the center cosponsors the annual state constitutional lecture, published as the foreword to the Rutgers Law Journal’s annual issue.
For a state constitution law scholar, the United States is the place to study. In fact, no other country has 51 constitutions or as Williams says, “lots of opportunities for research and scholarship.”
Think knowledge of state constitutions is just for the legal community? “There’s more in state constitutions that affect daily life as compared to the U.S. Constitution, like public schools, state taxations, and state budget, which fuels state government and that affects everybody every day,” notes Williams, who launched the theme issue after teaching at Rutgers Law–Camden for eight years.
“Then Dean John Pittinger asked Professor Earl Maltz to come up with an idea for the Law Journal and Earl proposed state constitution law as a new field of study. At the time I wondered whether an issue dedicated to state constitution law would really work, but I agreed to implement this idea and 25 years later we all know that it’s been a spectacular success,” says Williams, who teaches civil procedure and state constitutional law and legislation at Rutgers Law–Camden. “People around the country, and around the world, know ours is the-go-to issue for state con law.”
Not only have the readers of the issue benefited from this comprehensive body of knowledge by top scholars writing on subjects from an analysis of the first American state constitutions to the current state constitutional litigation and developments concerning same-sex marriage, so have generations of Rutgers Law–Camden students.
According to Williams, the various editors and staff of the Rutgers Law Journal should be commended for their prodigious efforts in the volume of legal research, organization, and analysis involved over the years. “More than a generation of Rutgers Law Journal members have read and analyzed virtually every state constitutional law decision by state high courts in the United States,” writes Williams with Tarr in the anniversary edition’s introduction.
Rutgers Law students have been key voices in this dialogue which has included not only the highly respected insight of their faculty advisor Williams, but the scholarship submitted by authors around the world, including one of the nation's foremost civil liberties lawyers Burt Neuborne, his student Helen Hershkoff, now also a professor at NYU, and even brothers Akhil Amar, a Yale law professor, and Vikram Amar, a UC Davis law professor. The issue has also featured book reviews on the many important tomes on the subject as well as the critical works of state high court justices offering their own views of state constitutional interpretation.
“The Introduction to that first issue indicated that ‘we anticipate that this issue of the Law Journal will fill a major gap in state constitutional law scholarship,’” write Tarr and Williams in the 25th anniversary introduction. “The record will show that we have more than delivered on that prediction.”
For more about this special anniversary event, click here.