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Curtis on Congressional Power to Regulate Political Terrorism

By Lawrence Solum

Michael Kent Curtis (Wake Forest University - School of Law) has posted The Klan, the Congress, and the Court: Congressional Enforcement of the Fourteenth And Fifteenth Amendments & the State Action Syllogism, A Brief Historical Overview (University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, Vol. 11, No. 1398, 2009) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

A Court committed to protecting constitutional rights and protecting citizens against political terrorism could reasonably have upheld congressional power to reach private acts of terror designed to deter or punish the exercise of constitutional rights. It could have done so while also protecting the values of federalism. While the Justices at the time reached a restrictive result, the Congress, that included a number of framers of the Fourteenth Amendment, did not. Recent Court decisions have chosen the decision of the Justices who considered constitutionality of the response to political terror over the decision of most of the framers of the Amendment.

Highly recommended.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on December 22, 2009 (boomark / email).