Constitutional Law

by Noah R. Feldman, Kathleen Sullivan

Hardbound - New, hardbound print book.

Genres: Law

1823 pages, Hardcover

Published July 29, 2019

Reviews

[Rebecca]

Look, I didn't read every page. But I've read as much as I could reasonably be required to.

[Meg Lanthier]

the fact that you can put textbooks on goodreads? iconic. this casebook? terrible

[Juliana]

This is a super thick book with the thin little bible paper pages and lowkey destroyed my back every day when I walked to class. It was also $300. Not sure that there's much they can do about either of those things but I'm still going to dock some points

There was absolutely no reason for so many fundamental con law cases (in particular Carolene Products Footnote 4???? ) to be in the notes like genuinely wtf. Overall I did enjoy the notes more than I usually do with casebooks and I felt like they explored some fun areas but with just so much stuff in there including some landmark cases it is just hard to pick out what is fun facts and what is heavily referenced doctrine

I see the vision of why they wanted to split NFIB v. Sebelius up into 3 parts but really did not enjoy that structure and would have actually preferred to read the case all at once instead of being like a pinball machine where we hit that and then hit some other stuff and then go back to Sebelius.

And now that I'm fired up let me just say that Gibbons v. Ogden did not need to be there twice. Most boring case ever who cares BFFR. We got the idea the first time. I get it's an important case or whatever but no need to double dip.

Maybe some of these are hot takes but here's a non-exhaustive list of some of the cases I think deserved to NOT be in the notes (or at least to be discussed more in-depth in the notes) in my humble 1L opinion:
- Carolene Products (footnote 4)
- TransUnion (literally nuked standing hello??)
- Rucho v. Common Cause (especially pertinent right now)
- Luther v. Borden
- Cruikshank (feel like this one is just not discussed as much IRL outside of the book too even though it should be)
-Heart of Atlanta Motel (and also maybe Katzenbach v. McClung)
- Trump v. Hawai'i
- Pike v Bruce Church (the test is literally called the pike balancing test how are you going to put the case that invented it in the notes??)

But also we did not read every single section in my course so maybe these cases are in there somewhere and I missed them. But I still feel like in the chapters I read where they were discussed as notes they deserved some more recognition. Feel free to disagree. Maybe I'm just not as into the constitutional canon and some of these cases aren't actually talked about. It's entirely possible that I am wrong.

But anyways long review but Feldman is obviously very good at what he does and the book overall was good. Again the notes were a fun side quest most times that I enjoyed and felt like I gained a deeper understanding of the law (which I guess is what the notes are for).

4/5

[Anna Moiseieva]

The fact that we had to read this particular casebook is very interesting but besides the point. Very comprehensive so obviously didn't read a good portion of it. a good chunk of the cases assigned were in the notes/paraphrased instead of just printed by themselves. Edited well and I appreciated getting relevant historical/social context before some of the cases that were just quoted on their own. Saw some overlap with leg reg and property which really illustrates how connected these different fields are which I think is cool.

[Bruno Franco Netto]

Overly long. It offers the cases but very little else. Only useful if you need it for the cases in your Constitutional Law class but if you want to understand the material you will need supplementary materials.

[D]

school

[Jessie]

How do they even make paper this thin. Fascinating. Overall not my worst textbook. This is about all I have to say for a TWENTIETH edition that costs $300.