contingent constitutionalism

Criminal law and variability

• Fourth amendment
  • up to local judges to decide what is warntless
  • Some places authorized, and some didn't
  • More legal authority == less freedom
  • they can make warantless arrests
  • Local police power leads to other misconduct and brutality
  • Local laws increase authority and add diversity to local laws
  • Local laws change fourth ammend reasonableness
• Sizth ammendment
  • changes locally
  • can be less or more punitive
  • Variablility in punishment, and also in definitition of crime

Institutional design

• Benefits
  • allows state and local to be maintained
  • Connected to community and values
  • No "Dead Hand"
  • Norms stay where they are and don't spread (no risk to spread if bad)
• Detriments
  • variable rights
  • place determines your rights
  • fairness concerns
  • Hurts minorities because laws made by the majority
  • no self limiting

New Understanding

• Myth of Rights Nationalism
  • Is national now
  • nationalism survived because its benificial
  • people are content to labor under a large body
  • knowing rights strengthens union and US
• Legal Spatiality
  • Laws have been imbued with the place in the past
  • Now that the US is regarded as a single space, the laws shoudl be the same
  • Now how it was back then
  • Dangers include zones where the consititution and norms don't apply
• Incorporations legacy
  • there has been a rise in nationalism and making federal laws
  • variability is declining, though isn't causing concern that its still there