Hershkoff and Littlestone-Luria on The Louisiana Constitution and the Courts of Westminster: Standing and the Civil Law Heritage @lalawreview @nyulaw @ALittleStone

Helen Hershkoff and Adam Littlestone-Luria, both of New York University School of Law, are publishing The Louisiana Constitution and the Courts of Westminster: Standing and the Civil Law Heritage in volume 85 of the Louisiana Law Review (2025). Here is the abstract.

A substantial majority of the Roberts Court now purports to rest constitutional jurisprudence on a legal “history and tradition” divined from the nation’s common law heritage. Leaving aside the question whether this approach should carry dispositive weight in interpreting the federal Constitution, this Article raises a different but unacknowledged concern: The Court’s brand of originalism relies on a cramped notion of the nation’s “usable past.” Its myopic focus on our common law heritage erases other critical threads in the relevant legal legacy. In particular, the Article focuses on the civil law heritage of the Louisiana Constitution. As a first step, we interrogate whether the Louisiana court should automatically interpret its state standing requirement in lock step with the federal. We argue that the Supreme Court’s recent move to limit the kinds of legal harms that count as a basis for Article III standing in terms of common law analogues may cause serious distortion if it is mimicked by Louisiana’s courts. Since the civil tradition and civil codes play such an integral role as the source and definition of private rights and interests, a singular focus on common law analogs may warp the proper “history and tradition” that is relevant to Louisiana law. In conclusion, the article steps beyond the Louisiana context, arguing that the analysis carries wider implications. Assuming that history and tradition must, or at least may, play a role in legal analysis, lawmakers and judges in each state should recognize the potential inherent in their own distinctive legal legacies. As a final step, we argue that the Supreme Court’s brand of originalism obscures the deep pluralism that marks the nation’s history and tradition—a multiplicity which standing doctrine should respect and even celebrate.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Warden on The Louisiana Constitution of 1974: A Reflection @DerekWardenSJD @SU_LawReview48

Derek Warden, Louisiana Supreme Court, is publishing The Louisiana Constitution of 1974: A Reflection in volume 51 of the Southern University Law Review. Here is the abstract.

The year 2023 marks fifty years since the last full constitutional convention in Louisiana. Next year, 2024, will mark the fiftieth anniversary of our state's constitution. This essay reflects on that document and our shared constitutional history. It calls upon Louisiana law schools and journals to celebrate, in its fiftieth year, the document, the framers, and all those whose faith holds the document in existence.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Brostoff on The Encyclopedist Code: Ancien Droit Legal Encyclopedias and Their Verbatim Influence on the Louisiana Digest of 1808 @LSULawCenter

Seth Brostoff, Louisiana State University Law Center, is publishing The Encyclopedist Code: Ancien Droit Legal Encyclopedias and Their Verbatim Influence on the Louisiana Digest of 1808 in volume 13 of the Journal of Civil Law Studies. Here is the abstract.

This Article identifies nearly one hundred articles and provisions in Louisiana’s first civil code, the Digest of 1808, which were copied verbatim or almost verbatim (that is, literally or almost literally) from three French legal encyclopedias popular during the Ancien Régime: M. Lerasle’s Encyclopédie méthodique: Jurisprudence (8 vols., 1782-89), Jean-Baptiste Denisart’s Collection de décisions nouvelles (1st ed., 6 vols., 1754), and Joseph-Nicolas Guyot’s Répertoire de jurisprudence (2d ed., 17 vols., 1784-85). As the Appendix indicates, verbatim and almost verbatim extracts from Lerasle, Denisart, and Guyot constitute at least 4-5% of the Digest’s source material. This Article therefore serves as a supplement (and partial corrective) to Rodolfo Batiza’s 1971 and 1974 studies of the Digest’s “actual sources”. The present study argues that the Digest’s primary redactor, Louis Moreau Lislet, borrowed language from French legal encyclopedia entries largely for pedagogical purposes, including introducing into Louisiana’s new civil code civilian definitions and other material that would be useful for lawyers and judges trained in the common law. As a result, Louisiana’s first civil code possesses a didactic quality that is absent from its Napoleonic prototype. Equally important, this study suggests that earlier scholars’ assumptions that the Digest’s source material reflects Louisiana’s mixed Spanish-French legal history should be revisited: while discovery of a significant presence of French legal encyclopedic sources certainly reveals the drafter’s preference for, and familiarity with, ancien droit legal literature, it further undermines previous assumptions about the widespread indirect influence of Roman and Spanish-Castilian sources.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.