Today we conclude our preview of the new (Summer) issue of the Claremont Review of Books with a bonus edition featuring a book by a friend. Subscribe to the CRB here for the heavily subsidized price of $19.95 and get online access thrown in for free.
Michael Stokes Paulsen is the University Chair & Professor of Law at the University of St. Thomas in the Twin Cities. Through his contributions to professional publications and a leading casebook, he has emerged as one of our foremost scholars of American constitutional law.
Mike is also a friend; I first got to know him when he joined the faculty of the University of Minnesota Law School at the beginning of his academic career. I greatly admire him. It was obvious that he had an important contribution to make as a constitutional scholar. Before departing for the University of St. Thomas Law School, he went on to become McKnight Presidential Professor of Law and Public Policy, Briggs and Morgan Professor of Law, and Associate Dean for Research and Scholarship at the University of Minnesota Law School.
Mike has now co-written with his son Luke Paulsen The Constitution: An Introduction. The book’s Web site is online here. Justice Alito read the book in galley and wrote a brief review of it for Engage: The Journal of the Federalist Society Practice Groups. When Justice Alito’s review was posted online, we also published it here on Power Line with the kind permission of the Federalist Society.
I should add that C-SPAN has posted the Paulsens’ discussion of their book at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia this past June. The video is posted here. National Review has collected Mike’s contributions (mostly to NR’s Bench Memos, I think) here.
The CRB called on the estimable Michael Ullmann to review the Paulsens’ book in the new issue. The review is published under the heading “Two cheers for originalism.” Professor Uhlmann writes:
In The Constitution: An Introduction, Paulsen and his son, Luke, a young software engineer who clearly learned a thing or two about law over many years at the family dinner table, have produced that rare thing: a commentary on the Constitution that may be profitably read by experts and non-experts alike. It is at once intellectually sophisticated without being pedantic, and comprehensible to lay readers without demeaning their intelligence. The Paulsens have accomplished what legions of professors have failed to do, and in truth have scarcely even tried to do: they explain in 300 gracefully written pages the origins, structure, operations, and political development of the United States Constitution.
Whole thing, all of it of interest, here.
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