The Constitution as Code

The Constitution as Code links Rudolph von Jhering and François Gény to the United States Constitution: “Durch das römische Recht, über das römische Recht hinaus”; “par la constitution, mais au-delà de la constitution.” This provocative paper was presented at the Fourth Worldwide Congress of Mixed Jurisdiction Jurists, Montreal, Canada. It voices a thesis: “Liberty evolves: judicial interpretation in le sens évolutif.” The same day, Justice Anthony Kennedy announced the U.S. Supreme Court’s opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges, the same-sex marriage case, another of Professor Baier’s Beweise (proofs).

PAUL R. BAIER is the Judge Henry A. Politz Professor of Law, Paul M. Hebert Law Center, Louisiana State University, USA. He holds the J.D., Harvard Law School. Editor, Harvard Legal Commentary; Judicial Fellow, Supreme Court of the United States; Scholar-in-Residence Louisiana Bar Foundation. Constitutional Interpretation: Procédés d’Elaboration (with Justice Harry A. Blackmun) (LSU-Aix-Marseille III Summer Study in Law, 1986, 1992); Separation of Powers and the Rule of Law (Tulane Law School, Siena, Italy, 199l, with Justice Antonin Scalia). His play, “Father Chief Justice”: Edward Douglass White and the Constitution, has been in production for fifteen years, playing most recently on the stage of the Social Law Library, Boston, Massachusetts, featuring four members of the Massachusetts Supreme Court. Professor Baier is Secretary of the Supreme Court of Louisiana Historical Society.