The Controlled Substances Act authorizes the attorney general to schedule drugs. Schedule I of the CSA imposes a complete criminal ban; schedules II through V allow drugs to be prescribed under certain conditions. For decades, the attorney general has delegated this authority to the Drug Enforcement Administration, which has consistently opposed...

For the Balkinization symposium on David Pozen, The Constitution of the War on Drugs (Oxford University Press, 2024). I am indebted to Jack Balkin for organizing a symposium on my book, The Constitution of the War on Drugs, and to all of the commentators for offering such rich reflections. The book recovers a lost history of constitutional...

Reva Siegel and Mary Ziegler  We have just posted a revised draft of Comstockery, the first legal history of the Comstock Act since antiabortion lawyers have attempted to transform it into a de facto national ban on mailing abortion-related items. Our draft challenges the claim that the obscenity law is a plain-meaning, no-exceptions, national...

I've been doing some research on the history of the draft and came across something interesting. On November 9, 1863, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court issued a 3-2 decision (Kneedler v. Lane) holding the federal military draft unconstitutional. Ten days later, Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address.Reading the Address with this sequence of events in mind,...

For the Balkinization symposium on David Pozen, The Constitution of the War on Drugs (Oxford University Press, 2024).Paul Butler Like most users of illegal drugs, I have never been caught.  I have lots of company, David Pozen reminds me, in The Constitution of the War on Drugs, his prodigiously researched take down of said war but not said constitution. ...

For the Balkinization symposium on David Pozen, The Constitution of the War on Drugs (Oxford University Press, 2024). Kate Shaw   I admit that I was surprised when I learned that David Pozen was hard at work on a book project about the war on drugs. Pozen is a brilliant scholar of constitutional law and constitutional theory; he’s written more...