Daphna Renan
90 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 1471
Justice Ginsburg’s opinions challenge us to rethink the role of statutes in American constitutional democracy, and how to interpret the authority of the people to innovate on the lawmaking process itself. Her legacy includes a body of opinions that comprises a forceful rebuttal to the Court’s current interpretive dogma. Justice Ginsburg’s writing poses an alternative vision of American public law—a “republican” jurisprudence that puts the power to make law back in the hands of the people. This Symposium Essay elucidates three aspects of that jurisprudence: what work it understands legislation to do in the polity, how it understands the authority of Congress to make law, and how it interprets the authority of the people to innovate on the lawmaking process itself.
