Free downloadable books: نوفمبر 2018

American Civil Law Origins: Implications for

Ten American states were settled by France, Mexico or Spain and had civil law legal systems in place at the time of the American Revolution. We argue that this initial condition had persistent effects on state constitutions, because under civil law legal traditions, laws were spelled out in a legal code that judges administer. When these states entered the Union and adopted common law, their civil law tradition led them to adopt state constitutions that were longer and more detailed than common law state constitutions. This greater length and specificity of these constitutions created demand for constitutional change as preferences and circumstances changed. Constitutional instability is likely to have a negative impact on state court quality because it has the potential to both weaken judicial review and to destabilize the legal framework. Using four separate measures of constitutional instability and controlling for a set of covariates, we quantify the substantial negative impact of constitutional instability on state courts.