Document Type
Book Review
Publication Date
Winter 2025
DOI
10.59015/jach.WUEU7246
Abstract
The Constitution and the War on Drugs, David Pozen’s carefully researched and brilliantly argued book, is both illuminating and disturbing: illuminating because it unearths forgotten moments when judicially formulated constitutional doctrine that could have ended or sharply restricted the War on Drugs were well within the Overton Window, and disturbing because it surfaces hard questions about historical contingency and the scope of the change that might have occurred in a counterfactual world. In this review, the author argues that the failure to specify both the nature of the counterfactual and the breadth of the alternative possibility have confused discussions about constitutional reform in general and about the reform Pozen suggests in particular.
Publication Citation
Journal of American Constitutional History, Vol. 3, Issue 1, 207-222.
Scholarly Commons Citation
Seidman, Louis Michael, "Pozen and the Puzzle of Counterfactuals" (2025). Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works. 2655.
https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub/2655
Included in
Constitutional Law Commons, Courts Commons, Jurisprudence Commons, Legal History Commons, Supreme Court of the United States Commons