Source: https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/conlaw/2011/04/-constitutional-footnotes-a-month-of-footnotes-starting-with-the-most-famous-footnote.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-18 22:46:52+00:00

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April is "National Poetry Month," and here at Constitutional Law Professors Blog we are celebrating not with a poem a day, but with a footnote a day.
Although there certainly are some poems about and in constitutional law, arguably (or so I have long thought) footnotes are the next closest creature to "poetry" in Constitutional Law.
At issue in United States v. Carolene Products Company, 304 U.S. 144 (1938) was a federal statute regulating the shipment of "filled milk" (skimmed milk to which nonmilk fat is added so that it may seem to be like whole milk or even cream). The challenges to the law were based on a lack of commerce clause power and a due process violation. The case did not involve equal protection - - - which perhaps explains the relegation of the now-famous language to a footnote.
For purists, here's the famous footnote four, complete with citations, from Carolene Products.
Nor need we enquire whether similar considerations enter into the review of statutes directed at particular religious, Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U. S. 510, or national, Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U. S. 390; Bartels v. Iowa, 262 U. S. 404; Farrington v. Tokushige, 273 U. S. 284, or racial minorities, Nixon v. Herndon, supra; Nixon v. Condon, supra: whether prejudice against discrete and insular minorities may be a special condition, which tends seriously to curtail the operation of those political processes ordinarily to be relied upon to protect minorities, and which may call for a correspondingly more searching judicial inquiry. Compare 17 U. S. 428; South Carolina v. Barnwell Bros., 303 U. S. 177, 303 U. S. 184, n 2, and cases cited.
United States v. Carolene Prod. Co., 304 U.S. 144, 152-53 n.4 (1938).
I'm glad you posted a link to your footnotes article. It's well worth reading. The text, that is. But, it's well worth reading for those of us who actually do read footnotes (and end notes for that matter). I had long believed that no one could top Dennis Arrow for his "Pomobabble" article (96 Michigan Law Review 461(Dec. 1997)). But I do think you have bested him. Even if the coincidental publishing date is only that. Surely it is coincidental?

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