The quest for an antitotalitarian formula marks not just judicial doctrine but academic constitutional thought as well. Antitotalitarianism lies just below the surface of the leading modern theories of constitutional law, coloring the work of scholars like John Hart Ely and Bruce Ackerman. Indeed, constitutional thought still operates within the framework defined by opposition to Nazism and communism. The problem of totalitarianism gave birth to major themes in modern academic constitutional theory. But to credit antitotalitarianism with helping to remake constitutional case law is still to underestimate its influence. Those decisions revolutionized the law of free expression, equal protection, police procedures, and personal privacy. In a more subtle way, the desire to articulate principles that distinguished America from the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany contributed to a long line of liberal Supreme Court decisions from the Second World War through the Warren era. Sometimes, as in Dennis, antitotalitarianism appeared on the face of judicial doctrine. In the years after World War II, the Supreme Court continually reformulated constitutional doctrine in ways designed to prevent a totalitarian regime, communist or otherwise, from arising in the United States. United States,' Justice Robert Jackson noted that lawmaking in his generation involved never-ending quests for a legal formula that would protect America against a communist revolution.2 Jackson was writing primarily about the Smith Act,3 but his remark had much broader application. Primus, University of Michigan Law School A Brooding Omnipresence: Totalitarianism in Postwar Constitutional Thought
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