Tomorrow, students in my Administrative Law class will take their final exam. This morning I made some last-minute changes to the exam and sent it off; this afternoon, I talked with students who dropped by with last-minute questions as they prepared.

The sun came out after a couple of gray days and streamed in the two giant west-facing windows of my office, brightening when it hit the orange-and-turquoise area rug, the blonde maple desk and credenza and bookshelf, the tropical colors of the Ugandan oil paintings. The students brightened too, shifting into go-mode, rattling off questions and nodding with quick comprehension at my technical answers.

We talked about how the McCarthy exceptions may not have survived the constructions of Section 704 as a statutory exhaustion doctrine; how Universal Camera refined the standard for reviewing evidence in support of findings of fact in formal adjudication; how the Major Questions doctrine is another Chevron Step Zero. It lifts me up to hear the students talking like masters of these technical doctrines.

and In This Corner …

But more than technical mastery, I hope they take away from this class an appreciation that they are coming of age as legal professionals in an era of conceptual change unknown for at least a century. Not since the New Deal have fundamental questions about the structure of government and the locus of power been as hotly contested.

We can’t say yet whether this will beome what Bruce Ackerman called (in a book that made me decide to go to law school) a “constitutional transformation.” We’re not there yet.

But we’re clearly at a “constitutional moment” — a nearly-as-rare time when fundamental constitutional questions are once again unsettled.

I don’t know if I like where it seems to be headed — but after three decades in a relatively stable legal universe, I want to grab some popcorn and Raisinettes and take a front-row seat in the action-packed theater of this constitutional contest.

The greatest show on earth is about to begin …