The new issue of the Yale Law Journal is out, and this article caught my eye: Mary Sarah Bilder, The Corporate Origins of Judicial Review. From the introduction:

This Article traces a new historical account of the origins of judicial review. It argues that judicial review arose from a longstanding English corporate practice under which a corporation's ordinances were reviewed for repugnancy to the laws of England. This English corporation law subsequently became a transatlantic constitution binding American colonial law by a similar standard of not being repugnant to the laws of England. After the Revolution, this practice of bounded legislation slid inexorably into a constitutional practice, as "the Constitution" replaced "the laws of England." With the Constitution understood to embody the supreme authority of the people, the judiciary would void ordinary legislation repugnant to this supreme law. Over a century later, this practice gained a new name: judicial review. The widespread acceptance of this name eventually obscured the degree to which the origins of the practice lay in older practices regarding the delegated nature of corporate and colonial authorities, rather than in a new constitutional theory of judicial power.

Looks fascinating. I feel sorry for the law review editors who had to check the footnotes, though.