Digital Commons Network^™

The Supreme Court Review Act: Fast-Tracking The Interbranch Dialogue And Destabilizing The Filibuster, Aaron-Andrew P. Bruhl

Faculty Publications

This Essay presents an analysis of the Supreme Court Review Act, a bill that was recently introduced in Congress. The Act would create a streamlined legislative process for bills responding to new Supreme Court decisions that interpret federal statutes or restrict constitutional rights. By facilitating legislative responses to controversial cases, the Act would promote the “dialogue” that commentators and the courts themselves have used as a model for interbranch relations. The Essay describes how the proposed Supreme Court Review Act would work, discusses some of its benefits, addresses its constitutionality, and raises some questions about its implementation and effects.

Standing Without Injury, Jonathan Adler

Faculty Publications

It is well-established that injury in fact is an essential element of Article III standing, but should it be? Academics have long criticized the Supreme Court’s standing jurisprudence. These criticisms are now being echoed by federal judges. Judge Kevin Newsom, for one, has suggested existing standing jurisprudence has become ungrounded from constitutional text, incoherent, and administrable. He suggests abandoning injury in fact altogether, and recognizing broad congressional power to authorize causes of action to sue in federal court, subject only to those limits imposed by the executive branch’s obligation to “Take Care” that the laws are faithfully executed. In short, …

Red-Flag Laws, Civilian Firearms Ownership And Measures Of Freedom, Royce De R. Barondes

Faculty Publications

This essay provides context for an assessment of a part of the recently-enacted Bipartisan Safer Communities Act--federal legislation funding state red-flag procedures, which allow for seizures of firearms from persons who have not committed crimes.

First, it assesses Maryland’s experience during the first year of implementing these procedures. The essay details computations, extrapolating from Maryland’s first-year experience, showing that adoption of these statutes causes blameless persons to be subject to being killed by the government at a rate comparable to or in excess of the murder rate.

Second, the essay identifies an overlooked impact of this federal legislation. The legislation’s …

Mysterizing Religion, Marc O. Degirolami

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

A mystery of faith is a truth of religion that escapes human understanding. The mysteries of religion are not truths that human beings happen not to know, or truths that they could know with sufficient study and application, but instead truths that they cannot know in the nature of things. In the Letter to the Colossians, St. Paul writes that as a Christian apostle, his holy office is to “bring to completion for you the word of God, the mystery hidden from ages and from generations past.” Note that Paul does not say that his task is to make …

A Prophylactic Approach To Compact Constitutionality, Katherine Mims Crocker

Faculty Publications

From COVID-19 to climate change, immigration to health insurance, firearms control to electoral reform: state politicians have sought to address all these hot-button issues by joining forces with other states. The U.S. Constitution, however, forbids states to “enter into any Agreement or Compact” with each other “without the Consent of Congress,” a requirement that proponents of much interstate action, especially around controversial topics, would hope to circumvent.

The Supreme Court lets them do just that. By interpreting “any Agreement or Compact” so narrowly that it is difficult to see what besides otherwise unlawful coordination qualifies, the Court has essentially read …