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Grains Of Sand Or Butterfly Effect: Standing, The Legitimacy Of Precedent, And Reflections On Hollingsworth And Windsor, Maxwell L. Stearns
Grains Of Sand Or Butterfly Effect: Standing, The Legitimacy Of Precedent, And Reflections On Hollingsworth And Windsor, Maxwell L. Stearns
Maxwell L. Stearns
One test of whether a scholarly work has achieved canonical status is to ask respected scholars in the field which works, setting aside their own, are essential reads. William Fletcher’s article, The Structure of Standing, now in its twenty-fifth year, would almost certainly emerge at the top of any such lists among standing scholars. And yet, while many at this conference have built upon Fletcher’s insights, there remains notable disagreement concerning standing doctrine’s normative foundations. The central dispute concerns whether standing doctrine should be celebrated as furthering a “private-rights,” or instead, condemned as thwarting a “public-rights,” adjudicatory model. In a …
Private-Rights Litigation And The Normative Foundations Of Durable Constitutional Precedent, Maxwell L. Stearns
Private-Rights Litigation And The Normative Foundations Of Durable Constitutional Precedent, Maxwell L. Stearns
Maxwell L. Stearns
This chapter advances a simple thesis that runs counter to much public-law scholarship. Holding all else constant, the more difficult, or costly, constitutional rulings are to obtain, the more durable the resulting precedent; conversely, the easier, or cheaper, such rulings are to obtain, the less durable the resulting precedent. Most public-law scholarship implicitly rests on the opposite premise that the relative ease or difficulty of obtaining constitutional rulings should correlate positively, not negatively, with the relative importance or unimportance of the asserted right. Within a public-rights adjudicatory model, important constitutional rights justify relaxing traditional constraints on constitutional decisionmaking, including ripeness, …