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Full-Text Articles in Law
Anti-Disruption Statutory Construction, Jonathan Adler
Anti-Disruption Statutory Construction, Jonathan Adler
Faculty Publications
During his first ten years on the Supreme Court, Chief Justice John Roberts has adopted a pragmatic approach to statutory interpretation that appears to place a higher priority on avoiding disruptive consequences than on any particular interpretive methodology. Prepared for the symposium, “Ten Years the Chief: Examining a Decade of John Roberts on the Supreme Court,” at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, this brief essay argues that the Chief Justice’s approach to statutory interpretation exhibits a “Burkean minimalism” that seeks to reduce seismic effect of the Court’s decisions. In particular, the Chief Justice is drawn toward statutory interpretations …
A Radically Immodest Judicial Modesty: The End Of Facial Challenges To Abortion Regulations And The Future Of The Health Exception In The Roberts Era, B. Jessie Hill
Faculty Publications
If there is anything as strongly associated in the public mind with Chief Justice John Roberts as his black robe and judicial temperament, it is surely his claim to judicial modesty. And indeed, some commentators have suggested that there are signs of newfound judicial restraint in the Roberts Court. One example of this purported restraint is the Roberts Court’s expressed preference for narrower, as-applied decisionmaking in constitutional cases, as opposed to striking down statutes on their face. The Roberts Court has turned away facial challenges or otherwise expressed a preference for making decisions on an as-applied basis in a number …