Law Commons^™

Rethinking Legislative Facts, Haley N. Proctor

Notre Dame Law Review

As the factual nature of legal inquiry has become increasingly apparent over the past century, courts and commentators have fallen into the habit of labeling the facts behind the law “legislative facts.” Loosely, legislative facts are general facts courts rely upon to formulate law or policy, but that definition is as contested as it is vague. Most agree that legislative facts exist in some form or another, but few agree on what that form is, on who should find them, and how. This Article seeks to account for and resolve that confusion. Theories of legislative fact focus on the role …

Who Is A Minister? Originalist Deference Expands The Ministerial Exception, Jared C. Huber

Notre Dame Law Review

The ministerial exception is a doctrine born out of the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment that shields many religious institutions’ employment decisions from review. While the ministerial exception does not extend to all employment decisions by, or employees of, religious institutions, it does confer broad—and absolute—protection. While less controversy surrounds whether the Constitution shields religious institutions’ employment decisions to at least some extent, much more debate surrounds the exception’s scope, and perhaps most critically, which employees fall under it. In other words, who is a "minister" for purposes of the ministerial exception?

Common Law Statutes, Charles W. Tyler

Notre Dame Law Review

The defining feature of a “common law statute” is that it resists standard methods of statutory interpretation. The category includes such important federal statutes as the Sherman Act, § 1983, and the Labor Management Relations Act, among others. Despite the manifest significance of common law statutes, existing caselaw and legal scholarship lack a minimally defensible account of how courts should decide cases arising under them. This Article supplies such an account. It argues that judges should decide cases arising under common law statutes by applying rules representing a consensus among American courts today—i.e., rules that jurisdictions generally have in common. …

Converse-Osborn: State Sovereign Immunity, Standing, And The Dog-Wagging Effect Of Article Iii, Carlos M. Vázquez

Notre Dame Law Review

“[T]he legislative, executive, and judicial powers, of every well constructed government, are co-extensive with each other . . . . [T]he judicial department may receive from the Legislature the power of construing every . . . law [which the Legislature may constitutionally make].” Chief Justice Marshall relied on this axiom in Osborn v. Bank of the United States to stress the breadth of the federal judicial power: the federal courts must have the potential power to adjudicate any claim based on any law Congress has the power to enact. In recent years, however, the axiom has sometimes operated in the …

State Officers And The Enforcement Of Federal Law, Charlie Nugent

Notre Dame Law Review

There is an unresolved question whether the state enforcement of federal law is compatible with the structure of government that the Constitution creates for the United States. Commentators have advanced two diametrically opposed positions to justify the state enforcement of federal law. The “federal delegation” position maintains that federal executive power is the only executive power that can perform federal executive functions. Proponents of this position argue that, when state officers enforce federal law, they exercise federal executive power at the pleasure of the President. This federal delegation position, however, has not been adequately defended. There is no clear reason …

An Originalist Approach To Prospective Overruling, John O. Mcginnis, Michael Rappaport

Notre Dame Law Review

Originalism has become a dominant jurisprudential theory on the Supreme Court. But a large number of precedents are inconsistent with the Constitution’s original meaning and overturning them risks creating enormous disruption to the legal order. This article defends a prospective overruling approach that would harmonize precedent with originalism’s rise and reduce the disruption from overrulings. Under prospective overruling, the Court declares that an existing statute violates the original meaning but will continue to be enforced because declaring it unconstitutional would produce enormous costs; however, future statutes of this type will be voided as unconstitutional. Under our approach, the Court would …

Liberalism And Orthodoxy: A Search For Mutual Apprehension, Brandon Paradise, Fr. Sergey Trostyanskiy

Notre Dame Law Review

This Article seeks to evaluate and contextualize recently intensifying Christian critiques of liberalism’s intellectual and moral claims. Much of this recent critique has been from Catholic and Protestant quarters. Christianity’s third major branch—Orthodox Christianity—has not played a prominent role in current critiques of liberalism. This Article seeks to help fill this void in the literature. In helping to fill this void, it contributes to understanding how liberalism fits with one of the world’s most ancient Christian traditions.

The Article begins by disambiguating the terms Orthodoxy and liberalism. After identifying each body of thought’s foundational commitments, it notes that Orthodoxy endorses …

Tender And Taint: Money And Complicity In Entanglement Jurisprudence, Amy J. Sepinwall

Notre Dame Law Review

Because liberalism is concerned with individual freedom, it finds that one person is responsible for the conduct of another only under very narrow circumstances. To a large extent, the law reflects this narrow conception of complicity. There is however one glaring exception to the law’s general resistance to complicity claims: where one actor becomes connected to another’s act through a pecuniary contribution, the law’s liberalism falls away. Money forges a cognizable association no matter how tenuous the causal connection and no matter the subsidizer’s attitudes toward the subsidized act. For example, in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, the Supreme Court recognized …

Contingency And Contestation In Christianity And Liberalism, Michael P. Moreland

Notre Dame Law Review

What is the relationship of Christianity to liberalism? Answers include: Liberalism is a product of the moral legacy of Christianity, such as the dignity of individual human persons, equality, rights, perhaps even some forms of democratic institutionalism. Or liberalism is a hostile reaction against Christianity by way of an autonomous individualism set against divinely ordained creatureliness and dependence, democracy against authority, egalitarianism against hierarchy. Or liberalism is in a modus vivendi relationship with Christianity and vice versa. Or perhaps there is something true about each of these answers.

Critiques of liberalism in law and politics come in waves. The liberal-communitarian …

The Constitutional Law Of Interpretation, Anthony J. Bellia Jr., Bradford R. Clark

Notre Dame Law Review

The current debate over constitutional interpretation often proceeds on the assumption that the Constitution does not provide rules for its own interpretation. Accordingly, several scholars have attempted to identify applicable rules by consulting external sources that governed analogous legal texts (such as statutes, treaties, contracts, etc.). The distinctive function of the Constitution—often forgotten or overlooked—renders these analogies largely unnecessary. The Constitution was an instrument used by the people of the several States to transfer a fixed set of sovereign rights and powers from one group of sovereigns (the States) to another sovereign (the federal government), while maintaining the “States” as …

Debs And The Federal Equity Jurisdiction, Aditya Bamzai, Samuel L. Bray

Notre Dame Law Review

The United States can sue for equitable relief without statutory authorization. The leading case on this question is In re Debs, and how to understand that case is of both historical and contemporary importance. Debs was a monumental opinion that prompted responses in the political platforms of major parties, presidential addresses, and enormous academic commentary. In the early twentieth century, Congress enacted several pieces of labor legislation that reduced Debs’s importance in the specific context of strikes. But in other contexts, the question whether the United States can bring suit in equity remains disputed to this day. The …

The Moral Authority Of Original Meaning, J. Joel Alicea

Notre Dame Law Review

One of the most enduring criticisms of originalism is that it lacks a sufficiently compelling moral justification. Scholars operating within the natural law tradition have been among the foremost critics of originalism’s morality, yet originalists have yet to offer a sufficient defense of originalism from within the natural law tradition that demonstrates that these critics are mistaken. That task has become more urgent in recent years due to Adrian Vermeule’s critique of originalism from within the natural law tradition, which has received greater attention than previous critiques. This Article is the first full-length response to the natural law critique of …

"A Sword In The Bed": Bringing An End To The Fusion Of Law And Equity, Brooks M. Chupp

Notre Dame Law Review

Those who called for the fusion of law and equity have, throughout the years, argued that the existence of a parallel court system for equity would be inefficient and confusing for parties. While there is limited merit to this viewpoint, the United States has been willing to create courts of limited jurisdiction to hear cases of a highly specialized or technical nature in other areas of the law (for example, tax and bankruptcy). This Note argues that the specialized-courts approach is viable as it relates to equity and that it is, in fact, preferable to the current system. This Note …

Recovering Classical Legal Constitutionalism: A Critique Of Professor Vermeule's New Theory, Jeffrey A. Pojanowski, Kevin C. Walsh

Notre Dame Law Review

This Review proceeds in three Parts. Part I briefly summarizes Common Good Constitutionalism and provides a more detailed description of four of the book’s distinctive features. Part II critiques Vermeule’s argument in light of the classical tradition’s four essential aspects of law, namely that it is an ordinance of reason, for the common good, made by one who has care of the community, and promulgated. Part III draws on those reflections to respond to Vermeule’s criticisms of work like ours that argues that original-law-based understandings of the Constitution are at home in the classical legal tradition. A Conclusion briefly reflects …

Interpreting State Statutes In Federal Court, Aaron-Andrew P. Bruhl

Notre Dame Law Review

This Article addresses a problem that potentially arises whenever a federal court encounters a state statute. When interpreting the state statute, should the federal court use the state’s methods of statutory interpretation—the state’s canons of construction, its rules about the use of legislative history, and the like—or should the court instead use federal methods of statutory interpretation? The question is interesting as a matter of theory, and it is practically significant because different jurisdictions have somewhat different interpretive approaches. In addressing itself to this problem, the Article makes two contributions. First, it shows, as a normative matter, that federal courts …

Interring The Unitary Executive, Christine Kexel Chabot

Notre Dame Law Review

The President’s power to remove and control subordinate executive officers has sparked a constitutional debate that began in 1789 and rages on today. Leading originalists claim that the Constitution created a “unitary executive” President whose plenary removal power affords her “exclusive control” over subordinates’ exercise of executive power. Text assigning the President a removal power and exclusive control appears nowhere in the Constitution, however, and unitary scholars have instead relied on select historical understandings and negative inferences drawn from a supposed lack of independent regulatory structures at the Founding. The comprehensive historical record introduced by this Article lays this debate …

Stare Decisis And The Supreme Court(S): What States Can Learn From Gamble, Zachary B. Pohlman

Notre Dame Law Review

While almost all questions before the Supreme Court require statutory or constitutional interpretation, state courts of last resort occupy a unique place in the American judicial landscape. As common-law courts, state supreme courts are empowered to develop common-law doctrines in addition to interpreting democratically enacted texts. This Note argues that these two distinct state court functions—interpretation of statutes and constitutions, and common-law judging—call for two distinct approaches to stare decisis, a distinction that is often muddied in practice. Justice Thomas’s concurrence in Gamble v. United States provides the framework for each approach, a framework based on the genesis and development …

Setting Our Feet: The Foundations Of Religious And Conscience Protections, Hanna Torline

Notre Dame Law Review

This Note does not attempt to claim that religion and conscience are not moral equivalents, that they are not equally important, or that they do not require equal legal treatment. Nor does it attempt to claim the converse. Simply put, it argues that a consideration of the different foundations underlying conscience protections and religious protections should give pause to anyone arguing that the two are equivalent. This Note concludes that the rationales behind protecting religion and conscience are different enough to merit consideration in the debate. For if religion and conscience are treated as equivalents under the law, they will …

Transborder Speech, Ronald J. Krotoszynski Jr.

Notre Dame Law Review

In an increasingly globalized marketplace of ideas, First Amendment law and theory must recognize that the freedom of speech does not end at the water’s edge. Simply put, the locus of expressive activity should not prefigure the government’s ability to engage in censorship. Nevertheless, under current First Amendment law and practice, the accident of geography may serve as a constitutionally acceptable basis for content-based censorship of speech. If, as the Supreme Court argued with such ferocity in Citizens United, the value of speech to an audience does not depend on the speaker’s identity or motive for speaking, then by …

Precedent In A Polarized Era, Zachary S. Price

Notre Dame Law Review

My Review begins below in Part I with a brief synopsis of Professor Kozel’s argument. Part II then discusses his theory’s particular value, and challenges, in our historical moment of acute polarization and political conflict over constitutional law. To make Part II’s claims more concrete, Part III then turns to Janus and Wayfair. It uses the two cases to illustrate pressures courts may face in the years ahead and assesses how well these decisions accord with Kozel’s theory. The Review ends with a conclusion reflecting more broadly on the importance of stare decisis and other institutional restraints in the current …

The Canon Of Rational Basis Review, Katie R. Eyer

Notre Dame Law Review

The modern constitutional law canon fundamentally misdescribes rational basis review. Through a series of errors—of omission, simplification, and recharacterization—we have largely erased a robust history of the use of rational basis review by social movements to generate constitutional change. Instead, the story the canon tells is one of dismal prospects for challengers of government action—in which rational basis review is an empty, almost meaningless form of review.

This Article suggests that far from the weak and ineffectual mechanism that most contemporary accounts suggest, rational basis review has, in the modern era, served as one of the primary equal protection entry …

Originalism, Cass R. Sunstein

Notre Dame Law Review

Originalism might be defended on two very different grounds. The first is that it is in some sense mandatory—for example, that it follows from the very idea of interpretation, from having a written Constitution, or from the only legitimate justifications for judicial review. The second is that originalism is best on broadly consequentialist grounds. While the first kind of defense is not convincing, the second cannot be ruled off limits. In an imaginable world, it is right; in our world, it is usually not. But in the context of impeachment, originalism is indeed best, because there are no sufficiently helpful …

Chevron Step Two's Domain, Kent H. Barnett, Christopher J. Walker

Notre Dame Law Review

An increasing number of judges, policymakers, and scholars have advocated eliminating or narrowing Chevron deference—a two-step inquiry under which courts defer to federal agencies’ reasonable interpretations of ambiguous statutes the agencies administer. Much of the debate centers on either Chevron’s domain (i.e., when Chevron should apply at all) or how courts ascertain statutory ambiguity at Chevron’s first step. Largely lost in this debate on constraining agency discretion is the role of Chevron’s second step: whether the agency’s resolution of a statutory ambiguity is reasonable. Drawing on the most comprehensive study of Chevron in the circuit courts, this …

Qui Tam Litigation Against Government Officials: Constitutional Implications Of A Neglected History, Randy Beck

Notre Dame Law Review

The Supreme Court concluded twenty-five years ago, in Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, that uninjured private plaintiffs may not litigate “generalized grievances” about the legality of executive branch conduct. According to the Lujan Court, Congress lacked power to authorize suit by a plaintiff who could not establish some “particularized” injury from the challenged conduct. The Court believed litigation to require executive branch legal compliance, brought by an uninjured private party, is not a “case” or “controversy” within the Article III judicial power and impermissibly reassigns the President’s Article II responsibility to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” …

The Exceptional Role Of Courts In The Constitutional Order, N.W. Barber, Adrian Vermeule

Notre Dame Law Review

This Article looks at a rare part of the judicial role: those exceptional cases when the judge is called upon to pass judgment on the constitution itself. This arises in three groups of cases, roughly speaking. First, in exceptional cases the validity of the constitution and the legal order is thrown into dispute. Second, on some occasions the judge is asked to rule on the transition from one constitutional order to another. Third, there are some cases in which the health of the constitutional order requires the judge to act not merely beyond the law, as it were, but actually …

The Unconscionable War On Moral Conscience, Michael Stokes Paulsen

Notre Dame Law Review

My thesis in this review builds on and is inspired in part by George’s book: Where, or to the extent that, a conflict between conscience and authority reduces to a pure stand on principle by each side—sincere conscience for its sake versus authority for its—in a free society conscience should almost always win. The only time that claims of government authority should triumph over genuine claims of religious conscience is when religiously motivated conduct would produce essentially intolerable harm to others—harm of a kind and degree that would lead one to conclude (in effect, not literally) that it is inconceivable …

Judicial Candor And Extralegal Reasoning: Why Extralegal Reasons Require Legal Justifications (And No More), Eric Dean Hageman

Notre Dame Law Review

This Note’s first Part explores two landmark Supreme Court cases, Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey and NFIB, that may have been decided based on extralegal considerations. Part II describes three prominent theories of judicial candor with an eye to the results they might yield with respect to extralegal reasoning. Part III offers and defends a new, partial theory of judicial candor. This theory is that a judge who employs extralegal reasoning should omit discussion of her reliance on that reasoning and justify her decision with legal reasoning.

The first two Parts will demonstrate that there is a …

Assessing The Role Of History In The Federal Courts Canon: A Word Of Caution, Amanda L. Tyler

Notre Dame Law Review

In undertaking historical inquiry in the field of federal courts, one must be careful about assigning certain data points from the Founding period determinative weight, rather than treating them as part of a larger conversation about the role of the judicial power in our constitutional framework. This is because in studying the early years following ratification of the Constitution, one tends to find both examples of major principles that remained the subject of disagreement as well as examples of early legislation and practices that today we would reject as plainly inconsistent with the constitutional separation of powers. In support of …

Communicative Content And Legal Content, Lawrence B. Solum

Notre Dame Law Review

This Essay investigates a familiar set of questions about the relationship between legal texts (e.g., constitutions, statutes, opinions, orders, and contracts) and the content of the law (e.g., norms, rules, standards, doctrines, and mandates). Is the original meaning of the constitutional text binding on the Supreme Court when it develops doctrines of constitutional law? Should statutes be given their plain meaning or should judges devise statutory constructions that depart from the text to serve a purpose? What role should default rules play in the interpretation and construction of contracts? This Essay makes two moves that can help lawyers and legal …

Hierarchically Variable Deference To Agency Interpretations, Aaron-Andrew P. Bruhl

Notre Dame Law Review

When courts review agency action, they typically accord agency decisions a degree of deference. As many courts and commentators have recognized, the law in this area is complicated because it features numerous standards of review, including several distinct regimes for evaluating agencies’ legal interpretations. There is, however, at least one important respect in which uniformity rather than variety prevails: the applicable standards of review do not vary depending on which court is reviewing the agency. Whichever standard governs a particular case—Chevron, Skidmore, or something else—all courts in the judicial hierarchy are supposed to apply that same standard.

This Article proposes …