Law Commons^™

The Problem Of Extravagant Inferences, Cass Sunstein

Georgia Law Review

Judges and lawyers sometimes act as if a constitutional or statutory term must, as a matter of semantics, be understood to have a particular meaning, when it could easily be understood to have another meaning, or several other meanings. When judges and lawyers act as if a legal term has a unique semantic meaning, even though it does not, they should be seen to be drawing extravagant inferences. Some constitutional provisions are treated this way; consider the idea that the vesting of executive power in a President of the United States necessarily includes the power to remove, at will, a …

Interpreting The Administrative Procedure Act: A Literature Review, Christopher J. Walker, Scott Macguidwin

Law & Economics Working Papers

The modern administrative state has changed substantially since Congress enacted the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) in 1946. Yet Congress has done little to modernize the APA in those intervening seventy-seven years. That does not mean the APA has remained unchanged. Federal courts have substantially refashioned the APA’s requirements for administrative procedure and judicial review of agency action. Perhaps unsurprisingly, calls to return to either the statutory text or the original meaning (or both) have intensified in recent years. “APA originalism” projects abound.

As part of the Notre Dame Law Review’s Symposium on the History of the Ad- ministrative Procedure Act …

Interpreting The Administrative Procedure Act: A Literature Review, Christopher J. Walker

Articles

The modern administrative state has changed substantially since Congress enacted the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) in 1946. Yet Congress has done little to modernize the APA in those intervening seventy-seven years. That does not mean the APA has remained unchanged. Federal courts have substantially refashioned the APA’s requirements for administrative procedure and judicial review of agency action. Perhaps unsurprisingly, calls to return to either the statutory text or the original meaning (or both) have intensified in recent years. “APA originalism” projects abound.

As part of the Notre Dame Law Review’s Symposium on the History of the Administrative Procedure Act and …

When Statutory Interpretation Becomes Precedent: Why Individual Rights Advocates Shouldn’T Be So Quick To Praise Bostock, Elena Schiefele

Washington and Lee Law Review

Justice Neil Gorsuch’s approach to textualism, which this Note will call “muscular textualism,” is unique. Most notably exemplified in Bostock v. Clayton County, muscular textualism is marked by its rigorous adherence to what Justice Gorsuch perceives to be the “plain language” of the text. Because Justice Gorsuch’s opinions exemplify muscular textualism in a structured and consistent manner, his appointment to the Supreme Court provides the forum from which he can influence the decision-making process of other members of the judiciary when they seek guidance from Supreme Court precedent. Accordingly, it is important for both advocates and judges to understand …

The Second Founding And The First Amendment, William M. Carter Jr.

Articles

Constitutional doctrine generally proceeds from the premise that the original intent and public understanding of pre-Civil War constitutional provisions carries forward unchanged from the colonial Founding era. This premise is flawed because it ignores the Nation’s Second Founding: i.e., the constitutional moment culminating in the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments and the civil rights statutes enacted pursuant thereto. The Second Founding, in addition to providing specific new individual rights and federal powers, also represented a fundamental shift in our constitutional order. The Second Founding’s constitutional regime provided that the underlying systemic rules and norms of the First Founding’s Constitution …

Legitimate Interpretation – Or Legitimate Adjudication?, Thomas W. Merrill

Faculty Scholarship

Current debate about the legitimacy of lawmaking by courts focuses on what constitutes legitimate interpretation. The debate has reached an impasse in that originalism and textualism appear to have the stronger case as a matter of theory while living constitutionalism and dynamic interpretation provide much account of actual practice. This Article argues that if we refocus the debate by asking what constitutes legitimate adjudication, as determined by the social practice of the parties and their lawyers who take part in adjudication, it is possible to develop an account of legitimacy that produces a much better fit between theory and practice. …

Originalism And Congressional Power To Enforce The Fourteenth Amendment, Christopher W. Schmidt

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

In this Essay, I argue that originalism conflicts with the Supreme Court’s current jurisprudence defining the scope of Congress’ power to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment. Under the standard established in Boerne v. Flores, the Court limits congressional power under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment to statutory remedies premised on judicially defined interpretations of Fourteenth Amendment rights. A commitment to originalism as a method of judicial constitutional interpretation challenges the premise of judicial interpretive supremacy in Section 5 jurisprudence in two ways. First, as a matter of history, an originalist reading of Section 5 provides support for broad judicial …

Justice Scalia, The Nondelegation Doctrine, And Constitutional Argument, William K. Kelley

Journal Articles

Justice Antonin Scalia wrote two major opinions considering the nondelegation doctrine. In Whitman v. American Trucking Associations, he accepted and applied a very broad, indeed virtually unlimited, view of Congress's power to delegate authority to administrative agencies that was consistent with the Court's precedents since the New Deal. In his dissent in Mistretta v. United States, however, he concluded that the constitutional structure formally barred the delegation of naked rulemaking power to an agency that was untethered to other law execution tasks. This essay analyzes Justice Scalia's nondelegation jurisprudence in light of the general jurisprudential commitments he championed throughout his …

The Tragedy Of Justice Scalia, Mitchell N. Berman

All Faculty Scholarship

Justice Antonin Scalia was, by the time of his death last February, the Supreme Court’s best known and most influential member. He was also its most polarizing, a jurist whom most students of American law either love or hate. This essay, styled as a twenty-year retrospective on A Matter of Interpretation, Scalia’s Tanner lectures on statutory and constitutional interpretation, aims to prod partisans on both sides of our central legal and political divisions to better appreciate at least some of what their opponents see—the other side of Scalia’s legacy. Along the way, it critically assesses Scalia’s particular brand of …

Clarence Thomas, Fisher V. University Of Texas, And The Future Of Affirmative Action In Higher Education, Scott D. Gerber

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Hayekian Statutory Interpretation: A Response To Professor Bhatia, John Ehrett

John Ehrett

In this Essay, I challenge Professor Gautam Bhatia’s recent claim that a Hayekian worldview offers the most rational framing of the philosophical vision underlying Justice Scalia’s jurisprudence. I argue that Hayek’s conception of law, more properly understood, emphasizes the context of social interaction patterns, rather than focusing exclusively on individual autonomous agents. I subsequently trace the resulting implications for interpretive methodology that flow from this distinction, and ultimately address the discontinuities between the normative visions of liberty espoused by Hayek and Scalia.

The Arduous Virtue Of Fidelity: Originalism, Scalia, Tribe, And Nerve, Ronald Dworkin

Fordham Law Review

Proper constitutional interpretation takes both text and past practice as its object: Lawyers and judges faced with a contemporary constitutional issue must try to construct a coherent, principled, and persuasive interpretation of the text of particular clauses, the structure of the Constitution as a whole, and our history under the Constitution—an interpretation that both unifies these distinct sources, so far as this is possible, and directs future adjudication. They must seek, that is, constitutional integrity. So fidelity to the Constitution's text does not exhaust constitutional interpretation, and on some occasions overall constitutional integrity might require a result that could …

Eldred And Lochner: Copyright Term Extension And Intellectual Property As Constitutional Property, Paul M. Schwartz, William Michael Treanor

Paul M. Schwartz

Since the ratification of the constitution, intellectual property law in the United States has always been, in part, constitutional law. Among the enumerated powers that Article I of the Constitution vests in Congress is the power to create certain intellectual property rights. To a remarkable extent, scholars who have examined the Constitution's Copyright Clause have reached a common position. With striking unanimity, these scholars have called for aggressive judicial review of the constitutionality of congressional legislation in this area. The champions of this position--we refer to them as the IP Restrictors--represent a remarkable array of constitutional and intellectual property scholars. …

How Nfib V. Sebelius Affects The Constitutional Gestalt, Lawrence B. Solum

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The thesis of this essay is that the most important legal effects of the Supreme Court's decision in NFIB v. Sebelius are likely to be indirect. Sebelius marks a possible shift in what we can call the “constitutional gestalt” regarding the meaning and implications of the so-called “New Deal Settlement.” Before Sebelius, the consensus understanding was that New Deal and Warren Court cases had established a constitutional regime of plenary and virtually unlimited national legislative power under the Commerce Clause (which might be subject to narrow and limited carve outs protective of the core of state sovereignty).

After Sebelius …

Reforming Affirmative Action For The Future: A Constitutional And Consequentialist Approach, Quinn Chasan

CMC Senior Theses

In my analysis of affirmative action policy, I began the search without having formed any opinion whatsoever. The topic was interesting to me, and after reading a mass of news editorials and their op-eds, I decided to take up the argument for myself. Other than the fact that I am a student, I have no stake in affirmative action policy. This paper relies primarily on the foremost half-dozen or so notable mismatch theory scholars, a close reading of an innumerable number of Supreme Court opinions, affirmative action related studies from higher education academics and policy institutes, and how historical executive …

Statutory Interpretation Doctrine On The Modern Supreme Court And Four Doctrinal Approaches To Judicial Decision-Making , R. Randall Kelso

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Substance And Method In The Year 2000, Akhil Reed Amar

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Decision Theory Of Statutory Interpretation: Legislative History By The Rules, Victoria Nourse

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

We have a law of civil procedure, criminal procedure, and administrative procedure, but we have no law of legislative procedure. This failure has serious consequences in the field of statutory interpretation. Using simple rules garnered from Congress itself, this Article argues that those rules are capable of transforming the field of statutory interpretation. Addressing canonical cases in the field, from Holy Trinity to Bock Laundry, from Weber to Public Citizen, this article shows how cases studied by vast numbers of law students are made substantially more manageable, and in some cases quite simple, through knowledge of congressional procedure. …

The Constitution As An Exploding Cigar And Other “Historian’S Heresies” About A Constitutional Orthodoxy, R.B. Bernstein

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Against Textualism, William Michael Treanor

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Modern textualists have assumed that careful attention to constitutional text is the key to the recovery of the Constitution's original public meaning. This article challenges that assumption by showing the importance of nontextual factors in early constitutional interpretation. The Founding generation consistently relied on structural concerns, policy, ratifiers' and drafters' intent, and broad principles of government. To exclude such nontextual factors from constitutional interpretation is to depart from original public meaning because the Founders gave these factors great weight in ascertaining meaning. Moreover, for a modern judge seeking to apply original public meaning, the threshold question is not simply; "How …

Originalism And The Natural Born Citizen Clause, Lawrence B. Solum

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

The enigmatic phrase “natural born citizen” poses a series of problems for contemporary originalism. New Originalists, like Justice Scalia, focus on the original public meaning of the constitutional text. The notion of a “natural born citizen” was likely a term of art derived from the idea of a “natural born subject” in English law—a category that most likely did not extend to persons, like Senator McCain, who were born outside sovereign territory. But the Constitution speaks of “citizens” and not “subjects,” introducing uncertainties and ambiguities that might (or might not) make McCain eligible for the presidency.

Taking Text Too Seriously: Modern Textualism, Original Meaning, And The Case Of Amar's Bill Of Rights, William Michael Treanor

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Championed on the Supreme Court by Justices Scalia and Thomas and championed in academia most prominently by Professor Akhil Amar, textualism has in the past twenty years emerged as a leading school of constitutional interpretation. Textualists argue that the Constitution should be interpreted in accordance with its original public meaning and, in seeking that meaning, they closely parse the Constitution's words and grammar and the placement of clauses in the document. They have assumed that this close parsing recaptures original meaning, but, perhaps because it seems obviously correct, that assumption has neither been defended nor challenged. This article uses Professor …

Eldred And Lochner: Copyright Term Extension And Intellectual Property As Constitutional Property, Paul M. Schwartz, William Michael Treanor

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Since the ratification of the constitution, intellectual property law in the United States has always been, in part, constitutional law. Among the enumerated powers that Article I of the Constitution vests in Congress is the power to create certain intellectual property rights. To a remarkable extent, scholars who have examined the Constitution's Copyright Clause have reached a common position. With striking unanimity, these scholars have called for aggressive judicial review of the constitutionality of congressional legislation in this area. The champions of this position--we refer to them as the IP Restrictors--represent a remarkable array of constitutional and intellectual property scholars. …

The Second Amendment: Structure, History, And Constitutional Change, David Yassky

Michigan Law Review

A fierce debate about the Second Amendment has been percolating in academia for two decades, and has now bubbled through to the courts. The question at the heart of this debate is whether the Amendment restricts the government's ability to regulate the private possession of firearms. Since at least 1939 - when the Supreme Court decided United States v. Miller, its only decision squarely addressing the scope of the right to "keep and bear Arms" - the answer to that question has been an unqualified "no." Courts have brushed aside Second Amendment challenges to gun control legislation, reading the Amendment …

Book Review. Dynamic Statutory Interpretation By William N. Eskridge, Jr., William D. Popkin

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

The Case Of The Prisoners And The Origins Of Judicial Review, William Michael Treanor

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

For over one hundred years, scholars have closely studied the handful of cases in which state courts, in the years before the Federal Constitutional Convention, confronted the question whether they had the power to declare laws invalid. Interest in these early cases began in the late nineteenth century as one aspect of the larger debate about the legitimacy of judicial review, a debate triggered by the increasing frequency with which the Supreme Court and state courts were invalidating economic and social legislation. The lawyers, political scientists, and historians who initially unearthed the case law from the 1770s and 1780s used …

Statutory Interpretation, Legislative Inaction, And Civil Rights, Daniel A. Farber

Michigan Law Review

This month the Supreme Court will hear reargument in Patterson v. McLean Credit Union on the question of whether section 1981 prohibits discrimination by private parties. Professor Farber identifies three issues which lie at the heart of Patterson: Must statutes be construed to conform to the intent of the drafters? Does legislative inaction provide reliable guidance to interpreters of statutes? And should the nature of the claim at issue - here a claim of civil rights - influence the interpreters? On this last point, Professor Farber argues that public values must be relevant to statutory interpretation and that judges …

Updating Statutory Interpretation, T. Alexander Aleinikoff

Michigan Law Review

This month the Supreme Court will hear reargument in Patterson v. McLean Credit Union on the question of whether section 1981 prohibits discrimination by private parties. Professor Aleinikoff examines in depth the first issue raised by Professor Farber. Using metaphors of the archeological and the nautical Professor Aleinikoff describes theories of originalism and their application to statutory interpretation. Concluding that there are nonoriginalist (or nonarcheological) elements implicit in these theories, he proceeds to consider how an explicitly nonoriginalist (or nautical) theory of interpretation might work He concludes by commenting on the application of such a theory to Patterson.

Taking The Framers Seriously, William Michael Treanor

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article reviews Taking the Constitution Seriously by Walter Berns (1987).

This review focuses on three of the key historical points that Walter Berns makes: his arguments that the Declaration of Independence is a Lockean document; that the Constitution encapsulates the political philosophy of the Declaration; and that the framers viewed the commercialization of society as a salutary development and were unambivalent champions of the right to property. Examination of these issues suggests that the ideological universe of the framers was far more complex than Berns indicates. While the revolutionary era witnessed a new concern with individual rights and a …