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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Indefensible Duty To Defend, Neal Devins, Saikrishna B. Prakash
The Indefensible Duty To Defend, Neal Devins, Saikrishna B. Prakash
Neal E. Devins
Modern Justice Department opinions insist that the executive branch must enforce and defend laws. In the first article to systematically examine Department of Justice refusals to defend, we make four points. First, the duties to enforce and defend lack any sound basis in the Constitution. Hence, while President Obama is right to refuse to defend the Defense of Marriage Act, he is wrong to continue to enforce a law he believes is unconstitutional. Second, rather than being grounded in the Constitution, the duties are better explained by the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) desire to enhance its independence and status. By …
Congress's (Limited) Power To Represent Itself In Court, Tara Leigh Grove, Neal Devins
Congress's (Limited) Power To Represent Itself In Court, Tara Leigh Grove, Neal Devins
Tara L. Grove
Scholars and jurists have long assumed that, when the executive branch declines to defend a federal statute, Congress may intervene in federal court to defend the law. When invalidating the Defense of Marriage Act, for example, no Supreme Court Justice challenged the authority of the House of Representatives to defend federal laws in at least some circumstances. At the same time, in recent litigation over the Fast and Furious gun-running case, the Department of Justice asserted that the House could not go to court to enforce a subpoena against the executive. In this Article, we seek to challenge both claims. …
Congress's (Limited) Power To Represent Itself In Court, Tara Leigh Grove, Neal Devins
Congress's (Limited) Power To Represent Itself In Court, Tara Leigh Grove, Neal Devins
Neal E. Devins
Scholars and jurists have long assumed that, when the executive branch declines to defend a federal statute, Congress may intervene in federal court to defend the law. When invalidating the Defense of Marriage Act, for example, no Supreme Court Justice challenged the authority of the House of Representatives to defend federal laws in at least some circumstances. At the same time, in recent litigation over the Fast and Furious gun-running case, the Department of Justice asserted that the House could not go to court to enforce a subpoena against the executive. In this Article, we seek to challenge both claims. …
Averting Government By Consent Decree: Constitutional Limits On The Enforcement Of Settlements With The Federal Government, Jeremy A. Rabkin, Neal Devins
Averting Government By Consent Decree: Constitutional Limits On The Enforcement Of Settlements With The Federal Government, Jeremy A. Rabkin, Neal Devins
Neal E. Devins
No abstract provided.
Rediscovering The Journal Clause: The Lost History Of Legislative Constitutional Interpretation, Nicholas Handler
Rediscovering The Journal Clause: The Lost History Of Legislative Constitutional Interpretation, Nicholas Handler
Faculty Scholarship
Article I, Section 5 of the United States Constitution requires that each house of Congress keep a Journal of its proceedings. Contemporary observers have largely ignored this provision, treating it as a vestigial record-keeping requirement with little significance for modern law. This dismissive attitude is misguided. Historically, legislative Journals were one of the primary mechanisms by which Parliament, and later Congress, made and interpreted constitutional law. Journals are the official histories of legislatures’ activity. They record what legislatures do as institutions—what powers they exercise, what procedures they use, and what actions by the coordinate branches they protest or resist. In …
A Gun To Whose Head? Federalism, Localism, And The Spending Clause, Daniel S. Cohen
A Gun To Whose Head? Federalism, Localism, And The Spending Clause, Daniel S. Cohen
Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)
President Trump’s executive order rescinding federal funds from “sanctuary jurisdictions” has brought a critical, but overlooked, question of constitutional law to the forefront of the political debate: how does the Spending Clause apply to local governments? The purpose of the Spending Clause is to empower the federal government to bargain with the states to enact policies it cannot enact itself. This power, however, is constrained within the confines of federalism. The Supreme Court has sought to restrict the Spending Clause by crafting the Dole-NFIB framework, a test to determine whether a federal grant has compromised federalism. At its …