Law Commons^™

The Founding Fathers Said I Am Not Subject To Term Limits, Elias Arroyo

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Constitutional Jurisprudence Of Sandra Day O'Conor: A Refusal To "Foreclose The Unanticipated", Wilson Ray Huhn

Akron Law Review

Part I of this essay covers an early period on the Court when Justice O’Connor seemed principally concerned with questions of jurisdiction and appellate process, during which she was frequently inclined to dispose of cases on technical or procedural grounds. Part II discusses Justice O’Connor’s attention to detail and consideration of factual context and her tendency to adjust the traditional standards of review in light of the circumstances of the case. Part III outlines Justice O’Connor’s respect for precedent and commitment to the principle of stare decisis particularly as it relates to her refusal to overrule Roe v. Wade. Part …

Newsroom: Nason '05 Cited By U.S. Supreme Court, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Infinite Hope - Introduction To The Symposium: The 140th Anniversary Of The Fourteenth Amendment, Elizabeth Reilly

Akron Law Review

This symposium celebrates the 140th anniversary of ratification. The anniversary provides us with a fruitful occasion to reflect upon the meaning of the Amendment to its Framers in Congress and as it was initially interpreted by the United States Supreme Court and the public, and to examine the lasting impacts of both conceptions...Therefore, our participants explicitly discuss applying their understanding of history to the modern implications of the Fourteenth Amendment and current law. Understanding the Amendment, especially because of its early reception by the Court, requires looking at law, history, political science, and sociology, among other disciplines, to try to …

Realsim Over Formalism And The Presumption Of Constitutionality: Chief Justice Roberts' Opinion Upholding The Individual Mandate, Wilson Huhn

Akron Law Review

In National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, Chief Justice John Roberts cast the deciding vote to uphold the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act. Speaking for the Court in Part IIIC of his opinion, Roberts found that the individual mandate was properly enacted pursuant to the General Welfare Clause. Two aspects of his opinion in particular drove this result. In deciding whether the individual mandate constitutes a “tax” within the meaning of the Constitution, the Chief Justice engaged in realistic analysis rather than legal formalism. In addition, Roberts reasoned that, if fairly possible, the statute had to be …

Reverse Nullification And Executive Discretion, Michael T. Morley

Scholarly Publications

The President has broad discretion to refrain from enforcing many civil and criminal laws, either in general or under certain circumstances. The Supreme Court has not only affirmed the constitutionality of such under-enforcement, but extolled its virtues. Most recently, in Arizona v. United States, it deployed the judicially created doctrines of obstacle and field preemption to invalidate state restrictions on illegal immigrants that mirrored federal law, in large part to ensure that states do not undermine the effects of the President’s decision to refrain from fully enforcing federal immigration provisions.

Such a broad application of obstacle and field preemption is …

The Ndaa, Aumf, And Citizens Detained Away From The Theater Of War: Sounding A Clarion Call For A Clear Statement Rule, Diana Cho

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

In the armed conflict resulting from the September 11 attacks, the executive authority to order the indefinite detention of citizens captured away from the theater of war is an issue of foreign and domestic significance. The relevant law of armed conflict provisions relevant to conflicts that are international or non-international in nature, however, do not fully address this issue. Congress also intentionally left the question of administrative orders of citizen detainment unresolved in a controversial provision of the 2012 version of the annually-enacted National Defense Authorization Act. While plaintiffs in Hedges v. Obama sought to challenge the enforceability of NDAA’s …

Reflections On Comity In The Law Of American Federalism, Gil Seinfeld

Articles

Comity is a nebulous concept familiar to us from the law of international relations. Roughly speaking, it describes a set of reciprocal norms among nations that call for one state to recognize, and sometimes defer to, the laws, judgments, or interests of another. Comity also features prominently in the law of American federalism, but in that context, it operates within limits that have received almost no attention from scholarly commentators. Specifically, although courts routinely describe duties that run from one state to another, or from the federal government to the states, as exercises in comity, they almost never rely on …

Paths Of Resistance To Our Imperial First Amendment, Bertrall L. Ross Ii

Michigan Law Review

In the campaign finance realm, we are in the age of the imperial First Amendment. Over the past nine years, litigants bringing First Amendment claims against campaign finance regulations have prevailed in every case in the Supreme Court. A conservative core of five justices has developed virtually categorical protections for campaign speech and has continued to expand those protections into domains that states once had the authority to regulate. As the First Amendment’s empire expands, other values give way. Four key cases from this era illustrate the reach of this imperial First Amendment. In Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc. v. …

Six Overrulings, Andrew Koppelman

Michigan Law Review

John Paul Stevens, who retired in 2010 at the age of ninety after more than thirty-four years on the Supreme Court, has capped his astoundingly distinguished career by becoming an important public intellectual. He reviews books, gives high-profile interviews, wrote a memoir of the chief justices he has known, and has now written a second book. Six Amendments revisits half a dozen old, lost battles. Stevens appeals over the heads of his colleagues to a higher authority: the public. Now that he is off the Court, Stevens explains why six decisions in which he dissented should be overruled by constitutional …

The Scope Of Precedent, Randy J. Kozel

Randy J Kozel

The scope of Supreme Court precedent is capacious. Justices of the Court commonly defer to sweeping rationales and elaborate doctrinal frameworks articulated by their predecessors. This practice infuses judicial precedent with the prescriptive power of enacted constitutional and statutory text. The lower federal courts follow suit, regularly abiding by the Supreme Court’s broad pronouncements. These phenomena cannot be explained by—and, indeed, oftentimes subvert—the classic distinction between binding holdings and dispensable dicta. This Article connects the scope of precedent with recurring and foundational debates about the proper ends of judicial interpretation. A precedent’s forward- looking effect should not depend on the …

The Process Of Marriage Equality, Josh Blackman, Howard M. Wasserman

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Fixing Hollingsworth: Standing In Initiative Cases, Karl Manheim, John S. Caragozian, Donald Warner

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

In Hollingsworth v. Perry, the Supreme Court dismissed an appeal filed by the “Official Proponents” of California’s Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California. Chief Justice Roberts’ majority opinion held that initiative sponsors lack Article III standing to defend their ballot measures even when state officials refuse to defend against constitutional challenges. As a result, Hollingsworth provides state officers with the ability to overrule laws that were intended to bypass the government establishment—in effect, an “executive veto” of popularly-enacted initiatives.

The Article examines this new “executive veto” in depth. It places Hollingsworth in context, discussing the initiative process …

A Case For The Electoral College And For Its Faithless Elector, Stephen M. Sheppard

Faculty Articles

Every four years, the cry goes up to destroy the Electoral College. That cry is especially loud in years when a candidate is elected president who receives a minority of the votes. The election of a "minority president" happened with the election of 2000, but it had happened before. The Electoral College has elected three presidents whom a majority of the voters voted against: Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876, Benjamin Harrison in 1888, and George W. Bush in 2000. (A fourth president was also elected with a minority of the popular vote—John Quincy Adams in 1824—through that election was by …

The Limits Of Enumeration, Richard A. Primus

Articles

According to a well-known principle of constitutional interpretation here identified as the “internal-limits canon,” the powers of Congress must always be construed as authorizing less legislation than a general police power would. This Article argues that the internallimits canon is unsound. Whether the powers of Congress would in practice authorize any legislation that a police power would authorize is a matter of contingency: it depends on the relationship between the powers and the social world at a given time. There is no reason why, at a given time, the powers cannot turn out to authorize any legislation that a police …

The Scope Of Precedent, Randy J. Kozel

Michigan Law Review

The scope of Supreme Court precedent is capacious. Justices of the Court commonly defer to sweeping rationales and elaborate doctrinal frameworks articulated by their predecessors. This practice infuses judicial precedent with the prescriptive power of enacted constitutional and statutory text. The lower federal courts follow suit, regularly abiding by the Supreme Court’s broad pronouncements. These phenomena cannot be explained by—and, indeed, oftentimes subvert—the classic distinction between binding holdings and dispensable dicta. This Article connects the scope of precedent with recurring and foundational debates about the proper ends of judicial interpretation. A precedent’s forward- looking effect should not depend on the …

Constitutional Exaptation, Political Dysfunction, And The Recess Appointments Clause, Jay D. Wexler

Faculty Scholarship

The so-called Recess Appointments Clause of the Constitution provides that: “The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.”1 As of only a few years ago, I considered this clause so minor and quirky that I included it in a book about ten of the Constitution’s “oddest” clauses, right alongside such clearly weird provisions as the Title of Nobility Clause and the Third Amendment.2 Though I recognized that the Recess Appointments Clause was probably the least odd …

Enacted Legislative Findings And The Deference Problem, Daniel A. Crane

Articles

The constitutionality of federal legislation sometimes turns on the presence and sufficiency of congressional findings of predicate facts, such as the effects of conduct on interstate commerce, state discrimination justifying the abrogation of sovereign immunity, or market failures justifying intrusions on free speech. Sometimes a congressional committee makes these findings in legislative history. Other times, Congress recites its findings in a statutory preamble, thus enacting its findings as law. Surprisingly, the Supreme Court has not distinguished between enacted and unenacted findings in deciding how much deference to accord congressional findings. This is striking because the difference between enactedness and unenactedness …

The Puzzling Presumption Of Reviewability, Nicholas Bagley

Articles

The presumption in favor of judicial review of agency action is a cornerstone of administrative law, accepted by courts and commentators alike as both legally appropriate and obviously desirable. Yet the presumption is puzzling. As with any canon of statutory construction that serves a substantive end, it should find a source in history, positive law, the Constitution, or sound policy considerations. None of these, however, offers a plausible justification for the presumption. As for history, the sort of judicial review that the presumption favors - appellate-style arbitrariness review - was not only unheard of prior to the twentieth century, but …

The Jurisprudence Of Union, Gil Seinfeld

Articles

The primary goal of this Article is to demonstrate that the interest in national unity does important, independent work in the law of vertical federalism. We have long been accustomed to treating union as a constitutionally operative value in cases involving the duties states owe one another (i.e. horizontal federalism cases), but in cases involving the relationship between the federal government and the states, the interest in union is routinely ignored. This Article shows that, across a wide range of cases relating to the allocation of power between the federal government and the states, the states are constrained by a …

Election Law's Lochnerian Turn, Ellen D. Katz

Articles

This panel has been asked to consider whether "the Constitution [is] responsible for electoral dysfunction."' My answer is no. The electoral process undeniably falls well short of our aspirations, but it strikes me that we should look to the Supreme Court for an accounting before blaming the Constitution for the deeply unsatisfactory condition in which we find ourselves.

Understanding The Establishment Clause: A Revisit, Robert A. Sedler

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Dubious Delegation: Article Iii Limits On Mental Health Treatment Decisions, Adam Teitelbaum

Michigan Law Review

A common condition of supervised release requires a defendant, post-incarceration, to participate in a mental health treatment program. Federal district courts often order probation officers to make certain decisions ancillary to these programs. However Article III delegation doctrine places limits on such actions. This Note addresses the constitutionality of delegating the "treatment program" decision, in which a probation officer decides which type of treatment the defendant must undergo; the choice is often between inpatient treatment and other less restrictive alternatives. The resolution of this issue ultimately depends on whether this decision constitutes a "judicial act." Finding support in lower court …

How The Gun-Free School Zones Act Saved The Individual Mandate, Richard A. Primus

Articles

For all the drama surrounding the Commerce Clause challenge to the in-dividual mandate provision of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“PPACA”), the doctrinal question presented is simple. Under existing doctrine, the provision is as valid as can be. To be sure, the Supreme Court could alter existing doctrine, and many interesting things could be written about the dynamics that sometimes prompt judges to strike out in new directions under the pressures of cases like this one. But it is not my intention to pursue that possibility here. My own suspicion, for what it is worth, is that the …

Stare Decisis And Constitutional Text, Jonathan F. Mitchell

Michigan Law Review

Almost everyone acknowledges that stare decisis should play a significant role when the Supreme Court of the United States resolves constitutional cases. Yet the academic and judicial rationales for this practice tend to rely on naked consequentialist considerations, and make only passing efforts to square the Court's stare decisis doctrines with the language of the Constitution. This Article offers a qualified defense of constitutional stare decisis that rests exclusively on constitutional text. It aims to broaden the overlapping consensus of interpretive theories that can support a role for constitutional stare decisis, but to do this it must narrow the circumstances …

But How Will The People Know? Public Opinion As A Meager Influence In Shaping Contemporary Supreme Court Decision Making, Tom Goldstein, Amy Howe

Michigan Law Review

Chief Justice John Roberts famously described the ideal Supreme Court Justice as analogous to a baseball umpire, who simply "applies" the rules, rather than making them. Roberts promised to "remember that it's my job to call balls and strikes and not to pitch or bat." At her own recent confirmation hearings, Elena Kagan demurred, opining that Roberts's metaphor might erroneously suggest that "everything is clear-cut, and that there's no judgment in the process." Based on his 2009 book, The Will of the People: How Public Opinion Has Influenced the Supreme Court and Shaped the Meaning of the Constitution, Barry Friedman …

A Separation Of Powers Defense Of Federal Rulemaking Power, Michael Blasie

Faculty Scholarly Works

Judicial rulemaking—the methods by which federal courts create federal procedural rules—represents a paradigmatic clash between the functionalist and formalist theories of the separation of powers. There exist compelling practical reasons to invest such power in the judiciary, yet the Constitution’s text does not explicitly confer such power on any branch. This Article comprehensively examines the separation of powers issues raised by the current federal rulemaking process under the formalist theory of the separation of powers in light of modern precedent. Part I details the current procedure for creating the federal rules, summarizes the relevant scholarship, and examines the few Supreme …

The Four Pillars Of Constitutional Doctrine, Suzanna Sherry

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Constitutional interpretation, and thus constitutional doctrine, is inevitably controversial. Judges, scholars, lawyers, politicians, and the American public all disagree among themselves, not only about the correct constitutional outcome but even about the right approach to constitutional interpretation. We are unlikely to reach consensus on whether we should read the Constitution as a living and evolving document or instead read it in accordance with a fixed original meaning, much less on whether it does or does not protect campaign contributions, reproductive rights, affirmative action policies, gun ownership, or any of the other contested issues that have recently come before the Supreme …

Article I, Article Iii, And The Limits Of Enumeration, Gil Seinfeld

Articles

Article I, Section 8 and Article Ill, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution deploy parallel strategies for constraining the power of the federal government. They enumerate powers that the national legislature and judiciary, respectively, are permitted to exercise and thereby implicitly prohibit these two branches of government from exercising powers not enumerated. According to conventional thinking, this strategy has failed in connection with Article I and succeeded in connection with Article III. That is, it is widely acknowledged that Congress routinely exercises powers that are difficult to square with the Article I enumeration; but it is commonly thought that the …

Constitutional Expectations, Richard A. Primus

Articles

The inauguration of Barack Obama was marred by one of the smallest constitutional crises in American history. As we all remember, the President did not quite recite his oath as it appears in the Constitution. The error bothered enough people that the White House redid the ceremony a day later, taking care to get the constitutional text exactly right. Or that, at least, is what everyone thinks happened. What actually happened is more interesting. The second time through, the President again departed from the Constitution's text. But the second time, nobody minded. Or even noticed. In that unremarked feature of …