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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Strange Career Of The Three-Judge District Court: Federalism And Civil Rights, 1954-76, Michael E. Solimine
The Strange Career Of The Three-Judge District Court: Federalism And Civil Rights, 1954-76, Michael E. Solimine
Faculty Articles and Other Publications
The three-judge district court has had a long and strange career in the history of the federal court system. Congress created the court in 1910 as a response to the canonical decision of Ex parte Young two years earlier, which permitted federal court suits against state officials to facilitate constitutional challenges to state laws. The three-judge court statute was a reaction by Progressive Era politicians to such perceived judicial overreach, and required any such challenges to be brought before a specially convened trial court of three judges, with a direct appeal to the Supreme Court available. First established as a …
Constitutional Forbearance, A. Christopher Bryant
Constitutional Forbearance, A. Christopher Bryant
Faculty Articles and Other Publications
This essay begins by developing the concept of constitutional forbearance and exploring the role it plays in the craft of good judging. This first Part also illustrates what is meant by constitutional forbearance by recovering a forgotten but illustrative example from a century ago. Part II then argues that the need for forbearance has at present become unusually acute. Finally, in Part III this essay identifies some of the qualities of the Obama care cases that make them such singular opportunities for the exercise of this much needed judicial virtue and answers some anticipated objections to thinking about the cases …
Remanding To Congress: The Supreme Court's New ʺOn The Recordʺ Constitutional Review Of Federal Statutes, A. Christopher Bryant, Timothy J. Simeone
Remanding To Congress: The Supreme Court's New ʺOn The Recordʺ Constitutional Review Of Federal Statutes, A. Christopher Bryant, Timothy J. Simeone
Faculty Articles and Other Publications
In recent years, the fate of federal statutes has increasingly turned on the contents of their formal legislative records. The Supreme Court has shown a new willingness to find statutes unconstitutional because their legislative records do not support the factual judgments that justify congressional action. In this Article, Professors Bryant and Simeone trace the development of the trend toward increased judicial scrutiny of legislative records in recent Supreme Court rulings on the constitutionality of federal statutes. They then critique the Court's new approach, arguing that it is not only inconsistent with precedent, but also fundamentally ill advised, most importantly because …