Constitutional Law Commons^™

The Active Vices, Benjamin Johnson

Journal Articles

Alexander Bickel's pathbreaking idea of the "passive virtues" attempted to explain and justify the Supreme Court's power to control its docket. He proposed that the Court's extensive discretion allows it to remain passive and avoid politically perilous cases, preserving its institutional legitimacy until such time as durable principles are at stake. This theory remains one of the most influential ideas in legal scholarship, but is dangerously incomplete. Discretion is a double-edged sword, empowering the Court not only to avoid politics, but also to engage in it. In other words, a policy-motivated Court can use its agenda-setting power to target highly …

Federal Courts’ Recalcitrance In Refusing To Certify State Law Covid-19 Business Interruption Insurance Issues, Christopher French

Journal Articles

Over 2,000 COVID-19 business interruption insurance cases have been filed in state and federal courts the past two years with most of the cases filed in or removed to federal courts. The cases are governed by state law. Rather than certify the novel state law issues presented in the cases to the respective state supreme courts that ultimately will determine the law applicable in the cases, each of the eight federal circuit courts to issue decisions on the merits in such cases to date has done so by making an Erie guess regarding how the controlling state supreme courts would …

Invisible Article Iii Delinquency: History, Mystery, And Concerns About "Federal Juvenile Courts", Mae C. Quinn, Levi T. Bradford

Journal Articles

This essay is the second in a two-part series focused on our nation’s invisible juvenile justice system—one that operates under the legal radar as part of the U.S. Constitution’s Article III federal district court system. The first publication, Article III Adultification of Kids: History, Mystery, and Troubling Implications of Federal Youth Transfers, examined the little-known practice of prosecuting children as adults in federal courts. This paper will look at the related phenomenon of juvenile delinquency matters that are filed and pursued in our nation’s federal court system. To date, most scholarship evaluating youth prosecution has focused on our country’s juvenile …

Constitutionally Incapable: Parole Boards As Sentencing Courts, Mae C. Quinn

Journal Articles

Courtroom sentencing, as part of the judicial process, is a long-standing norm in the justice system of the United States. But this basic criminal law precept is currently under quiet attack. This is because some states are now allowing parole boards to step in to decide criminal penalties without first affording defendants lawful judicial branch sentencing proceedings and sentences. These outside-of-court punishment decisions are occurring in the cases of youthful offenders entitled to sentencing relief under Miller v. Alabama, which outlawed automatic life-without-parole sentences for children. Thus, some Miller-impacted defendants are being sentenced by paroleboards as executive branch agents, rather …

Why Federal Courts Apply The Law Of Nations Even Though It Is Not The Supreme Law Of The Land, Anthony J. Bellia, Bradford R. Clark

Journal Articles

We are grateful to the judges and scholars who participated in this Symposium examining our book, The Law of Nations and the United States Constitution. One of our goals in writing this book was to reinvigorate and advance the debate over the role of customary international law in U.S. courts. The papers in this Symposium advance this debate by deepening understandings of how the Constitution interacts with customary international law. Our goal in this Article is to address two questions raised by this Symposium that go to the heart of the status of the law of nations under the Constitution. …

Inside The 'Constitutional Revolution' Of 1937, Barry Cushman

Journal Articles

The nature and sources of the New Deal Constitutional Revolution are among the most discussed and debated subjects in constitutional historiography. Scholars have reached significantly divergent conclusions concerning how best to understand the meaning and the causes of constitutional decisions rendered by the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes. Though recent years have witnessed certain refinements in scholarly understandings of various dimensions of the phenomenon, the relevant documentary record seemed to have been rather thoroughly explored. Recently, however, a remarkably instructive set of primary sources has become available. For many years, the docket books kept by a number …

Multiple Chancellors: Reforming The National Injunction, Samuel L. Bray

Journal Articles

In several recent high-profile cases, federal district judges have issued injunctions that apply across the nation, controlling the defendants’ behavior with respect to nonparties. This Article analyzes the scope of injunctions to restrain the enforcement of a federal statute, regulation, or order. This analysis shows the consequences of the national injunction: more forum shopping, worse judicial decisionmaking, a risk of conflicting injunctions, and tension with other doctrines and practices of the federal courts.

This Article shows that the national injunction is a recent development in the history of equity. There was a structural shift at the Founding from a single-chancellor …

The Story Of Prudential Standing, S. Todd Brown

Journal Articles

Prudential standing, it seems, is the latest target in the Roberts Court’s effort to “bring some discipline” to jurisdictional and pseudo-jurisdictional concepts. During the Court’s last two terms, it issued a unanimous opinion that excised the zone of interests test from prudential standing doctrine (Lexmark), two unanimous opinions that questioned federal courts’ prudential discretion to decline jurisdiction (Lexmark and Driehaus), and a bitterly divided opinion in which the classification of a standing principle as prudential or constitutional was decisive (Windsor). Moreover, in Lexmark, the Court suggested that the third party standing principle may not be properly classified as prudential standing …

Second Thoughts About The First Amendment, Randy J. Kozel

Journal Articles

The U.S. Supreme Court has shown a notable willingness to reconsider — and depart from — its First Amendment precedents. In recent years the Court has marginalized its prior statements regarding the constitutional value of false speech. It has revamped its process for identifying categorical exceptions to First Amendment protection. It has rejected its past decisions on corporate electioneering and aggregate campaign contributions. And it has revised its earlier positions on union financing, abortion protesting, and commercial speech. Under the conventional view of constitutional adjudication, dubious precedents enjoy a presumption of validity through the doctrine of stare decisis. This Article …

Court-Packing And Compromise, Barry Cushman

Journal Articles

President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1937 Court-packing bill would have permitted him to appoint six additional justices to the Supreme Court, thereby expanding its membership to fifteen immediately. Throughout the ultimately unsuccessful campaign to enact the measure, Roosevelt was presented with numerous opportunities to compromise for a measure authorizing the appointment of fewer additional justices. The President rejected each of these proposals, and his refusal to compromise often has been attributed to stubbornness, overconfidence, or hubris. Yet an examination of the papers of Attorney General Homer S. Cummings reveals why FDR and his advisors believed that he required no fewer than …

Constitutional Gaps In Bankruptcy, S. Todd Brown

Journal Articles

Federal bankruptcy law incorporates a broad range of commercial and related matters that are otherwise left to the States under the Constitution, follows an efficiency-centered process model that may implicate due process, and relies upon a judicial structure that appears to be inconsistent with Article III. In spite of the crushing volume of bankruptcy cases and proceedings each year in which the resolution of one or more of these questions may be relevant, the Supreme Court has had few opportunities to tackle them directly. Indeed, after more than two centuries, the Court has provided precious few insights into the limits …

Checks, Balances And Judicial Wizardry: Constitutional Delegation And Congressional Legislation, Robert I. Reis

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Non-Pecuniary Interests And The Injudicious Limits Of Appellate Standing In Bankruptcy, S. Todd Brown

Journal Articles

Standing to appeal bankruptcy court orders today is limited to those with a pecuniary interest. This prudential limitation is based on the person aggrieved requirement of Section 39(c) of the Bankruptcy Act of 1898 - a requirement that was not included in the Bankruptcy Code. This article examines the extensive differences between the Act and the Code, the potential justifications for extending the pecuniary interest test in spite of the omission of the person aggrieved requirement, and the potential ramifications for parties and the integrity of the bankruptcy process. This analysis suggests that standing to appeal bankruptcy orders should be …

The Origins Of Article Iii "Arising Under" Jurisdiction, Anthony J. Bellia

Journal Articles

Article III of the Constitution provides that the judicial Power of the United States extends to all cases arising under the Constitution, laws, and treaties of the United States. What the phrase arising under imports in Article III has long confounded courts and scholars. This Article examines the historical origins of Article III arising under jurisdiction. First, it describes English legal principles that governed the jurisdiction of courts of general and limited jurisdiction--principles that animated early American jurisprudence regarding the scope of arising under jurisdiction. Second, it explains how participants in the framing and ratification of the Constitution understood arising …

The Federal Constitutional Court: Guardian Of German Democracy, Donald P. Kommers

Journal Articles

Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court rivals the Supreme Court of the United States in protecting political democracy. Its jurisprudence of democracy has shaped the course and character of German politics while upholding the rule of law and defending the constitutionally prescribed “free democratic basic order.” In furtherance of these objectives, the Constitutional Court has invalidated regulations limiting the rights of minor parties and constitutionalizing measures designed to stabilize Germany’s system of parliamentary government. These purposes have been served by constitutional decisions on voting rights, public funding of election campaigns, dissolution of Parliament, and proportional representation, including the limiting 5 percent clause. …

Stare Decisis And Due Process, Amy Coney Barrett

Journal Articles

In this Article, I argue that the preclusive effect of precedent raises due-process concerns, and, on occasion, slides into unconstitutionality. The Due Process Clause requires that a court give a person notice and an opportunity for a hearing before depriving her of life, liberty or property. Because of this requirement, courts have held in the context of issue preclusion that as a general rule, judicial determinations can bind only parties. The preclusion literature asserts that this parties only requirement does not apply to stare decisis because stare decisis, in contrast to issue preclusion, is a flexible doctrine. Yet stare decisis …

The Rehnquist Court And Criminal Procedure, Stephen F. Smith

Journal Articles

Much of recent discussions of conservative judicial activism has concerned the revival of federalism-based limits on Congress during the Rehnquist Court. The allure of federalism as a topic for discussion is understandable, yet I argue that constitutional criminal procedure provides a better context within which to test the Rehnquist Court's commitment to judicial restraint. In this Essay, I examine the topic at hand against the background of the many important developments that have taken place in criminal procedure on Rehnquist's watch. The results of this examination are surprising because they suggest that activism is not necessarily the antithesis of restraint. …

The Secret Lives Of The Four Horsemen, Barry Cushman

Journal Articles

"Outlined against red velvet drapery on the first Monday of October, the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore they are known as Famine, Pestilence, Destruction, and Death. These are only aliases. Their real names are Van Devanter, McReynolds, Sutherland, and Butler. They formed the crest of the reactionary cyclone before which yet another progressive statute was swept over the precipice yesterday morning as a packed courtroom of spectators peered up at the bewildering panorama spread across the mahogany bench above." Or so Grantland Rice might have written, had he been a legal realist. For more than two generations scholars …

The More Things Change…: Superficial State Constitutional Analysis At The New York Court Of Appeals, James A. Gardner

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Direct Democracy And Hastily Enacted Statutes, John C. Nagle

Journal Articles

Phil Frickey qualifies as the leading explorer of the borderline between statutory interpretation and constitutional law. Frickey explores ways to mediate the borderline between statutory interpretation and constitutional adjudication in the context of direct democracy. His is an enormously helpful attempt to reconcile the constitutional issues discussed by Julian Eule and the statutory interpretation issues discussed by Jane Schacter. I agree with many of Frickey's suggestions. Indeed, I will suggest some additional devices that can perform the same role. But I wonder whether Frickey has proved more than he set out to accomplish. The problems of direct democracy are special, …

Imagining The Past And Remembering The Future: The Supreme Court's History Of The Establishment Clause, Gerard V. Bradley

Journal Articles

Our Framers through the Establishment Clause sought to prevent the government from preferring one religious sect to another. However, the Supreme Court in Everson v. Board of Education abandoned that meaning of nonestablishment and created a general prohibition on all nondiscriminatory aid to religion, a decision later reinforced in Lemon v. Kurtzman. This Article discusses the Founder’s worldview and looks at other Establishment Clause cases to illustrate that the historical evidence is inconsistent with Everson. Rather, the founders intended to assure that religion would be aided only on a nondiscriminatory, or sect-neutral, basis and does not stand for …

Withdrawing Jurisdiction From Federal Courts, Charles E. Rice

Journal Articles

Courts today accept two incorrect assumptions when interpreting the federal constitution. First, they assume that the judiciary is the sole branch with the definitive power in interpreting the Constitution. Second, they assume that the Supreme Court's decisions on constitutional interpretation are the law of the land and equal to the language of the Constitution itself. This Article proposes that Congress ought to exercise its removal power of appellate jurisdiction from the federal courts in certain areas of law to limit the Supreme Court’s power in creating law that expands the Constitution, which is mistakenly viewed today with equal stature as …

Congress And The Supreme Court's Jurisdiction, Charles E. Rice

Journal Articles

When a ruling of the supreme court meets with Congressional disfavor there are several remedies available to Congress. If the decision is not on a constitutional level, a later statutory enactment will suffice to reverse or modify the ruling. If, however, the Court's decision is an interpretation of a constitutional mandate, such as the requirement of the fourteenth amendment that legislative districts be apportioned according to population, then a statute could not reverse the decision because the statute itself would be subject to that constitutional mandate as defined by the Court.

The obvious method of reversing a Supreme Court interpretation …

Article Iii Limits On Article I Courts: The Constitutionality Of The Bankruptcy Court And The 1979 Magistrates Act, Lucinda M. Finley

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Judicial Review: Its Influence Abroad, Donald P. Kommers

Journal Articles

The doctrine of judicial review, having been nourished in a legal culture and socio-political environment favorable to its growth, is America’s most distinctive contribution to constitutional government. Judicial review as historically practiced in the United States was duly recorded abroad, with varying degrees of influence and acceptability. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the influence of judicial review was most conspicuous in Latin America, where it was adopted as an articulate principle of numerous national constitutions, while most European nations consciously rejected it as incompatible with the prevailing theory of separation of powers. Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, although marginally …

Comparative Judicial Review And Constitutional Politics, Donald P. Kommers

Journal Articles

Donald P. Kommers reviews Richard D. Baker's Judicial Review in Mexico: A Study of the Amparo Suit (Austin and London: University of Texas Press, 1971); B. L. Strayer's Judicial Review of Legislation in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1968); Heinz Laufer's Verfassungsgerichtsbarkeit und politischer Prozess (Tiibingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck ], 1968); Mauro Cappelletti's Judicial Review in the Contemporary World (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1971); Edward McWhinney's Judicial Review (4th ed.) (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969); Richard E. Johnston's The Effect of Judicial Review on Federal-State Relations in Australia, Canada, and the United States (Baton Rouge: Louisiana …

Abortion: The Court Decides A Non-Case, Joseph O'Meara

Journal Articles

It took the Supreme Court 105 years to discover that the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees a personal right of privacy that invalidates state statutes forbidding abortion except to save the mother's life. As Mr. Justice Rehnquist pointed out, in a dissent that no member of the Court attempted to answer, at least thirty-six states had such anti-abortion statutes when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted. None was attacked on the ground that they offended the newly adopted amendment. The only conclusion possible from this history is that the drafters did not intend to have the Fourteenth Amendment withdraw from the States the …

Introduction, Joseph O'Meara

Journal Articles

A symposium was held on February 29, 1964, devoted to the constitutional amendments proposed by the Council of State Governments. Very briefly these amendments would (1) vest power to amend the Constitution in State legislatures; (2) set up a "Court of the Union," composed of the chief justice of the supreme court of each of the 50 states, which would have authority to review "any judgment of the Supreme Court relating to the rights reserved to the states or to the people by this Constitution"; (3) take from the federal courts all jurisdiction over the apportionment of representation in State …

Congress And The Supreme Court, Thomas Frank Konop

Journal Articles

In 1924, Plank Five of the Platform of the Independent candidate for President proposed a constitutional amendment that would enable Congress to override judicial review by reenacting a statute. Such an amendment would, of course, run in stark contrast to Chief Justice Marshall’s opinion in Marbury v. Madison. This paper explores nature of this proposed amendment and analyzes the implications of overturning the foundation of judicial power in our tripartite system of government. In sum, the author suggests that judicial review serves as an excellent check on Congress and the temporary passions of the public itself.