Constitutional Law Commons^™

Constitutional Maturity, Or Reading Weber In The Age Of Trump, Josh Chafetz

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Anxiety abounds about the state of American constitutional democracy in “the age of Trump.” A wide range of commentators have raised serious and profound questions about the resilience of our political institutions and the capacity of our current political leadership.

This Essay, written for a Constitutional Commentary symposium on “Constitutional Law in the Trump Era,” attempts to get a handle on that anxiety by taking a step back and viewing our contemporary situation through a broader lens—a lens crafted in a different time and place, but responsive to a related set of political questions.

In particular, this Essay turns to …

How Constitutional Norms Break Down, Josh Chafetz, David E. Pozen

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

From the moment Donald Trump was elected President, critics have anguished over a breakdown in constitutional norms. History demonstrates, however, that constitutional norms are perpetually in flux. The principal source of instability is not that these unwritten rules can be destroyed by politicians who deny their legitimacy, their validity, or their value. Rather, the principal source of instability is that constitutional norms can be decomposed—dynamically interpreted and applied in ways that are held out as compliant but end up limiting their capacity to constrain the conduct of government officials.

This Article calls attention to that latent instability and, in so …

Unprecedented? Judicial Confirmation Battles And The Search For A Usable Past, Josh Chafetz

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Recent years have seen intense conflicts over federal judicial appointments, culminating in Senate Republicans' 2016 refusal to consider the nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, Senate Democrats' 2017 filibuster of Neil Gorsuch's nomination to the same seat, and Republicans' triggering of the "nuclear option" to confirm Gorsuch. At every stage in this process, political actors on both sides have accused one another of "unprecedented" behavior.

This Essay, written for the 2017 Supreme Court issue of the Harvard Law Review, examines these disputes and their histories, with an eye toward understanding the ways in which discussions of (un)precedentedness …

Executive Opportunism, Presidential Signing Statements, And The Separation Of Powers, Daniel B. Rodriguez, Edward H. Stiglitz, Barry R. Weingast

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Executive discretion over policy outcomes is an inevitable feature of our political system. However, in recent years, the President has sought to expand his discretion through a variety of controversial and legally questionable tactics. Through a series of simple separation of powers models, we study one such tactic, employed by both Democratic and Republican presidents: the use of signing statements, which purport to have status in the interpretation of statutory meaning. Our models also show that signing statements upset the constitutional vision of lawmaking and, in a wide range of cases, exacerbate legislative gridlock. We argue that courts should not …

Unitary Innovations And Political Accountability, Edward H. Stiglitz

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

An important trend in administrative and constitutional law is to attempt to concentrate ever-greater control over the administrative state in the hands of the President. As the Supreme Court recently reminded us in Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, one foundation for this doctrinal trend is a fear that diffusing power diffuses accountability. Here, I study whether institutional innovations resulting from such judicial decisions support this functionalist constitutional value of political accountability, emphasizing under-appreciated complications arising out of interbranch relations. For most of the Article, I conduct an indepth empirical case study of the legislative veto, one …

Who Decides On Security?, Aziz Rana

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Despite over six decades of reform initiatives, the overwhelming drift of security arrangements in the United States has been toward greater—not less— executive centralization and discretion. This Article explores why efforts to curb presidential prerogative have failed so consistently. It argues that while constitutional scholars have overwhelmingly focused their attention on procedural solutions, the underlying reason for the growth of emergency powers is ultimately political rather than purely legal. In particular, scholars have ignored how the basic meaning of "security" has itself shifted dramatically since World War II and the beginning of the Cold War in line with changing ideas …

Congress's Constitution, Josh Chafetz

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Congress has significantly more constitutional power than we are accustomed to seeing it exercise. By failing to make effective use of its power, Congress has invited the other branches to fill the vacuum, resulting in a constitutional imbalance. This Article considers a number of constitutional tools that individual houses—and even individual members—of Congress, acting alone, can deploy in interbranch conflicts. Although the congressional powers discussed in this Article are clearly contemplated in constitutional text, history, and structure, many of them have received only scant treatment in isolation. More importantly, they have never before been considered in concert as a set …

The Two Faces Of American Freedom: A Reply, Aziz Rana

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Unconstitutionality Of The Filibuster, Josh Chafetz

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This Article, written for the Connecticut Law Review's 2010 "Is Our Constitutional Order Broken?" symposium, argues that the filibuster, as currently practiced, is unconstitutional.

After a brief introduction in Part I, Part II describes the current operation of the filibuster. Although the filibuster is often discussed in terms of "unlimited debate," this Part argues that its current operation is best understood in terms of a sixty-vote requirement to pass most bills and other measures through the Senate.

Part III presents a structural argument that this supermajority requirement for most Senate business is unconstitutional. This Part argues that the words "passed" …

The Political Animal And The Ethics Of Constitutional Commitment, Josh Chafetz

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In his article Parchment and Politics: The Positive Puzzle of Constitutional Commitment, Professor Daryl J. Levinson identifies a variety of public choice mechanisms that lead politically empowered groups to accept constitutional limitations on their political power. In this response, Professor Josh Chafetz argues that Levinson overlooks another set of mechanisms, ones which work not at the level of material interests but rather at the level of political morality. Focusing on an Aristotelian account of political morality—an account that was influential among the Framers of the U.S. Constitution and that remains influential today — Chafetz suggests that at least some …

Impeachment And Assassination, Josh Chafetz

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In 1998, the conservative provocateur Ann Coulter made waves when she wrote that President Clinton should be either impeached or assassinated. Coulter was roundly - and rightly - condemned for suggesting that the murder of the President might be justified, but her conceptual linking of presidential impeachment and assassination was not entirely unfounded. Indeed, Benjamin Franklin had made the same linkage over two hundred years earlier, when he noted at the Constitutional Convention that, historically, the removal of “obnoxious” chief executives had been accomplished by assassination. Franklin suggested that a proceduralized mechanism for removal - impeachment - would be preferable. …

Is The Filibuster Constitutional?, Josh Chafetz, Michael J. Gerhardt

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

With the help of the President, Democrats in Congress were able to pass historic healthcare-reform legislation in spite of - and thanks to - the significant structural obstacles presented by the Senate’s arcane parliamentary rules. After the passage of the bill, the current political climate appears to require sixty votes for the passage of any major legislation, a practice which many argue is unsustainable.

In this Debate, Professors Josh Chafetz and Michael Gerhardt debate the constitutionality of the Senate’s cloture rules by looking to the history of those rules in the United States and elsewhere. Professor Chafetz argues that the …

False Comfort And Impossible Promises: Uncertainty, Information Overload, And The Unitary Executive, Cynthia R. Farina

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The movement toward President-centered government is one of the most significant trends in modern American history. This trend has been accelerated by unitary executive theory, which provided constitutional and “good government” justifications for what political scientists have been calling the “personal” or “plebiscitary” presidency.

This essay draws on cognitive, social and political psychology to suggest that the extreme cognitive and psychological demands of modern civic life make us particularly susceptible to a political and constitutional ideology organized around a powerful and beneficent leader who champions our interests in the face of internal obstacles and external threats. The essay goes on …

Deconstructing Nondelegation, Cynthia R. Farina

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This Essay (part of the panel on "The Administrative State and the Constitution" at the 2009 Federalist Society Student Symposium) suggests that the persistence of debates over delegation to agencies cannot persuasively be explained as a determination finally to get constitutional law “right,” for nondelegation doctrine—at least as traditionally stated—does not rest on a particularly sound legal foundation. Rather, these debates continue because nondelegation provides a vehicle for pursuing a number of different concerns about the modern regulatory state. Whether or not one shares these concerns, they are not trivial, and we should voice and engage them directly rather than …

Social Movements And The Ethical Construction Of Law, Gerald Torres

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Leaving The House: The Constitutional Status Of Resignation From The House Of Representatives, Josh Chafetz

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Do members of the House of Representatives have a constitutional right to resign their seats? This Article uses that question as a window onto broader issues about the relationship between legislators and citizens and the respective roles of liberalism and republicanism in the American constitutional order. The Constitution explicitly provides for the resignation of senators, presidents, and vice presidents, but, curiously, it does not say anything about resigning from the House of Representatives. Should we allow the expressio unius interpretive canon to govern and conclude that the inclusion of some resignation provisions implies the impermissibility of resignation when there is …

Our Undemocratic Constitution: Where The Constitution Goes Wrong (And How We The People Can Correct It), Michael C. Dorf

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Identity Politics And The Second Amendment, Michael C. Dorf

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Interpretive Holism And The Structural Method, Or How Charles Black Might Have Thought About Campaign Finance Reform And Congressional Timidity, Michael C. Dorf

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Can Process Theory Constrain Courts?, Michael C. Dorf, Samuel Issacharoff

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The political process theory introduced by the Carolene Products footnote and developed through subsequent scholarship has shaped much of the modern constitutional landscape. Process theory posits that courts may justifiably intervene in the political arena when institutional obstacles impede corrective action by political actors themselves. Judged by this standard, the United States Supreme Court's decision in Bush v. Gore was a failure, because the majority could not explain why its interference was necessary. More broadly, Bush v. Gore points to a central deficiency in process theory: it relies upon the Justices to guard against their own overreaching, but does not …

The 2000 Presidential Election: Archetype Or Exception?, Michael C. Dorf

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Ideology Of Judging And The First Amendment In Judicial Election Campaigns, W. Bradley Wendel

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Schoolhouses, Courthouses, And Statehouses: Educational Finance, Constitutional Structure, And The Separation Of Powers Doctrine, Michael Heise

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Law Of Patronage At A Crossroads, Cynthia Grant Bowman

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Politics Of The Mass Media And The Free Speech Principle, Steven H. Shiffrin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

"We Don't Want Anybody Anybody Sent": The Death Of Patronage Hiring In Chicago, Cynthia Grant Bowman

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Reapportionment Cases: Cognitive Lag, The Malady And Its Cure, E. F. Roberts, Paul T. Shultz Iii

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The reapportionment cases have been considered by many to be the product of a liberal, activist Court which is endeavoring to reshape America’s political life according to its own views. The authors of this article assert that, to the contrary, the Court actually is reacting to the incontrovertible fact of the modern predominance of urban complexities which have rendered inappropriate our older political boundaries. In this sense, they consider the Court’s decisions conservative rather than liberal- because the Court’s purpose is to maintain a version of federalism along state boundaries which may have become outmoded even before the Court entered …