Jurisprudence Commons^™

Does The Discourse On 303 Creative Portend A Standing Realignment?, Richard M. Re

Notre Dame Law Review Reflection

Perhaps the most surprising feature of the last Supreme Court Term was the extraordinary public discourse on 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis. According to many commentators, the Court decided what was really a “fake” or “made-up” case brought by someone who asserted standing merely because “she worries.” As a doctrinal matter, these criticisms are unfounded. But what makes this episode interesting is that the criticisms came from the legal Left, which has long been associated with expansive principles of standing. Doubts about standing in 303 Creative may therefore portend a broader standing realignment, in which liberal Justices become jurisdictionally hawkish. …

A New Deal Approach To Statutory Interpretation: Selected Cases Authored By Justice Robert Jackson, Charles Patrick Thomas

Journal of Legislation

No abstract provided.

The Exceptional Role Of Courts In The Constitutional Order, N.W. Barber, Adrian Vermeule

Notre Dame Law Review

This Article looks at a rare part of the judicial role: those exceptional cases when the judge is called upon to pass judgment on the constitution itself. This arises in three groups of cases, roughly speaking. First, in exceptional cases the validity of the constitution and the legal order is thrown into dispute. Second, on some occasions the judge is asked to rule on the transition from one constitutional order to another. Third, there are some cases in which the health of the constitutional order requires the judge to act not merely beyond the law, as it were, but actually …

Inside The Taft Court: Lessons From The Docket Books, Barry Cushman

Journal Articles

For many years, the docket books kept by certain of the Taft Court Justices have been held by the Office of the Curator of the Supreme Court. Though the existence of these docket books had been brought to the attention of the scholarly community, access to them was highly restricted. In April of 2014, however, the Court adopted new guidelines designed to increase access to the docket books for researchers. This article offers a report and analysis based on a review of all of the Taft Court docket books held by the Office of the Curator, which are the only …

Judicial Candor And Extralegal Reasoning: Why Extralegal Reasons Require Legal Justifications (And No More), Eric Dean Hageman

Notre Dame Law Review

This Note’s first Part explores two landmark Supreme Court cases, Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey and NFIB, that may have been decided based on extralegal considerations. Part II describes three prominent theories of judicial candor with an eye to the results they might yield with respect to extralegal reasoning. Part III offers and defends a new, partial theory of judicial candor. This theory is that a judge who employs extralegal reasoning should omit discussion of her reliance on that reasoning and justify her decision with legal reasoning.

The first two Parts will demonstrate that there is a …

The Politics Of Statutory Interpretation, Margaret H. Lemos

Notre Dame Law Review

In a new book, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts, Justice Antonin Scalia and Bryan Garner describe and defend the textualist methodology for which Justice Scalia is famous. For Scalia and Garner, the normative appeal of textualism lies in its objectivity: by focusing on text, context, and canons of construction, textualism offers protection against ideological judging—a way to separate law from politics. Yet, as Scalia and Garner well know, textualism is widely regarded as a politically conservative methodology. The charge of conservative bias is more common than it is concrete, but it reflects the notion that textualism narrows the …

Sotomayor's Empathy Moves The Court A Step Closer To Equitable Adjudication, Veronica Couzo

Notre Dame Law Review

On August 6, 2009, then-Judge, now-Justice, Sonia Sotomayor was confirmed as the nation’s first Latina Supreme Court Justice. While many Latinos embraced the idea of having “Sonia from the Bronx” on the bench, others were fearful that her jurisprudence, combined with her background, would result in “reverse racism.” These fears, while arguably unfounded at the time, have been completely dispelled. Just as Justice Thurgood Marshall transformed the adjudications of the Supreme Court through experiential discourse, so too, to a lesser extent, has Justice Sotomayor. In both oral arguments and written opinions, Justice Sonia Sotomayor has demonstrated educative leadership—enlightening her colleagues …

Book Review, Clarence Emmett Manion

Journal Articles

Reviewing: THE PRICE OF PERFECT JUSTICE. By Macklin Fleming. The Adverse Consequences of Current Legal Doctrine on the American Courtroom. Justice of the California Court of Appeals (Basic Books, Inc. New York).