Legal History Commons^™

John Marshall And Felix Frankfurter: An Icon And A Disappointment?, William E. Nelson

Touro Law Review

This article shows how Chief Justice John Marshall first developed the doctrine of judicial restraint in Marbury v. Madison to assure the public that the Supreme Court would not engage in politically oriented judicial review as colonial courts had in holding Parliament’s 1765 Stamp Act unconstitutional. Justice Felix Frankfurter, in contrast, adopted judicial restraint differently—by reading the scholarship of James Bradley Thayer. This article also shows that Frankfurter did not abandon his commitment to judicial restraint when during his years on the bench it began to serve conservative purposes rather than the progressive purposes it had once served.

Abandoning Animus, Robert L. Tsai

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay presents a preliminary set of arguments against the legal concept of animus grounded in actual practice. After considering the major reasons advanced in support of the animus approach as well as the main objections, I argue that the end of animus may come once we confront the limits of judicial capacity. First, judges have not been willing or able to resort to the animus rationale to call out bigotry where the evidence of hostility is robust. These failures suggest that projects founded upon judicial review to reduce hateful motivations may be overly optimistic. Second, on the occasions the …

Taking Care With Text: "The Laws" Of The Take Care Clause Do Not Include The Constitution, And There Is No Autonomous Presidential Power Of Constitutional Interpretation, George Mader

Faculty Scholarship

“Departmentalism” posits that each branch of the federal government has an independent power of constitutional interpretation—all branches share the power and need not defer to one another in the exercise of their interpretive powers. As regards the Executive Branch, the textual basis for this interpretive autonomy is that the Take Care Clause requires the President to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” and the Supremacy Clause includes the Constitution in “the supreme Law of the Land.” Therefore, the President is to execute the Constitution as a law. Or so the common argument goes. The presidential oath to “execute …

Judge James A. Wynn, Originalism, And The Juridical/Judicial Role, Michael E. Tigar

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Keeping Faith With Nomos, Steven L. Winter

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Presidential Whim, Matthew J. Steilen

Journal Articles

This article describes a new body of legal literature on the presidency. In contrast to older bodies of writing, which emphasize presidential independence, this body of writing emphasizes the dependence of the executive power, and a set of moral values associated with the office: faith, faithfulness, responsibility, honesty, due care, and professionalism, among others. The article considers prospects for enforcing this vision of the presidency in light of the particular problems posed by the Trump presidency. Many writers have complained of President Trump's leadership style, which is abrupt, reflexive, dissembling, and unilateral. I refer to this as the problem of …

Our Administered Constitution: Administrative Constitutionalism From The Founding To The Present, Sophia Z. Lee

All Faculty Scholarship

This article argues that administrative agencies have been primary interpreters and implementers of the federal Constitution throughout the history of the United States, although the scale and scope of this "administrative constitutionalism" has changed significantly over time as the balance of opportunities and constraints has shifted. Courts have nonetheless cast an increasingly long shadow over the administered Constitution. In part, this is because of the well-known expansion of judicial review in the 20th century. But the shift has as much to do with changes in the legal profession, legal theory, and lawyers’ roles in agency administration. The result is that …

Reconsidering Judicial Independence: Forty-Five Years In The Trenches And In The Tower, Stephen B. Burbank

All Faculty Scholarship

Trusting in the integrity of our institutions when they are not under stress, we focus attention on them both when they are under stress or when we need them to protect us against other institutions. In the case of the federal judiciary, the two conditions often coincide. In this essay, I use personal experience to provide practical context for some of the important lessons about judicial independence to be learned from the periods of stress for the federal judiciary I have observed as a lawyer and concerned citizen, and to provide theoretical context for lessons I have deemed significant as …

Mcculloch V. Marbury, Kermit Roosevelt Iii, Heath Khan

All Faculty Scholarship

This article builds on recent scholarship about the origins and creation of “our Marbury”—the contemporary understanding of the case and its significance—to argue that Marbury is in fact wholly unsuited for the role it plays in Supreme Court rhetoric and academic instruction. While Marbury is generally understood to support aggressive judicial review, or actual invalidation of a government act, it offers no guidance at all for how judicial review should be employed in particular cases—in particular, whether review should be aggressive or deferential. The actual opinion in Marbury makes no effort to justify its lack of deference to the …

Securities Law In The Sixties: The Supreme Court, The Second Circuit, And The Triumph Of Purpose Over Text, Adam C. Pritchard, Robert B. Thompson

Articles

This Article analyzes the Supreme Court’s leading securities cases from 1962 to 1972—SEC v. Capital Gains Research Bureau, Inc.; J.I. Case Co. v. Borak; Mills v. Electric Auto-Lite Co.; Superintendent of Insurance v. Bankers Life & Casualty Co.; and Affiliated Ute of Utah v. United States—relying not just on the published opinions, but also the Justices’ internal letters, memos, and conference notes. The Sixties Court did not simply apply the text as enacted by Congress, but instead invoked the securities laws’ purposes as a guide to interpretation. The Court became a partner of Congress in shaping the securities laws, rather …

From Parliamentary To Judicial Supremacy: Reflections In Honour Of The Constitutionalism Of Justice Moseneke, Peter G. Danchin

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Marbury In Mexico: Judicial Review’S Precocious Southern Migration, M C. Mirow

M. C. Mirow

In attempting to construct United States-style judicial review for the Mexican Supreme Court in the 1880s, Ignacio Vallarta, president of the court, read Marbury in a way that preceded this use of the case in the United States. Using this surprising fact as a central example, this article makes several important contributions to the field of comparative constitutional law. The work demonstrates that through constitutional migration, novel readings of constitutional sources can arise in foreign fora. In an era when the United States Supreme Court may be accused of parochialism in its constitutional analysis, the article addresses the current controversy …

Unearthing The Lost History Of Seminole Rock, Amy J. Wildermuth, Sanne H. Knudsen

Articles

In 1945, the Supreme Court blessed a lesser known type of agency deference in Bowles v. Seminole Rock. Also known as Auer deference, it affords deference to agency interpretations of their own regulations. Courts regularly defer to agencies under this doctrine, regardless of where the interpretations first appear or how long-standing they are. Recently members of the Supreme Court have signaled a willingness to reconsider, and perhaps jettison, Seminole Rock. We agree. Seminole Rock has been widely accepted but surprisingly disconnected from any analysis of its origins and justifications. This Article — the first historical explication of Seminole …

Agora: Reflections On Zivotofsky V. Kerry : Historical Gloss, The Recognition Power, And Judicial Review, Curtis A. Bradley

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Constitution Making In The Countries Of Former Soviet Dominance: Current Development, Rett R. Ludwikowski

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

That Elusive Consensus: The Historiographic Significance Of William E. Nelson's Works On Judicial Review, Mark Mcgarvie

Chicago-Kent Law Review

This essay provides a historiographical context for Nelson’s work on judicial review. It argues that Nelson’s integration of intellectual and legal history not only rebutted the instrumentalist historiography that prevailed when he undertook his work on Marshall and judicial review, but also fostered an appreciation of the need to place legal actors in the intellectual context in which they acted. Highlighting the influence of Bernard Bailyn’s pathfinding work on popular sovereignty upon Nelson’s development of his consensus theory, the essay contends that Nelson’s work changed the course of academic readings of Marshall’s jurisprudence to be consistent with a broader acceptance …

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 …

From Commonwealth To Constitutional Limitations: Thomas Cooley's Michigan, 1805-1886, Robert Allan Olender

SJD Dissertations

In response to what he perceived as the challenges associated with republican governance in the later portions of the nineteenth century, Michigan’s Thomas McIntyre Cooley penned his treatise concerning constitutional limitations on legislative power. In it, Cooley offered a vision of government where courts would check government power and would raise constitutional barriers against the impact of improper influences on legislators. As a student of history, Cooley grounded his beliefs and doctrines in experience, not philosophical reflections. Believing that “the fruits of speculative genius in government are of little value,” Cooley submitted that governing structures and law “must be the …

The National Security State: The End Of Separation Of Powers, Michael E. Tigar

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Constitution And Legislative History, Victoria Nourse

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this article, the author provides an extended analysis of the constitutional claims against legislative history, arguing that, under textualists’ own preference for constitutional text, the use of legislative history should be constitutional to the extent it is supported by Congress’s rulemaking power, a constitutionally enumerated power.

This article has five parts. In part I, the author explains the importance of this question, considering the vast range of cases to which this claim of unconstitutionality could possibly apply—after all, statutory interpretation cases are the vast bulk of the work of the federal courts. She also explains why these claims should …

Judicial Deference To Administrative Interpretations Of Law, Antonin Scalia

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

No abstract provided.

Judicial Independence In Administrative, Adjudication: Past, Present, And Future , Ann Marshall Young

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

No abstract provided.

Creeping Judicialization In Special Education Hearings?: An Exploratory Study, Perry A. Zirkel, Zorka Karanxha, Anastasia D'Angelo

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

No abstract provided.

The Supreme Court's Take On Immigration In Nken V. Holder: Reaffirming A Traditional Standard That Affords Courts More Time And Flexibility To Decide Immigration Appeals Before Deporting Aliens, Elizaveta Kabanova

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

No abstract provided.

Accountability In The Administrative Law Judiciary: The Right And The Wrong Kind, Edwin L. Felter Jr

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

This article discusses and evaluates several forms of accountability in the administrative law judiciary, and compares them with prevalent forms of accountability in the judicial branch. Felter argues that codes of judicial conduct, as well as formal enforcement mechanisms, work together to maintain a balance of independence and accountability in the administrative law judiciary. The article analyzes the "right kinds" of accountability as distinguished from the "wrong kind" of accountability, i.e., political accountability. The article maintains that decisional independence is the cornerstone of any properly functioning adjudication system. The price of decisional independence is accountability to concepts and mechanisms other …

Presidential Power, Historical Practice, And Legal Constraint, Curtis A. Bradley, Trevor W. Morrison

Faculty Scholarship

The scope of the President’s legal authority is determined in part by historical practice. This Essay aims to better understand how such practice-based law might operate as a constraint on the presidency. Some scholars have suggested that presidential authority has become “unbounded” by law, and is now governed only or primarily by politics. At the same time, there has been growing skepticism about the ability of the familiar political checks on presidential power to work in any systematic or reliable fashion. Skepticism about law’s potential to constrain in this context is heightened by the customary nature of much of what …

Yick Wo At 125: Four Simple Lessons For The Contemporary Supreme Court, Marie A. Failinger

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

The 125th anniversary of Yick Wo v. Hopkins is an important opportunity to recognize the pervasive role of law in oppressive treatment of Chinese immigrants in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is also a good opportunity for the Supreme Court to reflect on four important lessons gleaned from Yick Wo. First, the Court should never lend justification to the evil of class discrimination, even if it has to decline to rule in a case. Second, where there is persistent discrimination against a minority group, the Court must be similarly persistent in fighting it. Third, the Court needs to take …

Appeals To The Privy Council Before American Independence: An Annotated Digital Catalogue, Sharon Hamby O'Connor, Mary Sarah Bilder

Sharon Hamby O'Connor

Between the later seventeenth century and American independence, appeals from colonial high courts were taken to the Privy Council in England. These appeals are the precursors of today’s appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court. Their legal and policy issues can be reconstructed from the outcome of the appeals, the briefs of crown law officers, related Privy Council documents, and handwritten notations on these materials. This article describes Appeals to the Privy Council Before American Independence, an annotated digital catalogue of appeals from the thirteen colonies with links and digital images providing access to this material, now compiled from a variety …

The Real Formalists, The Real Realists, And What They Tell Us About Judicial Decision And Legal Education, Edward Rubin

Michigan Law Review

The periodization of history, like chocolate cake, can have some bad effects on us, but it is hard to resist. We realize, of course, that Julius Caesar didn’t think of himself as “Classical” and Richard the Lionhearted didn’t regard the time in which he lived as the Middle Ages. Placing historical figures in subsequently defined periods separates us from them and impairs our ability to understand them on their own terms. But it is difficult to understand anything about them at all if we try to envision history as continuous and undifferentiated. We need periodization to organize events that are …

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 …