Supreme Court of the United States Commons^™

A Government Of Laws That Is A Government Of Men And Women, Mark Tushnet

Arkansas Law Review

I take Mark Killenbeck’s “provocative” article as an occasion for some informal comments about what Korematsu and Trump v. Hawaii tell us about the saying, “a government of laws, not a government of men and women.” My basic thought is that the “not” in the saying has to be replaced “but also.” And, in some sense we have always had to have known that the saying was wrong as stated. Whatever the laws are, they don’t make themselves. Nor do they administer themselves, nor interpret themselves. Men and women appear at the stages of enactment, application, and adjudication. So, for …

A Proper Burial, Robert L. Tsai

Arkansas Law Review

In his article, Professor Mark Killenbeck defends both Korematsu v. United States and Trump v. Hawaii on their own terms, albeit on narrow grounds. He goes on to conclude that comparisons of the two decisions don’t hold up. Killenbeck has authored a thoughtful and contrarian paper, but I’m not sold. In my view, Korematsu simply isn’t worth saving; in fact, a more complete repudiation of the internment decisions is overdue. Trump v. Hawaii, too, must also be revisited at the earliest opportunity and its more alarming features that abet presidential discrimination against non-citizens rejected. Moreover, I believe that comparisons between …

There Was Nothing "Neutral" About Executive Order 9066, Eric L. Muller

Arkansas Law Review

There is no more appropriate place to discuss the Japanese American cases of World War II than in the pages of the Arkansas Law Review. This is not only because Arkansas was the only state outside the Western Defense Command to host not one but two of the War Relocation Authority’s (WRA) concentration camps for Japanese Americans. It is because one of the most important lawyers to oversee the development and administration of all the WRA camps was the dean under whose leadership this law review was founded: Robert A. Leflar. Leflar’s is not a name that constitutional lawyers are …

Tainted Precedent, Darrell A.H. Miller

Arkansas Law Review

We have a common law system of constitutional adjudication, at least in the sense that constitutional practice in the United States relies on prior rulings rather than reasoning from first principles in each case. If there’s controlling precedent on point, it’s binding. Neither “inferior courts” in the federal system, nor state courts adjudicating federal law, are permitted to start anew with the “original public meaning” of the First Amendment or pronounce a fresh Dworkinian “moral reading” of the Fourth. Even the highest court in the land, the Supreme Court of the United States, for reasons of reputation, stability, and rule …

Korematsu, Hawaii, And Pedagogy, Sanford Levinson

Arkansas Law Review

I begin with some reflections on my own career in teaching—or, perhaps, attempting to teach—American constitutional law to generations of students from 1975 to the present. Or, more accurately, until about three years ago, when I taught introductory constitutional law for the last time. I am quite happy to no longer be teaching that course, whatever joys it did provide me in the past, for a very simple reason: I became more and more frustrated by the demands of coverage, i.e., the duty to take up a variety of topics—including attendant cases and collateral materials—and the unfortunate certainty that what …

Korematsu As The Tribute That Vice Pays To Virtue, Jack M. Balkin

Arkansas Law Review

Mark Killenbeck wants to (partially) rehabilitate the reputation of one of the Supreme Court’s most despised legal decisions, Korematsu v. United States. He argues that “[w]e should accept and teach Korematsu as an exemplar of what thelaw regarding invidious discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, and national origin should be.” In both Korematsu (and Hirabayashi v. United States) the Court asserted that classifications based on race were subject to strict scrutiny. But “[t]he majority,” Killenbeck explains, “refused to heed their own mandate. In Hirabayashi they held that the government policy was ‘reasonable.’ In Korematsu, . . . they failed …

Sober Second Thought? Korematsu Reconsidered, Mark R. Killenbeck

Arkansas Law Review

How to best describe and treat Korematsu v. United States? A self-inflicted wound? It is certainly an exemplar of a case that in key respects tracks Justice Stephen Breyer’s caution about decisions that have “harm[ed] not just the Court, but the Nation.” Part of an “Anticanon,” resting on “little more than naked racism and associated hokum” and “embod[ying] a set of propositions that all legitimate constitutional decisions must be prepared to refute”? Perhaps. Or is it simply an opinion and result that “has long stood out as a stain that is almost universally recognized as a shameful mistake”?

“Lawyers’ Work”: Does The Court Have A Legitimacy Crisis?, Lackland Bloom

St. Mary's Law Journal

Talk of the Supreme Court’s legitimacy is pervasive. It can’t be avoided by anyone paying attention. The question this article addresses is does the Supreme Court have a legitimacy crisis. The title “Lawyers’ Work” is taken from Justice Scalia’s dissenting opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey in which he declared that as long as the Court decides cases by engaging in “Lawyers’ Work” the public will leave it alone. This article concludes that Justice Scalia was partially though not entirely correct.

The article begins by considering the concept of judicial legitimacy as developed and studied by political scientists. Next it …

The Militia: A Definition And Litmus Test, Marcus Armstrong

St. Mary's Law Journal

The United States Supreme Court, in its decision in Perpich v. Department of Defense, ruled that members of the National Guard are “troops” as that word is used in the Constitution. In doing so, the Court negated a long-standing, but obsolete, definition of the militia. However, this move away from an obsolete definition of the militia posed considerable difficulties that the Court was unable to rectify in its Perpich decision. In this Article, the author hopes to help rectify these difficulties by proposing four necessary characteristics that define the militia: first, the militia is a military force; second, the …

Neither Safe, Nor Legal, Nor Rare: The D.C. Circuit’S Use Of The Doctrine Of Ratification To Shield Agency Action From Appointments Clause Challenges, Damien M. Schiff

Seattle University Law Review

Key to the constitutional design of the federal government is the separation of powers. An important support for that separation is the Appointments Clause, which governs how officers of the United States are installed in their positions. Although the separation of powers generally, and the Appointments Clause specifically, support democratically accountable government, they also protect individual citizens against abusive government power. But without a judicial remedy, such protection is ineffectual—a mere parchment barrier.

Such has become the fate of the Appointments Clause in the D.C. Circuit, thanks to that court’s adoption—and zealous employment—of the rule that agency action, otherwise unconstitutional …

Why Do The Poor Not Have A Constitutional Right To File Civil Claims In Court Under Their First Amendment Right To Petition The Government For A Redress Of Grievances?, Henry Rose

Seattle University Law Review

Since 1963, the United States Supreme Court has recognized a constitutional right for American groups, organizations, and persons to pursue civil litigation under the First Amendment right to petition the government for redress of grievances. However, in three cases involving poor plaintiffs decided by the Supreme Court in the early 1970s—Boddie v. Connecticut,2 United States v. Kras,3 and Ortwein v. Schwab4—the Supreme Court rejected arguments that all persons have a constitutional right to access courts to pursue their civil legal claims.5 In the latter two cases, Kras and Ortwein, the Supreme Court concluded that poor persons were properly barred from …