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State Sovereign Immunity And The New Purposivism, Anthony J. Bellia Jr., Bradford R. Clark

Journal Articles

Since the Constitution was first proposed, courts and commentators have debated the extent to which it alienated the States’ preexisting sovereign immunity from suit by individuals. During the ratification period, these debates focused on the language of the citizen-state diversity provisions of Article III. After the Supreme Court read these provisions to abrogate state sovereign immunity in Chisholm v. Georgia, Congress and the States adopted the Eleventh Amendment to prohibit this construction. The Court subsequently ruled that States enjoy sovereign immunity independent of the Eleventh Amendment, which neither conferred nor diminished it. In the late twentieth-century, Congress began enacting statutes …

Ideological Leanings In Likely Pro Bono Biglaw Amicus Briefs In The United States Supreme Court, Derek T. Muller

Journal Articles

Each term, the United States Supreme Court receives hundreds of amicus briefs filed in merits docket cases. Many of the largest law firms file amicus briefs before the United States Supreme Court. These amicus briefs are often pro bono, which means the clients do not pay for the firm to file the brief. That pro bono work can quickly total millions of dollars of legal briefing subsidized by the law firm. And pro bono work often reflects the law firm’s desire to work for its prior commitments to what it identifies as the "public good."

Controversies have arisen in recent …

Colonizing Queerness, Jeremiah A. Ho

University of Colorado Law Review

This Article investigates how and why the cultural script of inequality persists for queer identities despite major legal advancements such as marriage, anti-discrimination, and employment protections. By regarding LGBTQ legal advancements as part of the American settler colonial project, I conclude that such victories are not liberatory or empowering but are attempts at colonizing queer identities. American settler colonialism’s structural promotion of a normative sexuality illustrates how our settler colonialist legacy is not just a race project (as settler colonialism is most widely studied) but also a race-gender-sexuality project. Even in apparent strokes of progress, American settler colonialism’s eliminationist motives …

Loper Bright And The Future Of Chevron Deference, Jack M. Beermann

Faculty Scholarship

The question presented in Loper Bright Industries v. Raimondo¹ is “[w]hether the Court should overrule Chevron or at least clarify that statutory silence concerning controversial powers expressly but narrowly granted elsewhere in the statute does not constitute an ambiguity requiring deference to the agency.” The Court denied certiorari on another question focused on the merits of the case,² indicating that at least four of the Justices are anxious to revisit or at least clarify Chevron. It’s about time, although it’s far from certain that the Court will actually follow through with the promise the certiorari grant indicates.^{3 …}

Roads Not Taken On Affirmative Action, Robert L. Tsai

Faculty Scholarship

The law of affirmative action is a mess. In the short term, legal doctrine is constrained by path dependence, but its long-term future is murkier due to the many unforeseen contingencies. To regain a sense of the possible, this Article looks forward to the future of equality jurisprudence by looking backward. It recovers three roads not taken. First, the Supreme Court could have kept expectations minimal by hewing closely to the methods and rhetoric of fairness rather than ratifying a consumerist model of entitlement by deploying an individualistic vision of equality. Second, the justices might have endorsed a robust right …

The Curious Case Of Justice Neil Gorsuch, Justin Burnworth

Pace Law Review

Justice Gorsuch has a propensity for unexpected decisions. His opinions in Bostock v. Clayton County, United States v. Vaello Madero, and McGirt v. Oklahoma confounded the legal community at large. Some argue that his Western upbringing played a role. Others argue that his time clerking for Justice Kennedy primed him for unpredictable decisions. These explanations do not get at the core of Justice Gorsuch’s legal reasoning. This article dives into the depths of these opinions to extract his “Enduring” theories of law. I argue that legal scholarship has incorrectly viewed these three decisions as isolated incidents when they are best …

Case Law On American Indians: October 2022 - August 2023, Thomas P. Schlosser

American Indian Law Journal

No abstract provided.

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. …

Just Extracurriculars?, Emily Gold Waldman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Extracurricular activities have been the battleground for a striking number of Supreme Court cases set at public schools, from cases involving speech to religion to drug testing. Indeed, the two most recent Supreme Court cases involving constitutional rights at public schools--Kennedy v. Bremerton School District (2022) and Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L. (2021)--both arose in the extracurricular context of school sports. Even so, the Supreme Court has never fully clarified the status of extracurricular activities themselves. Once a school offers an extracurricular activity, is participation merely a privilege? Does the fact that extracurricular activities are voluntary for students affect …

The Common Law And First Amendment Qualified Right Of Public Access To Foreign Intelligence Law, Laura K. Donohue

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

For millennia, public access to the law has been the hallmark of rule of law. To be legally and morally binding, rules must be promulgated. Citizens’ knowledge of the law, in turn, serves as the lynchpin for democratic governance. In common law countries, it is more than just the statutory provisions and their execution that matters: how courts rule, and the reasoning behind their determination, proves central. Accordingly, in the United States, both common law and the right to petition incorporated in the First Amendment have long enshrined a presumed right of public right of access to Article III opinions …

121st Sibley Lecture: American Democracy In Peril, J. Michael Luttig

Georgia Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Applications Docket, Greg Goelzhauser

Georgia Law Review

The Supreme Court’s applications docket, often misleadingly called the “shadow docket” or “emergency docket,” is controversial, complex, and poorly understood. Using original data spanning nearly two decades, I unravel the docket’s empirical foundations. Applications practice changed fundamentally in recent years. Contrary to conventional wisdom, dispositions declined on average, but this conceals divergent trends: among applications involving stays and injunctions, capital dispositions decreased while noncapital dispositions increased. Moreover, noncapital applications now comprise a larger share of the docket than capital applications. This shift enhances docket salience because, as I show, most capital applications are denied simultaneous to denying plenary review, while …

Parting The Red Sea: Prescriptions For The Rluipa Equal Terms Provision's Expanding Circuit Split, Braden T. Meadows

Georgia Law Review

Congress unanimously passed the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) in 2000. The Act marked the culmination of a decades-long dialogue between Congress and the Supreme Court. RLUIPA’s passage embodied Congress’s resolve to provide religious free exercise protections—particularly as it pertained to religious land use. Since 2000, however, RLUIPA’s Equal Terms Provision has been subject to differing judicial interpretations, resulting in an expanding circuit split. This Note analyzes the circuit split and offers guidance to future interpreters.

First, this Note examines the social, legislative, and judicial history leading to RLUIPA’s enactment. Second, it analyzes the contours of interpretations …

Jurisdiction Beyond Our Borders: United States V. Alcoa And The Extraterritorial Reach Of American Antitrust, 1909–1945, Laura Phillips Sawyer

Scholarly Works

Chapter in the book Antimonopoly and American Democracy by Daniel A. Crane and William J. Novak, eds., Oxford University Press, 2023.

In 1945, Judge Learned Hand wrote one of the most influential opinions in modern antitrust law. In declaring that the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa) had illegally monopolized the industry for virgin aluminum and had participated in an illegal international cartel, Hand both revived and extended American antitrust law. The ruling is famous for several reasons: it narrowly defined the relevant market in favor of the government; it expanded the category of impermissible dominant firm conduct; it interpreted congressional …

You Can’T Teach Old Katz New Tricks: It’S Time To Revitalize The Fourth Amendment, Jeremy Connell

University of Miami Law Review

For over half a century, the Court’s decision in Katz v. United States has been the lodestar for applying the Fourth Amendment. The Katz test has produced a litany of confusing and irreconcilable decisions in which the Court has carved exceptions into the doctrine and then carved exceptions into the exceptions. These decisions often leave lower courts with minimal guidance on how to apply the framework to new sets of facts and leave legal scholars and commenters befuddled and frustrated with the Court’s explanations for the rulings. The Court’s decision in Carpenter v. United States represents the apex of Katz’s …

Inconsistencies In State Court Decisions Regarding Public School Financing Are Violating The Constitutional Rights Of Citizens: Why The Nevada Court In Shea V. State Should Have Intervened, Corinne Milnamow

University of Miami Law Review

In 1973, the Supreme Court decided the landmark case, San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, which held there was no fundamental right to education under the United States Constitution. In the years that have followed Rodriguez, state courts across the country have been left to decide issues related to public school financing. Many plaintiffs in these cases will argue that education is a fundamental right under their state’s constitution and that their respective state’s public school financing structure—one that heavily relies on local property taxes—is unconstitutional because of the discrepancies in the quality of education one will receive in …

The News Media Engagement Principle: Why Social Media Has Not Actually Overrun The Limited Purpose Public Figure Category, Zachary R. Cormier

University of Miami Law Review

Has the rise of social media ruined the limited purpose public figure category of the First Amendment’s actual malice privilege? Justice Gorsuch believes so—and he has recently invited courts to get rid of it. He argues that the category now includes vast numbers of otherwise private citizens that have “become ‘public figures’ on social media overnight.” With so many people qualifying as limited purpose public figures (and having to overcome the actual malice standard to prevail on a defamation claim), he claims that the category has evolved to provide an unjustified shield for the masses of misinformation-peddlers on social media. …

What’S Your Damage?! The Supreme Court Has Wrecked Temporary Takings Jurisprudence, Timothy M. Harris

University of Miami Law Review

In Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, the U.S. Supreme Court unnecessarily expanded the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause. In doing so, the Court veered away from established precedent and overturned prior case law—without expressly admitting to doing so.

In 2021, the Court held that a California law allowing union organizers to access private property under certain conditions took away a landowner’s right to exclude others and was (apparently) immediately compensable under the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause. Prior law had subjected temporary takings to an uncertain, unpopular, and ambiguous balancing test—but the Cedar Point holding turned temporary takings jurisprudence on its head …

For Freedom Or Full Of It? State Attempts To Silence Social Media, Grace Slicklen

University of Miami Law Review

Freedom of speech is, unsurprisingly, foundational to the “land of the free.” However, the “land of the free” has undergone some changes since the First Amendment’s ratification. Unprecedented technological evolution has ushered in a digital forum in which the volume, speed, and reach of words transcend the Framers’ visions of the First Amendment’s aims. Social media platforms have become central spaces for public discourse, where opportunities to create—and repress—speech are endless. From enabling individuals to freely express their views, to allowing state actors to limit open exchanges, it is about time that the Supreme Court tackles this complex issue of …

Bureaucratic Overreach And The Role Of The Courts In Protecting Representative Democracy, Katie Cassady

Liberty University Journal of Statesmanship & Public Policy

The United States bureaucracy began as only four departments and has expanded to address nearly every issue of public life. While these bureaucratic agencies are ostensibly under congressional oversight and the supervision of the President as part of the executive branch, they consistently usurp their discretionary authority and bypass the Founding Fathers’ design of balancing legislative power in a bicameral Congress.

The Supreme Court holds an indispensable role in mitigating the overreach of executive agencies, yet the courts’ inability to hold bureaucrats accountable has diluted voters’ voices. Since the Supreme Court’s 1984 ruling in Chevron, U.S.A. v. Natural Resources Defense …

Divide, "Two-Step," And Conquer: How Johnson & Johnson Spurred The Bankruptcy System, Patrick Maney

University of Cincinnati Law Review

No abstract provided.

Originalism After Dobbs, Bruen, And Kennedy: The Role Of History And Tradition, Randy E. Barnett, Lawrence B. Solum

Northwestern University Law Review

In three recent cases, the constitutional concepts of history and tradition have played important roles in the reasoning of the Supreme Court. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization relied on history and tradition to overrule Roe v. Wade. New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen articulated a history and tradition test for the validity of laws regulating the right to bear arms recognized by the Second Amendment. Kennedy v. Bremerton School District looked to history and tradition in formulating the test for the consistency of state action with the Establishment Clause.

These cases raise important questions about …

Opening Remarks, Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

Thank you. I am honored to be here. And there is no more fitting way to honor Michael than around the 40th anniversary of Plyler v. Doe.

This case centered on Texas statute § 21.031, which on its face, permitted the local school districts to exclude noncitizen children who entered the United States without immigration status or to charge admission for the same. The questions before the Court were: (1) whether a noncitizen under the statute who is present in the state without legal status is a “person” and therefore in the jurisdiction of the state within the meaning …

Introduction, Rosemary Salomone

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

This issue of the St. John’s Law Review includes several Articles that were initially presented at the Law Review’s Fall 2022 virtual symposium. The symposium commemorated the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Plyler v. Doe as a starting point for discussing current immigration law in the United States. It was dedicated in memory of Professor Michael A. Olivas, who held the William B. Bates Distinguished Chair in Law (Emeritus) and was the Director of the Institute for Higher Education Law and Governance at the University of Houston Law Center. Professor Olivas, a passionate advocate of …

Counting To Four: The History And Future Of Wisconsin's Fractured Supreme Court, Jeffrey A. Mandell, Daniel J. Schneider

Marquette Law Review

Over the past decade, the Wisconsin Supreme Court has issued “fractured” opinions—decisions without majority support for any one legal rationale supporting the outcome—at an alarming clip. These opinions have confounded legal analysts, attorneys, and government officials due to their lack of majority reasoning, but also due to their length and the court’s particular procedures for assigning, drafting, and labelling opinions. This has become especially problematic where the court has issued fractured opinions in areas core to the basic functioning of state and local government, leaving the state without clear precedential guidance on what the law is. Yet, virtually no one …

Texas Juvenile Justice: The Need For A “Second Look” At Juvenile Prison Sentences, Kyle Jenkins

St. Mary's Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Mother Nature On The Run: The Sec, Climate Change Disclosure, And The Major Questions Doctrine, J. Robert Brown, Jr.

San Diego Law Review

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC or Commission) has proposed a rule that addresses the disclosure needs of investors with respect to climate change. The proposal would require that public companies tell investors about the risks to their business associated with climate change and explain the system and strategy of governance for monitoring those risks. In addition, the proposal would mandate the disclosure of certain greenhouse gas emissions.

The SEC’s proposal arrived contemporaneously with the Supreme Court’s announcement of the “major questions” doctrine. A deliberate attempt to limit the authority of the executive branch, the doctrine would restrict agencies from …

Exploring Democratic Accountability In The Administrative State, Joshua Ulan Galperin

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This essay seeks to add to the ongoing effort of defining accountability in practical terms by presenting an inconspicuous but directly on-point case study about administrative accountability. This is the story of the United States Department of Agriculture farmer committee system, which seems to be the one and only experiment in federal administrative elections. The experiment, however, has been a failure both as a matter of practical policy and constitutional validity. Indeed, in advance of legislative debate on the 2023 Farm Bill, a USDA advisory committee publicly recommended that Congress abolish the committee system. Nevertheless, there is much to learn …

A Handmaid’S Tale: Amy Coney Barrett, Originalism, And The Specter Of Religion, Calvin R. Coker, Joel L. Reed

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

In this essay, we analyze the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Amy Coney Barrett to identify and explain the interaction between religion and jurisprudential philosophy. By tracing rhetorical scholarship on religion, politics, and the Supreme Court, we highlight tension engendered by both the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee and Barrett herself in locating her Catholicism as a desirable attribute for a nominee while at the same time espousing the importance of judicial objectivity. We suggest Barrett and her supporters on the committee invoked the judicial philosophy of originalism to allay this tension while occluding conversations about Barrett’s prior ideological …

Per Curiam Signals In The Supreme Court's Shadow Docket, Zina Makar

Washington Law Review

Lower courts and litigants depend a great deal on the Supreme Court to articulate and communicate signals regarding how to interpret existing doctrine. Signals are at their strongest and most reliable when they originate from the Court’s merits docket. More recently, the Court has been increasingly relying on its orders docket—colloquially referred to as its “shadow docket”—to communicate with lower courts by summarily reversing and correcting errors in interpretation without briefing or oral argument.

Over the past decade the Roberts Court has granted certiorari to summarily reverse a growing number of qualified immunity cases, issuing over a dozen unsigned per …