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Qualified Immunity And Constitutional Structure, Katherine Mims Crocker
Qualified Immunity And Constitutional Structure, Katherine Mims Crocker
Faculty Scholarship
A range of scholars has subjected qualified immunity to a wave of criticism—and for good reasons. But the Supreme Court continues to apply the doctrine in ever more aggressive ways. By advancing two claims, this Article seeks to make some sense of this conflict and to suggest some thoughts toward a resolution.
First, while the Court has offered and scholars have rejected several rationales for the doctrine, layering in an account grounded in structural constitutional concerns provides a historically richer and analytically thicker understanding of the current qualified-immunity regime. For suits against federal officials, qualified immunity acts as a “compensating …
A Prudential Take On A Prudential Takings Doctrine, Katherine Mims Crocker
A Prudential Take On A Prudential Takings Doctrine, Katherine Mims Crocker
Faculty Scholarship
The Supreme Court is set to decide a case requesting reconsideration of a doctrine that has long bedeviled constitutional litigants and commentators. The case is Knick v. Township of Scott, and the doctrine is the “ripeness” rule from Williamson County Regional Planning Commission v. Hamilton Bank that plaintiffs seeking to raise takings claims under the Fifth Amendment must pursue state-created remedies first — the so-called “compensation prong” (as distinguished from a separate “takings prong”). This Essay argues that to put the compensation prong in the best light possible, the Court should view the requirement as a “prudential” rule rather than …
Chase Court And Fundamental Rights: A Watershed In American Constitutionalism, The , Robert J. Kaczorowski
Chase Court And Fundamental Rights: A Watershed In American Constitutionalism, The , Robert J. Kaczorowski
Faculty Scholarship
Three weeks before he died in May 1873, the frail and ailing Salmon P. Chase joined three of his brethren in dissent in one of the most important cases ever decided by the United States Supreme Court, the Slaughter-House Cases.1 This decision was a watershed in United States constitutional history for several reasons. Doctrinally, it represented a rejection of the virtually unanimous decisions of the lower federal courts upholding the constitutionality of revolutionary federal civil rights laws enacted in the aftermath of the Civil War. Institutionally, it was an example of extraordinary judicial activism in overriding the legislative will of …