Law Commons^™

The National Security Consequences Of The Major Questions Doctrine, Timothy Meyer, Ganesh Sitaraman

Michigan Law Review

The rise of the major questions doctrine—the rule that says that in order to delegate to the executive branch the power to resolve a “question of ‘deep economic and political significance’ that is central to [a] statutory scheme,” Congress must do so expressly—threatens to unmake the modern executive’s authority over foreign affairs, especially in matters of national security and interstate conflict. In the twenty-first century, global conflicts increasingly involve economic warfare, rather than (or in addition to) the force of arms.

In the United States, the executive power to levy economic sanctions and engage in other forms of economic warfare …

The Gloss Of War: Revisiting The Korean War’S Legacy, Mary L. Dudziak

Michigan Law Review

In war powers analysis, reliance on the interpretive method of historical practice, also called the “gloss of history,” has made history a technology of the forever war. This approach draws upon the history of U.S. military conflict to interpret the scope of presidential war power and embeds past actions into the separation of powers. There is a crucial flaw in this methodology, however. The understanding of history in historical gloss is not informed by the changing historiography of war. This has led to a divergence between the “history” in legal authority and the revised historical understanding in scholarly works of …

Pretext, Reality, And Verisimilitude: Truth-Seeking In The Supreme Court, Robert N. Weiner

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The assault on truth in recent public discourse makes it especially important that judicial decisions about Executive actions reflect the world as it is. Judges should not assume some idealized reality where good faith prevails, the motives of public officials are above reproach, and administrative processes are presumptively regular. Unfortunately, however, the Supreme Court has acted on naïve or counterfactual assumptions that limit judicial review of administrative or Presidential action. Such intentional judicial blindness or suspension of justified disbelief—such lack of verisimilitude—can sow doubt regarding the Court’s candor and impartiality.

In analyzing the Court’s fealty to objective reality in its …