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Congress's (Less) Limited Power To Represent Itself In Court: A Comment On Grove And Devins, Jack M. Beermann
Congress's (Less) Limited Power To Represent Itself In Court: A Comment On Grove And Devins, Jack M. Beermann
Faculty Scholarship
In their recent article, Congress’s (Limited) Power to Represent Itself in Court, 99 Cornell L. Rev. 571 (2014) Tara Leigh Grove and Neal Devins make the case against congressional litigation in defense of the constitutionality of federal statutes. They conclude that Congress, or a single House of Congress, may not defend the constitutionality of federal statutes in court even when the Executive Branch has decided not to do so but may litigate only in furtherance of Congress’s investigatory and disciplinary powers. Grove and Devins claim that congressional litigation in support of the constitutionality of federal statutes violates two separate but …
Professed Values, Constructive Interpretation, And Political History: Comments On Sotirios Barber, The Fallacies Of States' Rights, David B. Lyons
Professed Values, Constructive Interpretation, And Political History: Comments On Sotirios Barber, The Fallacies Of States' Rights, David B. Lyons
Faculty Scholarship
Our barely functioning Congress seems to embody the issues that this conference on constitutional dysfunction is meant to address. At this moment, however, congressional disarray may result less from institutional design than from our lasting heritage of white supremacy. Republican control of the House owes much to the party's Southern Strategy, which has exploited widespread dissatisfaction with the Democrats' official renunciation of racial stratification. That challenge to the American Way is exacerbated by the idea, outrageous to some, of a black President. That context has some bearing on this Symposium's topic of federalism. For, as Professor Larry Yackle reminds us, …
The Creation Of The Department Of Justice: Professionalization Without Civil Rights Or Civil Service, Jed Handelsman Shugerman
The Creation Of The Department Of Justice: Professionalization Without Civil Rights Or Civil Service, Jed Handelsman Shugerman
Faculty Scholarship
This Article offers a new interpretation of the founding of the Department of Justice (DOJ) in 1870 as an effort to shrink and professionalize the federal government. The traditional view is that Congress created the DOJ to increase the federal government's capacity to litigate a growing docket due to the Civil War. More recent scholarship contends that Congress created the DOJ to enforce Reconstruction and ex-slaves' civil rights. However, it has been overlooked that the DOJ Act eliminated about one-third of federal legal staff. The founding of the DOJ had less to do with Reconstruction, and more to do with …