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Columbia Law School

Supreme Court of the United States

Supreme Court

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Re-Reading Chevron, Thomas W. Merrill Jan 2021

Re-Reading Chevron, Thomas W. Merrill

Faculty Scholarship

Though increasingly disfavored by the Supreme Court, Chevron remains central to administrative law doctrine. This Article suggests a way for the Court to reformulate the Chevron doctrine without overruling the Chevron decision. Through careful attention to the language of Chevron itself, the Court can honor the decision’s underlying value of harnessing comparative institutional advantage in judicial review, while setting aside a highly selective reading that unduly narrows judicial review. This re-reading would put the Chevron doctrine – and with it, an entire branch of administrative law – on firmer footing.


Symposium: The Puzzling And Troubling Grant In Kisor, Gillian E. Metzger Jan 2020

Symposium: The Puzzling And Troubling Grant In Kisor, Gillian E. Metzger

Faculty Scholarship

From one perspective, the Supreme Court’s decision to grant review in Kisor v. Wilkie is not surprising. Dating back at least to Justice Antonin Scalia’s 2011 concurrence in Talk America v. Michigan Bell Telephone Co., through Decker v. Northwest Environmental Defense Center in 2013 and Perez v. Mortgage Bankers Association in 2015, there’s been growing interest on the Supreme Court’s conservative wing in overturning Auer deference, or the doctrine that an agency’s interpretation of its own regulation is “controlling unless plainly erroneous or inconsistent with the regulation.” The campaign to overturn Auer v. Robbins then stalled, with the court denying …


Beyond The Bosses' Constitution: The First Amendment And Class Entrenchment, Jedediah S. Purdy Jan 2018

Beyond The Bosses' Constitution: The First Amendment And Class Entrenchment, Jedediah S. Purdy

Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court’s “weaponized” First Amendment has been its strongest antiregulatory tool in recent decades, slashing campaign-finance regulation, public-sector union financing, and pharmaceutical regulation, and threatening a broader remit. Along with others, I have previously criticized these developments as a “new Lochnerism.” In this Essay, part of a Columbia Law Review Symposium, I press beyond these criticisms to diagnose the ideological outlook of these opinions and to propose an alternative. The leading decisions of the antiregulatory First Amendment often associate free speech with a vision of market efficiency; but, I argue, closer to their heart is antistatist fear of entrenchment …


The Supreme Court And The Transformation Of Juvenile Sentencing, Elizabeth S. Scott, Thomas Grisso, Marsha Levick, Laurence Steinberg Jan 2015

The Supreme Court And The Transformation Of Juvenile Sentencing, Elizabeth S. Scott, Thomas Grisso, Marsha Levick, Laurence Steinberg

Faculty Scholarship

In the past decade, the Supreme Court has transformed the constitutional landscape of juvenile crime regulation. In three strongly worded opinions, the Court held that imposing harsh criminal sentences on juvenile offenders violates the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. In combination, these cases create a special status for juveniles under Eighth Amendment doctrine as a category of offenders whose culpability is mitigated by their youth and immaturity, even for the most serious offenses. The Court also emphasized that juveniles are more likely to reform than adult offenders, and that most should be given a meaningful opportunity to …


The Story Of Bob Jones University V. United States: Race, Religion, And Congress' Extraordinary Acquiescence, Olatunde C.A. Johnson Jan 2010

The Story Of Bob Jones University V. United States: Race, Religion, And Congress' Extraordinary Acquiescence, Olatunde C.A. Johnson

Faculty Scholarship

On May 25, 1983, the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS) had authority to deny tax-exempt status to Bob Jones University, Goldsboro Christian School, and other private and religious schools with racially discriminatory educational policies. The Court relied on the statute’s broad purpose and placed significant weight on Congress’ failure to enact legislation to overturn the IRS policy. A complete account of the legislative history, provided here, both supports and undercuts the Court’s opinion. More importantly, this story provides an account of the dynamic interaction among a Supreme Court critical of racial integration, a …