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Justice Delayed: Government Officials' Authority To Wind Down Constitutional Violations, Neil H. Buchanan, Michael C. Dorf

UF Law Faculty Publications

Upon finding that a government program is unconstitutional, courts in the United States sometimes allow executive officials a grace period to wind it down rather than insisting on its immediate cessation. Courts likewise occasionally afford a legislature a grace period to repeal an unconstitutional law. Yet no one has even attempted to explain the source of authority for allowing ongoing constitutional violations or to prescribe the limits on permissible compliance delays. Until now.

Judicial toleration of a continuing constitutional violation can be conceptualized as an exercise of the equitable discretion to withhold injunctive relief, but that rationale does not justify …