Law Commons^™

Supreme Court Reform And American Democracy, Ganesh Sitaraman, D. Epps

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In How to Save the Supreme Court, we identified the legitimacy challenge facing the Court, traced it to a set of structural flaws, and proposed novel reforms. Little more than a year later, the conversation around Supreme Court reform has only grown louder and more urgent. In this Essay, we continue that conversation by engaging with critics of our approach. The current crisis of the Supreme Court is, we argue, inextricable from the question of the Supreme Court’s proper role in our democracy. For those interested in reform, there are three distinct strategies for ensuring the Supreme Court maintains its …

The Future Of Supreme Court Reform, Ganesh Sitaraman, Daniel Epps

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

For a brief moment in the fall of 2020, structural reform of the Supreme Court seemed like a tangible possibility. After the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in September, some prominent Democratic politicians and liberal commentators warmed to the idea of expanding the Court to respond to Republicans’ rush to confirm a nominee before the election, despite their refusal four years prior to confirm Judge Merrick Garland on the ground that it was an election year. Though Democratic candidate Joe Biden won the Presidency in November, Democrats lost seats in the House and have a majority in the Senate …

Our Kardashian Court (And How To Fix It), Suzanna Sherry

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The Supreme Court is broken. After cataloging its dysfunctions, this Article suggests a contributing cause and proposes a solution. The contributing cause is that Justices have become celebrities, and, like other celebrities, play to their fan base. The solution is to limit their opportunities to use their official status to do so: Congress should pass a law prohibiting concurring or dissenting opinions and requiring each case to be decided by an unsigned opinion that does not disclose the number of Justices who join it. The Article outlines the advantages of such a law and considers possible objections to it, including …

The Arbitration-Litigation Paradox, Pamela K. Bookman

Vanderbilt Law Review

The Supreme Court's interpretation of the Federal Arbitration Act is universally touted as favoring arbitration. Its arbitration cases and decisions in other areas are also viewed as supporting the Court's more general hostility to litigation. These pro-arbitration and anti-litigation policies can be mutually reinforcing. Moreover, they appear to be mutually consistent, in part because the Court describes the essential features of arbitration as being "informal," "speedy," "efficient"-in short, the categorical opposite of litigation.

This Article contends that the Court's approach is not as "pro- arbitration" as it appears. On the contrary, the Court's pro-arbitration and anti- litigation values sometimes conflict. …

Reconstituting The Federalism Battle In Energy Transportation, Jim Rossi, Alexandra B. Klass

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This article explores the growing federalism tensions in efforts to expand the nation’s energy transportation infrastructure — the electric transmission lines, natural gas pipelines, natural gas import and export terminals and related infrastructure that power the U.S. electricity and transportation systems. It uses two illustrations — one involving an interstate electric transmission line (subject to state jurisdiction) and one involving and an interstate natural gas pipeline (subject to federal jurisdiction) — to highlight how the clear jurisdictional lines between federal and state authority over these projects created decades ago is no longer adequate for today’s energy needs. We believe that …

Introduction: Is The Supreme Court Failing At Its Job, Or Are We Failing At Ours?, Suzanna Sherry

Vanderbilt Law Review

It is a pleasure and a privilege to write an introduction to this Symposium celebrating Dean Erwin Chemerinsky's important new book, The Case Against the Supreme Court. Chemerinsky is one of the leading constitutional scholars of our time and a frequent advocate before the U.S. Supreme Court. If he thinks there is a case to be made against the Court, we should all take it very seriously indeed. Chemerinsky's thesis may be stated in a few sentences. The primary role of the Supreme Court, in his view, is to "protect the rights of minorities who cannot rely on the political …

Inferiority Complex: Should State Courts Follow Lower Federal Court Precedent On The Meaning Of Federal Law?, Amanda Frost

Vanderbilt Law Review

The conventional wisdom is that state courts need not follow lower federal court precedent when interpreting federal law. Upon closer inspection, however, the question of how state courts should treat lower federal court precedent is not so clear. Although most state courts now take the conventional approach, a few contend that they are obligated to follow the lower federal courts, and two federal courts of appeals have declared that their decisions are binding on state courts. The Constitution's text and structure send mixed messages about the relationship between state and lower federal courts, and the Supreme Court has never squarely …

The End Of Class Actions?, Brian T. Fitzpatrick

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In this Article, I give a status report on the life expectancy of class action litigation following the Supreme Court's decisions in Concepcion and American Express. These decisions permitted corporations to opt out of class action liability through the use of arbitration clauses, and many commentators, myself included, predicted that they would eventually lead us down a road where class actions against businesses would be all but eliminated. Enough time has now passed to make an assessment of whether these predictions are coming to fruition. I find that, although there is not yet solid evidence that businesses have flocked to …

The Endangered Species Act's Fall From Grace In The Supreme Court, J.B. Ruhl

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Thirty-five years ago, the Endangered Species Act ("ESA") had as auspicious a debut in the U.S. Supreme Court as any statute could hope for. In Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill, a majority of the Court proclaimed that the ESA was intended "to halt and reverse the trend toward species extinction, whatever the cost" and backed up those and other bold words by preventing a nearly completed federal dam from impounding its reservoir because doing so would eliminate the only known (at the time) habitat of a small fish, the now infamous snail darter. To this day, Hill remains actively discussed …

The Four Pillars Of Constitutional Doctrine, Suzanna Sherry

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Constitutional interpretation, and thus constitutional doctrine, is inevitably controversial. Judges, scholars, lawyers, politicians, and the American public all disagree among themselves, not only about the correct constitutional outcome but even about the right approach to constitutional interpretation. We are unlikely to reach consensus on whether we should read the Constitution as a living and evolving document or instead read it in accordance with a fixed original meaning, much less on whether it does or does not protect campaign contributions, reproductive rights, affirmative action policies, gun ownership, or any of the other contested issues that have recently come before the Supreme …

Remaking The United States Supreme Court In The Courts' Of Appeals Image, Chris Guthrie, Tracey E. George

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

We argue that Congress should remake the United States Supreme Court in the U.S. courts' of appeals image by increasing the size of the Court's membership, authorizing panel decision making, and retaining an en banc procedure for select cases. In so doing, Congress would expand the Court's capacity to decide cases, facilitating enhanced clarity and consistency in the law as well as heightened monitoring of lower courts and the other branches. Remaking the Court in this way would not only expand the Court's decision making capacity but also improve the Court's composition, competence, and functioning.

The Dimension Of The Supreme Court, Paul H. Edelman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Lawrence Sirovich introduced two novel mathematical techniques to study patterns in recent Supreme Court decisions. One of these methods, information theory, has never been applied previously. The other method, singular value decomposition, is closely related to other methods that have previously been employed.

In this paper I give an explication of these two methods and evaluate their use in the context of understanding the Supreme Court. I conclude that information theory holds some promise for furthering our understanding but singular value decomposition, as applied by Sirovich, is …

The Federal Court System: A Principal-Agent Perspective, Tracey E. George, Albert H. Yoon

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Professor Merrill ably demonstrates that Supreme Court decisions should be examined as the product of an inherently political institution. Observers who assert that Justices are best understood as prophets of the law are practicing an intellectual sleight of hand that allows them to ignore the non­ doctrinal factors that affect judicial behavior. Such an effort is understandable. The Court is a much more complicated subject if its rulings reflect nonlegal factors as well as legal ones. The desire, however, to ignore the true character of the Court produces accounts of its behavior that are inadequate, incorrect, or wholly without content. …

How Is Constitutional Law Made?, Tracey E. George, Robert J. Pushaw, Jr.

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Professors George and Pushaw review Maxwell L. Stearns’ book, “Constitutional Process: A Social Choice Analysis of Supreme Court Decision-making.” In his book, Stearns demonstrates that the U.S. Supreme Court fashions constitutional law through process-based rules of decision such as outcome voting, stare decisis, and justiciability. Employing “social choice” economic theory, Professor Stearns argues that the Court strives to formulate rules that promote rationality and fairness. Perhaps the greatest strength of Stearns’ book is that he presents a grand unified theory of the Court’s rules of constitutional process and the resulting development of doctrine. This strength can also be a weakness, …

Does The Solicitor General Advantage Thwart The Rule Of Law In The Administrative State?, Jim Rossi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Linda Cohen and Matthew Spitzer's study, "The Government Litigant Advantage," sheds important light on how the Solicitor General's litigation behavior may impact the Supreme Court's decision making agenda and outcomes for regulatory and administrative law cases. By emphasizing how the Solicitor General affects cases that the Supreme Court decides, Cohen and Spitzer's findings confirm that administrative law's emphasis on lower appellate court decisions is not misplaced. Some say that D.C. Circuit cases carry equal-if not more-precedential weight than Supreme Court decisions in resolving administrative law issues. Cohen and Spitzer use positive political theory to provide a novel explanation for some …

Faith In Fantasy: The Supreme Court's Reliance On Commutation To Ensure Justice In Death Penalty Cases, Victoria J. Palacios

Vanderbilt Law Review

Since scarcely a decade after Furman v. Georgia,' the Supreme Court has struggled to avoid review of death penalty cases by narrowing the grounds defendants can use to challenge their sentences, as well as the procedures they can use to make those challenges. The Court supports its jurisprudence and the deregulation of death with an important but unexamined assumption: whatever shortcomings exist in the administration of the death penalty, ultimately injustice can and will be avoided by the exercise of the commutation power at the state level.

This Article argues that such an assumption is unwarranted. By substituting the fantasy …

Having It Both Ways: Proof That The U.S. Supreme Court Is "Unfairly" Prosecution-Oriented, Christopher Slobogin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

If the assertions that this essay makes about the Court's "unfair" prosecution-orientation withstand scrutiny," two further conclusions might follow. First, the highest court in the country is so fixated on ensuring that a particular side wins that it is willing with some frequency to sacrifice the most basic attribute of any court worthy of the name-the appearance of fairness. This conclusion is a much more fundamental challenge to the Court's integrity than is the simple acknowledgement that a majority of the Justices are biased in favor of the government. Second, to the extent the Court's unfairness becomes common knowledge, its …

Symposium: Federalism's Future, Jeffrey R. Pettit

Vanderbilt Law Review

Two years have passed since my predecessor, Mike Smith, sat in Professor Barry Friedman's office to begin choosing a topic for the Symposium that now sits before you. Although choosing a topic for a symposium two years in advance of its occurrence can be a difficult task, the topic they agreed upon, Federalism's Future, transcends the risk of becoming outdated. If the Supreme Court's struggle to articulate a "reasoned principle" in balancing the powers and responsibilities of our state and federal governments in Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority, and later in New York v. United States,2 is any …

Why The Supreme Court Overruled "National League Of Cities", Mark Tushnet

Vanderbilt Law Review

We are now in the midst of a confused era for federalism doctrine. A court of appeals has read the Supreme Court's precedents for at least as much as they are worth in holding that Congress, in enacting the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990, exceeded the power the Commerce Clause grants it., The Supreme Court itself has been unable to develop a stable constitutional doctrine about the roles of Congress and the courts in protecting federalism. Every time the Supreme Court has wandered into the federalism forest, it has gotten lost. For a while, scholars believed we understood why. …

R.A.V. V. City Of St. Paul: The Continuing Confusion Of The Fighting Words Doctrine, Melody L. Hurdle

Vanderbilt Law Review

Communication contributes to the marketplace of ideasI which is the only way to promote the discovery of truth in society. The importance of communication has led the United States Supreme Court to herald freedom of expression as "the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom." Indeed, the Court protects few other constitutional rights with such fervor. First Amendment protection is not absolute, however, and the United States Supreme Court consistently has asserted that certain forms or classes of expression may be regulated without violating the Constitution. Generally speaking, the Court has carved exceptions to First Amendment …

Jurisdiction By Necessity: Examining One Proposal For Unbarring The Doors Of Our Courts, Tracy L. Troutman

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Although the usually proclaimed goals of the United States legal system are "fair play and justice," a person who is injured in some way, who feels that he has had his rights violated, or who seeks to enforce a business agreement, may not necessarily have a remedy in its judicial system. Often a court may claim it lacks power to hear a case because it does not have jurisdiction over the defendant or the subject matter of the suit. Another motive of a court for refusing to hear the case may be simply the necessity to clear its docket. One …

The Supreme Court And The Definition Of "Security": The"Context" Clause, "Investment Contract" Analysis, And Their Ramifications, Marc I. Steinberg, William E. Kaulbach

Vanderbilt Law Review

In two recent decisions' construing the scope of the federal securities acts, the Supreme Court apparently has undertaken to alleviate some of the confusion and uncertainty surrounding the most fundamental question in securities law: the definition of"security" itself. Much of the existing confusion can be traced to earlier decisions of the Court that first implied, and later held,that the regulatory or offering context in which a particular transaction occurs could function to exclude the transaction from cover-age of the securities laws' anti-fraud provisions. This result could follow even though the transaction in question otherwise might satisfy the traditional Howey or …

Book Review: Louis D. Brandeis And The Progressive Tradition; Brandeis, Paul Brickner

Vanderbilt Law Review

Urofsky has captured the essence of Brandeis in his excellent and informative volume. Urofsky often demonstrates a fine facility for clarifying points and positions with meaningful factual details.His book reveals the depth of scholarship that one would expect from a co-editor of the five volume collection of Brandeis' letters."He recognized the importance of the relationship between Brandeis and Frankfurter and devoted an entire small chapter to their efforts to promulgate their views as described by Bruce Murphy. For a concise but telling biography of Brandeis, from the "people's attorney" to one of the Supreme Court's " nine old men", Urofsky's …

Earl Warren: The Judge Who Changed America. By Jack Harrison Pollack, Richard Y. Funston

Vanderbilt Law Review

Earl Warren was a decent, personable, and humane man who had the good fortune to preside over the Supreme Court of the United States at a peculiarly propitious moment. That, surely, is enough to say for any man's lifetime, and someday the definitive biography of Warren will say it. In the meantime, it remains some-thing of a mystery why aging liberals find it necessary to canonize the late Chief Justice. Nevertheless, journalist Jack Harrison Pollack's Earl Warren: The Judge Who Changed America is the latest addition to the Warren hagiography. In it you meet Warren,the self-effacing, underpaid, young District Attorney; …

The Due Process Mandate And The Constitutionality Of Admiralty Arrests And Attachments Pursuant To Supplemental Rules B And C, Jon L. Goodman

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

In the past decade, the area of procedural due process, including traditional doctrines of in rem and quasi in rem jurisdiction, has undergone a constitutional facelift. As a result, two of admiralty's most extraordinary features--maritime attachment and garnishment and actions in rem--have been questioned from a constitutional standpoint.

The United States Supreme Court inaugurated the new era with its decision in Sniadach v. Family Finance Corp. In that case, the Court first began changing its procedural due process philosophy by broadening its conception of constitutionally protected forms of property. Having narrowly addressed itself to the question of what constitute constitutionally …

The Early Legal Career Of Howell Jackson, Terry Calvani

Vanderbilt Law Review

Felix Frankfurter observed in 1937 that "American legal history has done very little to rescue the [United States Supreme] Court from the limbo of impersonality."' Subsequently, numerous individual and collective works have focused on the more prominent figures in the history of that institution.' Unfortunately, there remain many justices of the Supreme Court who have received relatively little scholarly attention. Yet, as one political scientist has recently lamented, "[until] there is a fuller awareness of the inter-play between individual personalities and decision making, it is unlikely there will be 'an adequate history of the Supreme Court."

One such individual is …

Abstention: The Supreme Court And Allocation Of Judicial Power, Randall P. Bezanson

Vanderbilt Law Review

In an era of continually expanding federal judicial power, the Supreme Court has fashioned and employed several devices designed to delegate certain classes of federal question litigation to the state court systems. Among these devices are the doctrines of abstention, comity, and exhaustion of state remedies. Implementation of these doctrines has enabled the Supreme Court to maintain state judicial presence in federal question litigation and retain at least the appearance of a manageable federalized judicial structure. This article will attempt to analyze the function of the abstention doctrines as judicially-created tempering devices. Following a brief discussion of the factors that …

The Court, The Constitution, And Chief Justice Burger, William F. Swindler

Vanderbilt Law Review

Although the constitutional crisis of 1973 has not yet demanded a definitive response from the Supreme Court, it obviously has established a landmark in the ultimate history of Warren Burger's Chief Justiceship. While the unprecedented confrontation between executive and judiciary was not carried beyond the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, Burger's old court,' and although the prospective confrontation between executive and Congress did not--at least in its first round-- reach a stage of review on the merits, the questions presented went to the cornerstones of Anglo-American constitutional theory itself. The case of Vice President Agnew raised issues …

The Haynsworth Affair Reconsidered: The Significance Of Conflicting Perceptions Of The Judicial Role, Edward N. Beiser

Vanderbilt Law Review

Between 1900 and 1968, the Senate had refused to confirm an appointee to the Supreme Court on only one occasion. Then, within a two year period, the Senate twice refused to confirm an appointment: Associate Justice Abe Fortas, nominated as Chief Justice in 1968, was never acted upon because of a Senate filibuster,and his name was withdrawn; and Judge Clement Haynsworth, whose nomination provoked a great deal of debate and controversy, was ultimately rejected by the Senate by a vote of 55 to 45. These two incidents marked a distinct change from the traditional custom of Senatorial acquiescence to Presidential …

Book Reviews, Law Review Staff

Vanderbilt Law Review

This is a deceptive book. It appears to be one more friendly appraisal of the work of the Warren Court--this time from the recent Solicitor General-surveying in giant steps and broad strokes its decisions in six major areas within the short space of 135 pages. On close reading it turns out to be a tough-minded essay written with notable lucidity, analytical density, and high professional competence. Moreover, it confronts directly and steadily the well-worn paradox or dilemma of the Supreme Court of the United States which must be both court and political institution, and it seriously attempts to appraise the …