Law Commons^™

Three-Dimensional Sovereign Immunity, Sarah L. Brinton

Sarah L Brinton

The Supreme Court has erred on sovereign immunity. The current federal immunity doctrine wrongly gives Congress the exclusive authority to waive immunity (“exclusive congressional waiver”), but the Constitution mandates that Congress share the waiver power with the Court. This Article develops the doctrine of a two-way shared waiver and then explores a third possibility: the sharing of the immunity waiver power among all three branches of government.

Toward Adequacy, Sarah L. Brinton

Sarah L Brinton

Each year, hundreds of people, companies, organizations, and associations sue the federal government for injuries they have suffered at the hands of federal agencies. Such suits are often brought under the judicial review provisions of the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”), which Congress enacted expressly to allow broad access to courts in an age of increasing administrative agency action. By the terms of the APA itself, all final agency action for which there is no other adequate remedy in a court is reviewable under the APA.

But the very language meant to welcome such suits into court also acts as a …

Three-Dimensional Sovereign Immunity, Sarah L. Brinton

Sarah L Brinton

The Supreme Court has erred on sovereign immunity. The current federal immunity doctrine wrongly gives Congress the exclusive authority to waive immunity (“exclusive congressional waiver”), but the Constitution mandates that Congress share the waiver power with the Court. This Article develops the doctrine of a two-way shared waiver and then explores a third possibility: the sharing of the immunity waiver power among all three branches of government.

Proxy Sovereignty And The Problem Of Immunity, Sarah L. Brinton

Sarah L Brinton

The U.S. Constitution creates a three-branch federal government that acts on behalf of the sovereign people. Each constitutional branch—Congress, the executive, and the judiciary—is constrained to exercise only the powers and act only in the roles assigned it by the sovereign people via the Constitution. Despite this tripartite, proxy-sovereign nature of the U.S. national government, current federal sovereign immunity jurisprudence affords Congress the exclusive right to act as sovereign to waive immunity. This Article argues that the Constitution more faithfully supports another configuration of the waiver power. To do so, this Article introduces the proxy-sovereign framework, which assumes that (1) …