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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Indefinite Deflection Of Congressional Standing, Nat Stern
The Indefinite Deflection Of Congressional Standing, Nat Stern
Scholarly Publications
Recent litigation brought or threatened against the administration of President Obama has brought to prominence the question of standing by Congress or its members to sue the President for nondefense or non-enforcement of federal law. Leading scholars in the field of congressional standing immediately expressed doubt that courts would entertain a suit seeking to compel enforcement of these provisions. This Article argues that the premise that suits of this sort can be maintained rests on a tenuous understanding of the Supreme Court's fitful treatment of standing by Congress or its members to sue the Executive.
The Court has never issued …
Taking Care Of Federal Law, Leah Litman
Taking Care Of Federal Law, Leah Litman
Articles
Article II of the Constitution vests the “executive power” in the President and directs the President to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” But do these provisions mean that only the President may execute federal law? Two lines of Supreme Court precedent suggest conflicting answers to that question. In several prominent separation-of-powers cases, the Court has suggested that only the President may execute federal law: “The Constitution requires that a President chosen by the entire Nation oversee the execution of the laws.” Therefore, the Court has reasoned, Congress may not create private rights of action that allow nonexecutive …
The President's Wartime Detention Authority : What History Teaches Us, Anirudh Sivaram
The President's Wartime Detention Authority : What History Teaches Us, Anirudh Sivaram
Harvey M. Applebaum ’59 Award
This thesis examines the extent of the President’s wartime detention authority over citizens (in particular, detention authority pursuant to Article II of the U.S. Constitution) through a legal-historical lens. Some Presidents (Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, George W. Bush) have historically relied on Article II authority for detention, while others (Ulysses Grant, Barack Obama) have disclaimed the notion that such authority exists. Clarifying the scope and source of the Presidential detention authority over citizens bears both theoretical and real-world relevance. Theoretically, it lies at the confluence of two central American constitutional traditions – the separation of powers, and the protection of …
Negotiating Federalism And The Structural Constitutionn: Navigating The Separation Of Powers Both Vertically And Horizontally, Erin Ryan
Scholarly Publications
No abstract provided.
State (Un)Separated Powers And Commandeering, Aaron P. Brecher
State (Un)Separated Powers And Commandeering, Aaron P. Brecher
Res Gestae
This Essay argues that the Court’s line between state judges and other state officials is not as clean as the case law suggests. Specifically, early state constitutions, as well as the British constitutional order prevailing before the U.S. Constitution was enacted—which did not separate powers as rigidly as the U.S. Constitution—combine to undermine the distinction. Taking this line of analysis seriously is not to deny that commandeering state executive or legislative officials raises federalism concerns. But paying more careful attention to early state conceptions of the separation of powers furthers federalist goals in another way: it engenders respect for the …
Spokeo V. Robins And The Constitutional Foundations Of Statutory Standing, Maxwell Stearns
Spokeo V. Robins And The Constitutional Foundations Of Statutory Standing, Maxwell Stearns
Faculty Scholarship
In Spokeo v. Robins, the Supreme Court granted certiorari to address the following question: Does Congress have the power to confer standing upon an individual claiming that a privately owned website violated its federal statutory obligation to take specified steps designed to promote accuracy in aggregating and reporting his personal and financial data even if the resulting false disclosures did not produce concrete harm? This somewhat arcane standing issue involves congressional power to broaden the scope of the first of three constitutional standing requirements: injury in fact, causation, and redressability. Although the case does not directly address the prudential …
Inferiority Complex: Should State Courts Follow Lower Federal Court Precedent On The Meaning Of Federal Law?, Amanda Frost
Inferiority Complex: Should State Courts Follow Lower Federal Court Precedent On The Meaning Of Federal Law?, Amanda Frost
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
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 …
Behavioral War Powers, Ganesh Sitaraman, David Zionts
Behavioral War Powers, Ganesh Sitaraman, David Zionts
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
A decade of war has meant a decade of writing on war powers. From the authority to start a war, to restrictions on fighting wars, to the authority to end a war, constitutional lawyers and scholars have explored the classic issues (war initiation, prosecution, and termination) through the classic prisms (text, history, and function) for a new generation of national security challenges. Despite the volume of writing on war powers and the urgency of the debates in the context of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria, war powers debates are widely seen as stagnant. We introduce a new set of perspectives …
Delegation, Accommodation, And The Permeability Of Constitutional And Ordinary Law, Gillian E. Metzger
Delegation, Accommodation, And The Permeability Of Constitutional And Ordinary Law, Gillian E. Metzger
Faculty Scholarship
To some, the very idea of the constitutional law of the administrative state is an oxymoron. On this view, core features of the national administrative state — broad delegations and the combination of legislative, executive, and judicial power within administrative agencies, particularly agencies that are headed by unelected executive officials only removable on narrow grounds — are fundamentally at odds with both constitutional separation of powers principles and due process. To others, no such conflict between contemporary administrative governance and the Constitution exists, and assertions of the administrative state’s unconstitutionality rest on basic misunderstandings of what separation of powers and …
Prior Sexual Misconduct Evidence In State Courts: Constitutional And Common Law Challenges, Michael L. Smith
Prior Sexual Misconduct Evidence In State Courts: Constitutional And Common Law Challenges, Michael L. Smith
Faculty Articles
Prosecuting sex crimes is a sensitive, challenging process, and many who commit these crimes end up going unpunished. While a defendant may have a history of prior sexual misconduct, the rules of evidence in most states and at the federal level generally prohibit the introduction of prior misconduct to show a defendant's propensity to commit a present crime. In response, the federal government and numerous state legislatures have adopted rules of evidence that permit the introduction of prior sexual misconduct in cases where a defendant is charged with a sexual crime.
While commentators have written in great detail about federal …
A Taxonomy Of Discretion: Refining The Legality Debate About Obama’S Executive Actions On Immigration, Michael Kagan
A Taxonomy Of Discretion: Refining The Legality Debate About Obama’S Executive Actions On Immigration, Michael Kagan
Scholarly Works
Broad executive action has been the Obama Administration’s signature contribution to American immigration policy, setting off a furious debate about whether the President has acted outside his constitutional powers. But the legal debate about the scope of the President’s authority to change immigration policy has not fully recognized what is actually innovative about the Obama policies, and thus has not focused on those areas where he has taken executive discretion into uncharted territory. This essay aims to add new focus to the debate about Pres. Obama’s executive actions by defining five different types of presidential discretion: Congressionally-authorized discretion, non-enforcement discretion, …
Agora: Reflections On Zivotofsky V. Kerry : Historical Gloss, The Recognition Power, And Judicial Review, Curtis A. Bradley
Agora: Reflections On Zivotofsky V. Kerry : Historical Gloss, The Recognition Power, And Judicial Review, Curtis A. Bradley
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Modern-Day Nullification: Marijuana And The Persistence Of Federalism In An Age Of Overlapping Regulatory Jurisdiction, Ernest A. Young
Modern-Day Nullification: Marijuana And The Persistence Of Federalism In An Age Of Overlapping Regulatory Jurisdiction, Ernest A. Young
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Introduction To Agora: Reflections On Zivotofsky V. Kerry, Curtis A. Bradley, Carlos M. Vazquez
Introduction To Agora: Reflections On Zivotofsky V. Kerry, Curtis A. Bradley, Carlos M. Vazquez
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Reconceptualizing Non-Article Iii Tribunals, Jaime Dodge
Reconceptualizing Non-Article Iii Tribunals, Jaime Dodge
Scholarly Works
The Supreme Court’s Article III doctrine is built upon an explicit assumption that Article III must accommodate non-Article III tribunals in order to allow Congress to “innovate” by creating new procedural structures to further its substantive regulatory goals. In this Article, I challenge that fundamental assumption. I argue that each of the types of non-Article III innovation and the underlying procedural goals cited by the Court can be obtained through our Article III courts. The Article then demonstrates that these are not theoretical or hypothetical solutions, but instead are existing structures already in place within Article III. Demonstrating that the …
Constitutionalism Outside The Courts, Ernest A. Young
Constitutionalism Outside The Courts, Ernest A. Young
Faculty Scholarship
This essay is a chapter to be included in the forthcoming Oxford Handbook on the U.S. Constitution. Using the actions of Arkansas Governor Orville Faubus during the Little Rock crisis of 1957 and the U.S. Supreme Court’s subsequent decision in Cooper v. Aaron as a lens, it explores constitutional interpretation and enforcement by extrajudicial institutions. I explore the critique of Cooper’s notion of judicial supremacy by departmentalists like Walter Murphy, empirical scholars skeptical of judicial efficacy like Gerald Rosenberg, and popular constitutionalists like Larry Kramer and Mark Tushnet. I also consider four distinct institutional forms of extrajudicial constitutional interpretation and …
Brief Of Federal Courts Scholars As Amici Curiae In Support Of The Petitioner, Willaim Araiza, Howard M. Wasserman, Lawrence Sager, Stephen I. Vladeck, Ernest A. Young
Brief Of Federal Courts Scholars As Amici Curiae In Support Of The Petitioner, Willaim Araiza, Howard M. Wasserman, Lawrence Sager, Stephen I. Vladeck, Ernest A. Young
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.