Law Commons^™

Alexander Hamilton And Administrative Law: How America’S First Great Public Administrator Informs And Challenges Our Understanding Of Contemporary Administrative Law, Rodger D. Citron

Scholarly Works

Alexander Hamilton’s recognition and reputation have soared since the premiere of “Hamilton,” Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical about him in 2015. For lawyers, Hamilton’s work on the Federalist Papers and service as the nation’s first Treasury Secretary likely stand out more than other aspects of his extraordinary life. Politics and economics were fundamental concerns addressed by the Framers in a number of ways, including what we now refer to as administrative law—the laws and procedures that guide government departments (or, as we say today, agencies). Indeed, “Hamilton” reminds us that questions of administration and administrative law have been with us since the …

Lessons Of The Plague Years, Barry Sullivan

Faculty Publications & Other Works

The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged governments of every description across the globe, and it surely would have tested the mettle of any American administration. But the pandemic appeared in the United States at a particularly inopportune time. January 2020 marked the beginning of a presidential election year in a deeply polarized country. President Donald Trump was a controversial figure, beginning the fourth year of a highly idiosyncratic administration. He was both a candidate for re-election and the subject of an ongoing impeachment proceeding. In these circumstances, the pandemic quickly became politicized. President Trump's response to the COVID-19 pandemic has often …

Macro-Judging And Article Iii Exceptionalism, Merritt E. Mcalister

UF Law Faculty Publications

Over the last half-century, the federal courts have faced down two competing crises: an increase in small, low-value litigation thought unworthy of Article III attention and an increase in the numbers and complexity of “big” cases thought worthy of those resources. The choice was what to prioritize and how, and the answer the courts gave was consistent across all levels of the federal judiciary. Using what this Article calls “macro-judging,” Article III judges entrenched their own power and autonomy to focus on the work they deemed most “worthy” of their attention, while outsourcing less “important” work to an array of …

Macro-Judging And Article Iii Exceptionalism, Merritt E. Mcalister

UF Law Faculty Publications

Over the last half-century, the federal courts have faced down two competing crises: an increase in small, low-value litigation thought unworthy of Article III attention and an increase in the numbers and complexity of “big” cases thought worthy of those resources. The choice was what to prioritize and how, and the answer the courts gave was consistent across all levels of the federal judiciary. Using what this Article calls “macro-judging,” Article III judges entrenched their own power and autonomy to focus on the work they deemed most “worthy” of their attention, while outsourcing less “important” work to an array of …

Decoding Nondelegation After Gundy: What The Experience In State Courts Tells Us About What To Expect When We're Expecting, Daniel E. Walters

Faculty Scholarship

The nondelegation doctrine theoretically limits Congress’s ability to delegate legislative powers to the executive agencies that make up the modern administrative state. Yet, in practice, the U.S. Supreme Court has, since the New Deal, shied away from enforcing any limits on congressional delegation. That may change in the near future. In Gundy v. United States, the Court narrowly upheld a delegation, and a dissent signaled deep doubts about the Court’s longstanding “intelligible principle” standard and offered a new framework to replace it. Subsequent events strongly suggest that the Court is poised to move in the direction contemplated by the dissent …

The False Allure Of The Anti-Accumulation Principle, Kevin Stack, Michael Herz

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Today the executive branch is generally seen as the most dangerous branch. Many worry that the executive branch now defies or subsumes the separation of powers. In response, several Supreme Court Justices and prominent scholars assert that the very separation-of-powers principles that determine the structure of the federal government as a whole apply with full force within the executive branch. In particular, they argue that constitutional law prohibits the accumulation of more than one type of power-—legislative, executive, and judicial—-in the same executive official or government entity. We refer to this as the anti-accumulation principle. The consequences of this principle, …

Reasoning V. Rhetoric: The Strange Case Of “Unconstitutional Beyond A Reasonable Doubt”, Hugh D. Spitzer

Articles

An odd formulation has frequented American constitutional discourse for 125 years: a declaration that courts should not overturn a statute on constitutional grounds unless it is “unconstitutional beyond a reasonable doubt.” This concept has been thought of as a presumption, a standard, a doctrine, or a philosophy of coordinate branch respect and judicial restraint. Yet it has been criticized because “beyond a reasonable doubt” is at root an evidentiary standard of proof in criminal cases rather than a workable theory or standard for deciding constitutional law cases. This article discusses the history and use of “unconstitutional beyond a reasonable doubt,” …

Violence And Nondelegation, Jacob D. Charles, Darrell A. H. Miller

Faculty Scholarship

Debates over delegation are experiencing a renaissance. These debates presuppose an initial distribution of constitutional authority between actors that cannot be redistributed, or that can be redistributed only according to some clear ex ante set of rules. Nondelegation in this sense often arises in debates about separation of powers and intergovernmental delegation, although scholars have begun applying the concept to delegations to private corporations and other private actors. The public delegation doctrine restricts one branch of government from transferring its constitutional authority to another branch, while the private delegation doctrine limits transfer of government power to private entities. In this …

Keeping It Complex With Philip Hunton, John Locke, And The United States Federal Judiciary: On The Merit Of Murkiness In Separation Of Powers Jurisprudence, Michelle M. Kundmueller

Political Science & Geography Faculty Publications

This article draws on the resources of a little-known political theorist, Philip Hunton, to explain the function of “murky” jurisprudence in the maintenance of separation of powers over time. In the era immediately before the drafting of the United States Constitution, separation of powers was a touted remedy to tyranny. But if government is thus moderated, a critical question arises: who will judge the precise contours of each institution’s powers? This article addresses this longstanding question by comparing the solutions offered by Philip Hunton, John Locke, and the United States judiciary. I conclude that the judiciary’s decried inability to clarify …

House Rules: Congress And The Attorney-Client Privilege, David Rapallo

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In 2020, the Supreme Court rendered a landmark decision in Trump v. Mazars establishing four factors for determining the validity of congressional subpoenas for a sitting president’s personal papers. In an unanticipated move, Chief Justice John Roberts added that recipients of congressional subpoenas have “long been understood” to retain not only constitutional privileges, but common law privileges developed by judges, including the attorney-client privilege. This was particularly surprising since Trump was not relying on the attorney-client privilege and the Court had never treated this common law privilege as overriding Congress’s Article I power to set its own procedures for conducting …

Not A King: President Trump And The Case For Presidential Subpoena Reform, Robert J. Denault

Duke Journal of Constitutional Law & Public Policy Sidebar

In Trump v. Vance and Trump v. Mazars, the Supreme Court heard two expansive claims of presidential immunity from grand jury and Congressional subpoenas for the personal papers of the president. In both cases, the Court rejected the President’s claims. Despite winning both cases, the grand jury and Congress did not receive evidence relevant to potential misconduct by the President until after he left office—a remarkable feat for a President who did not win a single case or appeal in his effort to block either subpoena.

This Note argues for significant reforms in response to President Trump’s unprecedented success …

Free Speech And Democracy: A Primer For Twenty-First Century Reformers, Toni M. Massaro, Helen Norton

Publications

Left unfettered, the twenty-first-century speech environment threatens to undermine critical pieces of the democratic project. Speech operates today in ways unimaginable not only to the First Amendment’s eighteenth-century writers but also to its twentieth-century champions. Key among these changes is that speech is cheaper and more abundant than ever before, and can be exploited — by both government and powerful private actors alike — as a tool for controlling others’ speech and frustrating meaningful public discourse and democratic outcomes.

The Court’s longstanding First Amendment doctrine rests on a model of how speech works that is no longer accurate. This invites …

Constitutional Foundations For Public Health Practice: Key Terms And Principles, Fazal Khan, Marice Ashe

Scholarly Works

This chapter introduces the structure of the government in the United States and the concept of “separation of powers" among the federal, state, and local governments. It introduces core legal principles from the U.S. Constitution that frame the authority of the government to enact and enforce laws to protect and promote the public's health. These Constitutional principles are essential for the health advocate and leader to understand because every federal, state, and local law must comply with them. The core principles include the enumerated powers of the federal government and the broad plenary powers of state and local governments—which we …

Taking Appropriations Seriously, Gillian E. Metzger

Faculty Scholarship

Appropriations lie at the core of the administrative state and are be­com­ing increasingly important as deep partisan divides have stymied sub­stan­tive legislation. Both Congress and the President exploit appropria­tions to control government and advance their policy agendas, with the border wall battle being just one of several recent high-profile examples. Yet in public law doctrine, appropriations are ignored, pulled out for spe­cial legal treatment, or subjected to legal frameworks ill-suited for appro­priations realities. This Article documents how appropriations are mar­ginalized in a variety of public law contexts and assesses the reasons for this unjustified treatment. Appro­priations’ doctrinal marginalization does not …

Separation Of Powers, Partisanship And Impeachment: How Can We Overcome The Partisan Propaganda?, John M. Greabe

Law Faculty Scholarship

[excerpt] "Our Constitutional system divides power horizontally, among the three branches of the federal government, and vertically, between the federal government and the states. We refer to the former division as our "separation of powers" and the latter as our "federalism."

Preserving The Nationwide National Government Injunction To Stop Illegal Executive Branch Activity, Doug Rendleman

Scholarly Articles

The Trump Administration’s extravagant claims of executive power have focused the federal courts’ attention on separation of powers, judicial review, and equitable jurisdiction to grant broad injunctions that forbid the administration’s violations of the Constitution and federal statutes. Critics question the federal courts’ power to grant broad injunctions that are effective everywhere. These critics maintain, among other things, that the federal courts lack jurisdiction and that broad injunctions improperly affect nonparties and militate against “percolation” of issues in a variety of courts.

This Article examines the critics’ arguments and finds them unconvincing. Accepting the critics’ arguments would rebalance the separation …

Reform Prosecutors And Separation Of Powers, Logan E. Sawyer Iii

Scholarly Works

For decades, state and local prosecutors won election by promising to be tough on crime. Today, a new breed of prosecutor has gained prominence by campaigning on, and then implementing, reform agendas. Rather than emphasize the crimes they plan to prosecute, these reform prosecutors promise to use their discretion to stop the prosecution of certain crimes and halt the application of certain sanctions. They base their decision not on a lack of resources, but rather on a belief that the enforcement of those laws is unwise or unjust. Critics have decried such policies as both inappropriate and undemocratic. Prosecutors, critics …

Historical Gloss, Madisonian Liquidation, And The Originalism Debate, Curtis A. Bradley, Neil S. Siegel

Faculty Scholarship

The U.S. Constitution is old, relatively brief, and very difficult to amend. In its original form, the Constitution was primarily a framework for a new national government, and for 230 years the national government has operated under that framework even as conditions have changed in ways beyond the Founders’ conceivable imaginations. The framework has survived in no small part because government institutions have themselves played an important role in helping to fill in and clarify the framework through their practices and interactions, informed by the realities of governance. Courts, the political branches, and academic commentators commonly give weight to such …

Dimensions Of Delegation, Cary Coglianese

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Carey Law

How can the nondelegation doctrine still exist when the Supreme Court over decades has approved so many pieces of legislation that contain unintelligible principles? The answer to this puzzle emerges from recognition that the intelligibility of any principle dictating the basis for lawmaking is but one characteristic defining that authority. The Court has acknowledged five other characteristics that, taken together with the principle articulating the basis for executive decision-making, constitute the full dimensionality of any grant of lawmaking authority and hold the key to a more coherent rendering of the Court’s application of the nondelegation doctrine. When understood in dimensional …

Litigating War: The Justiciability Of Executive War Power, Chris Smith

Duke Journal of Constitutional Law & Public Policy Sidebar

Courts frequently dismiss claims against the Executive’s use of the war power as being non-justiciable political questions. This lack of a judicial check has created a situation in which meaningful checks and balances on the war power are found only in the Executive Branch itself. But the Constitution places the bulk of war powers in the hands of Congress. Executive usurpation of Congress’s constitutional prerogative to initiate hostilities has significantly weakened the separation of powers. In the aftermath of the Vietnam War, Congress sought to reassert its constitutional authority over war-making decisions by passing the War Powers Resolution. The Resolution …

Democratic Conditions, Barry Sullivan

Faculty Publications & Other Works

According to many social scientists, democratic institutions are subject to much discontent and distrust today. Citizens sense the existence of a substantial disconnect between the rhetoric of representative democracy and its reality—what citizens believe their proper role to be and what the realities of our government and society allow them to be. More to the point, citizens of all stripes believe that those who “represent” them live lives quite different from their own, and that those representatives are not seriously interested in the perspectives, ideas, or well-being of most people. The nature and extent of this discontent raises serious questions …

The Due Process And Other Constitutional Rights Of Foreign Nations, Ingrid Wuerth

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The rights of foreign states under the U.S. Constitution are becoming more important as the actions of foreign states and foreign state-owned enterprises expand in scope and the legislative protections to which they are entitled contract. Conventional wisdom and lower court cases hold that foreign states are outside our constitutional order and that they are protected neither by separation of powers nor by due process. As a matter of policy, however, it makes little sense to afford litigation-related constitutional protections to foreign corporations and individuals but to deny categorically such protections to foreign states.

Careful analysis shows that the conventional …

The Statutory Separation Of Powers, Sharon B. Jacobs

Publications

Separation of powers forms the backbone of our constitutional democracy. But it also operates as an underappreciated structural principle in subconstitutional domains. This Article argues that Congress constructs statutory schemes of separation, checks, and balances through its delegations to administrative agencies. Like its constitutional counterpart, the “statutory separation of powers” seeks to prevent the dominance of factions and ensure policy stability. But separating and balancing statutory authority is a delicate business: the optimal balance is difficult to calibrate ex ante, the balance is unstable, and there are risks that executive agencies in particular might seek expansion of their authority vis-à-vis …

Supreme Court As Superweapon: A Response To Epps & Sitaraman, Stephen E. Sachs

Faculty Scholarship

Is the Supreme Court's legitimacy in crisis? Daniel Epps and Ganesh Sitaraman argue that it is. In their Feature, How to Save the Supreme Court, they suggest legally radical reforms to restore a politically moderate Court. Unfortunately, their proposals might destroy the Court's legitimacy in order to save it. And their case that there is any crisis may fail to persuade a reader with different legal or political priors. If the Supreme Court needs saving, it will be saving from itself, and from too broad a conception of its own legal omnipotence. A Court that seems unbound by legal principle …

Reconsidering Judicial Independence: Forty-Five Years In The Trenches And In The Tower, Stephen B. Burbank

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Carey Law

Trusting in the integrity of our institutions when they are not under stress, we focus attention on them both when they are under stress or when we need them to protect us against other institutions. In the case of the federal judiciary, the two conditions often coincide. In this essay, I use personal experience to provide practical context for some of the important lessons about judicial independence to be learned from the periods of stress for the federal judiciary I have observed as a lawyer and concerned citizen, and to provide theoretical context for lessons I have deemed significant as …

Mcculloch V. Marbury, Kermit Roosevelt Iii, Heath Khan

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Carey Law

This article builds on recent scholarship about the origins and creation of “our Marbury”—the contemporary understanding of the case and its significance—to argue that Marbury is in fact wholly unsuited for the role it plays in Supreme Court rhetoric and academic instruction. While Marbury is generally understood to support aggressive judicial review, or actual invalidation of a government act, it offers no guidance at all for how judicial review should be employed in particular cases—in particular, whether review should be aggressive or deferential. The actual opinion in Marbury makes no effort to justify its lack of deference to the …

The Self-Delegation False Alarm: Analyzing Auer Deference's Effect On Agency Rules, Daniel E. Walters

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Carey Law

Auer deference holds that reviewing courts should defer to agencies when the latter interpret their own preexisting regulations. This doctrine relieves pressure on agencies to undergo costly notice-and-comment rulemaking each time interpretation of existing regulations is necessary. But according to some leading scholars and jurists, the doctrine actually encourages agencies to promulgate vague rules in the first instance, augmenting agency power and violating core separation of powers norms in the process. The claim that Auer perversely encourages agencies to “self-delegate”—that is, to create vague rules that can later be informally interpreted by agencies with latitude due to judicial deference—has helped …

James Wilson As The Architect Of The American Presidency, Christopher S. Yoo

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Carey Law

For decades, James Wilson has been something of a “forgotten founder.” The area where commentators generally recognize Wilson’s influence at the Convention is with respect to Article II, which establishes the executive and defines its powers. Most scholars characterize him as a resolute advocate of an independent, energetic, and unitary presidency, and a particularly successful one at that. In this regard, some scholars have generally characterized Wilson’s thinking as overly rigid. Yet a close examination of the Convention reveals Wilson to be more flexible than sometimes characterized. With respect to many aspects of the presidency, including the appointment power, the …

Critical Dialogue, James E. Fleming, Bruce P. Frohnen

Faculty Scholarship

It is a privilege to participate in this exchange with Bruce Frohnen concerning our books. In my Fidelity to Our Imperfect Constitution, I observe that in recent years, many have assumed that originalists have a monopoly on concern for fidelity in constitutional interpretation. I reject all forms of originalism and defend a moral reading of the United States Constitution. Such a conception views the Constitution as embodying abstract moral and political principles, not codifying concrete historical rules or practices. It sees interpretation of those principles as requiring normative judgments about how they are best understood, not merely historical research to …

French Constitutionalism, Elisabeth Zoller

Articles by Maurer Faculty

From the Foreword:

We are particularly pleased that this first special issue gives the opportunity to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of the Fifth Republic’s Constitution. Readers will find an enlightened vision of French constitutionalism, so patiently depicted by our colleague Elisabeth Zoller through a life of teachings and research, both in France and in the United States. Defined as “a political doctrine that aims to guarantee political freedom, i.e. the freedom we enjoy in respect of political power, as opposed to civil liberty, which we enjoy in respect of our peers”, constitutionalism has, in France, a profoundly unique character according …