Law Commons^™

Does A House Of Congress Have Standing Over Appropriations?: The House Of Representatives Challenges The Affordable Care Act, Bradford Mank

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

In U.S. House of Representatives v. Sylvia Matthews Burwell, the District Court for D.C. in 2015 held that the House of Representatives has Article III standing to challenge certain provisions of the Affordable Care Act as violations of the Constitution’s Appropriations Clause. The Supreme Court’s jurisprudence on legislative standing is complicated. The Court has generally avoided the contentious question of whether Congress has standing to challenge certain presidential actions because of the difficult separation-of-powers concerns in such cases. In Raines v. Byrd, the Court held that individual members of Congress generally do not have Article III standing by simply holding …

Clapper V. Amnesty International: Two Or Three Competing Philosophies Of Standing Law?, Bradford Mank

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

In its 2013 decision Clapper v. Amnesty International, the Supreme Court invoked separation of powers principles in holding that public interest groups alleging that the Government was spying on their foreign clients failed to demonstrate Article III standing because they could not prove that the future surveillance injury that they purportedly feared was “certainly impending.” Justice Breyer’s dissenting opinion argued “commonsense” suggested that the Government was spying on the plaintiffs’ foreign clients and proposed a “reasonable” or “high” probability standing test. Implicitly, the Clapper decision presented a third approach to standing decisions. In footnote 5, the majority opinion acknowledged that …

Political Hot Potato: How Closing Loopholes Can Get Policymakers Cooked, Stephanie Mcmahon

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

Loopholes in the law are weaknesses that allow the law to be circumvented. Once created, they prove hard to eliminate. Acase study of the evolving tax unit used in the federal income tax explores policymakers' response to loopholes. The1913 income tax created an opportunity for wealthy married couples to shift ownership of family income between spouses, then to file separately, and, as a result, to reduce their collective taxes. In 1948, Congress closed this loophole by extending the income-splitting benefit to all married taxpayers filing jointly. Congress acted only after the federal judiciary and Treasury Department pleaded for congressional …

Do The United States Sentencing Guidelines Deprive Defendants Of Due Process?, Bradford Mank

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

It is difficult to determine whether due process requires individualized sentencing because sentencing goals and practices have varied greatly during the course of this nation's history. A court applying Judge Bork's original intent doctrine of constitutional interpretation would probably reach a result different from that reached by a court employing a more liberal view of due process protections.1o It is likely that liberals and conservatives on the current Supreme Court would disagree on whether the Guidelines violate due process.

This article argues that the Guidelines can be saved and can satisfy due process requirements if the Supreme Court interprets the …