Law Commons^™

Ordered Liberty After Dobbs, Linda C. Mcclain, James E. Fleming

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay explores the implications of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization for the future of substantive due process (SDP) liberties protecting personal autonomy, bodily integrity, familial relationships (including marriage), sexuality, and reproduction. We situate Dobbs in the context of prior battles on the Supreme Court over the proper interpretive approach to deciding what basic liberties the Due Process Clause (DPC) protects. As a framing device, we refer to two competing approaches as “the party of [Justice] Harlan or Casey” versus “the party of Glucksberg.” In Dobbs, the dissent co-authored by Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan represents the party of …

Amicus Brief In Sec V. Jarkesy On Original Public Meaning Of Article Ii & Presidential Removal, Jed Handelsman Shugerman

Faculty Scholarship

In holding that the SEC’s administrative law judges’ protections against removal were unconstitutional, the Fifth Circuit extended Free Enterprise Fund v. PCAOB, 561 U.S. 447 (2010), and Seila Law LLC v. CFPB, 140 S. Ct. 2183 (2020). Those precedents were based on an incomplete historical record. Subsequent historical research shows that the Founding generation never understood Article II to grant the President an indefeasible removal power.

To be sure, this evidence does not suggest Congress should have unlimited power to protect any executive office or delegate removal to itself. Rather, the bottom line is that the evidence of original public …

The Anti-Innovation Supreme Court: Major Questions, Delegation, Chevron And More, Jack M. Beermann

Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court of the United States has generally been a very aggressive enforcer of legal limitations on governmental power. In various periods in its history, the Court has gone far beyond enforcing clearly expressed and easily ascertainable constitutional and statutory provisions and has suppressed innovation by the other branches that do not necessarily transgress widely held social norms. Novel assertions of legislative power, novel interpretations of federal statutes, statutes that are in tension with well-established common law rules and state laws adopted by only a few states are suspect simply because they are novel or rub up against tradition. …

Nonpatentability Of Business Methods: Legal And Economic Analysis, Peter Menell, Michael J. Meurer

Faculty Scholarship

In this brief filed in Bilski vs. Kappos, pending before the U.S. Supreme Court, we argue that the "useful Arts" limitation of the the Intellectual Property Clause of the U.S.Constitution restricts the scope of Congress's patent power to technological advances. Beyond this constitutional limitation, Congress has not extended patent protection to business methods. The subject matter provision of the 1952 Patent Act merely codified existing subject matter categories and limitations, including the exclusion of business methods. The First Inventor Defense Act of 1999 did not alter this limitation on patentable subject matter. It did not amend the subject matter provision. …

Equivocal Originalism, Gary S. Lawson

Faculty Scholarship

"Originalism" is a term shrouded in ambiguity and ripe for equivocation. A recent article by Stephen Sachs in the Harvard Law Review tries to clarify the discussion by distinguishing between originalism as a decision standard, or a set of criteria for ascertaining the truth conditions for propositions, and a decision procedure, or a mechanism for ascertaining whether those truth conditions are satisfied in any given context. That is a helpful distinction, but it still leaves much room for multiple and confusing uses of the term originalism. Jumping off from comments on Professor Sachs's article by Mitchell Berman and Judge Andrew …

The Immorality Of Originalism, Jack M. Beermann

Faculty Scholarship

The central claim of this essay is that in interpreting the U.S. Constitution, it is immoral to choose original intent over social welfare, broadly conceived. Once this argument is laid out and defended on its own terms, I support the central claim with a variety of arguments, including the defective process pursuant to which the Constitution was enacted, the deeply flawed substantive content of the Constitution, the incongruity of fidelity to the views of a generation of revolutionaries, the current virtual imperviousness of the Constitution to amendment, the failure of the Constitution to resolve fundamental questions concerning the allocation of …

Fidelity To Our Imperfect Constitution: A Response To Five Views, James E. Fleming

Faculty Scholarship

En mi libro reciente, Fidelity to Our Imperfect Constitution, adelanto una crí-tica sostenida al originalismo en todas sus formas y defiendo tanto lo que Ronald Dworkin llamó una “lectura moral” de la Constitución de los Estados Unidos de América como lo que, junto a Sotirios A. Barber, he llamado una “aproximación filosófica” a la interpretación constitucional. En este ensayo para el Simposio sobre el libro, respondo a cinco comentarios muy pensa-dos. Primero, en contra del comentario de Sot Barber, justifico el responder a la “resurgencia persistente del originalismo” y el tratar de “salvar al ori-ginalismo nuevo de sí mismo” al …

Fidelity To Our Imperfect Constitution: A Reply To Six Views, James E. Fleming

Faculty Scholarship

I am deeply grateful to Constitutional Commentary for publishing this symposium on my recent book, Fidelity to Our Imperfect Constitution: For Moral Readings and Against Originalisms. In the book, I put forward a sustained critique of originalism-whether old or new, concrete or abstract, living or dead. Instead, I defend what Ronald Dworkin called a "moral reading" of the U.S. Constitution' and what Sotirios A. Barber and I have called a "philosophic approach" to constitutional interpretation.4 By "moral reading" and "philosophic approach," I refer to conceptions of the Constitution as embodying abstract moral and political principles-not codifying concrete historical rules or …

Reflections Of An Empirical Reader (Or: Could Fleming Be Right This Time?), Gary S. Lawson

Faculty Scholarship

Professor Jim Fleming’s new book, Fidelity to Our Imperfect Constitution: For Moral Readings and Against Originalisms, purports to critique all forms of originalism from the perspective of Professor Fleming’s “moral reading” of, or “philosophic approach” to, the Constitution. I propose a somewhat different opposition: empirical reading versus moral reading. Empirical reading is necessarily originalist, but it focuses directly on the need to ground interpretation in theories of concepts, language, and communication. In this short comment, I outline the research agenda for a theory of empirical reading, explore the extent to which empirical readings and moral readings of the Constitution are …

The Moral Reading As A Practice: A Response To Three Comments On Fidelity To Our Imperfect Constitution, James E. Fleming

Faculty Scholarship

In recent years, many originalists have claimed a monopoly on concern for fidelity in constitutional interpretation. In my book, Fidelity to Our Imperfect Constitution, 1 I reject originalisms—whether old or new, concrete or abstract, living or dead. Instead, I defend what Ronald Dworkin called a “moral reading” of the United States Constitution, or a “philosophic approach” to constitutional interpretation. I refer to conceptions of the Constitution as embodying abstract moral and political principles—not codifying concrete historical rules or practices—and of interpretation of those principles as requiring normative judgments about how they are best understood—not merely historical research to discover relatively …

Time, Institutions, And Adjudication, Gary S. Lawson

Faculty Scholarship

Some of my earliest and fondest memories regarding constitutional theory involve Mike McConnell. He was a participant at the very first Federalist Society conference in 1982, at a time when the entire universe of conservative constitutional theorists fit comfortably in the front of one classroom. More importantly, at another Federalist Society conference in 1987, he gave a speech on constitutional interpretation that, unbeknownst to him, profoundly shaped my entire intellectual approach to the field by emphasizing the obvious but oftoverlooked point that different kinds of documents call for different kinds of interpretative methods.1 In 2015, it is more than an …

The Moral Reading All Down The Line, James E. Fleming

Faculty Scholarship

Michael W. McConnell has written an elegant and illuminating article about constitutional interpretation.' He seeks to show how five major methodological approaches fit together. The five approaches he discusses are: "originalism, precedent, longstanding practice, judicial restraint, and living constitutionalism (here called the normative approach)."'2 He distinguishes two camps with respect to these approaches. One camp, he notes, "advocates for (or against) a particular approach ... on the assumption that these approaches are mutually inconsistent and that the task is to determine which is best . . . .3 The other camp "treats the various common approaches as mere tools in …

Fit, Justification, And Fidelity In Constitutional Interpretation, James E. Fleming

Faculty Scholarship

Ronald Dworkin famously argued that the best interpretation of a Constitution should both fit and justify the legal materials, for example, the text, original meaning, and precedents. In his recent book, Against Obligation (Harvard University Press, 2012), Abner S. Greene provocatively and creatively bucks the tendencies of constitutional theorists to profess fidelity with the past in constitutional interpretation. He rejects originalist understandings of obligation to follow original meaning in interpreting the Constitution. And indeed he rejects interpretive obligation to follow precedent. In this Essay I focus on Greene’s arguments against interpretive obligation to the past, in particular, his argument that …

Liberty, James E. Fleming, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

"To secure the blessings of liberty," the Preamble to the US Constitution proclaims, "We the People . . . ordain and establish this Constitution." The Constitution is said to secure liberty through three principal strategies: the design of the Constitution as a whole; structural arrangements, most notably separation of powers andfederalism; and protection of rights. This chapter focuses on this third strategy of protecting liberty, in particular, through the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. We first examine the several approaches taken to the "Incorporation" of certain basic liberties "enumerated" in the Bill of Rights to apply to the state governments. We …

Common And Uncommon Families In The American Constitutional Order, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

This essay reviews Professor Mark E. Brandon’s aptly named book, States of Union: Family and Change in the American Constitutional Order, which challenges the familiar story that the U.S. constitutional and political order have rested upon a particular, unchanging form of family – monogamous, heterosexual, permanent, and reproductive – and on the family values generated by that family form. That story also maintains that such family form and the legal norms that sustained it remained relatively undisturbed for centuries until the dramatic transformation spurred in part, beginning the 1960s, by the U.S. Supreme Court’s constitutionalizing of family and marriage through, …

Classical Liberal Constitution Or Classical Liberal Construction?, Gary S. Lawson

Faculty Scholarship

In The Classical Liberal Constitution: The Uncertain Quest for Limited Government (2013), Richard Epstein says that he "incorporates but goes beyond" originalist theory by calling for adjudication "in sync with" classical liberal theory political theory, which Professor Epstein claims underlies the Constitution. Without in any way detracting from the numerous virtues of this book, I argue that this is primarily a work of constitutional construction rather than constitutional interpretation. From the standpoint of interpretation, the background rules that best supplement the constitutional text are found in eighteenth-century fiduciary law rather than in classical liberal political theory, though the latter is …

Fit, Justification, And Fidelity In Constitutional Interpretation, James E. Fleming

Faculty Scholarship

With this event – a Symposium on Abner Greene’s Against Obligation2 and Michael Seidman’s On Constitutional Disobedience3 – we continue our Boston University Law Review series of symposia on significant recent books in law. The distinctive format is to pick two books that join issue on an important topic, to invite the author of each book to write an essay on the other book, and to invite several Boston University School of Law faculty members to write an essay on one or both books.

The New Originalist Manifesto, James E. Fleming

Faculty Scholarship

Lawrence B. Solum and Robert W. Bennett's excellent book, Constitutional Originalism: A Debate, calls to mind a famous book in political philosophy, J.J.C. Smart and Bernard Williams's Utilitarianism: For and Against.' Both works pair two spirited yet fair-minded scholars in a constructive debate between two competing views prevalent in their fields. Originalism has a reasonable, programmatic, and inclusive proponent in Solum, and living constitutionalism has a capable, pragmatic, and effective champion in Bennett.

Taking Responsibilities As Well As Rights Seriously, James E. Fleming

Faculty Scholarship

In his first book, Ronald Dworkin famously called for “taking rights seriously” by treating them as “trumps” over considerations of utility or the general welfare.1 Taking Rights Seriously (along with other works) provoked calls for taking responsibilities as well as (or instead of) rights seriously, or for engaging in “responsibility talk,” not just “rights talk.”2 In Life’s Dominion, Dworkin himself got on the responsibility bandwagon in justifying the right to procreative autonomy and the right to die.3 He countenanced that government may encourage women to take the decision whether to have an abortion responsibly, so long as it does not …

Toward A More Democratic Congress?, James E. Fleming

Faculty Scholarship

There is considerable talk of failure in the air these days - including constitutional failure, moral failure, political failure and institutional failure - and criticisms of Congress figure prominently in this discourse. First, I shall ask whether talk about Congress being "the broken branch," the topic of the first panel in this symposium, is talk of constitutional failure or failure of some other sort. Second, to link the topic of that panel to the topic of the panel in which I participated, I will ask whether some call Congress the broken branch because it is not adequately or appropriately democratic. …

The Place Of History And Philosophy In The Moral Reading Of The American Constitution, James E. Fleming

Faculty Scholarship

Dworkin argues that commitment to interpretive fidelity requires that we recognize that the Constitution embodies abstract moral principles rather than laying down a particular historical conception, and that interpreting those principles requires fresh judgments of political theory about how they are best understood. This interpretive strategy — Dworkin's ‘moral reading’ of the Constitution — stands in opposition to the narrow originalists' claim that interpretive fidelity requires following the rules laid down by the framers of the Constitution. Some theorists have responded to the originalists by attempting to carve out an intermediate theory between narrow originalism and the moral reading. Dworkin …

Constitutional Theory And The Future Of The Unitary Executive, Sotirios Barber, James E. Fleming

Faculty Scholarship

In The Constitution in Wartime: Beyond Alarmism and Complacency, Mark Tushnet distinguishes two voices: "alarmists who see in every action taken by the Bush [A]dministration a portent of gross restrictions on the civil liberties of all Americans, and administration shills who see in those actions entirely reasonable, perhaps even too moderate, accommodations of civil liberties to the new realities of national security."1 Tushnet's volume contains essays, including one by us,2 which he judges to lie "beyond alarmism and complacency" (or perhaps between alarmism and complacency). But critics of the Bush Administration's theory of the unitary executive may be alarmed by …

The Odyssey Of Cass Sunstein, James E. Fleming

Faculty Scholarship

I am delighted to participate in this symposium honoring and criticizing the scholarship of Cass Sunstein. Let me begin by stating something so obvious that we typically don't say it: Cass is the most remarkably thoughtful, constructive, and productive scholar of his (and my) generation, the generation of scholars born around the time that Brown v. Board of Education1 was decided. No one has addressed a wider range of important subjects or made a more substantial contribution to our understanding of law. I have been fruitfully engaging with his scholarship from my first article 2 to my two recent books.3 …

The Balkanization Of Originalism, James E. Fleming

Faculty Scholarship

Are we all originalists now? If anything would prompt that question, it would be Ronald Dworkin and Jack Balkin dressing up their theories in the garb of originalism (or, at any rate, being interpreted as originalists). For they are exemplars of two bete noires of originalism as conventionally understood: namely, the moral reading of the Constitution, and pragmatic, living constitutionalism, respectively.' Yet in recent years Dworkin has been interpreted as an abstract originalist2 and Balkin has now embraced the method of text and principle, which he presents as a form of abstract originalism.'

The New Constitutional Order And The Heartening Of Conservative Constitutional Aspirations, James E. Fleming

Faculty Scholarship

The basic question for this conference is whether we as a people have entered, or are on the verge of entering, a new constitutional order. In 2003, Mark Tushnet published a terrific book, The New Constitutional Order, an expansion of his insightful Foreword: The New Constitutional Order and the Chastening of Constitutional Ambition in the Harvard Law Review.2 The title of that book was an inspiration for the title of this conference. And the title of that article is the basis for the title of my article. For years, liberals and progressives have been anticipating or announcing a conservative revolution …

Prolegomenon To Any Future Administrative Law Course: Separation Of Powers And The Transcendental Deduction, Gary S. Lawson

Faculty Scholarship

Federal constitutional law has a way of worming itself into just about every crevice of the law school curriculum. Civil Procedure students grapple with the Due Process Clauses, Property students ponder the Takings Clause, and Torts students must reckon with issues of federal preemption and legislative power. But few courses outside the mainstream Constitutional Law curriculum require as much sustained attention to constitutional issues as does Administrative Law.' Administrative Law courses typically involve an extensive study of procedural due process.2 They also engage, at least peripherally, in some of the most fundamental and long-lived constitutional controversies in the law of …

Judicial Review Without Judicial Supremacy: Taking The Constitution Seriously Outside The Courts, James E. Fleming

Faculty Scholarship

Larry Sager and Larry Kramer have written important books that, in quite different ways, call for taking the Constitution seriously outside the courts. Sager's Justice in Plainclothes' and Kramer's The People Themselves2 nonetheless join issue in significant ways, and therefore it is illuminating to analyze them as a pair.

To get a handle on the differences between the two Larrys' books, I have concocted the following fanciful hypothetical. Imagine a law school with a faculty that includes Ronald Dworkin: court-centered constitutional theorist extraordinaire and proponent of a liberal moral reading of the American Constitution.3 Further imagine that the faculty includes …

Discretion As Delegation: The 'Proper' Understanding Of The Nondelegation Doctrine, Gary S. Lawson

Faculty Scholarship

The nondelegation doctrine, as it has been traditionally understood, maintains that the federal Constitution places limits (however modest) on the kind and quantity of discretion that Congress can grant to other actors. Eric Posner and Adrian Vermeule have recently described this doctrine as a "neurotic burden"' on the legal system that "lacks any foundation in constitutional text and structure, in standard originalist sources, or in sound economic and political theory.''2 They agree that the Constitution forbids Congress from delegating the formal power to enact legislation through the Article I voting process,3 but they argue that "a statutory grant of authority …

The Natural Rights-Based Justification For Judicial Review, James E. Fleming

Faculty Scholarship

On this panel, we are to consider questions such as "What form should constitutional interpretation by courts take in light of our aspirations to a good society?" For example, should courts engage in "moral readings" of the Constitution by elaborating abstract moral principles of liberty and equality or by making moral arguments about fostering human goods or virtues? In his paper, Justifying the Natural Law Theory of Constitutional Interpretation, Professor Michael Moore defends a sophisticated and powerful version of a moral realist or natural law answer to these questions.2 He confesses that, despite numerous criticisms, his views on the desirability …

Fidelity To Natural Law And Natural Rights In Constitutional Interpretation, James E. Fleming

Faculty Scholarship

It is an honor and a pleasure to comment on Professor Robert P. George's elegant and provocative paper.' For one thing, he is a leading proponent of reviving the natural law tradition in political, legal, and constitutional theory.2 For another, he was a reader of my Ph.D. dissertation in constitutional theory at Princeton University over a decade ago. I am happy to have the chance to reciprocate by reading a work of his and providing a critique of it. Fortunately, I learned at Princeton that vigorous criticism and disagreement are fully compatible with friendship and respect.