Constitutional Law Commons^™

Marbury And The Administrative State, Henry Paul Monaghan

Faculty Scholarship

Marbury v. Madison's prominence as a constitutional decision has long deflected interest in examining its other implications. But prior to proclaiming judicial competence to invalidate an act of Congress, the Court sustained judicial authority to enforce the specific statutory duties of administrative officials. Had the doctrine of separation of powers been understood from the beginning to bar any judicial control of administrative power, the constitutional scheme would have gone seriously awry at the outset. Congressional directives either would have been subordinated to the will of the executive department or would have generated collateral and unseemly struggles between the two …

Rescuing The Private Attorney General: Why The Model Of The Lawyer As Bounty Hunter Is Not Working, John C. Coffee Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

Forty years ago, Judge Jerome Frank coined the term "private Attorney General" to recognize the role of private litigation in the enforcement of law. In the intervening years, the "private attorney general" concept has become both a cliche and a crutch, receiving polite lip service from nearly all, but critical analysis from relatively few. As most college sophomores know, the private attorney general is someone who sues "to vindicate the public interest" by representing collectively those who individually could not afford the costs of litigation; and, as every law student knows, our society places extensive reliance upon such private attorneys …

The Case For Treason, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

"If this be treason, make the most of it." Patrick Henry had no fear of the ultimate crime against his King. Nor did the burghers of Maryland who set ablaze the Peggy Stewart in Annapolis Harbor. One would think that for us as Americans the crime of treason would carry special significance. Our nation was born in acts of treason. The threat of prosecution made the crime foremost in the mind of the constitutional draftsmen. Indeed, treason is the only crime to find definition in our basic document.

There are other indications that the crime of treason is central to …

Overbreadth, Henry Paul Monaghan

Faculty Scholarship

The concern in constitutional law with "overbreadth" is generally understood to denote a conscious departure from conventional standing concepts in free-expression cases. Assertedly justified by the special vulnerability of protected expression to impermissible deterrence, overbreadth doctrine invites litigants to attack the facial validity of rules which burden expressive interests. A litigant whose expression is admittedly within the constitutionally valid applications of a statute is permitted to assert the statute's potentially invalid applications with respect to other persons not before the court and with whom the litigant stands in no special relationship. Judicial focus is not on the protected character, vel …

Our Perfect Constitution, Henry Paul Monaghan

Faculty Scholarship

Professor Monaghan takes issue with "due substance" theorists, who view the Constitution as protecting rights and values generated by current conceptions of political morality. In this Article, he examines and criticizes the theories advanced to justify looking to those current conceptions as an acceptable mode of reasoning about constitutional meaning. Professor Monaghan's own view is that the proper mode of ascertaining constitutional meaning is one that looks to original intent and precedent, a view that acknowledges the Constitution does not guarantee perfect government.

"Twisting Slowly In The Wind": A Search For Constitutional Limits On Coercion Of The Criminal Defendant, John C. Coffee Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

In the corridor outside Courtroom Four, Foster Clark approached the prosecutor. "I was wondering," he said, "are we really going to have to try this case?"

"Well," the prosecutor said, "that depends. He's dead on and gone to heaven, if that's what you mean. He doesn't have a prayer."

"I was wondering if we could work something out," Clark said. "I haven't really had a chance to talk with him, but I was wondering."

"So talk to him," the prosecutor said. "Find out where he stands, and call me."

* * *

"Look," the prosecutor said, "you know I can't …

"No Soul To Damn: No Body To Kick": An Unscandalized Inquiry Into The Problem Of Corporate Punishment, John C. Coffee Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

Did you ever expect a corporation to have a conscience, when it has no soul to be damned, and no body to be kicked?
—Edward, First Baron Thurlow 1731-1806

The Lord Chancellor of England quoted above was neither the first nor the last judge to experience frustration when faced with a convicted corporation. American sentencing judges are likely to face a similar dilemma with increasing frequency in the near future, for a number of signs indicate that corporate prosecutions will become increasingly commonplace. At first glance, the problem of corporate punishment seems perversely insoluble: moderate fines do not deter, …

A Reply To Professor Ball, Philip Chase Bobbitt

Faculty Scholarship

Although it has been observed that approaching an allegedly universalistic theory by asserting the time- and culture-bound nature of that theory is an attack of some sort, Professor Ball does not take my lectures to be a rebuke to the enterprise in which he, Professor Tushnet, and others are engaged. Instead, he complains that I do not examine the relation between constitutional argument, on the one hand, and, on the other, social, political, and economic interests. This is a mistaken reading of my work. It is nice to be told that Tushnet and Ball accept my formulation "that in our …

Toward A Theory Of Prior Restraint: The Central Linkage, Vincent A. Blasi

Faculty Scholarship

The doctrine of prior restraint embodies a temporal preference. Acts of expression that could be sanctioned by means of criminal punishment or a civil damage award may not be regulated "in advance." The factor of timing, however, cannot serve to distinguish methods of regulation as neatly as this statement would seem to imply. In addition to a retrospective impact relating to punishment or compensation, criminal prohibitions and civil liability rules are meant to have a prospective impact – to deter speakers from engaging in harmful acts of expression in the future. If impact on speech before the moment of its …

Silence As A Moral And Constitutional Right, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

Like the Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches and seizures, the privilege against self-incrimination stands as a barrier to the government's acquisition of information about criminal activities. The moral analogue in private relations to the Fourth Amendment right is quite straightforward. One person should not rummage about the private spaces of another seeking signs of bad behavior unless he has very powerful reasons. The Fourth Amendment similarly limits the government, generally permitting searches only upon probable cause. The private moral analogue to the Fifth Amendment's right of silence is harder to identify, its analysis is more complex and the judgments …

Democracy And Distrust: A Theory Of Judicial Review, Gerard E. Lynch

Faculty Scholarship

John Hart Ely's Democracy and Distrust is an ambitious attempt to create a new theory of judicial review, breaking away from both "interpretivism" and "noninterpretivism" – a division Professor Ely regards as a "false dichotomy" (p. vii). The book is brilliant and provocative, so much so that one fears less that its faults will be obscured – there is little danger that polemic critics will fail to pounce on them – than that the flash of Professor Ely's reasoning and the controversy it generates will distract us from the genuine importance of the insight that powers his analysis.

Constitutional Fate, Philip Chase Bobbitt

Faculty Scholarship

The Mary Ireland Graves Dougherty Lectures in Constitutional Law were established in 1979 at the University of Texas School of Law in the memory of Mrs. Dougherty by her family. Professor Bobbitt delivered the inaugural series of these lectures on three evenings in April 1979. Of those in attendance, only Professor Bobbitt's students, who had witnessed the evolution of his ideas during that year, and a few colleagues with whom he must have shared his thoughts, could have expected what followed on those spring evenings in Austin. His subject was "the question of judicial review." So stated, the subject hardly …

Taking Supreme Court Opinions Seriously, Henry Paul Monaghan

Faculty Scholarship

Taking Supreme Court opinions seriously emerged as a topic of discussion at a lunch I attended last year with several Supreme Court law clerks. Somehow we came round to a particular three-judge district court case which I confidently opined was "certain" to be reversed on the basis of principles announced in prior opinions. The clerks were models of politeness and circumspection; never once did they even intimate that the judgment would (by divided vote) be affirmed. But shortly after I had announced my views of that case, one of the clerks began to prod me, asking whether I simply took …

Professor Jones And The Constitution, Henry Paul Monaghan

Faculty Scholarship

Professor Harry Jones's elegant and stimulating Waterman lectures begin on a salutary note. Professor Jones rightly reminds us that, first and foremost, a constitution is not exclusively or primarily a limitation on the exercise of political power, but rather is a charter for its exercise. Accordingly, to view the Constitution as "all brakes and no engine" suggests a serious and fundamental myopia, albeit an understandable one given the popular preoccupation with the Supreme Court's role in vindicating guarantees of civil liberty. But that preoccupation, Professor Jones notes, does more than distort the meaning of the Constitution; it ignores an historically …

The Constitution Goes To Harvard, Henry Paul Monaghan

Faculty Scholarship

Doctrinal disorder haunts a generation of Supreme Court decisions construing and applying the strands of the fourteenth amendment. But in a confusion contest between the Court and academic writers on constitutional law, picking a winner would be no simple task. Those of us in the academy, despite our comparatively ample time for reflection, have long resisted discussion of fundamental issues.

Professors Tribe and Michelman, two of our ablest writers, illustrate my point in their provocative recent essays on National League of Cities v. Usery. Neither purports to erect more adequate scaffolding for the decision's federalism foundation. Rather, each attempts …

The Enduring Significance Of Neutral Principles, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

Almost twenty years have passed since Herbert Wechsler delivered his Oliver Wendell Holmes lecture, Toward Neutral Principles of Constitutional Law. Although no one piece fully conveys the richness and rigor of Professor Wechsler's conception of constitutional law and the role of the judiciary, Neutral Principles sets out starkly, eloquently, and courageously some of his fundamental beliefs about constitutional decisionmaking. Shifts in jurisprudential fashion, as well as marked changes in constitutional doctrine and the composition of the Supreme Court, would make this an apt time to review what is almost certainly the most cited and most controversial discussion of constitutional …

Processes Of Constitutional Decisionmaking: Cases And Materials, Henry Paul Monaghan

Faculty Scholarship

Authors of constitutional law casebooks traditionally have presented their subject through Supreme Court opinions arranged under the three general groupings of judicial review, distribution of powers (federalism and separation of powers), and individual liberties. This organizational consensus rests upon two widely held and deep beliefs: a basic course in constitutional law should (1) consist of a rigorous and sustained study of substantive doctrine and (2) be undertaken principally through a detailed examination of Supreme Court decisions, albeit supplemented in varying degrees by authors' questions and law review excerpts.

Paul Brest's Processes of Constitutional Decisionmaking poses a formidable challenge to this …

Section 1983 And Federalism, Richard Briffault

Faculty Scholarship

The relationship between the themes of federalism and individual rights is one that runs deep in American intellectual and social history. And it is one that has changed drastically with changes in the conditions and temperament of our society.

In the early days of the Republic, federalism was viewed as. a means of protecting individual rights from the tyranny of a unified central government. The Civil War brought with it a rejection of this guiding principle. State autonomy came to be seen not as a means to protect the individual from government abuse but rather as the primary source of …

Constitutional Limits On Aid To Sectarian Universities, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

Because private colleges and universities have more and more difficulty keeping their heads above water financially, the possibility of government support increasingly is becoming a question of survival. Almost certainly the level of public support for private academic institutions will rise in the future, and any doubts about eligibility for this support are of vital concern for affected universities. The major issue regarding eligibility has been the status of sectarian universities. Given the stringent constitutional limits on government aid to religion, can universities that are connected to churches or are otherwise sectarian receive public assistance?

Government By Judiciary: The Transformation Of The Fourteenth Amendment, Gerard E. Lynch

Faculty Scholarship

As its title suggests, Raoul Berger's Government by Judiciary states an extreme version of a familiar thesis: The Supreme Court has abandoned its proper role as interpreter of the Constitution and has usurped the power to act as a third legislative chamber. Like kadis under a tree, the Court creates law from mere personal predilections. The main instrument of this judicial coup has been the fourteenth amendment. Government by Judiciary is an historian's book, strongest when using the historian's tools to illuminate the past. Underlying this research, however, is a remarkably simplistic theory of constitutional interpretation, a theory that forms …

First Amendment Protection For Commercial Advertising: The New Constitutional Doctrine, Thomas W. Merrill

Faculty Scholarship

Governmental regulation of commercial advertising has become a major focus of challenges to established first amendment doctrine. An increasing number of suits have raised constitutional objections to regulations of false or deceptive advertising, regulations of offensive advertising, prohibitions of commercial advertising in certain forums, prohibitions of price advertising for particular products or services, and prohibitions of all advertising for particular products or services.' Until recently, the majority of courts upheld such regulations under the Supreme Court's ruling in Valentine v. Chrestensen that "purely commercial advertising" is unprotected by the first amendment.

In the last two years the Court has subjected …

Constitutional Common Law, Henry Paul Monaghan

Faculty Scholarship

Mr. Justice Powell has publicly characterized the 1974 Term of the Supreme. Court as a "dull" one. Whatever the accuracy of that description, the 1974 Term was, in the public eye, a quiet one. When, late in the Term, the Court ordered the death penalty case held over for reargument, it ensured that the 1974 Term would generate few front-page testimonials to the supreme authority of the Supreme Court. But neither a dull nor a quiet Term can obscure the current reality that the Court's claim to be the "ultimate interpreter of the Constitution" appears to command more nearly universal …

Constitutional Regulation Of Provisional Creditor Remedies: The Cost Of Procedural Due Process, Robert E. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

In recent years a series of Supreme Court decisions has purported to envelop the rights of defaulting debtors in an enlarged concept of procedural due process. The central theme underlying this development is clearly an attempt by the Court to impose some degree of constitutional control on the exercise of provisional creditor remedies. The path that leads from Sniadach v. Family Finance Corp. to North Georgia Finishing, Inc. v. Di-Chem, Inc., is however, far from clear and the cases have provoked serious questioning of the meaning and impact of this doctrine. Due process as reflected in Sniadach and Fuentes …

Constitutional Adjudication: The Who And When, Henry Paul Monaghan

Faculty Scholarship

When the newly appointed Justices of the Supreme Court assembled in the Royal Exchange Building in New York for their first session on February 2, 1790, the most farsighted individual could not have foreseen what the future held for this tribunal. Now less than a generation short of its 200th anniversary, the Court is universally acknowledged to be the final and authoritative expositor of the Constitution. Yet after almost two centuries, questions concerning this power of the Court to interpret the Constitution remain. The first set of questions centers on the substantive standards for constitutional adjudication. The second, with which …

The Reality Of Procedural Due Process – A Study Of The Implementation Of Fair Hearing Requirements By The Welfare Caseworker, Robert E. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

The constitutional mandates of procedural due process have been more sharply defined in recent years as a result of the decision of the Supreme Court in Goldberg v. Kelly. Although the full extent of the doctrine has not yet been delimited, the core proposition seems well established that in the absence of an overriding governmental interest, procedural -due process requires that an individual be accorded notice and a hearing prior to an administrative decision that would adversely affect his ability to subsist by contemporary standards. In applying this principle to the termination of public assistance payments, the Court in …

All Or Nothing At All: The Defeat Of Selective Conscientious Objection, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

The generosity of the United States Supreme Court to conscientious objectors whom Congress has declined to exempt from military service has apparently ended. In Gillette v. United States, decided with Negre v. Larsen, the Court decisively closed the door on claims that those conscientiously opposed to participation in particular wars are entitled by statute or constitutional right to an exemption from military service. Mr. Justice Marshall's majority opinion first disposes of the statutory claim. According to the opinion, the relevant language of § 6(j) of the Military Selective Service Act of 1967," conscientiously opposed to participation in war …

First Amendment "Due Process", Henry Paul Monaghan

Faculty Scholarship

A number of recent Supreme Court opinions, primarily in the obscenity area, have fastened strict procedural requirements on governmental action aimed at controlling the exercise of first amendment rights. Professor Monaghan believes that there are two basic principles that can be distilled from these cases: that a judicial body, following an adversary hearing, must decide on the protected character of the speech, and that the judicial determination must either precede or immediately follow any governmental action which restricts speech. The author argues that these two broad principles should limit any governmental activity which affects freedom of speech, no matter how …

Public Support And The Sectarian University, Walter Gellhorn, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

In mid-1968 we undertook to advise Fordham University concerning steps that might be appropriate to establish its eligibility for public assistance. As part of that task we tried to determine the extent to which present law requires official differentiation between Church-related and other institutions of higher learning. Since the University sought a wholly detached consideration of its legal posture, our conclusions in this article represent our best judgment of the present state of the law and its probable development. We have avoided indicating our own personal position on debatable legal and ethical issues.

The Regulation And Administration Of The Welfare Hearing Process – The Need For Administrative Responsibility, Robert E. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

In recent years, the concept of public welfare has undergone substantial conceptual changes, the primary being a shift from the older concept of gratuity to one of statutory entitlement pursuant to the Social Security Act. This paper seeks to examine and analyze the administrative "fair hearing" as a means of effective regulation of administrative discretion and enforcement of the entitlement provisions of the federal act. Primary emphasis is placed on a comparative treatment of state hearing procedures and federal hearing regulations to determine whether the fair hearing is, at present, a viable means of insuring due process in welfare administration.

The Truth-In-Negotiations Act – An Examination Of Defective Pricing In Government Contracts, Michael J. Graetz

Faculty Scholarship

Charges of excessive profitmaking on government contracts have issued from the Senate floor and the nation's press and have provided the impetus for recent congressional investigations and proposals for remedial legislation. Profiteering by government contractors is a problem of potentially enormous dimensions since purchases by the federal government total more than seventy-seven billion dollars – over ten per cent of the gross national product. Because the greatest part of these purchases are made by the Department of Defense, congressional action aimed at minimizing excessive profits has focused upon Defense Department procurement activities under the Armed Services Procurement Act (ASPA).