Supreme Court of the United States Commons^™

The Tao Of Pleading: Do Twombly And Iqbal Matter Empirically, Patricia W. Moore

Faculty Articles

In 2007, the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, sending “shockwaves” through the federal litigation bar. Seemingly without prior warning, the Court abrogated “the accepted rule that a complaint should not be dismissed for failure to state a claim unless it appears beyond doubt that the plaintiff can prove no set of facts in support of his claim which would entitle him to relief”—the standard for deciding 12(b)(6) motions first stated fifty years earlier in Conley v. Gibson. To replace the old rule, the Court announced a new “plausibility” standard: that a complaint …

Dr. Miles's Orphans: Vertical Conspiracy And Consignment In The Wake Of Leegin, Jeffrey L. Harrison

UF Law Faculty Publications

When the Supreme Court overturns a well-established case, the impact extends well beyond that ruling. Cases that have survived for extended periods of time typically spawn complementary cases. These complementary cases protect the ruling in the principal case from erosion by the imagination of business planners, lawyers, scholars, and judges. Or, these complementary cases may be the cases that narrow the rule in the principal case when the Court wants to temper the effect of—but not overrule—its prior decision. When the principal case is, however, overturned, both of these types of cases become orphans. Without the parent case, it is …

Executive Activism Not Reciprocated With Judicial Activism: Wyeth V. Levine And Cuomo V. Clearing House Return Preemption To The Legislative Branch, Anthony C. Coveny, Shelly A. Sanford

St. Thomas Law Review

The Supreme Court has taken a strong stand on the preemption issue, with both liberal and conservative justices agreeing to return preemptive authority to Congress. In short, the Supreme Court has properly refused to reward Executive activism with Judicial activism. This article discusses the theoretical foundation of preemption; the requirement of clear Congressional intent; recent Executive Branch attempts to push preemption vis-d-vis agency regulation; the Supreme Court's refusal to reward Executive activism with Judicial activism in Wyeth v. Levine and Cuomo v. Clearing House Ass'n, L.L. C.; and the preemption landscape as it exists in 2009 going forward.

Elena Kagan Can't Say That: The Sorry State Of Political Discourse Regarding Constitutional Interpretation, Neil J. Kinkopf

Faculty Publications By Year

No abstract provided.

Interring The Rhetoric Of Judicial Activism, Neil S. Siegel

Faculty Scholarship

For decades, leaders of the Republican Party have decried “judicial activism” and championed “judicial restraint.” For much of that time, Republican politicians have equated judicial restraint with a commitment to judicial deference, asserting that “activist” judges disrespect the will of popular majorities. More recently, as the Republican Party has solidified its control of the federal courts and made its own claims on the Constitution, Republican politicians have tended to define judicial activism in potentially conflicting ways, mixing deference frames with claims about the autonomy of law from mere politics or personal beliefs.

In this Article, I examine these two ways …

'Struck' By Stereotype: Ruth Bader Ginsburg On Pregnancy Discrimination As Sex Discrimination, Neil S. Siegel, Reva B. Siegel

Faculty Scholarship

This is an attempt at recovery. This Essay hopes to call attention to then-Professor Ruth Bader Ginsburg's merits brief in Struck v. Secretary of Defense. The brief has been under appreciated in part because the Supreme Court declined to decide the case. But anyone seeking to understand the origins and nature of Justice Ginsburg's views on sex discrimination would be well advised to read this brief. So would anyone interested in reimagining the bounds of constitutional possibility in the realm of gender equality.

A Coase Theorem For Constitutional Theory, Neil S. Siegel

Faculty Scholarship

There is much to admire about Barry Friedman’s new book, The Will of the People. Explaining how the institution of judicial review was made safe for democracy in America, Friedman’s story is extensively researched, beautifully written, scrupulously nonpartisan about the modern Court, and frequently humorous. What is more, his primary claim - that the Supreme Court of the United States is very much a democratic institution because judicial review always has been responsive to public opinion - is, to a large extent, convincing. I have taught The Will of the People in my first-year constitutional law course, and I plan …

What Does Graham Mean In Michigan?, Kimberly A. Thomas

Articles

In Graham v. Florida, the United States Supreme Court held that life without parole could not be imposed on a juvenile offender for a nonhomicide crime.1 In this context, the Graham Court extensively discussed the diminished culpability of juvenile criminal defendants, as compared to adults. The Court relied on current scientific research regarding adolescent development and neuroscience. While the narrowest holding of Graham has little impact in Michigan, the science it relies on, and the potential broader implications for adolescents in Michigan, are significant.

Reflections On Section 5 Of The Ftc Act And The Ftc's Case Against Intel, Daniel A. Crane

Articles

The Federal Trade Commission’s (“FTC’s”) unprecedented enforcement action against Intel raises profound issues concerning the scope of the FTC’s powers to give a construction to Section 5 of the FTC Act that goes beyond the substantive reach of the Sherman Act. While I have urged the FTC to assert such independence from the Sherman Act, this is the wrong case to make a break. Indeed, if anything, Intel poses a risk of seriously setting back the development of an independent Section 5 power by provoking a hostile appellate court to rebuke the FTC’s effort and cabin the FTC’s powers in …

Citizens United And The Corporate Form, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

In Citizens United vs. FEC, the Supreme Court struck down a Federal statute banning direct corporate expenditures on political campaigns. The decision has been widely criticized and praised as a matter of First Amendment law. But it is also interesting as another step in the evolution of our legal views of the corporation. This Article argues that by viewing Citizens Unitedthrough the prism of theories about the corporate form, it is possible to see that the majority and the dissent departed from previous Supreme Court jurisprudence on the First Amendment rights of corporations. It is also possible to then predict …

Article I, Article Iii, And The Limits Of Enumeration, Gil Seinfeld

Articles

Article I, Section 8 and Article Ill, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution deploy parallel strategies for constraining the power of the federal government. They enumerate powers that the national legislature and judiciary, respectively, are permitted to exercise and thereby implicitly prohibit these two branches of government from exercising powers not enumerated. According to conventional thinking, this strategy has failed in connection with Article I and succeeded in connection with Article III. That is, it is widely acknowledged that Congress routinely exercises powers that are difficult to square with the Article I enumeration; but it is commonly thought that the …

Constitutional Expectations, Richard A. Primus

Articles

The inauguration of Barack Obama was marred by one of the smallest constitutional crises in American history. As we all remember, the President did not quite recite his oath as it appears in the Constitution. The error bothered enough people that the White House redid the ceremony a day later, taking care to get the constitutional text exactly right. Or that, at least, is what everyone thinks happened. What actually happened is more interesting. The second time through, the President again departed from the Constitution's text. But the second time, nobody minded. Or even noticed. In that unremarked feature of …

When The Supreme Court Came To Michigan, Leonard M. Niehoff

Articles

It is an arcane and curious chapter in the history of the federal courts. Under the terms of the Judiciary Act of 1789, the members of the Supreme Court of the United States were obligated to travel around the country and hear cases that were brought before the lower courts in their assigned circuits. This resulted in what the justices condemned as a "painful and improper situation. "

Null Preemption, Jonathan R. Nash

Faculty Articles

This Article proceeds as follows. In Part I, I introduce the concept of null preemption. I discuss in greater detail the case of regulation of motor vehicle tailpipe greenhouse-gas emissions as a case study of null preemption. In Part II, I explore the contours of null preemption, and then describe, and distinguish among, several paradigmatic settings in which null preemption may arise.

In Part III, I consider the normative case for null preemption. I conclude that the case is narrow. I also consider concerns of institutional choice and argue that even those who generally defend agency preemption of state law …

Did A Switch In Time Save Nine?, Daniel E. Ho, Kevin M. Quinn

Faculty Articles

Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s court-packing plan of 1937 and the “switch in time that saved nine” animate central questions of law, politics, and history. Did Supreme Court Justice Roberts abruptly switch votes in 1937 to avert a showdown with Roosevelt? Scholars disagree vigorously about whether Roberts’s transformation was gradual and anticipated or abrupt and unexpected. Using newly collected data of votes from the 1931–1940 terms, we contribute to the historical understanding of this episode by providing the first quantitative evidence of Roberts’s transformation. Applying modern measurement methods, we show that Roberts shifted sharply to the left in the 1936 term. The …

Mapp V. Ohio Revisited: A Law Clerk's Diary, Polly J. Price

Faculty Articles

The 1960 Supreme Court Term laid the groundwork for the subsequent revolution in the relationship between state and federal law accomplished by the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren. The "most famous search and seizure case in American history" - Mapp v. Ohio - would be decided that Term. Mapp held that the Fourth Amendment's protection against "unreasonable searches and seizures" required the exclusion of evidence found through an illegal search by state and local police officers, extending to the states a rule that had previously applied only to federal law enforcement. Mapp became a pivotal chapter in the …

The Irrepressible Influence Of Byrd, Richard D. Freer, Thomas Arthur

Faculty Articles

We set forth four interrelated theses in this article. First, Byrd is the only Supreme Court case since Erie itself to discuss all three of the core interests balanced, expressly or not, in every vertical choice of law case. Second, because Hanna's "twin aims" test ignores two of these three core interests, it cannot adequately serve as the standard for cases under the Rules of Decision Act ("RDA"). This fact is evidenced by the Court's eschewing the twin aims test in cases, like Gasperini, where state and federal interests must be accommodated. Third, as all three opinions in …

How Not To Lie With Judicial Votes: Misconceptions, Measurement, And Models, Daniel E. Ho, Kevin M. Quinn

Faculty Articles

In Part I, we describe the formal spatial theory often invoked to justify the statistical approach. While spatial theory has the nice feature of synthesizing theory and empirics, legal scholars may remain skeptical of its strong assumptions. Fortunately, measurement models can be illuminating even if the spatial theory is questionable.

To illustrate this, Part II provides a nontechnical overview of the intuition behind measurement models that take merits votes as an input and return a summary score of Justice-specific behavior as an output. Such scores provide clear and intuitive descriptive summaries of differences in judicial voting.

Confusion abounds, however, and …

Equal Standing With States: Tribal Sovereignty And Standing After Massachusetts V. Epa, Joseph Mead, Nicholas Fromherz

All Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs Publications

In Massachusetts v. EPA, 549 U.S. 497 (2007), the Supreme Court held that Massachusetts was entitled to "special solicitude" in the standing analysis because it was sovereign. As a result, Massachusetts passed the standing threshold in a global warming case where an ordinary litigant may have been stymied. The Supreme Court’s analysis raises an interesting question: Are Indian tribes—which have been considered sovereign entities since before the founding, and which hold lands facing heavy environmental pressure—entitled to "special solicitude" as well? We think they should be.

To make this argument, we begin by discussing standing basics; dissecting Massachusetts v. …

Book Review Of Melvin I. Urofsky's Louis D. Brandeis: A Life, Edward A. Purcell Jr.

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

Our Forgotten Founders: Reconstruction, Public Education, And Constitutional Heroism, Thomas G. Donnelly

Law Faculty Publications

Works on the Founding generation consistently inhabit national bestseller lists. For instance, David McCullough’s book 1776 placed fifth on Publishers Weekly’s 2005 list, beating out pop culture favorites Blink and Freakonomics. Over the last decade, other similarly successful titles have included His Excellency, Founding Brothers, and John Adams. In fact, McCullough’s hagiographic biography of our nation’s second President was later transformed into an Emmy Award-winning mini-series on HBO—to say nothing of President Obama’s decision to add it to his 2009 summer reading list. In short, Americans revere their eighteenth-century Founders. ...

Equitable Balancing In The Age Of Statutes, Jared Goldstein

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Taking Cues From Congress: Judicial Review, Congressional Authorization, And The Expansion Of Presidential Power, David H. Moore

Faculty Scholarship

In evaluating whether presidential acts are constitutional, the Supreme Court often takes its cues from Congress. Under the Court's two most prominent approaches for gauging presidential power-Justice Jackson's tripartite framework and the historical gloss on executive power-congressional approval of presidential conduct produces a finding of constitutionality. Yet courts and commentators have failed to recognize that congressional authorization may result from a failure of checks and balances. Congress may transfer power to the President against institutional interest for a variety of reasons. This key insight calls into question the Court's reflexive reliance on congressional authorization. Through this reliance, the Court overlooks …

Congressional End-Run: The Ignored Constraint On Judicial Review, Luke M. Milligan

Georgia Law Review

This Article identifies an untended connection between
the research of legal academics and political scientists. It
explains how recent developments in constitutional theory,
when read in good light, expose a gap in the judicial
politics literature on Supreme Court decision making. The
gap is the "congressional end-run."
End-runs occur when Congress mitigates the policy cost
of adverse judicial review through neither formal limits on
the Court's autonomy nor substitution of its constitutional

interpretationfor that of the Court, but through a different
decision which cannot, as a practical if not legal matter,
be invalidated by the Court. End-runs come in several …

Business-Like: The Supreme Court's 2009-2010 Labor And Employment Decisions, Melissa Hart

Publications

The 2009-10 Term at the Supreme Court was a relatively quiet one for labor and employment law. While the Justices were in the news for decisions on corporate political donations and the Second Amendment, the Court’s work-related docket grabbed no headlines. In fact, though, the Court considered 7 work law cases this Term, in areas ranging from standards for arbitration agreements to employee privacy rights in new technology to time limitations for filing Title VII disparate impact claims. This article discusses the Court’s labor and employment cases for the Term. While they may not have made much news, several of …

Prudentialism In Mcdonald V. City Of Chicago, Neil S. Siegel

Faculty Scholarship

At least two kinds of prudential argument have been identified in the literature on constitutional interpretation: court-centered prudentialism and system-centered prudentialism. Commentators often characterize court-centered prudentialism as animated by concern over the Supreme Court’s preservation of its public legitimacy, which can be undermined when the Justices decide controversial questions in ways that cause backlash. By contrast, system-centered prudentialism asks not only what judicial decision is best for the Court’s effectiveness, but also what response is best for the constitutional system as a whole when the Court’s legitimacy is not at stake.

The Court’s recent decision in McDonald v. City of …

Why March To A Uniform Beat? Adding Honesty And Proportionality To The Tune Of Federal Sentencing, Jelani Jefferson Exum

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

This Article fills a gap in current scholarship concerning the Federal Sentencing Guidelines ("Guidelines") by bringing together many sentencing concerns and refocusing them on the Guidelines themselves. Since United States v. Booker, in which the Supreme Court demoted the Guidelines from mandatory to advisory status and imposed reasonableness as the appellate standard of review, several scholars have written about the new, advisory Guidelines scheme. Some have focused on the constitutional problems that Booker failed to settle. Others have argued against a presumption of reasonableness for within-Guidelines sentences. For some scholars, the biggest issues with the advisory Guidelines regime …

Prosecutorial Discretion In The Shadow Of Advisory Guidelines And Mandatory Minimums, Michael A. Simons

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Imagine the following rather run-of-the-mill crime spree:

Three young men, ranging in age from eighteen to twenty and without significant criminal histories, get together to rob a convenience store in New York City. They take an unloaded an inoperable gun, go into the store, point the gun at the clerk behind the counter, and take a few hundred dollars from the cash register. Flush with success, they decide to do it again, this time at a jewelry store down the block. One of the young men points the unloaded gun at the store employees, another stands guard by the …

Issue 2: Table Of Contents

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Public Consensus As Constitutional Authority, Richard A. Primus

Articles

Barry Friedman's new book The Will of the People attempts to dissolve constitutional law's countermajoritariand ifficulty by showing that, in practice,t he Supreme Court does only what the public will tolerate. His account succeeds if "the countermajoritarian difficulty" refers to the threat that courts will run the country in ways that contravene majority preference, but not if the "the countermajoritarian difficulty" refers to the need to explain the legitimate sources of judicial authority in cases where decisions do contravene majority preference. Friedman's book does not pursue the second possibility, and may suggest that doing so is unimportant, in part because …