Article III requires federal courts that exercise federal jurisdiction to be given life tenure and undiminished compensation, limiting Congress’s ability to influence the judiciary. But from the beginning, we have accepted certain forms of adjudication outside Article III – state courts, most obviously, but also territorial courts, administrative adjudication of public rights, and military tribunals. The question is why. This Article attempts to provide an answer. It argues that it is a mistake to focus on the act of adjudication itself; adversary presentation about the application of law to fact is simply a procedure, and not a procedure uniquely limited to Article III courts. Instead, the constitutional question is one of government power. What kind of power has the tribunal been vested with, and what it is trying to do with that power? With this framework in view, the structure and scope of non-Article-III adjudication becomes clearer. Some courts exercise the judicial power of some other government. This is why territorial courts and state courts are constitutional. Some bodies exercise executive power, subject to the constraints reflected by the Due Process Clause. This is why administrative adjudication of public rights and military trials are constitutional. Some exercise no governmental power, and can proceed only as an adjunct to another entity, or on the basis of consent. This is the only basis on which magistrate judges and bankruptcy judges can proceed and may render some of their current behavior unconstitutional.
{"title":"Adjudication Outside Article III","authors":"William Baude","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.3194945","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.3194945","url":null,"abstract":"Article III requires federal courts that exercise federal jurisdiction to be given life tenure and undiminished compensation, limiting Congress’s ability to influence the judiciary. But from the beginning, we have accepted certain forms of adjudication outside Article III – state courts, most obviously, but also territorial courts, administrative adjudication of public rights, and military tribunals. The question is why. \u0000 \u0000This Article attempts to provide an answer. It argues that it is a mistake to focus on the act of adjudication itself; adversary presentation about the application of law to fact is simply a procedure, and not a procedure uniquely limited to Article III courts. Instead, the constitutional question is one of government power. What kind of power has the tribunal been vested with, and what it is trying to do with that power? \u0000 \u0000With this framework in view, the structure and scope of non-Article-III adjudication becomes clearer. Some courts exercise the judicial power of some other government. This is why territorial courts and state courts are constitutional. Some bodies exercise executive power, subject to the constraints reflected by the Due Process Clause. This is why administrative adjudication of public rights and military trials are constitutional. Some exercise no governmental power, and can proceed only as an adjunct to another entity, or on the basis of consent. This is the only basis on which magistrate judges and bankruptcy judges can proceed and may render some of their current behavior unconstitutional.","PeriodicalId":48320,"journal":{"name":"Harvard Law Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2020-03-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46649458","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Freedom","authors":"Peter Rohs","doi":"10.4324/9780429029202","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429029202","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48320,"journal":{"name":"Harvard Law Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2019-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"70610785","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dormant Commerce Clause--Extraterritoriality Doctrine--Fourth Circuit Invalidates Maryland Statute Regulating Price Gouging in the Sale Of Generic Drugs.--Association for Accessible Medicines v. Frosh, 887 F.3d 664 (4th Cir. 2018).","authors":"","doi":"","DOIUrl":"","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48320,"journal":{"name":"Harvard Law Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2019-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"37163701","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Article II of the U.S. Constitution twice imposes a duty of “faithful execution” on the President, who must “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” and take an oath or affirmation to “faithfully execute the Office of President.” These clauses are cited often, but their background and original meaning have never been fully explored. Courts, the executive branch, and many scholars rely on one or both clauses as support for expansive views of presidential power, for example, to go beyond standing law to defend the nation in emergencies; to withhold documents from Congress or the courts; or to refuse to fully execute statutes on grounds of unconstitutionality or for policy reasons. This Article is the first to explore the textual roots of these clauses from the time of Magna Carta and medieval England, through colonial America, and up to the original meaning in the Philadelphia Convention and ratification debates. We find that the language of “faithful execution” was for centuries before 1787 very commonly associated with the performance of public and private offices—especially those in which the officer had some control over the public fisc. “Faithful execution” language applied not only to senior government officials but also to a vast number of more ministerial officers, too. We contend that it imposed three core requirements on officeholders: (1) diligent, careful, good faith, and impartial execution of law or office; (2) a duty not to misuse an office’s funds and or take unauthorized profits; and (3) a duty not to act ultra vires, beyond the scope of one’s office. These three duties of fidelity look a lot like fiduciary duties in modern private law. This “fiduciary” reading of the original meaning of the Faithful Execution Clauses might have important implications in modern constitutional law. Our history supports readings of Article II of the Constitution, for example, that limit presidents to exercise their power in good faith, for the public interest, and not for reasons of self-dealing, self-protection, or other bad faith, personal reasons. So understood, Article II may thus place some limits on the pardon and removal authority. The history we present also supports readings of Article II that tend to subordinate presidential power to congressional direction, limiting presidential non-enforcement of statutes, and perhaps constraining agencies’ interpretation of statutes to pursue Congress’s objectives. Our conclusions undermine imperial and prerogative claims for the presidency, claims that are sometimes, in our estimation, improperly traced to dimensions of the clauses requiring the President's faithful execution.
{"title":"Faithful Execution and Article II","authors":"A. Kent, E. Leib, J. Shugerman","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.3260593","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.3260593","url":null,"abstract":"Article II of the U.S. Constitution twice imposes a duty of “faithful execution” on the President, who must “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” and take an oath or affirmation to “faithfully execute the Office of President.” These clauses are cited often, but their background and original meaning have never been fully explored. Courts, the executive branch, and many scholars rely on one or both clauses as support for expansive views of presidential power, for example, to go beyond standing law to defend the nation in emergencies; to withhold documents from Congress or the courts; or to refuse to fully execute statutes on grounds of unconstitutionality or for policy reasons. \u0000 \u0000This Article is the first to explore the textual roots of these clauses from the time of Magna Carta and medieval England, through colonial America, and up to the original meaning in the Philadelphia Convention and ratification debates. We find that the language of “faithful execution” was for centuries before 1787 very commonly associated with the performance of public and private offices—especially those in which the officer had some control over the public fisc. “Faithful execution” language applied not only to senior government officials but also to a vast number of more ministerial officers, too. We contend that it imposed three core requirements on officeholders: \u0000 \u0000(1) diligent, careful, good faith, and impartial execution of law or office; \u0000 \u0000(2) a duty not to misuse an office’s funds and or take unauthorized profits; and \u0000 \u0000(3) a duty not to act ultra vires, beyond the scope of one’s office. \u0000 \u0000These three duties of fidelity look a lot like fiduciary duties in modern private law. This “fiduciary” reading of the original meaning of the Faithful Execution Clauses might have important implications in modern constitutional law. Our history supports readings of Article II of the Constitution, for example, that limit presidents to exercise their power in good faith, for the public interest, and not for reasons of self-dealing, self-protection, or other bad faith, personal reasons. So understood, Article II may thus place some limits on the pardon and removal authority. The history we present also supports readings of Article II that tend to subordinate presidential power to congressional direction, limiting presidential non-enforcement of statutes, and perhaps constraining agencies’ interpretation of statutes to pursue Congress’s objectives. Our conclusions undermine imperial and prerogative claims for the presidency, claims that are sometimes, in our estimation, improperly traced to dimensions of the clauses requiring the President's faithful execution.","PeriodicalId":48320,"journal":{"name":"Harvard Law Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2018-10-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43260536","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-03-28DOI: 10.4135/9781483302799.n170
Ryan C. Williams
Article IV’s command that the “United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government” stands as one of the few remaining lacunae in the judicially enforced Constitution. For well over a century, federal courts have viewed the provision — traditionally known as the Guarantee Clause but now referred to by some as the “Republican Form of Government” Clause — as a paradigmatic example of a nonjusticiable political question. In recent years, however, both the Supreme Court and lower federal courts have signaled a new willingness to reconsider this much-criticized jurisdictional barrier in an appropriate case, leading many to predict that its eventual demise is only a matter of time. The interpretive possibilities inherent in a judicially enforceable Guarantee Clause have tantalized generations of constitutional theorists, leading to a significant body of research attempting to uncover what was meant by the provision’s oblique reference to “a Republican Form of Government.” But this research has almost completely ignored a separate inquiry that is equally critical to understanding the provision’s meaning and significance — namely, what it means for the United States to “guarantee” such republican government to the states. This Article seeks to shed new light on the original meaning of the term “guarantee” in the Guarantee Clause, by looking to an unexpected source — namely, eighteenth century treaty practice. The language of the Guarantee Clause closely parallels language that was frequently used in seventeenth and eighteenth-century treaties. The interpretation of such treaty provisions was informed by well-settled background principles of international law, which attached particular legal significance to the term “guarantee.” As used in eighteenth-century treaties, the term “guarantee” signified a diplomatic commitment whereby one nation pledged its support to the protection of some preexisting right or entitlement possessed by another sovereign. Importantly, however, such provisions were deemed to exist solely for the benefit of the guaranteed sovereign and conferred no separate rights or entitlements on the nation pledging the guarantee. Viewing the Guarantee Clause through the lens of eighteenth-century treaty practice casts significant doubt on claims by modern scholars that the provision should be understood as a repository of judicially enforceable individual rights. Rather, both the text of the provision and contextual evidence regarding its original understanding strongly suggest that the provision more likely reflected a quasi-diplomatic, treaty-like commitment on the part of the federal government to its quasi-sovereign component states. This evidence lends new, and heretofore unappreciated support, to the Supreme Court’s longstanding practice of treating Guarantee Clause claims as beyond the scope of judicial cognizance.
{"title":"The \"Guarantee\" Clause","authors":"Ryan C. Williams","doi":"10.4135/9781483302799.n170","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4135/9781483302799.n170","url":null,"abstract":"Article IV’s command that the “United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government” stands as one of the few remaining lacunae in the judicially enforced Constitution. For well over a century, federal courts have viewed the provision — traditionally known as the Guarantee Clause but now referred to by some as the “Republican Form of Government” Clause — as a paradigmatic example of a nonjusticiable political question. In recent years, however, both the Supreme Court and lower federal courts have signaled a new willingness to reconsider this much-criticized jurisdictional barrier in an appropriate case, leading many to predict that its eventual demise is only a matter of time. The interpretive possibilities inherent in a judicially enforceable Guarantee Clause have tantalized generations of constitutional theorists, leading to a significant body of research attempting to uncover what was meant by the provision’s oblique reference to “a Republican Form of Government.” But this research has almost completely ignored a separate inquiry that is equally critical to understanding the provision’s meaning and significance — namely, what it means for the United States to “guarantee” such republican government to the states. \u0000This Article seeks to shed new light on the original meaning of the term “guarantee” in the Guarantee Clause, by looking to an unexpected source — namely, eighteenth century treaty practice. The language of the Guarantee Clause closely parallels language that was frequently used in seventeenth and eighteenth-century treaties. The interpretation of such treaty provisions was informed by well-settled background principles of international law, which attached particular legal significance to the term “guarantee.” As used in eighteenth-century treaties, the term “guarantee” signified a diplomatic commitment whereby one nation pledged its support to the protection of some preexisting right or entitlement possessed by another sovereign. Importantly, however, such provisions were deemed to exist solely for the benefit of the guaranteed sovereign and conferred no separate rights or entitlements on the nation pledging the guarantee. \u0000Viewing the Guarantee Clause through the lens of eighteenth-century treaty practice casts significant doubt on claims by modern scholars that the provision should be understood as a repository of judicially enforceable individual rights. Rather, both the text of the provision and contextual evidence regarding its original understanding strongly suggest that the provision more likely reflected a quasi-diplomatic, treaty-like commitment on the part of the federal government to its quasi-sovereign component states. This evidence lends new, and heretofore unappreciated support, to the Supreme Court’s longstanding practice of treating Guarantee Clause claims as beyond the scope of judicial cognizance.","PeriodicalId":48320,"journal":{"name":"Harvard Law Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2018-03-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41527964","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This Article reports the results of a survey of a diverse group of forty-two federal appellate judges concerning their approaches to statutory interpretation. The study reveals important differences between their approaches and the approach that the Supreme Court purports to take. It also helps to substantiate the irrelevance of the enduring, but now-boring, textualism-versus-purposivism debate. None of the judges we interviewed was willing to associate himself or herself with “textualism” without qualification. All consult legislative history. Most eschew dictionaries. All utilize at least some canons of construction, but for reasons that range from “window dressing,” to the use of canons to assist in opinion writing, to a view that they are useful decision tools. Most of the judges we interviewed are not fans of Chevron, except for the judges on the D.C. Circuit, which hears the bulk of Chevron cases. Some of the judges interviewed believe that understanding Congress is important to a judge’s work, while others do not see how judges can use such understanding to decide cases. Most express doubt that the Supreme Court’s interpretive methodology binds the lower courts. The younger judges, who attended law school and practiced during the ascendance of textualism, are generally more formalist and accepting of the canons of construction, regardless of political affiliation. The older judges are less focused on canons, take a broader view of their delegated authority, and appear to grapple more with questions of judicial legitimacy. The approach that emerged most clearly from our interviews might be described as intentional eclecticism. Most of the judges we spoke to are willing to consider many different kinds of argument and evidence, and defend that approach as the only democratically legitimate one. Yet at the same time many observe a gap between how they actually decide cases and how they write opinions, a gap they attribute to the disconnect between the expectations of the public and the realities of judicial decisionmaking.
{"title":"Statutory Interpretation on the Bench: A Survey of Forty-Two Judges on the Federal Courts of Appeals","authors":"Abbe R. Gluck, R. Posner","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.3138249","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.3138249","url":null,"abstract":"This Article reports the results of a survey of a diverse group of forty-two federal appellate judges concerning their approaches to statutory interpretation. The study reveals important differences between their approaches and the approach that the Supreme Court purports to take. It also helps to substantiate the irrelevance of the enduring, but now-boring, textualism-versus-purposivism debate. None of the judges we interviewed was willing to associate himself or herself with “textualism” without qualification. All consult legislative history. Most eschew dictionaries. All utilize at least some canons of construction, but for reasons that range from “window dressing,” to the use of canons to assist in opinion writing, to a view that they are useful decision tools. Most of the judges we interviewed are not fans of Chevron, except for the judges on the D.C. Circuit, which hears the bulk of Chevron cases. Some of the judges interviewed believe that understanding Congress is important to a judge’s work, while others do not see how judges can use such understanding to decide cases. Most express doubt that the Supreme Court’s interpretive methodology binds the lower courts. The younger judges, who attended law school and practiced during the ascendance of textualism, are generally more formalist and accepting of the canons of construction, regardless of political affiliation. The older judges are less focused on canons, take a broader view of their delegated authority, and appear to grapple more with questions of judicial legitimacy. The approach that emerged most clearly from our interviews might be described as intentional eclecticism. Most of the judges we spoke to are willing to consider many different kinds of argument and evidence, and defend that approach as the only democratically legitimate one. Yet at the same time many observe a gap between how they actually decide cases and how they write opinions, a gap they attribute to the disconnect between the expectations of the public and the realities of judicial decisionmaking.","PeriodicalId":48320,"journal":{"name":"Harvard Law Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2018-03-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43678161","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Civil Rights--Eighth Amendment--Third Circuit Holds Parents of Mentally Ill Young Man Held in Solitary Confinement Stated Claims of Cruel and Unusual Punishment.--Palakovic v. Wetzel, 854 F.3d 209 (3d Cir. 2017).","authors":"","doi":"","DOIUrl":"","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48320,"journal":{"name":"Harvard Law Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2018-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"36300598","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Over the last several decades, courts and legal scholars have struggled with whether or when to consider boilerplate text as contract. Recent attempts to draw all boilerplate text into “contract” seek to end that struggle but have shifted contract law away from its traditional focus on enforcing parties’ actual agreements and common understandings. This has required a series of ad hoc “fixes” to contract law reminiscent of the medieval use of “epicycles” to try to square geocentric theories of planetary motion with recalcitrant observations of a nongeocentric universe. This shift has been transforming the meanings of contract law’s central concepts. We view the shift as an undiagnosed paradigm slip, resulting in a generalized theory of “contract” as a mere assumption of risk that allows private obligations to be created unilaterally without reaching the actual agreements required by core contract law principles. Some now call this new sort of obligation “contract.” But it is pseudo-contract, resembling contract without fulfilling its necessary conditions of validity.The recent paradigm slip into pseudo-contract raises a complex blend of linguistic, factual, conceptual, practical, normative, and doctrinal problems. Under the mantle of “contract,” the problems of pseudo-contract have remained largely hidden. In this Article we expose these problems and develop a more nuanced and coherent method of analysis — shared meaning analysis — that courts and other legal analysts can use to determine when any particular piece of boilerplate text does, or does not, contribute an actual term to a contract. Because facts about language have received insufficient attention in discussions of how boilerplate text may (or may not) contribute to contract meaning, we launch our analysis by developing several seminal insights into the dependence of meaning on social cooperation from the language philosopher Paul Grice. Drawing on his insights into language, we develop a contemporary definition of the shared meaning of a contract (or the “common meaning of the parties”) as that meaning that is most consistent with the presupposition that both parties were using language cooperatively to contract. We then offer a simple conceptual test that courts can use to discern this shared meaning, distinguish contractual from noncontractual uses of boilerplate text, and prevent contract from slipping into pseudo-contract. We pay particular attention to diagnosing deceptive or misleading uses of boilerplate text. Using examples ranging widely from clickwrap consumer contracts to high-end boilerplate contracts between sophisticated parties, we show how shared meaning analysis applies generally to many varieties of contract.
{"title":"Pseudo-Contract and Shared Meaning Analysis","authors":"R. Kar, M. Radin","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.3124018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.3124018","url":null,"abstract":"Over the last several decades, courts and legal scholars have struggled with whether or when to consider boilerplate text as contract. Recent attempts to draw all boilerplate text into “contract” seek to end that struggle but have shifted contract law away from its traditional focus on enforcing parties’ actual agreements and common understandings. This has required a series of ad hoc “fixes” to contract law reminiscent of the medieval use of “epicycles” to try to square geocentric theories of planetary motion with recalcitrant observations of a nongeocentric universe. This shift has been transforming the meanings of contract law’s central concepts. We view the shift as an undiagnosed paradigm slip, resulting in a generalized theory of “contract” as a mere assumption of risk that allows private obligations to be created unilaterally without reaching the actual agreements required by core contract law principles. Some now call this new sort of obligation “contract.” But it is pseudo-contract, resembling contract without fulfilling its necessary conditions of validity.The recent paradigm slip into pseudo-contract raises a complex blend of linguistic, factual, conceptual, practical, normative, and doctrinal problems. Under the mantle of “contract,” the problems of pseudo-contract have remained largely hidden. In this Article we expose these problems and develop a more nuanced and coherent method of analysis — shared meaning analysis — that courts and other legal analysts can use to determine when any particular piece of boilerplate text does, or does not, contribute an actual term to a contract. Because facts about language have received insufficient attention in discussions of how boilerplate text may (or may not) contribute to contract meaning, we launch our analysis by developing several seminal insights into the dependence of meaning on social cooperation from the language philosopher Paul Grice. Drawing on his insights into language, we develop a contemporary definition of the shared meaning of a contract (or the “common meaning of the parties”) as that meaning that is most consistent with the presupposition that both parties were using language cooperatively to contract. We then offer a simple conceptual test that courts can use to discern this shared meaning, distinguish contractual from noncontractual uses of boilerplate text, and prevent contract from slipping into pseudo-contract. We pay particular attention to diagnosing deceptive or misleading uses of boilerplate text. Using examples ranging widely from clickwrap consumer contracts to high-end boilerplate contracts between sophisticated parties, we show how shared meaning analysis applies generally to many varieties of contract.","PeriodicalId":48320,"journal":{"name":"Harvard Law Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2018-02-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47453665","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Scholars of administrative law focus overwhelmingly on lawsuits to review federal government action while assuming that, if plaintiffs win such lawsuits, the government will do what the court says. But in fact, the federal government’s compliance with court orders is imperfect and fraught, especially with orders compelling the government to act affirmatively. Such orders can strain a federal agency’s resources, interfere with its other legally-required tasks, and force it to make decisions on little information. An agency hit with such an order will often warn the judge that it badly needs more latitude and more time to comply. Judges relent, cutting slack and extending deadlines. The plaintiff who has “won” the suit finds that victory was merely the start of a tough negotiation that can drag on for years. These compliance negotiations are little understood. Basic questions about them are unexplored, including the most fundamental: What is the endgame? That is, if the judge concludes that the agency has delayed too long and demanded too much, is there anything she can do, at long last, to make the agency comply? What the judge can do, ultimately, is the same thing as for any disobedient litigant: find the agency (and its high officials) in contempt. But do judges actually make such contempt findings? If so, can judges couple those findings with the sanctions of fine and imprisonment that give contempt its potency against private parties? If not, what use is contempt? The literature is silent on these questions, and conventional research methods, confined to appellate case law, are hopeless for addressing it. There are no opinions of the Supreme Court on the subject, and while the courts of appeals have handled the problem many times, they have dealt with it in a manner calculated to avoid setting clear and general precedent. Through an examination of thousands of opinions (especially of district courts), docket sheets, briefs, and other filings, plus archival research and interviews, this Article provides the first general assessment of how federal courts handle the federal government’s disobedience. It makes four conclusions. First, the federal judiciary is willing to issue contempt findings against agencies and officials. Second, while several federal judges believe they can (and have tried to) attach sanctions to these findings, the higher courts have exhibited a virtually complete unwillingness to allow sanctions, at times swooping down at the eleventh hour to rescue an agency from incurring a budget-straining fine or its top official from being thrown in jail. Third, the higher courts, even as they unfailingly thwart sanctions in all but a few minor instances, have bent over backward to avoid making pronouncements that sanctions are categorically unavailable, deliberately keeping the sanctions issue in a state of low salience and at least nominal legal uncertainty. Fourth, even though contempt findings are practically devoid of sanctions, th
{"title":"The Endgame of Administrative Law: Governmental Disobedience and the Judicial Contempt Power","authors":"N. Parrillo","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.2907797","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.2907797","url":null,"abstract":"Scholars of administrative law focus overwhelmingly on lawsuits to review federal government action while assuming that, if plaintiffs win such lawsuits, the government will do what the court says. But in fact, the federal government’s compliance with court orders is imperfect and fraught, especially with orders compelling the government to act affirmatively. Such orders can strain a federal agency’s resources, interfere with its other legally-required tasks, and force it to make decisions on little information. An agency hit with such an order will often warn the judge that it badly needs more latitude and more time to comply. Judges relent, cutting slack and extending deadlines. The plaintiff who has “won” the suit finds that victory was merely the start of a tough negotiation that can drag on for years. These compliance negotiations are little understood. Basic questions about them are unexplored, including the most fundamental: What is the endgame? That is, if the judge concludes that the agency has delayed too long and demanded too much, is there anything she can do, at long last, to make the agency comply? What the judge can do, ultimately, is the same thing as for any disobedient litigant: find the agency (and its high officials) in contempt. But do judges actually make such contempt findings? If so, can judges couple those findings with the sanctions of fine and imprisonment that give contempt its potency against private parties? If not, what use is contempt? The literature is silent on these questions, and conventional research methods, confined to appellate case law, are hopeless for addressing it. There are no opinions of the Supreme Court on the subject, and while the courts of appeals have handled the problem many times, they have dealt with it in a manner calculated to avoid setting clear and general precedent. Through an examination of thousands of opinions (especially of district courts), docket sheets, briefs, and other filings, plus archival research and interviews, this Article provides the first general assessment of how federal courts handle the federal government’s disobedience. It makes four conclusions. First, the federal judiciary is willing to issue contempt findings against agencies and officials. Second, while several federal judges believe they can (and have tried to) attach sanctions to these findings, the higher courts have exhibited a virtually complete unwillingness to allow sanctions, at times swooping down at the eleventh hour to rescue an agency from incurring a budget-straining fine or its top official from being thrown in jail. Third, the higher courts, even as they unfailingly thwart sanctions in all but a few minor instances, have bent over backward to avoid making pronouncements that sanctions are categorically unavailable, deliberately keeping the sanctions issue in a state of low salience and at least nominal legal uncertainty. Fourth, even though contempt findings are practically devoid of sanctions, th","PeriodicalId":48320,"journal":{"name":"Harvard Law Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2018-01-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2139/SSRN.2907797","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41592021","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In several recent high-profile cases, federal district judges have issued injunctions that apply across the nation, controlling the defendants’ behavior with respect to non-parties. This Article offers a new analysis of the scope of injunctions to restrain the enforcement of a federal statute or regulation. It makes two contributions.First, it shows the causes of the current problem. The national injunction is a recent development in the history of equity, traceable to the second half of the twentieth century. But the forum-shopping and other problems associated with the national injunction depend on something older and more structural: the shift from one chancellor in England to many “chancellors” in the federal courts.Second, this Article proposes a single clear principle for the scope of injunctions against federal defendants. A federal court should give what might be called a “plaintiff-protective injunction,” enjoining the defendant’s conduct only with respect to the plaintiff. No matter how important the question and no matter how important the value of uniformity, a federal court should not award a national injunction. The basis for this principle is traditional equity, in line with the rule that the federal courts must trace their equitable doctrines to that source. To put this principle into practice, several specific reforms are suggested, ones that the Supreme Court could adopt through an exercise of its supervisory jurisdiction.
{"title":"Multiple Chancellors: Reforming the National Injunction","authors":"Samuel L. Bray","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.2864175","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.2864175","url":null,"abstract":"In several recent high-profile cases, federal district judges have issued injunctions that apply across the nation, controlling the defendants’ behavior with respect to non-parties. This Article offers a new analysis of the scope of injunctions to restrain the enforcement of a federal statute or regulation. It makes two contributions.First, it shows the causes of the current problem. The national injunction is a recent development in the history of equity, traceable to the second half of the twentieth century. But the forum-shopping and other problems associated with the national injunction depend on something older and more structural: the shift from one chancellor in England to many “chancellors” in the federal courts.Second, this Article proposes a single clear principle for the scope of injunctions against federal defendants. A federal court should give what might be called a “plaintiff-protective injunction,” enjoining the defendant’s conduct only with respect to the plaintiff. No matter how important the question and no matter how important the value of uniformity, a federal court should not award a national injunction. The basis for this principle is traditional equity, in line with the rule that the federal courts must trace their equitable doctrines to that source. To put this principle into practice, several specific reforms are suggested, ones that the Supreme Court could adopt through an exercise of its supervisory jurisdiction.","PeriodicalId":48320,"journal":{"name":"Harvard Law Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2017-12-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43707377","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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