An Abandoned Jurisprudence

2020 ◽  
pp. 201-224
Author(s):  
Edward A. Jr. Purcell
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Federal Courts ◽  
Judicial Power ◽  
Warren Court ◽  
Historical Practices ◽  
The U.S

This chapter examines Justice Antonin Scalia’s views on Article III of the U.S. Constitution and the nature of the federal judicial power that it established. One of Scalia’s principal goals was to limit severely the power of the federal courts and to undo many of the decisions of the Warren Court, including their ability to create implied private causes of action, and the chapter argues that in pursuing that goal Scalia departed from originalist views and that the arguments he advanced were themselves self-contradictory. The chapter shows, moreover, that originalist doctrines and historical practices actually contradicted his claims about limits on the federal judicial power. Further, the chapter argues that his views were based not on originalist ideas but on the twentieth-century positivism associated with Erie Railroad v. Tompkins, and that in Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, he explicitly acknowledged that his positivist ideas were not the ideas of the Founders. The chapter concludes that in this area, Scalia simply abandoned originalism and did so, once again, to achieve his own ideological and political goals

A Subjective Jurisprudence

2020 ◽  
pp. 55-92
Author(s):  
Edward A. Jr. Purcell
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Separation Of Powers ◽  
Judicial Power ◽  
Executive Power ◽  
The Political ◽  
Institutional Goals ◽  
Policy Goals ◽  
Power Limit ◽  
Political Right ◽  
The U.S

This chapter examines Justice Antonin Scalia’s jurisprudence dealing with the U.S. Constitution’s two structural axes, separation of powers and federalism. It argues that both constitutional principles are general, largely indeterminate, and easily manipulable and that Scalia construed them in light of his own subjective goals and values. He was determined to use them instrumentally to expand executive power, limit Congress, and severely restrict federal judicial power. The chapter argues that Scalia regarded separation of powers as more critical and important than federalism because it was better suited to serve his political and institutional goals and that, in joining the Rehnquist Court’s “federalism revolution” in the early twentieth century, he contradicted the position he had taken in his Senate confirmation hearing about the propriety of the Court giving special deference to Congress on federalism issues. Finally, the chapter shows that before he went on the Court, Scalia had made it clear that he viewed both separation of powers and federalism as principles that could and should be interpreted to serve the practical policy goals of the political right.

Cases Without Controversies

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
James E. Pfander
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Federal Courts ◽  
Judicial Power ◽  
Habeas Corpus ◽  
Federal Law ◽  
Antebellum America ◽  
Article Iii Courts ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Over Time

Cases Without Controversies: Uncontested Adjudication in Article III Courts offers a new account of the power of federal courts in the United States to hear and determine uncontested applications to assert or register a claim of right. Familiar to lawyers in civil law countries as forms of voluntary or non-contentious jurisdiction, these uncontested applications fit uneasily with the commitment to adversary legalism in the United States. Indeed, modern accounts of federal judicial power often urge that the language of Article III of the U.S. Constitution limits federal courts to the adjudication of concrete disputes between adverse parties and rules out all forms of non-contentious jurisdiction. Said to rest on the so-called “case-or-controversy” requirement of Article III, this requirement of party contestation threatens the power of federal courts to conduct a range of familiar proceedings, such as the oversight of bankruptcy proceedings, the issuance of warrants, and the adjudication of applications for mandamus and habeas corpus relief. By recounting the tradition of naturalization and other uncontested litigation in antebellum America and coupling that tradition with an account of the important difference between cases and controversies, this book challenges the prevailing understanding of Article III. In addition to defending the power of federal courts to hear uncontested matters of federal law, this book examines the way the Constitution’s meaning has changed over time and suggests an interpretive methodology that would allow the U.S. Supreme Court to take account of the old and the new in defining the contours of federal judicial power.

Silence Is Consent for the Modern Presidency

2019 ◽  
pp. 97-116
Author(s):  
Jasmine Farrier
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Federal Courts ◽  
Executive Power ◽  
Woodrow Wilson ◽  
Modern Presidency ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Franklin Roosevelt ◽  
Private Litigation ◽  
The U.S

This chapter examines the breadth of executive power expansion in the twentieth century. It does this by studying private litigation cases that challenged presidential firings by Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt; the landmark “Steel Seizure” case under Harry Truman; financial settlements related to the Iran hostage crisis; the post-9/11 cases of detainee treatment; and the most recent passport case on the U.S. policy toward Israel's capital. In almost all of these private litigation cases, the Supreme Court looked at congressional intention and action to guide their decisions. These precedents help one to understand the most recent legal controversies against President Donald Trump. Wherever federal courts can find Congress's delegation of power, presidents will likely win.

The Nineteenth-Century Perspective on Federal Judicial Power

2021 ◽  
pp. 73-84
Author(s):  
James E. Pfander
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Federal Courts ◽  
Judicial Power ◽  
State Law ◽  
Federal Law ◽  
The U.S ◽  
The Way

This chapter examines the way nineteenth-century jurists defined the words “cases” and “controversies” in Article III of the U.S. Constitution. It shows that federal courts agreed to hear uncontested applications to claim rights under federal law as “cases” under Article III. But the same courts refused to hear matters governed by state law unless they arose between opposing parties as “controversies” within Article III. This distinction between cases and controversies meant that a claim of right by a petitioner, such as that in a naturalization petition, would qualify as a case, even though the plaintiff did not join an adverse party from whom the plaintiff sought redress.

The Judicial Response to the Administrative State

2021 ◽  
pp. 87-98
Author(s):  
James E. Pfander
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Federal Courts ◽  
Judicial Power ◽  
Administrative State ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Way ◽  
Judicial Role

This chapter describes the way a requirement of contestation was introduced into definitions of federal judicial power in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The case-or-controversy requirement arose as a tool with which federal courts could refrain from lending support to the investigatory and regulatory initiatives of the growing administrative state. Justice Stephen Field played a central role in the introduction of the contestation construct, and it took hold at the Supreme Court in the twentieth century, as progressive Justices came to embrace contestation as an essential limit on the judicial role in constitutional litigation.

Uncontested Adjudication and the Modern Case-or-Controversy Rule

2021 ◽  
pp. 143-154
Author(s):  
James E. Pfander
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Federal Court ◽  
Federal Courts ◽  
Judicial Power ◽  
History Of

This chapter explains how the nineteenth-century history of uncontested litigation undercuts the modern case-or-controversy rule as developed and applied in the twentieth century. That the antebellum federal courts were empowered to hear petitions for naturalized citizenship and other uncontested claims as cases under Article III undermines three key elements of the modern case-or-controversy rule: its suggestion that all plaintiffs invoking the judicial power must establish standing by identifying an injury in fact; its requirement that only claims that name an adverse party can be brought in federal court; and its linkage of cases and controversies, two distinct ideas, in an all-purpose case-or-controversy requirement.

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