Open AccessPosted Content
Popular Constitutionalism and the Underenforcement Problem: The Case of the National Healthcare Law
TLDR
In this article, the authors look at the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) through the lens of underenforcement and argue that popular constitutionalism influences which norms are underenforced at any given time.Abstract:
Contemporary constitutional theory distinguishes between constitutional meaning and the doctrines that courts develop to enforce that meaning. This conceptual gap recognizes the possibility that, at any given time, extant doctrine will "underenforce" particular constitutional norms -- that is, the doctrinal tests by which courts decide cases will not protect those norms to their full conceptual limits. This essay looks at the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) through the lens of underenforcement. I suggest that since 1937, constitutional doctrine has underenforced constitutional limits on the Commerce and Spending Clause, as well as (perhaps) principles of economic liberty. But underenforcement is historically contingent; in 1920, for example, extant doctrine enforced all those principles more rigorously while underenforcing others, such as equal protection and freedom of speech. I argue that popular constitutionalism influences which norms are underenforced at any given time. Historical changes in popular perceptions of the appropriate role of government, and the national government in particular, have encouraged underenforcement of limits on national power and principles of economic liberty. At the same time, the public's perception of the appropriate role of the Court also plays a role; hence, underenforcement in these areas arguably reflects the Court's sense that it had been overly aggressive in checking action by the political branches in the period leading up to 1937. But in the early 21st century, popular understandings may be changing on both these fronts. The Tea Party movement is just one manifestation of a wider sense that the role of government has limits, and the Court has regained much of its prestige by developing its role as protector of individual rights. The point is that what has changed once can change again. The healthcare law seemed obviously constitutional to many observers based on current doctrinal tests, but those tests themselves reflect contingent historical factors. Although this essay was written before the Court decided the ACA case, it anticipates the Court's willingness to reopen basic questions concerning the scope of judicial review on questions of national power.read more
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Journal Article
Doctrinal Dynamism, Borrowing, and the Relationship Between Rules and Rights
Joseph Blocher,Luke Morgan +1 more
TL;DR: The study of rights dynamism, exemplified in Timothy Zick's new book on the First Amendment's relationship with the rest of the Bill of Rights, can help deepen understandings of the nature of constitutional rights as discussed by the authors.
Posted Content
Sorrell v. IMS Health and the End of the Constitutional Double Standard
TL;DR: The authors argue that the sort of overlap we see in Sorrell v. IMS Health is increasingly common and that this overlap will put pressure on the Court to abandon its double standard as an organizing principle in constitutional law.
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Journal ArticleDOI
The Influence of Amicus Curiae Briefs on the Supreme Court
TL;DR: The aim of this review was to assess the impact of the publication of Amicus Curiae Brief Quality on the success rates of Institutional Litigants and Cited Briefs, as well as three models ofJudgement, which were used in this study.
Posted Content
The Significance of the Local in Immigration Regulation
TL;DR: In this paper, a functional account of sub-federal immigration regulation is provided, and a framework for federal and state lawmakers intended to restrain their impulses to preempt legislation by lower levels of government, and to create incentives for cooperative ventures in immigration regulation.
Book
Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors recover the story of how African American activists remade national belonging through battles in legislatures, conventions, and courthouses, and show how the Fourteenth Amendment constitutionalized the birthright principle, and black Americans' aspirations were realized.
Posted Content
Dissenting by Deciding
TL;DR: Dissent by deciding as mentioned in this paper can also take place when a school board mandates the teaching of creationism or a jury engages in nullification, and it has been studied extensively in the literature.
Dissertation
Adjudicating Human Rights in Transitional Contexts: A Nigerian Case-Study, 1999-2009
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigated the extent to which human rights violations correlates with the lack of effective judicial protection of those rights between 1999 and 2009, and found that the current approach is still orientated towards British administrative law principles which did not demand the standard of intense scrutiny required for the effective protection of human rights norms.