Yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in American Electric Power v. Connecticut, the massive greenhouse-gas suit. Like the other “big” global warming/climate change suits, this one suffers from a basic and incurable defect: it seeks to undermine the separation of powers established under the U.S. Constitution by inviting the courts to address “political questions” of a sort properly resolved by other branches of government. As Cato’s amicus brief by Ilya Shapiro and Evan Turgeon explained in the case of Comer v. Murphy Oil:

“[W]hile it executes firmly all the judicial powers intrusted to it, the court will carefully abstain from exercising any power that is not strictly judicial in its character, and which is not clearly confided to it by the Constitution.” Muskrat v. United States, 219 U.S. 346, 355 (1911). A dispute is not “judicial in its character” when, among other reasons, the plaintiff does not have “standing” or the claim raises a “political question.” … And the political question doctrine, for which “the appropriateness under our system of government of attributing finality to the action of the political departments and also the lack of satisfactory criteria for a judicial determination are dominant considerations,” Coleman v. Miller, 307 U.S. 433, 454-55 (1939), isolates the judiciary from policy disputes the Constitution assigns to the democratic process.

By its nature, global warming is exactly the sort of policy question traditionally entrusted to the political branches: it is wholly unsuited to individualized justice based on links between particularized emissions and particularized effects, its proposed remedies are much disputed and likely to be the result of inevitably arbitrary compromise, sovereign negotiations with foreign actors play a crucial role, and so forth. As the courts have long recognized, one does not generate a case for judicial action simply by piling atop each other the propositions “something needs to be done” and “the political branches have not done it.” Indeed, the Obama administration itself has more or less invited the Supreme Court to dismiss the action on political-question grounds.

The Cato Institute filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to review the American Electric Power case and then filed another amicus brief on the merits. Anyone interested in how the complexities of the Court’s “political question” doctrine apply in this case should read – in addition to Ilya Shapiro’s blog posts here and here – this new article in the Federalist Society’s publication Engage by Megan L. Brown of Wiley Rein LLP, who has served as Counsel of Record to the Cato Institute in its amicus briefs in this area. Brown provides a thorough explanation of why all three of the major warming suits fail the justiciability test, why Justices Kennedy and Breyer may be worth watching as “swing” votes in AEP, and how the new case affords the court a chance to revisit its problematic pro-regulatory holding in Massachusetts v. EPA (2007). (More from Brown in this Christian Science Monitor op-ed.)

Also worth reading on this subject: Harvard professor Laurence Tribe, by no means known as a general skeptic of environmental regulation, who has assisted the defense side in this litigation and explains some of the reasons in a new Boston Globe op-ed.

Slate columnist Dahlia Lithwick seems to think so (h/t David Bernstein).  So I’m not accused of taking Lithwick’s words out of context, here’s the relevant passage, discussing Senate nominee Christine O’Donnell (R-DE):

O’Donnell explained that “when I go to Washington, D.C., the litmus test by which I cast my vote for every piece of legislation that comes across my desk will be whether or not it is constitutional.” How weird is that, I thought. Isn’t it a court’s job to determine whether or not something is, in fact, constitutional? And isn’t that sort of provided for in, well, the Constitution? In 2003, O’Donnell said of the Supreme Court that “it’s kind of like we have the nine people sitting there in Washington who have a constitutional monarchy and that is an abuse of the system.” So I do wonder a little whether she’s claiming that her view of what’s constitutional trumps theirs. Not a lot of space for checks and balances in that reading.

Apparently Lithwick doesn’t know that senators and congressmen (and a whole host of other officials – including federal law clerks of the kind both she and I were at some point) swear an oath to uphold the Constitution.  It seems that it would be hard to fulfill that oath if you don’t in good faith and to the best of your ability consider the constitutional dimension of whatever you’re voting on.  Yes of course not all congressmen are lawyers – though it’s unclear whether being one and even chairing the judiciary committee helps one think through constitutional issues – but you shouldn’t have to be a constitutional scholar to see that, for example, Congress cannot force everyone to eat three servings of fruits and vegetables daily.  (Though now-Justice Elena Kagan refused to say that.)

Indeed, the Constitution is silent as to which branch of government is to review the constitutionality of legislation.  Moreover, as we know from the foundational case of Marbury v. Madison, the judiciary’s role in doing so is merely (but rightly) implied, not explicit, in constitutional text.  There is no “weirdness” in courts exercising their constitutional powers by ruling on constitutional issues brought before them in lawsuits even as the other branches make constitutionality determinations in carrying out their own duties.  After all, isn’t a president who does something he consciously knows is beyond his lawfully vested Article II authority violating his own oath of office and potentially subjecting himself to impeachment for that very reason?

Yes, long gone, unfortunately, are the days when congressional debates focused on the constitutionality of proposed bills rather than their desirability, but shouldn’t Congress at least pay lip service to the idea that it needs a constitutional warrant for everything it does?

In any event, I’ll be on a panel with Dahlia this Thursday at the Missouri Bar Association’s annual meeting and will raise this issue to her.  (May also take on her bizarre accusation that Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley was appealing sub rosa to “Christian Reconstructionists” in asking at Kagan’s confirmation hearings whether the right to keep and bear arms pre-existed the Constitution – see David Bernstein’s simple rebuttal at the Volokh Conspiracy.)