Tag: Supreme Court

Big Government Causes Hyper-Partisanship in the Judicial Appointment Process

By
Ilya Shapiro

Earlier this year, the Georgetown Journal of Law & Public Policy hosted a symposium on “Hyper-Partisanship and the Law.” The journal editors graciously invited me to join an august panel on partisanship in the judiciary that included George Mason University Law School’s Todd Zywicki and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Rachel Brand. (Brand ran the DOJ’s Office of Legal Policy, which is responsible for vetting and advising the president on judicial nominees, from 2005 to 2007.)

The symposium video isn’t available online, but the participants were invited to publish their presentations in this summer’s issue of the GJLPP. Zywicki has already blogged about his paper, “The Senate and Hyper-Partisanship: Would the Constitution Look Different if the Framers Had Known that Senators Would Be Elected in Partisan Elections?”

My (short) article is entitled “Big Government Causes Partisanship in Judicial Nominations.” Here’s an excerpt:

In 1962, Byron White’s hearing lasted 15 minutes and consisted of three questions.  Can you imagine that happening now?  Most district court nominees would take that deal.  Is it because of TV and the media and the instant sound bite and the new media with the Internet and social networking and all the rest of it?  Is it because the issues have gotten more ideologically divisive?  I think the answer isn’t really any of these.  It isn’t that there’s been a corruption of the confirmation process, the nomination process, presidential or senatorial rhetoric, or the use of filibusters.  It’s a relatively new development but one that’s part and parcel of a much larger problem: constitutional corruption.

As government has grown, so have the laws and regulations over which the Court has power.  The Court’s power has grown commensurate with the power of Congress, because all of a sudden it’s declaring what Congress can do with its great powers and what kind of new rights will be recognized.   As we have gone down the wrong jurisprudential track since the New Deal, judges all of a sudden have more power behind them and the opportunity to really change the direction of public policy more than they ever did.

Read the whole thing (not yet in the final format). My presentation largely tracked some of the points Roger Pilon made in his seminal (and now decade-old) paper, “How Constitutional Corruption Has Led to Ideological Litmus Tests for Judicial Nominees.” You should read that too.

Topics: 
Cato Publications, Government and Politics, Law and Civil Liberties

Did You Read the Federalist Papers in College? Grad School? Law School?

By
Michael F. Cannon

In the Wall Street Journal, Peter Berkowitz says you probably didn’t. And it shows:

It would be difficult to overstate the significance of The Federalist for understanding the principles of American government and the challenges that liberal democracies confront early in the second decade of the 21st century. Yet despite the lip service they pay to liberal education, our leading universities can’t be bothered to require students to study The Federalist—or, worse, they oppose such requirements on moral, political or pedagogical grounds. Small wonder it took so long for progressives to realize that arguments about the constitutionality of ObamaCare are indeed serious.

Explains a lot, really.

Topics: 
Education and Child Policy, Government and Politics, Health Care, Law and Civil Liberties

Alabama Gov. Vows to Veto ObamaCare Exchange

By
Michael F. Cannon

According to WSFA-12 News, Alabama legislators are working on legislation to create an ObamaCare Exchange. But:

Governor Robert Bentley [R] will likely veto the bill.

“This legislation is premature.  The federal government has yet to establish clear guidelines for a health insurance exchange,” said Deputy Communications Director Jeremy King, in a statement to WSFA 12 News.  “Also, the federal government has extended some deadlines for putting an exchange together.  Plus, the U.S. Supreme Court has not yet ruled on the constitutionality of the federal health care law.   If Supreme Court justices strike down the law as the Governor hopes they will, there will be no need for such an exchange.  Either way, there is no need to establish an exchange at this point,” the statement went on to say.

“Doing so without clear guidance from Washington would simply be a guessing game.  Also, there would still be time in the 2013 session to set up an exchange if the law is upheld.  If this legislation is approved in the current session, a veto can be expected.”

Full story and video here.

Topics: 
General, Government and Politics, Health Care

Supreme Court Gives Taxpayers a Muddled Win

By
Ilya Shapiro

This blogpost was co-authored by Cato legal associate Carl DeNigris.

Before the argument on the Arizona immigration case yesterday, the Supreme Court scored a blow for American taxpayers by rejecting the IRS’s attempt to overturn the Court’s prior interpretation of a disputed provision of the Internal Revenue Code, 26 U.S.C. §6501(e)(1)(A).  By avoiding the issue of whether agencies can use their regulatory powers retroactively, however, the Court didn’t go far enough.

In United States v. Home Concrete, the Court ruled that its decision in Colony v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue (1956) – that a taxpayer’s overstatement of tax basis in property is not an omission of income that would otherwise trigger an extended statute of limitations period for assessment – was still controlling.  The IRS had tried to change its interpretation of the relevant regulation but the Court concluded that, despite the government’s contention that the new interpretation was due judicial deference, “there is no longer any different construction that is consistent with Colony and available for adoption by the agency.”  That is, the IRS can’t unilaterally overturn Supreme Court precedent by changing how it interprets statutory language or applies a particular regulation.

But the Court didn’t address the government’s most insidious action here: the IRS sought deference for a regulation that it promulgated in the midst of litigation and which would have been retroactively applied to the taxpayers who were parties to the Home Concrete lawsuit.

In our amicus brief, Cato argued that sanctioning this sort of ad hoc, retroactive rulemaking undermines the rule of law by altering basic assumptions “regarding fairness and reliability of the laws and their application by the courts.”  Yet, with the exception of Justice Kennedy’s one sentence dismissal in dissent, the Court showed no interest in the retroactivity issue.  Moreover, it referred to the government’s blatant attempt at retroactive rulemaking as a mere “gap-filling regulation” with “no gap to fill.”  So while taxpayers won a narrow victory today, the Court’s silence gives little assurance that it remains a bulwark against arbitrary government power.

Perhaps even more importantly, it’s now unclear how courts are to apply an important precedent called Brand X, a 2005 case standing for the proposition that administrative agencies (like the IRS) can adopt regulations contrary to a judicial decision only when the relevant statute’s silence or ambiguity represents a congressional delegation of authority to fill that “gap” to the agency.  In other words, here the IRS acted contrary to clear statutory language as interpreted by Colony Cove, but what about future cases?  We’re no tax or even administrative law specialists, but it does seem that the Court has made a big mess out of Brand X:  When can an agency overturn decisions of the Court?  When can it not?  We’ll have to wait for the next ridiculous agency action to make its way to the Supreme Court to find out.

For more on the case, see here; for more technical administrative/tax law analysis, see here.  One other curious thing about this decision is that it ended up 5-4 but the majority opinion was written by Justice Breyer (who styles himself as the Court’s administrative law expert) and joined by the “conservative” justices – though Justice Scalia concurs only in part – with Justice Kennedy writing the dissent, joined by the remaining three “liberal” justices.

Topics: 
Government and Politics, Law and Civil Liberties, Tax and Budget Policy

Immigration Laws at the Supreme Court: Constitutional but Bad Policy

By
Ilya Shapiro

For anyone suffering from post-Obamacare-argument Supreme Court withdrawal, this Wednesday the Court takes up Arizona’s controversial Senate Bill (“SB”) 1070.  See my blogpost from when the Court granted review for some background.

SB 1070 is much-misunderstood: it has nothing to do with sexy political issues like racial profiling and everything to do with boring legal ones like whether a given state provision is “preempted” by federal law.  That is, do the various parts of the state law – each one of which the Court will be evaluating independently – conflict with federal law (direct preemption) or intrude in an area exclusively reserved to Congress (implied preemption).

United States v. Arizona shows that there’s a difference between what’s constitutional and what’s good policy. SB 1070 was crafted to mirror federal law rather than asserting new state powers that interfere with federal authority over immigration.  That’s why lower courts only enjoined four of its provisions and why the Supreme Court would not be wrong to resurrect even those four.

But beyond this hyper-technical legal analysis, SB 1070 and copy-cat laws elsewhere – some of which go further than Arizona’s and thus are of more dubious constitutionality – highlight the dysfunction in our immigration system.  Given Congress’s failure to act in this area, state governments have spawned a host of federalism experiments.  Many of these laws are terrible policy for reasons ranging from economic effects to the misuse of law enforcement resources.

Legal scholars always enjoy the opportunity to point out laws that they think are constitutional but bad policy.  It makes them feel intellectually honesty (if they have reason to be defensive in that regard).  Well, immigration is the most obvious place where my constitutional and policy views diverge.  The ultimate solution here isn’t for the Supreme Court to strike down the states’ lawful if misguided legislation, but for Congress and the president to enact a comprehensive national reform.

For more on what’s at stake in the case, see my SCOTUSblog essay from last summer, my forthcoming law review article, and my new colleague Alex Nowrasteh’s recent op-ed.  For the briefs and other background materials, see SCOTUSblog’s case page.

Topics: 
Government and Politics, Law and Civil Liberties, Trade and Immigration

Alan Blinder Owes Me $5 for Wasting My Time

By
Michael F. Cannon

In today’s Wall Street Journal, Alan Blinder writes one of the most error-ridden and discourse-debasing op-eds I have ever read. About any topic. Ever.

A sampling:

[O]ur country was founded on the idea that the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are inalienable. Access to affordable health care is surely essential to two of these three rights, maybe to all three.

This is absurd. Does Blinder really mean to say that until about a hundred years ago, when modern medicine really began, the lack of access to affordable health care alienated every single human being to walk the Earth from their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?

I wish people would think—long and hard—before they write about health care. Especially the smart ones.

Topics: 
Government and Politics, Health Care, Law and Civil Liberties

Cato’s Amicus Brief Helps Persuade Supreme Court to Protect Private Property Rights

By
Ilya Shapiro

This blogpost was co-authored by Cato legal associate Anna Mackin.

Today, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Arkansas Game & Fish Commission v. United States, the Fifth Amendment Takings Clause case whose cert petition Cato supported with an amicus brief. In that brief, we joined the Pacific Legal Foundation in urging the Court to preserve a remedy long-recognized in American courts: compensation for government destruction of private property.

Over a year ago, the Federal Circuit blithely ignored this constitutionally guaranteed protection, ruling that so long as it might be characterized as “temporary,” no government flooding of private land can constitute a Fifth Amendment violation. If upheld, this sweeping opinion could prevent recovery for the destruction of private property whenever the government characterizes its own actions as “temporary,” without any assurances of the length of this “temporary” loss.

Notable Supreme Court commentators saw the importance of this case early on, and our amicus brief was featured on SCOTUSblog’s “petition of the day” page. Many thanks to Brian Hodges at PLF for working with Cato on the brief – one of just four filed in the case. Congratulations also and especially to Matthew Miller & Julie Greathouse of Perkins & Trotter, who represent AGFC, for their successful legal strategy.

It is gratifying to see the Court snap up this opportunity to protect private property rights – it is more likely than not that it will reverse the lower court – implicitly validating the position Cato and PLF advanced in this case. We’ll now be filing a brief on the merits that will urge the Court to maintain constitutional protections against government intrusions on private property. The Court will hear the case next term, probably this fall, with a final decision expected by early 2013.

For more on AGFC v. United States, check the case’s SCOTUSBlog page or its Supreme Court docket page. Jonathan Adler also blogged about the case at the Volokh Conspiracy.

Topics: 
Government and Politics, Law and Civil Liberties, Regulatory Studies

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