Second Thoughts About the First Amendment

The U.S. Supreme Court has shown a notable willingness to reconsider — and depart from — its First Amendment precedents. In recent years the Court has marginalized its prior statements regarding the constitutional value of false speech. It has revamped its process for identifying categorical exceptions to First Amendment protection. It has rejected its past decisions on corporate electioneering and aggregate campaign contributions. And it has revised its earlier positions on union financing, abortion protesting, and commercial speech. Under the conventional view of constitutional adjudication, dubious precedents enjoy a presumption of validity through the doctrine of stare decisis. This Article contends that within the First Amendment context, there is no such presumption. When the Court concludes that a precedent reflects a cramped vision of expressive liberty, adherence to the past gives way. Unfettered speech, not legal continuity, is the touchstone. The best explanation for this phenomenon is the role of free speech in the constitutional order. The Court’s tendency is to characterize affronts to expressive liberty as dangerous steps toward governmental repression and distortion. From this perspective, it is little wonder that the Court eschews continuity with the past. Legal stability may be significant, but official orthodoxy seems like an excessive price to pay. Yet the Court’s practice raises serious questions. Departures from precedent can be problematic, especially when they become so frequent as to compromise the notion of constitutional law as enduring and impersonal. If the doctrine of stare decisis is to serve its core functions of stabilizing and unifying constitutional law across time, the desire to protect expressive liberty must yield, at least occasionally, to the need for keeping faith with the past

Special Justifications

The Supreme Court commonly asks whether there is a “special justification” for departing from precedent. In this Response, which is part of a Constitutional Commentary symposium on Settled Versus Right: A Theory of Precedent, I examine the existing law of special justifications and describe its areas of uncertainty. I also compare the Court’s current doctrine with a revised approach to special justifications designed to separate the question of overruling from deeper disagreements about legal interpretation. The aspiration is to establish precedent as a unifying force that enhances the impersonality of the Court and of the law, promoting values the Justices have described as fundamental

The Rule of Law and the Perils of Precedent

In this Essay, I wish to build on Professor Waldron\u27s thoughtful analysis by saying something more about the other side of stare decisis. The rule-of-law benefits of stare decisis are invariably accompanied by rule-of-law costs. In light of those costs, the ultimate question is not whether there are ways in which stare decisis promotes the rule of law. Rather, it is whether stare decisis advances the rule of law on net. Some departures from precedent can promote the rule of law, and some reaffirmances can impair it. Even if the rule of law were the only value that mattered, excessive fidelity to flawed precedents would be cause for concern. That rule-of-law ambivalence, I will suggest, should be brought to bear in calibrating the strength of deference that judicial precedents receive

The Rule of Law and the Perils of Precedent

In a world where circumstances never changed and where every judicial decision was unassailably correct, applying the doctrine of stare decisis would be a breeze. Fidelity to precedent and commitment to sound legal interpretation would meld into a single, coherent enterprise. That world, alas, is not the one we live in. Like so much else in law, the concept of stare decisis encompasses a series of trade-offs-and difficult ones at that. Prominent among them is the tension between allowing past decisions to remain settled and establishing a body of legal rules that is flexible enough to adapt and improve over time. Notwithstanding pervasive disagreement over the application of stare decisis to particular disputes, the doctrine is well established in American jurisprudence. Indeed, the Supreme Court has gone so far as to describe stare decisis as indispensable to the rule of law. But as Jeremy Waldron skillfully reminds us, justifying the doctrine requires more than platitudes. Even a proposition as fundamental and seemingly intuitive as the ability of stare decisis to promote the rule of law conceals a considerable amount of analytical nuance. Professor Waldron concentrates on developing what we might think of as the rule-of-law case for precedent. Central to his project is the recognition that rule-of-law benefits arise at several distinct points along the path from initial ruling to subsequent application. The touchstone is the principle of generality, pursuant to which individual jurists subjugate their personal beliefs to the vision of a unified court working across space and time to fashion generally applicable norms. In this Essay, I wish to build on Professor Waldron\u27s thoughtful analysis by saying something more about the other side of stare decisis. The rule-of-law benefits of stare decisis are invariably accompanied by rule-of-law costs. In light of those costs, the ultimate question is not whether there are ways in which stare decisis promotes the rule of law. Rather, it is whether stare decisis advances the rule of law on net. Some departures from precedent can promote the rule of law, and some reaffirmances can impair it. Even if the rule of law were the only value that mattered, excessive fidelity to flawed precedents would be cause for concern. That rule-of-law ambivalence, I will suggest, should be brought to bear in calibrating the strength of deference that judicial precedents receive

Precedent and Reliance

Among the most prevalent justifications for deference to judicial precedent is the protection of reliance interests. The theory is that when judicial pronouncements have engendered significant reliance, there should be a meaningful presumption against adjudicative change. Yet there remains a fundamental question as to why reliance on precedent warrants judicial protection in the first place. This Article explores the dynamics and implications of precedential reliance. It contends that the case for protecting reliance on precedent is uncertain. There are several reasons why reliance might potentially be worth protecting, but all are subject to serious limitations or challenges. To bolster the doctrine of stare decisis while the status of precedential reliance continues to be worked out, the Article suggests a conceptual move away from backwardlooking reliance and toward the forward-looking interest in managing the disruptive impacts of adjudicative change for society at large

The Scope of Precedent

The scope of Supreme Court precedent is capacious. Justices of the Court commonly defer to sweeping rationales and elaborate doctrinal frameworks articulated by their predecessors. This practice infuses judicial precedent with the prescriptive power of enacted constitutional and statutory text. The lower federal courts follow suit, regularly abiding by the Supreme Court’s broad pronouncements. These phenomena cannot be explained by—and, indeed, oftentimes subvert—the classic distinction between binding holdings and dispensable dicta. This Article connects the scope of precedent with recurring and foundational debates about the proper ends of judicial interpretation. A precedent’s forward- looking effect should not depend on the superficial categories of holding and dictum. Instead, it should reflect deeper normative commitments that define the nature of adjudication within American legal culture. The account that emerges is one in which the scope of precedent is inextricably linked to interpretive theory and constitutional understandings. Divergent methods of interpretation, from originalism to common law constitutionalism and beyond, carry distinctive implications for describing a precedent’s constraining effect. So, too, do various methods of interpretation in the statutory and common law contexts. Ultimately, what should determine the scope of precedent is the set of premises—regarding the judicial role, the separation of powers, and the relevance of history, morality, and policy—that informs a judge’s methodological choices

Institutional Autonomy and Constitutional Structure

This Review makes two claims. The first is that Paul Horwitz’s excellent book, First Amendment Institutions, depicts the institutionalist movement in robust and provocative form. The second is that it would be a mistake to assume from its immersion in First Amendment jurisprudence (not to mention its title) that the book\u27s implications are limited to the First Amendment. Professor Horwitz presents First Amendment institutionalism as a wide-ranging theory of constitutional structure whose focus is as much on constraining the authority of political government as it is on facilitating expression. These are the terms on which the book\u27s argument — and, to a large extent, the leading edge of contemporary institutionalist thinking — ought to be received, understood, and evaluated

Second Thoughts About the First Amendment

The U.S. Supreme Court has shown a notable willingness to reconsider — and depart from — its First Amendment precedents. In recent years the Court has marginalized its prior statements regarding the constitutional value of false speech. It has revamped its process for identifying categorical exceptions to First Amendment protection. It has rejected its past decisions on corporate electioneering and aggregate campaign contributions. And it has revised its earlier positions on union financing, abortion protesting, and commercial speech. Under the conventional view of constitutional adjudication, dubious precedents enjoy a presumption of validity through the doctrine of stare decisis. This Article contends that within the First Amendment context, there is no such presumption. When the Court concludes that a precedent reflects a cramped vision of expressive liberty, adherence to the past gives way. Unfettered speech, not legal continuity, is the touchstone. The best explanation for this phenomenon is the role of free speech in the constitutional order. The Court’s tendency is to characterize affronts to expressive liberty as dangerous steps toward governmental repression and distortion. From this perspective, it is little wonder that the Court eschews continuity with the past. Legal stability may be significant, but official orthodoxy seems like an excessive price to pay. Yet the Court’s practice raises serious questions. Departures from precedent can be problematic, especially when they become so frequent as to compromise the notion of constitutional law as enduring and impersonal. If the doctrine of stare decisis is to serve its core functions of stabilizing and unifying constitutional law across time, the desire to protect expressive liberty must yield, at least occasionally, to the need for keeping faith with the past

Statutory Interpretation, Administrative Deference, and the Law of Stare Decisis

This Article examines three facets of the relationship between statutory interpretation and the law of stare decisis: judicial interpretation, administrative interpretation, and interpretive methodology. In analyzing these issues, I emphasize the role of stare decisis in pursuing balance between past and present. That role admits of no distinction between statutory and constitutional decisions, calling into question the practice of giving superstrong deference to judicial interpretations of statutes. The pursuit of balance also suggests that one Supreme Court cannot bind future Justices to a wide-ranging interpretive methodology. As for rules requiring deference to administrative interpretations of statutes and regulations, they are articulated at high levels of generality, cut across numerous contexts, and dictate the inferences that future Justices must draw from congressional and administrative ambiguity. Taken in combination, these factors give rise to a strong argument that deference regimes like the Chevron and Auer doctrines fall outside the bounds of stare decisis

Leverage

Sometimes government operates by inducement rather than order. Congress distributes money to the states. A state grants funds to nonprofit organizations. An administrative agency offers wages and professional opportunities to its staff. A high school provides instruction to its students. In each situation, the government furnishes something of value. And in each situation, it asks something in return—whether implementation of a government program, forbearance from activities deemed inconsistent with operational goals, conduct in pursuit of an employment mission, or compliance with standards of academic discipline. Though they arise in different contexts, these varied forms of government action present the same core question of constitutional justification. The issue in each case is the extent of the government’s power to bargain for what it does not, will not, or cannot demand. It is beyond dispute that state and federal governments have broad authority to implement policy through inducements. It is just as clear that there are limits on what governments may buy. As it has explored those limits in recent years, the Supreme Court has turned repeatedly to the concept of leverage: the government’s exploitation of a public asset to influence unrelated behavior