Originalism and the Law of the Past

Originalism has long been criticized for its “law office history” and other historical sins. But a recent “positive turn” in originalist thought may help make peace between history and law. On this theory, originalism is best understood as a claim about our modern law — which borrows many of its rules, constitutional or otherwise, from the law of the past. Our law happens to be the Founders’ law, unless lawfully changed. This theory has three important implications for the role of history in law. First, whether and how past law matters today is a question of current law, not of history. Second, applying that current law may often require deference to historical expertise, but for a more limited inquiry: one that looks specifically at legal doctrines and instruments, interprets those instruments in artificial ways, and makes use of evidentiary principles and default rules when the history is obscure. Third, ordinary legal reasoning already involves the application of old law to new facts, an inquiry that might other-wise seem daunting or anachronistic. Applying yesterday’s “no vehicles in the park” ordinance is no less fraught — and no more so — than applying Founding-era legal doctrines

Brief of Professors William Baude and Stephen E. Sachs as Amici Curiae in Support of Neither Party

This case presents the question whether to overrule Nevada v. Hall, 440 U.S. 410 (1979). That question requires careful attention to the legal status of sovereign immunity and to the Constitution’s effect on it, which neither Hall nor either party has quite right. The Founders did not silently constitutionalize a common-law immunity, but neither did they leave each State wholly free to hale other States before its courts. While Hall’s holding was mostly right, other statements in Hall are likely quite wrong—yet this case is a poor vehicle for reconsidering them. Hall correctly held that States lack a constitutional immunity in sister-state courts. The Founders viewed each State as immune from such suits under the common law and the law of nations. Before the Constitution’s enactment, this was plainly not a constitutional right, and nothing in the Constitution changed that. Thus, Hall properly rejected the argument that there is a “federal rule of law implicit in the Constitution that requires all of the states to adhere to the sovereign-immunity doctrine as it prevailed when the Constitution was adopted.” Hall went too far, however, in denying that “the Constitution places any limit on the exercise of one State’s power to authorize its courts to assert jurisdiction over another State,” and in reducing sister-state immunity to a “matter of comity.” In particular, Hall was likely wrong to assume that a State’s abrogation of immunity in its own courts could be projected outward so as to bind other state and federal courts. In an appropriate case, these principles might justify revisiting and narrowing portions of Hall. Yet this case is a poor vehicle for doing so. Because the case has been improperly framed by the parties and cannot be resolved properly without further briefing, the Court should dismiss the writ as improvidently granted. Alternatively, it should dismiss for lack of jurisdiction—or, if satisfied of its jurisdiction, should affirm

The Law of Interpretation

How should we interpret legal instruments? How do we identify the law they create? Current approaches largely fall into two broad camps. The standard picture of interpretation is focused on language, using various linguistic conventions to discover a document\u27s meaning or a drafter\u27s intent. Those who see language as less determinate take a more skeptical view, urging judges to make interpretive choices on policy grounds. Yet both approaches neglect the most important resource available: the already applicable rules of law. Legal interpretation is neither a subfield of linguistics nor an exercise in policymaking. Rather, it is deeply shaped by preexisting legal rules. These rules tell us what legal materials to read and how to read them. Like other parts of the law, what we call the law of interpretation has a claim to guide the actions of judges, officials, and private interpreters -- even if it isn\u27t ideal. We argue that legal interpretive rules are conceptually possible, normatively sensible, and actually part of our legal system. This Article thus reframes the theory of statutory and constitutional interpretation, distinguishing purely linguistic questions from legal questions to which language offers no unique answer. It also has two concrete implications of note. It provides a framework for analyzing the canons of interpretation, determining whether they are legally valid and how much authority they bear. And it helps resolve debates over constitutional interpretation and construction, explaining how construction can go beyond the text but not beyond the law

Originalism’s Bite

Is originalism toothless? Richard Posner seems to think so. He writes that repeated theorizing by intelligent originalists, one of us happily included, has rendered the theory incoherent and capable of supporting almost any result. We appreciate the attention, but we fear we\u27ve been misunderstood. Our view is that originalism permits arguments from precedent, changed circumstances, or whatever you like, but only to the extent that they lawfully derive from the law of the founding. This kind of originalism, surprisingly common in American legal practice, is catholic in theory but exacting in application. It might look tame, but it has bite

Precedent and Discretion

Supreme Court precedent is a topic of perennial prominence. The Court overruled or severely limited multiple precedents last year, just as it did the year before that. Because of our widely-repeated norm of stare decisis, every overruling is criticized. Scholars have then debated whether the Court needs a stronger norm of stare decisis, so that it overrules fewer cases

Reflections of a Supreme Court Commissioner

In 2021, President Joseph Biden convened a presidential commission to consider proposals to reform the Supreme Court. Dozens of witnesses dressed up to provide live testimony to the commission, thousands of people wrote in with additional testimony, and the commission ultimately sent the President a 294-page report.1 I served on that commission and agreed to submit our report to the President. But much is lost in committee. What follows are my own views on the subjects we considered. In keeping with the structure of the commission’s report, Part I addresses background, Part II addresses court packing, Part III addresses term limits, Part IV addresses jurisdiction stripping and related reforms, and Part V addresses the shadow docket. Part VI addresses the commission itself

State Regulation and the Necessary and Proper Clause

The new marijuana federalism is here, but is it here to stay? In this Article, I address that question by way of two related points, a practical one and a technical one, and I ultimately argue that state regulation should have a bigger role in fixing the limits of federal constitutional power. The practical point is that the current regime of state marijuana legalization is unstable, and it is a miracle that it is working as well as it is. Because marijuana remains contraband at the federal level, businesses and lawmakers who invest in responsible legalization at the state level have no guarantee their investments are safe from the whims of federal law enforcement. Moreover, even if the federal drug laws are not actively enforced in those states, the laws create serious problems for banks, lawyers, and others who might otherwise want to work with the in-state marijuana industry. The technical point is that this instability can be traced to an importantly erroneous footnote in the Supreme Court’s decision in Gonzales v. Raich. Footnote 38 claims that state law can never be relevant to the scope of Congress’s power under the Commerce Clause or the Necessary and Proper Clause. That conclusion is wrong, is not required by the rest of the Court’s enumerated powers jurisprudence, and should be cast aside. The Necessary and Proper Clause should be interpreted to give states a bigger role in determining when the federal drug laws are constitutional. Congress’s power to reach purely in-state conduct is premised on the possibility of interstate spillovers. If a state legalizes and regulates a drug in a way that minimizes the risk of spillovers into the interstate black market, the federal drug laws should be forbidden to apply within that state. This both creates a more stable set of incentives for states to responsibly manage local behavior and provides a more satisfactory formal grounding for the executive nonenforcement policy