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Tuesday, March 07, 2006

The Roberts Court Methodology

David Barron (Law, Harvard) has some very interesting thoughts on LawCulture on what seems to be emerging as Chief Justice Roberts' interpretive methodology: he doesn't like and won't cite any source that hasn't been authored by one of the three branches of government.  No foreign law; no law review articles; no treatises.  Here's David's evaluation:

On the one hand, it has a kind of no nonsense quality about it -- a just the facts ma'm style fully in accord with the new conservative judicial pose on display at the last two confirmation hearings.  On the other hand, it might also suggest a vision of constitutional decision making that is awfully cramped and technical, in which the only guideposts are past cases, and statutory and regulatory texts stripped of their context, animating purposes or ideas.  Lost in this approach is any sense of the broader legal culture that produces authoritative legal statements or the way in which such statements in turn shape the culture.  It is statecraft by hornbook.  It's too early to tell of course, whether there is anything to this "pattern." But it's worth watching -- and challenging if it develops into an actual theory of constitutional decision making.

Interesting.  It is hard to disagree that such a methodology seems "cramped;" but given what we all know about precedent and its failure to constrain, it seems likely that one still needs normative direction in choosing among relevant cases.  For that task, law review articles and treatises remain informative -- and will inform how precedent is used to achieve certain results.  This is not CLS or realism really -- just a realization that even if a handful of Justices stop citing anything but cases, we law professors will still have a function in writing about doctrine.  To be sure, our influence may be silent.  But toiling away without getting cited is something with which most law professors are well-acquainted.

Posted by Ethan Leib on March 7, 2006 at 11:55 AM in Constitutional thoughts | Permalink

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Not only did it (in the FAIR/Solomon case) unanimously reject the position taken by law school faculty in serried ranks assembled, but Chief Justice Roberts is hinting that he'll follow his predecessor Rehnquist in favoring arguments based on "authorit... [Read More]

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» Supreme Court ignoring lawprofs from PointOfLaw Forum
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Tracked on Mar 8, 2006 11:52:22 AM

» Blog Round-Up - Wednesday, March 8th from SCOTUSblog
On FAIR v. Rumsfeld: This week the Legal Affairs Debate Club asks, "Is FAIR v. Rumsfeld Bad for Free Speech?" Debating are Mark Moller, the editor-in-chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review and a co-author of Cato's amicus brief in... [Read More]

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» Supreme Court ignoring lawprofs from PointOfLaw Forum
Not only did it (in the FAIR/Solomon case) unanimously reject the position taken by law school faculty in serried ranks assembled, but Chief Justice Roberts is hinting that he'll follow his predecessor Rehnquist in favoring arguments based on "authorit... [Read More]

Tracked on Mar 8, 2006 5:00:50 PM

» Blog Round-Up - Wednesday, March 8th from SCOTUSblog
On FAIR v. Rumsfeld: This week the Legal Affairs Debate Club asks, "Is FAIR v. Rumsfeld Bad for Free Speech?" Debating are Mark Moller, the editor-in-chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review and a co-author of Cato's amicus brief in... [Read More]

Tracked on Mar 8, 2006 10:47:36 PM

» Blog Round-Up - Wednesday, March 8th from SCOTUSblog
On FAIR v. Rumsfeld: This week the Legal Affairs Debate Club asks, "Is FAIR v. Rumsfeld Bad for Free Speech?" Debating are Mark Moller, the editor-in-chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review and a co-author of Cato's amicus brief in... [Read More]

Tracked on Mar 9, 2006 11:31:28 AM

» Blog Round-Up - Wednesday, March 8th from SCOTUSblog
On FAIR v. Rumsfeld: This week the Legal Affairs Debate Club asks, "Is FAIR v. Rumsfeld Bad for Free Speech?" Debating are Mark Moller, the editor-in-chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review and a co-author of Cato's amicus brief in... [Read More]

Tracked on Mar 9, 2006 12:41:30 PM

» Blog Round-Up from SCOTUSblog
On FAIR v. Rumsfeld: This week the Legal Affairs Debate Club asks, "Is FAIR v. Rumsfeld Bad for Free Speech?" Debating are Mark Moller, the editor-in-chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review and a co-author of Cato's amicus brief in... [Read More]

Tracked on Mar 9, 2006 1:41:09 PM

» Supreme Court ignoring lawprofs from PointOfLaw Forum
Not only did it (in the FAIR/Solomon case) unanimously reject the position taken by law school faculty in serried ranks assembled, but Chief Justice Roberts is hinting that he'll follow his predecessor Rehnquist in favoring arguments based on "authorit... [Read More]

Tracked on Mar 1, 2007 10:45:15 AM

Comments

I agree with "no treatises". If a court does not have binding precedent from its own jurisdiction on a point of law it should take the trouble to treat it as a matter of first impression and create some. (I hated getting unpublished orders that cited Am.Jur. as their basis).

Posted by: nk | Mar 8, 2006 8:08:46 AM

I'm sorry, I mistyped that: use -

(a href="http://www.target_site.tld/pagename")explanatory text(/a)

BUT, instead of using parentheses, use triangular trackets, i.e. <> instead of (). That should work.

Posted by: Simon | Mar 7, 2006 5:40:18 PM

Mary,
Regarding links, most blogs (as opposed to bulletin boards) that permit links use standard HTML tags. It's diffiult to demonstrate without the blog parsing the HTML, so to include a link, you would write:

(a href="href="http://www.target_site.tld/pagename")explanatory text(/a)

BUT, instead of using parentheses, use triangular trackets (i.e. ).

Posted by: Simon | Mar 7, 2006 5:39:11 PM

"affirance simply can be invested"=affirmance simply can be invented

Posted by: Mary K. Day-Petrano | Mar 7, 2006 5:25:29 PM

Simon, I apologize for not providing the link to your previous post. I still do not know how to do a link on this blawg. Thank you for your previous comment. I am thinking perhaps the reason I am now ruled to have a disability of being unable to see, i.e., blind, is precisely because of this problem existing in Florida when the record is not properly provided for the judge to review through no fault of the appellant. And so, without the record, "facts" that result in the conviction and its affirance simply can be invested out of thin air. A travesty, except now I will have the opportunity I am sure to learn brail and get a seeing eye dog.

Posted by: Mary K. Day-Petrano | Mar 7, 2006 5:23:11 PM

Regarding Mary's comment above, since I'm quoted, I feel I should offer a touch of clarification - the post Mary quotes is here. Mary raised a point that the Supreme Court should grant cert in a Florida case, Jones v. State, in which the Florida Supreme Court held (seemingly contrary to its own cited precedents, hence my confusion with the majority) that the inability of the district court to provide a transcript if the trial was not injurious to the petitioner's right to appeal and that there was no need to order a new trial. This strikes me as absurd result and a deprivation of meaningful appellate review, and I fully agree with Mary and the Jones dissent in this regard. The dissent argued this result was reached in violation of the Florida State Constitution, as construed, and I would suggest that it may well violate the Fourteenth Amendment, and so I (possibly naively) agree with Mary that the Supreme Court should grant cert.

Posted by: Simon | Mar 7, 2006 2:23:01 PM

Ethan:
You're probably right, but it's true to say - as has been observed here at Prawfs before - that some conservatives like to (try to) read the word "treaties" out of the supremacy clause, so I thought perhaps that was where David was going with it.

Posted by: Simon | Mar 7, 2006 2:07:34 PM

"what seems to be emerging as Chief Justice Roberts' interpretive methodology ...." Gosh, I am still trying to make sense of the new conservative "interpretative methodology," given SCOTUS' Mon. Mar.06, 2006 case disposition, upholding the Florida courts' res judicata ruling of medical diagnosis by judicial officers without medical licensure that my 20/20 vision establishes (invents) that I have a new Americans With Disabilities Act protected disability I did not know I have -- can't see, i.e, blind.

Simon writes on SCOTUSblog – “I have to admit that, on the basis of her previous comments at SCOTUSblog, I approach the prospect of agreeing with Mary with some trepidation, but I have to admit that having read the Jones v. State opinion, my gut feeling is that the dissent has it absolutely right. Frankly, I have to admit that I'm confused by the majority.”

I can understand Simon’s “trepidation,” but, based on the following, I dispute that such trepidation should be ascribed to me rather than America’s lawyers and judges making medical diagnoses without medical licensure.

I am disabled, autistic. I also have traumatic brain injury from my father bashing my head against his walls to cover up drugging me and sexually abusing me when I was a minor child.

I have lived a life of Hell on Earth, no affordable housing. Lived in my car, in vineyards in California at nite, and in a rat infested chinchilla barn with no toilet, heat, or food facilities.

I tried to pull myself up by my bootstraps. Went to college on student loans, $200,000 at last count. Fought valiantly to graduate law school.

My father, who bashed my head, could not let the defective child become a lawyer and expose his National Security surveillance work for IBM. So he spent $100,000 on five attorneys and a family law psychologist to abuse me in the California courts in a grandparent visitation, taking away complete custody over my daughter just because he "could provide better" on his $12,600 per month income than I could being disabled -- never any finding of parental unfitness on my part.

The California courts refused to provide my necessary reasonable accommodations to access the courts to fight for my daughter, so my mother tried to help scribe my pleadings for me. Allowing a defective disabled autistic to actually participate in court was too much for the Court system and the attorneys, so they caused my mother (who was my caretaker and financial provider) to set herself on fire and die on my father's front law with public protest signs over the abuse, which I witnessed acquiring PTSD.

Immediately after she died, I was thrown on the streets homeless with no replacement caretaker or financial support of any kind. It was a terror-filled torture I cannot begin to describe. I begged everyone I still knew to help me get pleadings scribed to put before the California court that killed her to ask my father to pay disability adult child support, since after my mother died he was my only available guardian for purposes of my ability to communicate with courts and agencies for disability benefits.

The California courts have never in 16 years given me a day for that hearing, ever.

My father hired new attorneys to threaten me, knowing he was my guardian and had fiduciary duties to assist me with obtaining the disability adult support from him, who threatened that if I did not sign a paper dropping my necessary disability support, my father would destroy my California bar admission.

Immediately after my mother died, the California Bar revoked my previously granted good moral character clearance because I was disabled and my mother had self-immolated and I lost my caretaker and financial supporter. Even though I fought with them for 7 long years to get my necessary reasonable accommodations, and finally when I got them on the 4th bar examination and passed, they ruled I was not of the moral character to be allowed to become a California lawyer because I kept being homeless due to no housing in that area of California anyone on SSI disability could afford and because without a speech recognition assistive device I was unable to perform the tasks of working. They approved the good moral character of a murderer with 17 felony convictions who stabbed to death with scissors his sister.

When I tried to appeal, I was never to this day, 16 years later, allowed to have my appeal pleadings docketed, never given any appeal review, and they simply closed my case in a non-final status. When I asked the California Supreme Court for reasonable accommodations to file a petition to get an order requiring the appeal to be heard, I was told by the Clerk of Court on instructions of the Chief Justice Ronald M. George that people without arms, quadraplegics, and people with autism/learning disabilities who use speech recognition will not be licensed as attorneys in California.

I fled to Florida, to try to get my bar admission there. My father surreptitiously followed me closeby concealing himself just over the border in Georgia, and continued to prey on my daughter and myself to make sure I never get my bar admission.

I was hit in a car accident by a speeding driver who admitted not looking at the road while she was driving, and a Florida court refused to accommodate my disabilities to enable me to participate in the traffic hearing, used but never let me see a transcript, never let me cross-examine witnesses against me, lost more than 650 pages of my disability documentation showing I had 20/20 vision and a perfect driving record the previous 10 years without even a parking ticket on it -- and diagnosed me without a medical license as being unable to see, i.e. blind.

Having diagnosed and ruled I am blind and that is why I should lose my driver's license, the Florida courts all the way to the Florida Supreme Court held appeal review without providing me any way to complete pleadings knowing they ruled me blind!! If I am ruled blind, how could I even know the charges against me without brail??? No problem, I was convicted of a lesser included civil infraction of a criminal traffic offense I did not commit, which is not allowable as any infraction or offense existing under Florida law -- and upon this non-existent infraction/offense I have lost my driver's license and any independence I could have hoped for now for four years and it is ongoing.

I petitioned the United States Supreme Court, ruled blind, and no one there bothered to ask if I could "see" the pleadings I was ordered to file, and then, on the above facts, my petition was denied certiorari (US SUP. CT Docket No. 05-7287), leaving me now res judicata (all other courts and agencies must accept) that I am ruled with a new disability, I cannot see, i.e., am blind. I have been chastised before for seeing this like Dred Scott, so, not to despair, this new ruling give me new hope – to be the first blind person in America to pursue a driver’s license.

Now, I guess that also makes me eligible for all blind disability benefits of the States and Federal government, and retroactively to the Aug. 11, 2002 period in which I was ruled blind, but how can I explain to them when I apply how I can see with 20/20 vision but I have been ruled by the United States Supreme Court disposition of my case as blind, and all other courts and agencies must accept this diagnosis? Meanwhile, the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles has no reasonable accommodations on its driver's licensing tests to accommodation people ruled and diagnosed blind!! Even though I can see.

Now I am being denied my Florida bar admission for more than four years, because I cannot access the Florida Board of Bar Examiners web site Florida Bar Application since I use speech recognition device and have simultaneously been ruled diagnosed blind and cannot see. The FBBE’s web site application is not provided in brail, nor would I be able to understand the brail to fill the bar application absent brail training now being provided me by the State of Florida. So, again, I am locked out.

When I pursued my cases for my disability rights, while minding my own business, a Vessel surveillance platform was docked adjacent to my husband and I, where we lived on a decrepid sailing vessel (due to no affordable housing in Florida), and was recklessly tied during 2004 Hurricane Jeanne ensured to kill us. And to prey upon a disabled person ruled by the United States Supreme Court’s case disposition as blind!! A most despicable act. Why? Because I tried to enforce my disability civil rights?

Even though, upon arresting the imperiled recklessly tied Vessel in admiralty, the Magistrate ruled we have a meritorious six-figure salvage claim, the other side (who can only substantiate ownership of the offending Vessel with unreliable xerox copies), brought forth an admitted perjurer who committed perjury under Oath in Federal Court about his licensing, to conceal the whereabouts of the person who homicidally tied the Vessel. See, Petranos v. The Vessel Mistress, M.D. Fla. 04-cv-2534.

So, to crush disability rights of a person who has 20/20 vision but ruled by the highest Court in the land’s case disposition to be diagnosed blind, the perjurer brought forth to conceal the person who tried to kill my husband and I to stop my disability rights lawsuits, has been allowed by the Bush administration's FBI, US Coast Guard, and Federal District Court Judge James D. Whittemore to masquerade with false licensing credentials – thereby threatening the National ports security in light of the UAE/Dubai crisis.

I just wanted everyone to know that even when a disabled person tries to help themselves to be independent, working, and productive, the only fate the Bush administration and America’s courts system intend to allow is their death and destruction.

And I have been ruled and diagnosed blind!! When is Florida getting me my seeing eye dog?

Posted by: Mary K. Day-Petrano | Mar 7, 2006 2:07:10 PM

Thanks, Kevin, for the fact-checking. I hope that's the last time I defer to a Harvard Law School professor without checking for myself. It may be, however, that a judge's law review articles stand on a different footing. Is that tenable? Perhaps; perhaps not.

Simon: I think you are right about treaties; I just assumed a scrivener's error and thought David meant treatises rather than treaties. Given the context and its appearance right before casebooks, I think that's a reasonable construction. A "noscitur a sociis" of sorts!

Posted by: Ethan Leib | Mar 7, 2006 1:59:09 PM

Chief Justice Roberts actually has cited a law review article in one of his opinions. He gave a hat-tip to Judge Friendly's article, Indiscretion About Discretion, 31 Emory L.J. 747, 758 (1982), in his opinion in Martin v. Franklin Capital Corp., 126 S. Ct. 704, 710 (U.S. 2005).

Posted by: Kevin | Mar 7, 2006 1:39:08 PM

Md-
That's C.J.Roberts to you.

Posted by: Simon | Mar 7, 2006 1:30:54 PM

Your comment calls to mind a piece a few years back by Professor Jack Balkin on Postmodernism and its effect on constitutional discourse and interpretation. Balkin observed that for some time, the courts and the legal academy have not really been talking to one another at all, and that this disjunction is quintessentially postmodernist -- betokening the perhaps irretrievable fragmentation of constitutional discourse. The courts are interested in certain kinds of "cramped" legal methodologies, leading them to particular sorts of results, while legal academics march on with their own theories and discussions, having largely repudiated the courts as legitimate interpretative voices, yet never really expecting that their own views will have any effect on "real law."

In any event, rest assured. There is still a place for nuanced and abstruse, penetrating socio-legal critique. Just don't expect J. Roberts to care.

Posted by: md | Mar 7, 2006 12:58:13 PM

I was struck by the fact that the opinion cities solely to prior supreme court opinions, statutes, and regulations. No references to law review literature, treaties, casebooks, or anything else not written by one of the three branches themselves.I would suggest that this miscategorizes treaties; although none are cited in FAIR, I would suggest that ratified treaties would very definitely fall into the same category as the other members of the "okay by Roberts" crowd (prior supreme court opinions, statutes, and regulations).

Moreover, I find it pretty hard to agree with the statement that "perhaps it's not just foreign law that the new conservative judicial philosophy thinks is illegitimate; it's everything that's not an autoritative statement of a constitutionally recognized branch of govenrment"; the problem with foreign laws and precedents isn't just (or even primarily) its lack of a democratic foundation. If that was the principle problem with it, then that would indeed rule out law review articles from citation, yet Justices Scalia and Thomas, the two members of the court least amenable to importing foreign precedent, have at least semi-often cited law review articles in their opinions. It just seems far too early to be making predictions about our Fearless Leader's methodology on so limited a pool of opinions.

Posted by: Simon | Mar 7, 2006 12:47:01 PM

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