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Debunking the Nondelegation Doctrine for State Regulation of Federal Elections

One objection to the conduct of the 2020 election concerned the key role played by state executives in setting election rules. Governors and elections officials intervened to change a host of regulations, from ballot deadlines to polling times, often acting pursuant to legislation granting them emergency powers. Some advocates, politicians, and judges cried foul. They argued that state legislatures may not devolve the power to set the “Times, Places, and Manner” of federal elections under Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution.

This Article contests that view. Drawing on a survey of elections statutes in the thirteen original colonies, I argue that local officials frequently made critical decisions about the time, place, and manner of early American elections. Executive officers like sheriffs and local officials like selectmen had enormous discretion to determine the time and place of elections, and sometimes also their manner. That discretion was repeatedly affirmed by Congress. Advocates of the Independent State Legislature (“ISL”) theory must interpret these exercises of local power as evidence that Founding-era legislatures delegated their power under the Elections Clause. As a doctrinal matter, this history suggests that courts embracing the ISL theory ought to accord a broad permission for legislatures to delegate their Elections Clause powers today. For opponents of the ISL theory, the history of local power over federal elections may provide further reasons to question the literal meaning of the term “legislature” in Article I, Section 4.

Introduction

Imagine that a state legislature amends its election laws by passing the following statute: “The Secretary of State is authorized to amend existing election law if, in her judgement, such amendments would promote the fairness of an upcoming election.” Call this the “Delegation Act”; assume it is legal under the state constitution. Would a regulation promulgated under this Act violate Article I, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution?

This hypothetical question was exactly the one faced by tens of federal courts during the 2020 election, when state executives across the country began modifying election rules to ensure COVID-safe elections. The result was a serious divide between Supreme Court precedent and a literalist reading of the Elections Clause pressed by textualists.

Article I, Section 4’s Elections Clause provides that “[t]he Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof.”1 1.U.S. Const. art. I, § 4, cl. 1 (emphasis added). The Constitution contains numerous references to elections, but in this Article, I use the phrase “Elections Clause” to refer specifically to this clause.Show More Precedent going back over a century reads this clause broadly, such that that “Legislature” means “whoever is allowed to legislate.”2 2.See Smiley v. Holm, 285 U.S. 355, 368 (1932) (holding that a gubernatorial veto is part of the “legislature” for Elections Clause purposes); Ohio ex rel. Davis v. Hildebrant, 241 U.S. 565, 566, 568 (1916) (holding that the Elections Clause permits Ohio to use a referendum to pass its redistricting plan); see also infra Section I.A (discussing scholars’ broad interpretation of “Legislature”).Show More Under this rule, the Delegation Act is legal: the Secretary of State is authorized to promulgate regulations and is thus “allowed to legislate.”3 3.Of course, the Secretary of State would still be restrained by a number of other federal constitutional provisions, like the Equal Protection Clause and the Due Process Clause.Show More This interpretation was most recently affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2015.4 4.Ariz. State Legislature v. Ariz. Indep. Redistricting Comm’n (“AIRC”), 576 U.S. 787, 808 (2015).Show More

But several Justices have advocated discarding this precedent in favor of an alternative theory of the Elections Clause that features a so-called “Independent State Legislature” (“ISL”).5 5.Other scholars refer to an “Independent State Legislature Doctrine,” see, e.g., Hayward H. Smith, History of the Article II Independent State Legislature Doctrine, 29 Fla. St. U. L. Rev. 731, 732 (2001), though referring to this view as a “doctrine” may lend it too much heft.Show More When the Elections Clause speaks of the “Legislature,” they say, it means that exactly one entity may regulate the time, place, and manner of federal elections: “the representative body which ma[kes] the laws of the people.”6 6.AIRC, 576 U.S. at 825 (Roberts, C.J., dissenting) (alteration in original) (emphasis omitted) (quoting Smiley, 285 U.S. at 365).Show More Legislatures are thus “independent” when regulating federal elections in the sense that they are unbound by state constitutions (and, by implication, are free of the institutions that enforce state constitutions, namely state courts).7 7.See, e.g., Michael T. Morley, The Independent State Legislature Doctrine, Federal Elections, and State Constitutions, 55 Ga. L. Rev. 1, 8 (2020) (“[S]tate constitutions . . . cannot limit a legislature’s power to regulate most aspects of federal elections.”).Show More As this Article was going to press, the Court granted certiorari to reconsider the ISL theory.8 8.See Moore v. Harper, No. 21-1271, 2022 WL 2347621 (U.S. June 30, 2022) (granting certiorari).Show More

The Delegation Act raises a different question arising from the literalist reading of the Elections Clause: May the legislature itself convey its power? This Article argues that the right answer is yes. The Federal Constitution allows expansive legislative delegations under the Elections Clause.

That claim is contested among proponents of the Independent State Legislature theory. Some approve of delegations. Chief Justice Rehnquist’s concurrence in Bush v. Gore9 9.531 U.S. 98, 112 (2000) (per curiam). An earlier per curiam decision in Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board, 531 U.S. 70, 76–77 (2000), had also strongly intimated that the Court was inclined to adopt the Independent State Legislature theory, but the opinion fell short of actually adopting the theory as its holding.Show More endorses the Florida Legislature’s decision to “delegate[] the authority to run the elections and to oversee election disputes to the Secretary of State . . . and to state circuit courts.”10 10.Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. at 113–14.Show More The Arizona Legislature made similar arguments when it challenged a referendum establishing an independent redistricting commission in 2015: the legislature, it claimed, has total freedom to assign its regulatory duties to whomever it pleases.11 11.AIRC, 576 U.S. at 814.Show More

But more recent treatments of the ISL theory have begun to view delegations with greater skepticism. Several articles have expressed doubt about the propriety of delegations under the Elections Clause, arguing that the legislature cannot empower others to make rules for federal elections.12 12.I provide more detail on this claim in Section I.A, infra. To briefly summarize that discussion, two prominent scholars have advocated a strict view of statutory delegations. Derek Muller claims in a 2016 piece that “the historical understanding of the power of the ‘Legislature’ precluded a delegation of its power to another entity,” an almost-wholesale repudiation of delegations. Derek T. Muller, Legislative Delegations and the Elections Clause, 43 Fla. St. U. L. Rev. 717, 718 (2016). In some of his writing, Michael Morley has likewise argued against any restrictions on legislative power to set election regulations, including restrictions passed by legislatures themselves. Morley, supra note 7, at 92 (arguing that state legislatures should not be able to restrict their own “inalienable authority granted by the U.S. Constitution” to write elections laws); Michael T. Morley, The New Elections Clause, 91 Notre Dame L. Rev. Online 79, 93–94 (2016) [hereinafter Morley, The New Elections Clause] (criticizing AIRC for foreclosing future delegation challenges). Note, however, that a more recent perspective disclaims hostility to delegations. Michael T. Morley, The Independent State Legislature Doctrine, 90 Fordham L. Rev. 501, 555 (2021) [hereinafter Morley, The Independent State Legislature Doctrine].Show More And even more modest proposals, like the proposal to use the general federal nondelegation doctrine in federal elections, open the door to a future in which legislative delegations under the Elections Clause are highly contested.13 13.That is, many scholars expect federal nondelegation doctrine to be significantly tightened in coming years. See, e.g., Nicholas R. Parrillo, A Critical Assessment of the Originalist Case Against Administrative Regulatory Power: New Evidence from the Federal Tax on Private Real Estate in the 1790s, 130 Yale L.J. 1288, 1295–97 (2021) (describing the support for a much more stringent version of the doctrine). If this were to occur, then applying federal nondelegation rules to state elections might prove problematic.Show More

Some members of the judiciary appear even more hostile to Elections Clause delegations. During the 2020 election, a number of plaintiffs who brought Elections Clause challenges against executive actions found a sympathetic audience among federal judges. Citing the Elections Clause, for instance, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit overturned a Minnesota order extending the deadline for receiving mail-in ballots, even though the Minnesota Secretary of State claimed to possess delegated statutory authority to issue it.14 14.Carson v. Simon, 978 F.3d 1051, 1062 (8th Cir. 2020); see infra Section I.B.Show More Other judges either followed suit or issued dissenting opinions indicating they would have liked to.15 15.Tex. League of United Latin Am. Citizens v. Hughs, 978 F.3d 136, 150 (5th Cir. 2020) (Ho, J., concurring); Wise v. Circosta, 978 F.3d 93, 104 (4th Cir. 2020) (en banc) (Wilkinson & Agee, JJ., dissenting); see infra Section I.B.Show More

In short, an emerging movement that spans academia and the judiciary would severely curtail the power of state legislatures to delegate power over elections.

This Article’s primary purpose is to show that, as a doctrinal matter, Elections Clause delegations are entirely permissible. The Federal Constitution recognizes the power of state legislatures to delegate their authority over elections to state executives and state courts. Federal courts reviewing such delegations should give full effect to Elections Clause delegations, regardless of their view on whether state legislatures are bound by state constitutions in making federal elections law, and regardless of the delegation rules they might apply to Congress under Article I, Section 8.

I argue that a delegation-friendly reading of the Elections Clause is the only interpretation that accounts for the clear course of practice in the Founding era. Specifically, I undertake an original, comprehensive survey of election laws in the original thirteen states during the four decades following the ratification of the Constitution in 1788. While many scholars have used historical evidence to construe the meaning of the Elections Clause, all previous studies focus on evidence from the Civil War and the decades that followed it.16 16.See infra Section I.A; see also, e.g., Muller, supra note 12, at 718–20 (outlining an argument on legislative delegations rooted in late nineteenth-century congressional precedents and the pre-ratification history of the Seventeenth Amendment).Show More This is the first study to draw on the early American practice most relevant to an originalist interpretation of the Constitution.17 17.The text of the Elections Clause is susceptible to interpretation by reference to historical practice because it is ambiguous with respect to delegations. See William Baude, Constitutional Liquidation, 71 Stan. L. Rev. 1, 14 (2019).To see this, first note that the Elections Clause is simply equivalent to a grant of legislative power—no different than the grant of power to Congress in Article I, Section 8. In particular, no special significance should be attached to the appearance of the word “prescribe,” a word that the Supreme Court’s favorite Founding-era sources treat as synonymous with “make legislation about.” See, e.g., 1 William Blackstone, Commentaries *38 (defining law as a “rule of action, which is prescribed by some superior, and which the inferior is bound to obey”); id. at *44 (“Municipal law . . . is properly defined to be ‘a rule of civil conduct prescribed by the supreme power in a state . . . .’”); id. at *46, *52; see also The Federalist No. 57, at 280 (James Madison) (Terence Ball ed., 2003) (using the phrase “the mode prescribed by the Constitution for the choice of representatives” to refer to the states’ control over elections under the Elections Clause); The Federalist No. 75, at 365 (Alexander Hamilton) (Terence Ball ed., 2003) (“The essence of the legislative authority is to enact laws, or in other words to prescribe rules for the regulation of the society.”). Because “prescribe” simply means “make law about,” the Elections Clause is no different from other grants of legislative power. Does a grant of legislative power preclude delegations?Virtually everyone agrees that the Constitution’s other major grant of legislative power—Article I, Section 8—is textually ambiguous with respect to delegations. See, e.g., Keith E. Whittington & Jason Iuliano, The Myth of the Nondelegation Doctrine, 165 U. Pa. L. Rev.379, 389 (2017) (noting “[t]here is no explicit textual prohibition on the delegation of legislative power,” though “such a rule has long been thought implicit”); Gary Lawson & Patricia B. Granger, The “Proper” Scope of Federal Power: A Jurisdictional Interpretation of the Sweeping Clause, 43 Duke L.J.267, 274, 324 n.233 (1993) (anchoring the nondelegation doctrine in the Necessary & Proper Clause, not in the grant of power at the outset of Article I, Section 8).The conjunction of these two facts suggests that the propriety of Election Clause delegations cannot be determined from the text alone. Thus, historical evidence matters. It might either reveal Americans’ expectations about what the Clause’s text meant or reveal the settlement of their meaning in the first decades of the republic. See Baude, supra, at 14.Show More

The historical evidence shows that local power over elections was widespread in the decades following the Founding. In nine of thirteen states, profoundly consequential control over the “Times” and “Places” of elections was exercised by local officials like sheriffs or justices of the peace. To name just one example, Virginia sheriffs had the authority to adjourn elections up to four days, and they could relocate polling from the county courthouse if the county was “infected with any contagious disease, or . . . in danger of an attack from a public enemy.”18 18.Act effective Jan. 1, 1787, ch. 55, § 3, 1785 Va. Acts 38, 39.Show More Or take New York, where elections inspectors had total power to determine polling places and polling times.19 19.See, e.g., Act of Feb. 13, 1787, ch. 15, § 4, 1787 N.Y. Laws 316, 318; see also infra Appendix (“New York”).Show More Advocates of the Independent State Legislature theory must interpret these examples as delegations, and thus ought to embrace the legality of legislative delegations today.

In modern elections, of course, state executives have joined local officials in exercising power over federal elections. One might well wonder whether there is a constitutional difference between local power at the Founding and state executive power today.

Proponents of the ISL theory cannot sustain that view. First, as a factual matter, both “local” and “executive” officers received delegated power in the Founding era. Second, what makes Founding-era local governments arguably distinguishable from modern-day state executives is their claim to quasi-sovereignty in regulating their own affairs.20 20.See infra Part III.Show More It might thus be plausible to see local control over federal elections as an exercise of inherent, rather than delegated, power, a very different matter than horizontal delegations to state executives. But that interpretation would be utterly incompatible with the Independent State Legislature theory, which requires that state legislatures be the sole sources of legitimate rulemaking authority for federal elections; an exercise of inherent local power would scramble that narrative. Thus, advocates of the ISL theory ought to embrace delegation as the explanation for the historical evidence presented below.

Getting the delegation question right matters a great deal. COVID-19 is a powerful illustration of the need for occasional flexibility in election regulation, with dozens of states shifting their rules via executive action.21 21.See infra note 72 and accompanying text.Show More It is an open question whether safe and fair elections could have been held absent such delegations. But the implications of a nondelegation doctrine for the Elections Clause go far beyond COVID. State and local elections officials depend heavily on delegation to keep their agencies moving.22 22.See, e.g., Justin Weinstein-Tull, Election Law Federalism, 114 Mich. L. Rev. 747, 778–80 (2016); Daniel P. Tokaji, The Future of Elections Reform: From Rules to Institutions, 28 Yale L. & Pol’y Rev.125, 130–31 (2009) (describing the discretion baked into current election administration systems).Show More Adopting a nondelegation rule would wreak havoc on those systems.

With that said, the primary purpose of this Article is to intervene in the doctrinal debate over Elections Clause delegation; its aim is not to defend the practice of delegation as a matter of policy. It may be true, as some political science research suggests, that delegation is a necessary (though insufficient) ingredient in creating independent and expert agencies, in which case we might see delegation as a good.23 23.See generallyGary J. Miller & Andrew B. Whitford, Above Politics 17–22(2007) (arguing that delegation is key to establishing credibly neutral agencies like the Federal Reserve). As Michael McConnell points out, the issue of neutrality is less pronounced when legislatures make generalized ex ante rules. Michael W. McConnell, Two-and-a-Half Cheers for Bush v Gore, 68 U. Chi. L. Rev. 657, 661–62 (2001). But a regime without any delegation at all would inevitably require significant policy choices to be made at a close enough vantage point to an election that the stakes of any decision, and the likely beneficiaries, would be readily apparent.Show More Some of the examples cited below demonstrate a darker side of delegation, which is the risk that delegees use their positions to further the political ambitions of their allies. For present purposes, I bracket the normative question of whether we ought to celebrate delegation or deplore it. The goal here is to show that local power was a fact that was widely viewed as legal and to draw out the doctrinal implications of that historical evidence.

This Article also does not resolve two broader issues raised by the Independent State Legislature theory, namely (1) whether state legislatures are bound by state constitutions and (2) whether state courts can review state election laws governing federal elections. To be sure, my argument matters most in a world where the ISL theory is adopted, since current doctrine would defer entirely to state constitutions to determine the legality of delegations.24 24.See Ariz. State Legislature v. Ariz. Indep. Redistricting Comm’n (“AIRC”), 576 U.S. 787, 808 (2015) (“[R]edistricting is a legislative function, to be performed in accordance with the State’s prescriptions for lawmaking.”).Show More And the evidence here may be relevant to debates over the ISL theory. As I note above, what I call “silent delegations” to local governments might instead be interpreted as evidence of inherent local power over federal elections, which would undercut the ISL theory’s literalist reading of “legislature.”25 25.As noted below, I thank Greg Ablavsky and Robert Gordon for helping me see this alternative possibility.Show More Also, as Hayward H. Smith has noted, the aggressive delegations I document below may undercut the view that legislative power over federal elections was sacrosanct.26 26.Hayward H. Smith, Revisiting the History of the Independent State Legislature Doctrine, 53 St. Mary’s L.J. (forthcoming 2022) (manuscript at 37), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/paper​s.cfm?abstract_id=3923205 [https://perma.cc/78LE-H76B].Show More But this Article is not primarily about whether the ISL theory is correct.

As I argue in Part I, that is partially in recognition of the fact that the ISL theory appears very likely to be adopted. The Supreme Court has not taken a case addressing the proper interpretation of the Elections Clause since the Arizona redistricting litigation in 2015. In that case, Chief Justice Roberts authored a ringing dissent, joined by Justices Thomas and Alito, effectively endorsing the ISL theory.27 27.AIRC, 576 U.S. at 824–25 (Roberts, C.J., dissenting);see infra note 69 and accompanying text.Show More Today, the Chief Justice would almost certainly be in the majority. Justices Kavanaugh and Gorsuch trumpeted their adherence to the ISL theory during the 2020 election cycle, making five sitting Justices who have recently endorsed the ISL theory in their opinions.28 28.Democratic Nat’l Comm. v. Wis. State Legislature, 141 S. Ct. 28, 29 (2020) (Gorsuch J. concurring); id. at 34 n.1 (Kavanaugh, J. concurring); see infra notes 70–71 and accompanying text.Show More In recent redistricting litigation, several Justices have restated their commitment to this view.29 29.Moore v. Harper, 142 S. Ct. 1089, 1089–90 (2022) (mem.) (Alito, J. dissenting from denial of application for stay); id. at 1089 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring in denial of application for stay).Show More Even if it has not yet powered a majority opinion, the ISL theory already represents the views of the majority on the Supreme Court.

Finally, while this Article’s primary purpose is to contribute to a revived debate on the meaning of the Elections Clause, the pervasiveness of local delegations I document here adds to a growing literature on delegations in the early republic more generally. Most notably, Nicholas Parrillo has recently uncovered the history of federal boards of tax assessors empowered in 1798 to review property assessments under an ambiguous congressional statute.30 30.Parrillo, supra note 13, at 1302, 1304.Show More As Parrillo notes, originalist advocates of a more stringent nondelegation doctrine have traditionally argued that all Founding-era legislative delegations fall into the categories of (1) delegations concerning foreign affairs or (2) voluntary transactions and government benefits, such as those pertaining to veterans’ benefits.31 31.Id. at 1301 & n.48.Show More If, as advocates of the ISL theory believe, state legislatures make federal law when they regulate federal elections and are subject to the same nondelegation rules as Congress,32 32.See, e.g., Morley, The Independent State Legislature Doctrine, supra note 12, at 535 (“When plaintiffs allege a violation of their constitutional rights or federal voting-related statutes, they raise a federal question.”).Show More then the proliferation of delegation in the Elections Clause context would seem to provide another example of delegation under the Federal Constitution that affected the exercise of core political rights.33 33.See supra note 17 for a defense of the view that the language of the Elections Clause is not meaningfully different from that in Article I, Section 8.Show More

This Article proceeds as follows. Part I places this intervention in context by reviewing the scholarly and judicial discussion of the Independent State Legislature theory. It argues that the issue of permissible delegations has yet to be answered by extant scholarship and demonstrates that delegations were a major issue during 2020 election litigation. Part II presents the historical evidence suggesting that expansive and politically significant delegations to local officials were a pervasive feature of early American elections. Part III links that historical record back to modern controversies, arguing that state executives are no different from local officials. I conclude with some reflections on how federal courts should analyze delegations in future litigation.

  1. U.S. Const. art. I, § 4, cl. 1 (emphasis added). The Constitution contains numerous references to elections, but in this Article, I use the phrase “Elections Clause” to refer specifically to this clause. ↑
  2. See Smiley v. Holm, 285 U.S. 355, 368 (1932) (holding that a gubernatorial veto is part of the “legislature” for Elections Clause purposes); Ohio ex rel. Davis v. Hildebrant, 241 U.S. 565, 566, 568 (1916) (holding that the Elections Clause permits Ohio to use a referendum to pass its redistricting plan); see also infra Section I.A (discussing scholars’ broad interpretation of “Legislature”). ↑
  3. Of course, the Secretary of State would still be restrained by a number of other federal constitutional provisions, like the Equal Protection Clause and the Due Process Clause. ↑
  4. Ariz. State Legislature v. Ariz. Indep. Redistricting Comm’n (“AIRC”), 576 U.S. 787, 808 (2015). ↑
  5. Other scholars refer to an “Independent State Legislature Doctrine,” see, e.g., Hayward H. Smith, History of the Article II Independent State Legislature Doctrine, 29 Fla. St. U. L. Rev. 731, 732 (2001), though referring to this view as a “doctrine” may lend it too much heft. ↑
  6. AIRC, 576 U.S. at 825 (Roberts, C.J., dissenting) (alteration in original) (emphasis omitted) (quoting Smiley, 285 U.S. at 365). ↑
  7. See, e.g., Michael T. Morley, The Independent State Legislature Doctrine, Federal Elections, and State Constitutions, 55 Ga. L. Rev. 1, 8 (2020) (“[S]tate constitutions . . . cannot limit a legislature’s power to regulate most aspects of federal elections.”). ↑
  8. See Moore v. Harper, No. 21-1271, 2022 WL 2347621 (U.S. June 30, 2022) (granting certiorari). ↑
  9. 531 U.S. 98, 112 (2000) (per curiam). An earlier per curiam decision in Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board, 531 U.S. 70, 76–77 (2000), had also strongly intimated that the Court was inclined to adopt the Independent State Legislature theory, but the opinion fell short of actually adopting the theory as its holding. ↑
  10. Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. at 113–14. ↑
  11. AIRC, 576 U.S. at 814. ↑
  12. I provide more detail on this claim in Section I.A, infra. To briefly summarize that discussion, two prominent scholars have advocated a strict view of statutory delegations. Derek Muller claims in a 2016 piece that “the historical understanding of the power of the ‘Legislature’ precluded a delegation of its power to another entity,” an almost-wholesale repudiation of delegations. Derek T. Muller, Legislative Delegations and the Elections Clause, 43 Fla. St. U. L. Rev. 717, 718 (2016). In some of his writing, Michael Morley has likewise argued against any restrictions on legislative power to set election regulations, including restrictions passed by legislatures themselves. Morley, supra note 7, at 92 (arguing that state legislatures should not be able to restrict their own “inalienable authority granted by the U.S. Constitution” to write elections laws); Michael T. Morley, The New Elections Clause, 91 Notre Dame L. Rev. Online 79, 93–94 (2016) [hereinafter Morley, The New Elections Clause] (criticizing AIRC for foreclosing future delegation challenges). Note, however, that a more recent perspective disclaims hostility to delegations. Michael T. Morley, The Independent State Legislature Doctrine, 90 Fordham L. Rev. 501, 555 (2021) [hereinafter Morley, The Independent State Legislature Doctrine]. ↑
  13. That is, many scholars expect federal nondelegation doctrine to be significantly tightened in coming years. See, e.g., Nicholas R. Parrillo, A Critical Assessment of the Originalist Case Against Administrative Regulatory Power: New Evidence from the Federal Tax on Private Real Estate in the 1790s,
    130

    Yale

    L.J. 1288, 1295–97

    (2021) (describing the support for a much more stringent version of the doctrine). If this were to occur, then applying federal nondelegation rules to state elections might prove problematic. ↑

  14. Carson v. Simon, 978 F.3d 1051, 1062 (8th Cir. 2020); see infra Section I.B. ↑
  15. Tex. League of United Latin Am. Citizens v. Hughs, 978 F.3d 136, 150 (5th Cir. 2020) (Ho, J., concurring); Wise v. Circosta, 978 F.3d 93, 104 (4th Cir. 2020) (en banc) (Wilkinson & Agee, JJ., dissenting); see infra Section I.B. ↑
  16. See infra Section I.A; see also, e.g., Muller, supra note 12, at 718–20
    (

    outlining an argument on legislative delegations rooted in late nineteenth-century congressional precedents and the pre-ratification history of the Seventeenth Amendment). ↑

  17. The text of the Elections Clause is susceptible to interpretation by reference to historical practice because it is ambiguous with respect to delegations. See William Baude, Constitutional Liquidation, 71 Stan. L. Rev. 1, 14 (2019).To see this, first note that the Elections Clause is simply equivalent to a grant of legislative power—no different than the grant of power to Congress in Article I, Section 8. In particular, no special significance should be attached to the appearance of the word “prescribe,” a word that the Supreme Court’s favorite Founding-era sources treat as synonymous with “make legislation about.” See, e.g., 1 William Blackstone, Commentaries *38 (defining law as a “rule of action, which is prescribed by some superior, and which the inferior is bound to obey”); id. at *44 (“Municipal law . . . is properly defined to be ‘a rule of civil conduct prescribed by the supreme power in a state . . . .’”); id. at *46, *52; see also The Federalist No. 57, at 280 (James Madison) (Terence Ball ed., 2003) (using the phrase “the mode prescribed by the Constitution for the choice of representatives” to refer to the states’ control over elections under the Elections Clause); The Federalist No. 75, at 365 (Alexander Hamilton) (Terence Ball ed., 2003) (“The essence of the legislative authority is to enact laws, or in other words to prescribe rules for the regulation of the society.”). Because “prescribe” simply means “make law about,” the Elections Clause is no different from other grants of legislative power. Does a grant of legislative power preclude delegations?

    Virtually everyone agrees that the Constitution’s other major grant of legislative power—Article I, Section 8—is textually ambiguous with respect to delegations. See, e.g., Keith E. Whittington & Jason Iuliano, The Myth of the Nondelegation Doctrine, 165 U. Pa. L. Rev.

    379, 389 (2017) (noting “[t]here is no explicit textual prohibition on the delegation of legislative power,” though “such a rule has long been thought implicit”); Gary Lawson & Patricia B. Granger, The “Proper” Scope of Federal Power: A Jurisdictional Interpretation of the Sweeping Clause, 43 Duke L.J.

    267, 274, 324 n.233 (1993) (anchoring the nondelegation doctrine in the Necessary & Proper Clause, not in the grant of power at the outset of Article I, Section 8).

    The conjunction of these two facts suggests that the propriety of Election Clause delegations cannot be determined from the text alone. Thus, historical evidence matters. It might either reveal Americans’ expectations about what the Clause’s text meant or reveal the settlement of their meaning in the first decades of the republic. See Baude, supra, at 14. ↑

  18. Act effective Jan. 1, 1787, ch. 55, § 3, 1785 Va. Acts 38, 39. ↑
  19. See, e.g., Act of Feb. 13, 1787, ch. 15, § 4, 1787 N.Y. Laws 316, 318; see also infra Appendix (“New York”). ↑
  20. See infra Part III. ↑
  21. See infra note 72 and accompanying text. ↑
  22. See, e.g., Justin Weinstein-Tull, Election Law Federalism, 114 Mich. L. Rev. 747, 778–80 (2016); Daniel P. Tokaji, The Future of Elections Reform: From Rules to Institutions, 28 Yale L. & Pol’y Rev.

    125, 130–31 (2009) (describing the discretion baked into current election administration systems). ↑

  23. See generally Gary J. Miller & Andrew B. Whitford, Above Politics 17–22 (2007) (arguing that delegation is key to establishing credibly neutral agencies like the Federal Reserve). As Michael McConnell points out, the issue of neutrality is less pronounced when legislatures make generalized ex ante rules. Michael W. McConnell, Two-and-a-Half Cheers for Bush v Gore, 68 U. Chi. L. Rev. 657, 661–62 (2001). But a regime without any delegation at all would inevitably require significant policy choices to be made at a close enough vantage point to an election that the stakes of any decision, and the likely beneficiaries, would be readily apparent. ↑
  24. See Ariz. State Legislature v. Ariz. Indep. Redistricting Comm’n (“AIRC”), 576 U.S. 787, 808 (2015) (“[R]edistricting is a legislative function, to be performed in accordance with the State’s prescriptions for lawmaking.”). ↑
  25. As noted below, I thank Greg Ablavsky and Robert Gordon for helping me see this alternative possibility. ↑
  26. Hayward H. Smith, Revisiting the History of the Independent State Legislature Doctrine, 53 St. Mary’s L.J. (forthcoming 2022) (manuscript at 37), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/paper​s.cfm?abstract_id=3923205 [https://perma.cc/78LE-H76B]. ↑
  27. AIRC, 576 U.S. at 824–25 (Roberts, C.J., dissenting); see infra note 69 and accompanying text. ↑
  28. Democratic Nat’l Comm. v. Wis. State Legislature, 141 S. Ct. 28, 29 (2020) (Gorsuch J. concurring); id. at 34 n.1 (Kavanaugh, J. concurring); see infra notes 70–71 and accompanying text. ↑
  29. Moore v. Harper, 142 S. Ct. 1089, 1089–90 (2022) (mem.) (Alito, J. dissenting from denial of application for stay); id. at 1089 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring in denial of application for stay). ↑
  30. Parrillo, supra note 13, at 1302, 1304. ↑
  31. Id. at 1301 & n.48. ↑
  32. See, e.g., Morley, The Independent State Legislature Doctrine, supra note 12, at 535 (“When plaintiffs allege a violation of their constitutional rights or federal voting-related statutes, they raise a federal question.”). ↑

  33. See supra note 17 for a defense of the view that the language of the Elections Clause is not meaningfully different from that in Article I, Section 8. ↑

Judicial Minimalism in the Lower Courts

Debate about the virtues and vices of “judicial minimalism” is evergreen. But as is often the case in public law, that debate so far has centered on the Supreme Court. Minimalism arose and has been defended as a theory about how Justices should judge. This Article considers judicial minimalism as an approach for lower courts, which have become conspicuous and powerful actors on the public law scene. It begins by offering a framework that disentangles the three basic meanings of the term “judicial minimalism”: decisional minimalism, which counsels judges to decide cases on narrow and shallow grounds; prudential minimalism, which counsels judges to avail themselves of various techniques of not deciding cases (the so-called “passive virtues”) on grounds of prudence; and Thayerian minimalism, which counsels judges to refrain from invalidating the actions of the political branches except in cases of clear illegality. This Article then argues that several institutional features of lower courts make judicial minimalism in most of its forms a particularly compelling ideal for lower court judges. Further, attending to the differences between the lower courts and the Supreme Court reveals that minimalism is in tension with the institutional logic of the Supreme Court. In all, this Article aims both to clarify the concept of minimalism and to place it in its proper institutional home. After making the case for lower court minimalism, this Article proposes some strategies for realizing it: first, developing a concept of judicial role fidelity that is tailored to the institutional realities of lower courts, and second, reforming case-assignment rules, nationwide injunctions, and the size of the federal bench to help channel lower courts toward more minimalist outcomes.

Introduction

The lower federal courts are active and conspicuous these days. “[I]nferior” Article III courts (as the Constitution calls them1 1.U.S. Const. art. III, § 1.Show More) have “now assumed enormous legal, political, and cultural significance.”2 2.Henry P. Monaghan, Jurisdiction Stripping Circa 2020: What The Dialogue (Still) Has To Teach Us, 69 Duke L.J. 1, 32 (2019). The present salience of lower federal courts may not be historically unprecedented. One thinks, for instance, of the lower courts as a focal point in the fight over federalism in the early Republic, Alison L. LaCroix, The Ideological Origins of American Federalism 179 (2010); of lower court enforcement of the fugitive slave laws, Robert Cover, Justice Accused: Antislavery and the Judicial Process 159–74 (1975); or of lower courts issuing injunctions against organized labor in the Progressive Era, William E. Forbath, The Shaping of the American Labor Movement, 102 Harv. L. Rev. 1109, 1148–65 (1989).Show More They have repeatedly reviewed and halted major initiatives of the Trump and Biden Administrations,3 3.SeeBert I. Huang, Judicial Credibility, 61 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 1053, 1060 (2020) (noting that the Trump era was “a political moment when numerous government actions [were] being blocked by the lower federal courts”); Fred Barbash, Deanna Paul, Brittany Renee Mayes & Danielle Rindler, Federal Courts Have Ruled Against Trump Administration Policies at Least 70 Times, Wash. Post (Apr. 26, 2019), https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphi​cs/2019/politic​s/trump-overruled/ [https://perma.cc/MR8E-WMTX] (“All administrations lose cases, but experts cannot recall so many losses in such a short time.”); Ian Millhiser, Just How Much Is Trump’s Judiciary Sabotaging the Biden Presidency?, Vox (Dec. 27, 2021) (on file with editors), https://www.​vox.com/22820378/trump-biden-supreme-court-judiciary-sabotage.Show More often generating front-page headlines and issuing decisive nationwide relief that reshapes American life.4 4.E.g., Michael D. Shear, Stacy Cowley & Alan Rappeport, Biden’s Efforts at Race Equity Run into Snags, N.Y. Times, June 27, 2021, at A1; Alexander Burns, Federal Judge Blocks New Ban on Travel to U.S., N.Y. Times, Mar. 16, 2017, at A1. I represented the plaintiffs in the second of these cases, culminating in Trump v. Hawaii, 138 S. Ct. 2392 (2018). The views expressed in this Article are my own.Show More In the process, they have decided—at least provisionally—major questions roiling the nation, involving everything from abortion to race, religious freedom, public health, immigration, and presidential power. It is an opportune time to reflect on the proper role of a lower court judge in a public law case.

One of the most prominent theories addressing that general issue—the proper role of a judge—goes by the label “judicial minimalism.” Minimalism seems to be everywhere: it is deployed in court opinions,5 5.See, e.g.,Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, 141 S. Ct. 1868, 1881 (2021) (ruling on narrow, case-specific grounds); id. at 1883 (Barrett, J., concurring) (defending this narrow disposition); id. at 1887–88 (Alito, J., concurring in the judgment) (criticizing the majority’s narrow disposition). I represented the City of Philadelphia in the Supreme Court in Fulton. Again, the positions taken here are mine.Show More theorized in the legal academy,6 6.See infraPart I.Show More and debated in the commentariat.7 7.E.g., David Cole, Surprising Consensus at the Supreme Court, N.Y. Rev. of Books (July 7, 2021), https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2021/08/19/surprising-consensus-at-the-supreme​-court/ [https://perma.cc/2VZH-9GDU] (discussing “minimalism” in the Supreme Court’s recently concluded Term); Jay Michaelson, Your Father’s Supreme Court, Intelligencer, N.Y. Mag. (July 3, 2021) (on file with editors), https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/07/your-fathers-supreme-court.ht​ml (same).Show More It is a “dominant school of thought” today, with deep roots in our legal culture.8 8.Jonathan T. Molot, Principled Minimalism: Restriking the Balance Between Judicial Minimalism and Neutral Principles, 90 Va. L. Rev. 1753, 1776 (2004); Neal Devins, Rethinking Judicial Minimalism: Abortion Politics, Party Polarization, and the Consequences of Returning the Constitution to Elected Government, 69 Vand. L. Rev. 935, 938–39 (2016) (“Minimalism remains vibrant and is almost certainly the most important contemporary constitutional theory that formally takes into account the dynamic between the Supreme Court and elected government.”).Show More Eminences like James Bradley Thayer, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Alexander Bickel, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Cass Sunstein, to name only a few, have embraced variants of minimalism.9 9.See infraPart I.Show More

To date, however, debates about lower court judging and debates about minimalism have rarely intersected. The bulging literature on judicial minimalism has focused on the Supreme Court of the United States. Minimalism developed and has been offered as a philosophy for Justices, not judges. As far as I am aware, no one has systematically considered whether judicial minimalism makes sense as a model for lower court judges, who handle the vast bulk of Article III adjudication.10 10.See Stephen G. Breyer, Reflections on the Role of Appellate Courts: A View from the Supreme Court, 8 J. App. Prac. & Process 91, 93 (2006) (noting that “the eighty cases that the Supreme Court hears annually represent the small tip of a vast iceberg” and that “most determinative legal interpretations occur instead in the federal courts of appeals, in the state supreme courts, and in state appellate courts”); Sanford Levinson, On Positivism and Potted Plants: Inferior Judges and the Task of Constitutional Interpretation, 25 Conn. L. Rev. 843, 844 (1993) (“The behavior of the roughly 100 circuit judges and 500 district judges is, for most citizens most of the time, far more likely to count as ‘the law’ than the pronouncements of the nine denizens of the Supreme Court . . . .”).Show More

This Article takes up that question and answers yes: the institutional situation of lower courts makes judicial minimalism in most of its forms a particularly compelling model for a lower court judge. Substantiating that claim requires a few steps. The first is to define what judicial minimalism is and unpack why it has been defended, and so this Article begins by offering a framework that disentangles the three core meanings of judicial minimalism. Next, this Article walks through the institutional features of lower courts that distinguish them from the Supreme Court and explores how those features bear upon the judicial role. I argue that, taken together, those features counsel in favor of an approach to judging that coincides closely with the program of judicial minimalism. The call for institutional “situation-sense” that motivates this Article yields more than just a prescription for lower courts. Attending to the full context of the judicial system calls into question judicial minimalism as an ideal for the Supreme Court—the institution it was designed to address. Finally, the Article closes with some proposed reforms to cultivate a measure of minimalism in the lower courts. In a word, I aim to give the concept of judicial minimalism more analytical precision and to place it in its proper institutional home.

Such a project seems timely. As noted, lower courts have become highly visible and powerful actors on the public law scene.11 11.See supranote 2.Show More They are, as a result, starting more and more to attract the notice of theorists and commentators.12 12.See, e.g., Perry Bacon Jr., The Most Dangerous Conservative Judges Aren’t on the Supreme Court, Wash. Post (Dec. 21, 2021), https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/20​21/​12/21/most-dangerous-conservative-judges-arent-supreme-court/ [https://perma.cc/J4KJ-VZ​TH].Show More This attention is welcome. The traditional (if often implicit) focus of public law scholarship has been the Supreme Court, and the lower courts, as a result, were often overlooked.13 13.SeeEdward A. Purcell, Jr., Reconsidering the Frankfurterian Paradigm: Reflections on Histories of Lower Federal Courts, 24 Law & Soc. Inquiry 679, 681 (1999) (“Our excessive focus on the Supreme Court . . . has over the years minimized and obscured large areas of American experience . . . .”);Evan H. Caminker, Precedent and Prediction: The Forward-Looking Aspects of Inferior Court Decisionmaking, 73 Tex. L. Rev. 1, 4 (1994) (“[W]hile numerous scholars have comprehensively explored the nature and function of judicial law declaration from the perspective of the Supreme Court or a hypothetical single-judge judiciary, few have considered the view from below and the interaction between subordinacy and function.”).Show More In recent years, though, scholars have paid increasing heed to the variety of institutions that consider and decide questions of public law.14 14.SeeCass R. Sunstein & Adrian Vermeule, Interpretation and Institutions, 101 Mich. L. Rev. 885, 920–22 (2003). Of course, at a high level of generality, legal scholarship had been preoccupied with institutional questions since at least the legal process school, seeEdward L. Rubin, The New Legal Process, The Synthesis of Discourse, and the Microanalysis of Institutions, 109 Harv. L. Rev. 1393, 1396 (1996), but Professors Sunstein and Vermeule called for a more rigorously empirical and less stylized approach to institutional analysis. Sunstein & Vermeule, supra, at 897–913.Show More The core contention of this “institutional turn” is that normative theory about legal decision making ought to be bespoke, tailored to the manifold institutional settings in which questions of public law are resolved.15 15.Sunstein & Vermeule, supra note 14, at 886.Show More The study of lower courts has been a beneficiary of this institutional turn: recent scholarship has examined originalism,16 16.See Ryan C. Williams, Lower Court Originalism, 45 Harv. J.L. & Pub. Pol’y 257 (2022).Show More popular constitutionalism,17 17.Katie Eyer, Lower Court Popular Constitutionalism, 123 Yale L.J. Online 197, 215–18 (2013).Show More statutory interpretation,18 18.James J. Brudney & Lawrence Baum, Protean Statutory Interpretation in the Courts of Appeals, 58 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 681, 686 (2017); Aaron-Andrew P. Bruhl, Hierarchy and Heterogeneity: How to Read a Statute in a Lower Court, 97 Cornell L. Rev.433, 470–84 (2012).Show More stare decisis,19 19.Amy Coney Barrett, Statutory Stare Decisis in the Courts of Appeals, 73 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 317, 318 (2005).Show More foreign law,20 20.Roger P. Alford, Lower Courts and Constitutional Comparativism, 77 Fordham L. Rev. 647, 656–64 (2008).Show More Chevron deference,21 21.Michael Coenen & Seth Davis, Minor Courts, Major Questions, 70 Vand. L. Rev. 777, 799–820 (2017) (arguing that the “major questions” exception to Chevron deference should not be applied in lower courts).Show More and other topics in the context of lower federal courts,22 22.Z. Payvand Ahdout, Enforcement Lawmaking and Judicial Review, 135 Harv. L. Rev. 937, 960–73 (2022) (evaluating lower courts’ use of case management techniques in recent separation-of-powers suits); Richard M. Re, Narrowing Supreme Court Precedent from Below, 104 Geo. L.J. 921, 925 (2016) (arguing that lower courts can legitimately “narrow” Supreme Court precedent in certain circumstances); Doni Gewirtzman, Lower Court Constitutionalism: Circuit Court Discretion in a Complex Adaptive System, 61 Am. U. L. Rev. 457, 506–09 (2012) (viewing lower court decision making through the lens of complexity theory). For a critique of the federal courts of appeals as they currently operate that blends historical, empirical, and normative strands, see generally William M. Richman & William L. Reynolds, Injustice on Appeal: The United States Courts of Appeals in Crisis (2013).Show More to say nothing of state courts.23 23.See David E. Pozen, Judicial Elections as Popular Constitutionalism, 110 Colum. L. Rev. 2047, 2064–86 (2011) (exploring how judicial elections for state courts relate to theories of popular constitutionalism); Helen Hershkoff, State Courts and the “Passive Virtues”: Rethinking the Judicial Function, 114 Harv. L. Rev. 1833, 1842–76 (2001) (offering a comprehensive survey of justiciability doctrines in state courts); Hans A. Linde, E Pluribus—Constitutional Theory and State Courts, 18 Ga. L. Rev. 165, 166 (1984) (exploring the relationship between constitutional theory and “the world of the state courts”).Show More This scholarship has usefully foregrounded the judicial bodies that decide many multiples more cases than the ever-vanishing sliver that makes its way to the Supreme Court.24 24.In the 2020 Term, the Supreme Court issued only fifty-seven decisions in argued cases (and sixty-seven decisions including summary reversals and orders on the shadow docket). Stat Pack for the Supreme Court’s 2020–21 Term, SCOTUSBlog, https://www.scotusblog.co​m/statistics [https://perma.cc/SUY9-X5RD] (last visited May 20, 2022). The federal courts of appeals decide nearly fifty thousand cases per year. Admin. Off. of the U.S. Cts., Table B: U.S. Courts of Appeals––Cases Commenced, Terminated, and Pending During the 12-Month Periods Ending September 30, 2019 and 2020, at 1 (Sept. 30, 2020), https://www.uscourts.gov/sites​/default/files/data_tables/jb_b_0930.2020.pdf [https://perma.cc/U7M2-ESJB].Show More But the void regarding judicial minimalism persists. And, in some ways, minimalism is even more fundamental than these other questions because it goes to the basic attitude a judge should have toward the task of adjudication and so is interwoven with all the first-order interpretive debates just noted.25 25.See infra notes 98–103 and accompanying text.Show More

Judicial minimalism also relates to larger public controversies unfolding now about whether the federal judiciary should be reorganized or limited. Many feel that the judiciary is out of step with the political and legal mainstream.26 26.SeeJonathan S. Gould & David E. Pozen, Structural Biases in Structural Constitutional Law, 97 N.Y.U. L. Rev. (manuscript at 20) (forthcoming 2022), https://papers.ss​rn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3797051 [https://perma.cc/56BE-6CKF] (noting the pro-Republican structural biases in our method for selecting judges); Joshua P. Zoffer & David Singh Grewal, The Counter-Majoritarian Difficulty of a Minoritarian Judiciary, 11 Calif. L. Rev. Online 437, 454–62 (2020) (documenting the rise of federal judges appointed by Presidents and Senators representing a minority of the populace and the resulting legitimacy crisis in the federal judiciary).Show More Prominent academics have called for major court reforms.27 27.See generally Presidential Comm’n on the Sup. Ct. of the U.S., Final Report(2021), https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/SCOTUS-Report-Final-12.8.21-1.​pdf [https://perma.cc/K69J-T2C8] (summarizing and assessing potential Supreme Court reforms).Show More President Biden appointed a commission to explore, among other things, changing the size of the Supreme Court—a proposal that would have been nearly unthinkable not long ago.28 28.Michael D. Shear & Carl Hulse, Biden Orders Panel’s Review on Expanding Supreme Court, N.Y. Times, Apr. 10, 2021, at A13; cf. David E. Pozen, Self-Help and the Separation of Powers, 124 Yale L.J. 2, 34 (2014) (“‘Court packing’ is especially out of bounds.”).Show More Other scholars have objected to the increasingly prevalent “nationwide” injunction.29 29.E.g., Samuel L. Bray, Multiple Chancellors: Reforming the National Injunction, 131 Harv. L. Rev. 417, 457–65 (2017).Show More Still others have criticized the federal courts for insulating certain forms of structural inequality in American society and have called for a reorientation of public law scholarship toward “institutional reform and democratic action.”30 30.Jedediah Britton-Purdy, David Singh Grewal, Amy Kapczynksi & K. Sabeel Rahman, Building a Law-and-Political-Economy Framework: Beyond the Twentieth-Century Synthesis, 129 Yale L.J. 1784, 1807, 1829 (2020).Show More Many of these proposals borrow overtly or implicitly from theories of judicial minimalism—for instance, institutionalizing a norm of deference to the political branches through supermajority voting requirements or limiting courts’ jurisdiction and remedial powers.31 31.See, e.g., Ryan D. Doerfler & Samuel Moyn, Democratizing the Supreme Court, 109 Calif. L. Rev. 1703, 1727 (2021) (proposing that a supermajority of Justices be required to strike down federal legislation); Howard M. Wasserman, Congress and Universal Injunctions, 2021 Cardozo L. Rev. De Novo 187, 192–201 (discussing various proposals to reform nationwide or “universal” injunctions in Congress); cf. K. Sabeel Rahman, Constitutional Law 101: A Primer for the Law and Political Economy Blog, LPE Project (Nov. 23, 2018), https://lpeproject.org/blog/constitutional-law-101-a-primer-for-the-law-and-political-econom​y-blog-3/ [https://perma.cc/UK7N-BSVU] (“[V]iewed from a political economic lens, the battle for inclusion may sometimes involve judicial intervention, and other times involve judicial minimalism.”).Show More More broadly, these controversies about the judicial power confirm the growing need for public law theorists to grapple with lower courts, who define, as a practical matter, the meaning of federal law for so many people.32 32.See supranotes 10, 24. Indeed, it is even possible that lower court reform could achieve some of the same ends as “packing” the Supreme Court. See McNollgast, Politics and the Courts: A Positive Theory of Judicial Doctrine and the Rule of Law, 68 S. Cal. L. Rev. 1631, 1634 (1995) (“[U]nder the appropriate circumstances, expansion of the lower judiciary can have the same effect on judicial doctrine as packing the Supreme Court.”).Show More

This Article has three Parts. Judicial minimalism is a woolly concept that is often invoked to mean different and even contradictory things. Part I offers a novel typology of judicial minimalisms to set the analytical table for the rest of the discussion. As a preview, judicial minimalism has three core senses: first, decisional minimalism, associated most closely with Professor Cass Sunstein,33 33.Cass R. Sunstein, One Case at a Time: Judicial Minimalism on the Supreme Court 3–6 (1999) [hereinafter Sunstein, One Case at a Time]; Cass R. Sunstein, Foreword: Leaving Things Undecided, 110 Harv. L. Rev. 4, 6–10 (1996) [hereinafter Sunstein, Leaving Things Undecided].Show More which counsels judges to decide cases on narrow and shallow grounds; second, prudential minimalism, associated most closely with Professor Alexander Bickel,34 34.Alexander M. Bickel, The Least Dangerous Branch: The Supreme Court at the Bar of Politics 111–98 (1962) [hereinafter Bickel, Least Dangerous Branch]; Alexander M. Bickel, Foreword: The Passive Virtues, 75 Harv. L. Rev. 40, 47–51 (1961) [hereinafter Bickel, Passive Virtues].Show More which counsels judges to avail themselves of various techniques of not deciding cases (the so-called “passive virtues”) on grounds of prudence; and third, Thayerian minimalism, associated originally with Professor James Bradley Thayer,35 35.James B. Thayer, The Origin and Scope of the American Doctrine of Constitutional Law, 7 Harv. L. Rev. 129, 144 (1893).Show More which counsels judges to refrain from invalidating the actions of the political branches except in cases of clear illegality. My focus in this Article is decisional minimalism, but I define the other two forms and consider their applications in lower courts too.

Equipped with this taxonomy, Part II surveys several key institutional features of lower federal courts that distinguish them from the Supreme Court and evaluates how these features might affect the proper judicial role.36 36.This Article is confined to the federal district courts and courts of appeals. There is much greater institutional variety among state courts than there is among lower federal courts, and that variety would have to inform any analysis of minimalism in those venues. Judicial elections, in particular, would affect the democracy-based justifications for minimalism. See Pozen, supranote 23, at 2052 (“Elected judges . . . might claim a special license to incorporate public opinion into their decisional process, to engage in majoritarian review.”); Pamela K. Bookman & Colleen F. Shanahan, A Tale of Two Civil Procedures, 122 Colum. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2022) (manuscript at 5–14), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstra​ct_id=4016573 [https://perma.cc/WWC6-P82S] (laying out similarities and differences between state and federal courts). Nor will I discuss minimalism for so-called “Article I” judges or administrative agencies. See Laura K. Donohue & Jeremy McCabe, Federal Courts: Art. III(1), Art. I(8), Art. IV(3)(2), Art. II(2)/I(8)(3), and Art. II(1) Adjudication, 71 Cath. U. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2022) (manuscript at 3–5), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abst​ract_id=3825670 [https://perma.cc/4ZVH-XHJY] (discussing the full range of congressionally created courts); Charles F. Sabel & William H. Simon, Minimalism and Experimentalism in the Administrative State, 100 Geo. L.J. 53, 56–77 (2011) (discussing a form of “minimalism” in agency policymaking).Show More The variables include docket size and judicial workload, the operative rules of stare decisis, the assignment of judges, the methods of case selection, and the processes of judicial appointment. I argue that the differences between lower courts and the Supreme Court along these lines make judicial minimalism in most of its forms a more compelling ideal in the lower courts.37 37.My focus is public law cases, particularly constitutional and administrative law. See Hanoch Dagan & Benjamin C. Zipursky, Introduction: The Distinction Between Private Law and Public Law, in Research Handbook on Private Law Theory1, 3 (Benjamin C. Zipursky & Hanoch Dagan eds., 2020). Private law in lower federal courts is complicated by Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins and the frequent primacy of state law. See 304 U.S. 64, 78 (1938). That said, decisional minimalism is a framework that is potentially applicable in any case, and this Article may very well have implications for federalized areas of private law like intellectual property, antitrust, or labor law. Cf.Shyamkrishna Balganesh, The Pragmatic Incrementalism of Common Law Intellectual Property, 63 Vand. L. Rev. 1543, 1564–67 (2010) (defending a minimalist approach to intellectual property disputes). But my normative prescriptions will probably have the most bite in prominent public law cases because that is where non-minimalist decisions will be rewarded most in our current partisan ecosystem. See infranotes 42, 375.Show More The differences also reveal that decisional minimalism is in deep tension with the institutional logic of the Supreme Court in its present form. The Court’s near-total control over its agenda, its own stated criteria for granting certiorari, its limited case load, and its structural role as a superintendent of federal law through rare and episodic interventions all make the modern Court, in an important sense, an inherently anti-minimalist institution.38 38.SeeFrederick Schauer, Abandoning the Guidance Function: Morse v Frederick, 2007 Sup. Ct. Rev. 205, 207–08 (criticizing decisional minimalism for undermining the Court’s “guidance function” in light of its limited case load); Tara Leigh Grove, The Structural Case for Vertical Maximalism, 95 Cornell L. Rev. 1, 3 (2009) (arguing that minimalism is in tension with the Constitution, which makes the Supreme Court “supreme” in defining the content of federal law). On the Supreme Court’s extensive powers of agenda control, see Henry Paul Monaghan, On Avoiding Avoidance, Agenda Control, and Related Matters, 112 Colum. L. Rev.665, 683–711 (2012).Show More

Part III considers how judicial minimalism might be inculcated in lower courts. I begin with the need to develop a distinctive concept of role fidelity for lower court judges fitted to their institutional situation. “Role fidelity” refers to the ways that a judge’s socially conditioned understanding of her role affects the way she fulfills that role.39 39.The concept of judicial “role fidelity” was pioneered by Professor Robert Cover in his study of anti-slavery judges before the Civil War. SeeCover, supranote 2, at 7, 192–93; see also Pozen, supranote 23, at 2084 (defining “role fidelity”).Show More One consequence of the Supreme Court fixation of so much public law scholarship (and pedagogy) is that it tends to flatten concepts of judicial role fidelity.40 40.SeeBarrett, supra note 19, at 352 (“We tend to take a one-size-fits-all approach to federal court decision-making, assuming that the same interpretive practices should apply throughout the federal courts.”).Show More A lower court judge is implicitly encouraged to act like a mini-Justice. But ideals of judicial craft should not be flat.41 41.Pozen, supranote 23, at 2084 (noting the view that “there is no global ideal of judicial craft that exists independent of judicial structure”); Coenen & Davis, supranote 21, at 783 (arguing in favor of “assigning to different types of federal courts differentiated approaches to reviewing government action”) (italicization omitted).Show More And an important element of “role fidelity” for a lower court judge—that can be given life through doctrine, commentary, and the appointment process—is judicial minimalism.

Urging judges to be more minimalist is unlikely to be enough, however, because the current political climate and structure of the lower federal judiciary at times enable and even incentivize non-minimalist behavior by motivated judges.42 42.Professor Suzanna Sherry has observed that Supreme Court Justices increasingly seem to “seek[] the approval of [their] own ideologically-polarized in-group” and that “[j]udicial polarization becomes a larger problem when coupled with the modern trend of declining institutional loyalty.” Suzanna Sherry, Our Kardashian Court (and How to Fix It), 106 Iowa L. Rev. 181, 191–92 (2020). Some recent instances of lower court maximalism suggest that similar forces may be seeping into all levels of the federal judiciary. Cf. Neal Devins & Allison Orr Larsen, Weaponizing En Banc, 96 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 1373, 1437 (2021) (documenting a “dramatic spike in partisan en banc decision-making” in the courts of appeals and suggesting that there “are significant red flags to indicate that longstanding rule-of-law and collegiality norms on the federal bench are eroding”). One virtue of lower court minimalism is that it insists on a kind of judicial craft and humility that could resist the encroachments of polarization in the lower federal judiciary. SeeFrederick Schauer,Incentives, Reputation, and the Inglorious Determinants of Judicial Behavior, 68 U. Cin. L. Rev. 615, 631 (2000) (suggesting that, at least twenty years ago, “prose and craft” might have been more important “determinants of reputation” for lower court judges than substantive outcomes, in contrast to Supreme Court Justices).Show More As a result, some structural reform is also important. I suggest reforming case-assignment rules, requiring the concurrence of more than one judge for nationwide injunctions, and, for reasons that are not entirely intuitive but that I will explain below, expanding the size of the federal bench. This may sound like an ambitious program. But, given that structural reform of the judiciary is on the table right now in a way that it has not been for generations, there is reason to be hopeful.

  1. U.S. Const. art. III, § 1. ↑
  2. Henry P. Monaghan, Jurisdiction Stripping Circa 2020: What The Dialogue (Still) Has To Teach Us, 69 Duke L.J. 1, 32 (2019). The present salience of lower federal courts may not be historically unprecedented. One thinks, for instance, of the lower courts as a focal point in the fight over federalism in the early Republic, Alison L. LaCroix, The Ideological Origins of American Federalism 179 (2010); of lower court enforcement of the fugitive slave laws, Robert Cover, Justice Accused: Antislavery and the Judicial Process 159–74 (1975); or of lower courts issuing injunctions against organized labor in the Progressive Era, William E. Forbath, The Shaping of the American Labor Movement, 102 Harv. L. Rev. 1109, 1148–65 (1989). ↑
  3. See Bert I. Huang, Judicial Credibility, 61 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 1053, 1060 (2020) (noting that the Trump era was “a political moment when numerous government actions [were] being blocked by the lower federal courts”); Fred Barbash, Deanna Paul, Brittany Renee Mayes & Danielle Rindler, Federal Courts Have Ruled Against Trump Administration Policies at Least 70 Times, Wash. Post (Apr. 26, 2019), https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphi​cs/2019/politic​s/trump-overruled/ [https://perma.cc/MR8E-WMTX] (“All administrations lose cases, but experts cannot recall so many losses in such a short time.”); Ian Millhiser, Just How Much Is Trump’s Judiciary Sabotaging the Biden Presidency?, Vox (Dec. 27, 2021) (on file with editors), https://www.​vox.com/22820378/trump-biden-supreme-court-judiciary-sabotage. ↑
  4. E.g., Michael D. Shear, Stacy Cowley & Alan Rappeport, Biden’s Efforts at Race Equity Run into Snags, N.Y. Times
    ,

    June 27, 2021, at A1; Alexander Burns, Federal Judge Blocks New Ban on Travel to U.S., N.Y. Times

    ,

    Mar. 16, 2017, at A1. I represented the plaintiffs in the second of these cases, culminating in Trump v. Hawaii, 138 S. Ct. 2392 (2018). The views expressed in this Article are my own. ↑

  5. See, e.g., Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, 141 S. Ct. 1868, 1881 (2021) (ruling on narrow, case-specific grounds); id. at 1883 (Barrett, J., concurring) (defending this narrow disposition); id. at 1887–88 (Alito, J., concurring in the judgment) (criticizing the majority’s narrow disposition). I represented the City of Philadelphia in the Supreme Court in Fulton. Again, the positions taken here are mine. ↑
  6. See infra Part I. ↑
  7. E.g., David Cole, Surprising Consensus at the Supreme Court, N.Y. Rev. of Books (July 7, 2021), https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2021/08/19/surprising-consensus-at-the-supreme​-court/ [https://perma.cc/2VZH-9GDU] (discussing “minimalism” in the Supreme Court’s recently concluded Term); Jay Michaelson, Your Father’s Supreme Court, Intelligencer, N.Y. Mag. (July 3, 2021) (on file with editors), https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/07/your-fathers-supreme-court.ht​ml (same). ↑
  8. Jonathan T. Molot, Principled Minimalism: Restriking the Balance Between Judicial Minimalism and Neutral Principles, 90 Va. L. Rev. 1753, 1776 (2004); Neal Devins, Rethinking Judicial Minimalism: Abortion Politics, Party Polarization, and the Consequences of Returning the Constitution to Elected Government, 69 Vand. L. Rev. 935, 938–39 (2016) (“Minimalism remains vibrant and is almost certainly the most important contemporary constitutional theory that formally takes into account the dynamic between the Supreme Court and elected government.”). ↑
  9. See infra Part I. ↑
  10. See Stephen G. Breyer, Reflections on the Role of Appellate Courts: A View from the Supreme Court, 8 J. App. Prac. & Process 91, 93 (2006) (noting that “the eighty cases that the Supreme Court hears annually represent the small tip of a vast iceberg” and that “most determinative legal interpretations occur instead in the federal courts of appeals, in the state supreme courts, and in state appellate courts”); Sanford Levinson, On Positivism and Potted Plants: Inferior Judges and the Task of Constitutional Interpretation, 25 Conn. L. Rev. 843, 844 (1993) (“The behavior of the roughly 100 circuit judges and 500 district judges is, for most citizens most of the time, far more likely to count as ‘the law’ than the pronouncements of the nine denizens of the Supreme Court . . . .”). ↑
  11. See supra note 2. ↑
  12. See, e.g., Perry Bacon Jr., The Most Dangerous Conservative Judges Aren’t on the Supreme Court, Wash. Post (Dec. 21, 2021), https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/20​21/​12/21/most-dangerous-conservative-judges-arent-supreme-court/ [https://perma.cc/J4KJ-VZ​TH]. ↑
  13. See Edward A. Purcell, Jr., Reconsidering the Frankfurterian Paradigm: Reflections on Histories of Lower Federal Courts, 24 Law & Soc. Inquiry 679, 681 (1999) (“Our excessive focus on the Supreme Court . . . has over the years minimized and obscured large areas of American experience . . . .”); Evan H. Caminker, Precedent and Prediction: The Forward-Looking Aspects of Inferior Court Decisionmaking, 73 Tex. L. Rev. 1, 4 (1994) (“[W]hile numerous scholars have comprehensively explored the nature and function of judicial law declaration from the perspective of the Supreme Court or a hypothetical single-judge judiciary, few have considered the view from below and the interaction between subordinacy and function.”). ↑
  14. See Cass R. Sunstein & Adrian Vermeule, Interpretation and Institutions, 101 Mich. L. Rev. 885, 920–22 (2003). Of course, at a high level of generality, legal scholarship had been preoccupied with institutional questions since at least the legal process school, see Edward L. Rubin, The New Legal Process, The Synthesis of Discourse, and the Microanalysis of Institutions, 109 Harv. L. Rev. 1393, 1396 (1996), but Professors Sunstein and Vermeule called for a more rigorously empirical and less stylized approach to institutional analysis. Sunstein & Vermeule, supra, at 897–913. ↑
  15. Sunstein & Vermeule, supra note 14, at 886. ↑
  16. See Ryan C. Williams, Lower Court Originalism, 45 Harv. J.L. & Pub. Pol’y 257 (2022). ↑
  17. Katie Eyer, Lower Court Popular Constitutionalism, 123 Yale L.J. Online 197, 215–18 (2013). ↑
  18. James J. Brudney & Lawrence Baum, Protean Statutory Interpretation in the Courts of Appeals, 58 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 681, 686 (2017); Aaron-Andrew P. Bruhl, Hierarchy and Heterogeneity: How to Read a Statute in a Lower Court, 97 Cornell L. Rev.

    433, 470–84 (2012). ↑

  19. Amy Coney Barrett, Statutory Stare Decisis in the Courts of Appeals, 73 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 317, 318 (2005). ↑
  20. Roger P. Alford, Lower Courts and Constitutional Comparativism, 77 Fordham L. Rev. 647, 656–64 (2008). ↑
  21. Michael Coenen & Seth Davis, Minor Courts, Major Questions, 70 Vand. L. Rev. 777, 799–820 (2017) (arguing that the “major questions” exception to Chevron deference should not be applied in lower courts). ↑
  22. Z. Payvand Ahdout, Enforcement Lawmaking and Judicial Review, 135 Harv. L. Rev. 937, 960–73 (2022) (evaluating lower courts’ use of case management techniques in recent separation-of-powers suits); Richard M. Re, Narrowing Supreme Court Precedent from Below, 104 Geo. L.J. 921, 925 (2016) (arguing that lower courts can legitimately “narrow” Supreme Court precedent in certain circumstances); Doni Gewirtzman, Lower Court Constitutionalism: Circuit Court Discretion in a Complex Adaptive System, 61 Am. U. L. Rev. 457, 506–09 (2012) (viewing lower court decision making through the lens of complexity theory). For a critique of the federal courts of appeals as they currently operate that blends historical, empirical, and normative strands, see generally William M. Richman & William L. Reynolds, Injustice on Appeal: The United States Courts of Appeals in Crisis (2013). ↑
  23. See David E. Pozen, Judicial Elections as Popular Constitutionalism, 110 Colum. L. Rev. 2047, 2064–86 (2011) (exploring how judicial elections for state courts relate to theories of popular constitutionalism); Helen Hershkoff, State Courts and the “Passive Virtues”: Rethinking the Judicial Function, 114 Harv. L. Rev. 1833, 1842–76 (2001) (offering a comprehensive survey of justiciability doctrines in state courts); Hans A. Linde, E Pluribus—Constitutional Theory and State Courts, 18 Ga. L. Rev. 165, 166 (1984) (exploring the relationship between constitutional theory and “the world of the state courts”). ↑
  24. In the 2020 Term, the Supreme Court issued only fifty-seven decisions in argued cases (and sixty-seven decisions including summary reversals and orders on the shadow docket). Stat Pack for the Supreme Court’s 2020–21 Term, SCOTUSBlog, https://www.scotusblog.co​m/statistics [https://perma.cc/SUY9-X5RD] (last visited May 20, 2022). The federal courts of appeals decide nearly fifty thousand cases per year. Admin. Off. of the U.S. Cts., Table B: U.S. Courts of Appeals––Cases Commenced, Terminated, and Pending During the 12-Month Periods Ending September 30, 2019 and 2020, at 1 (Sept. 30, 2020), https://www.uscourts.gov/sites​/default/files/data_tables/jb_b_0930.2020.pdf [https://perma.cc/U7M2-ESJB]. ↑
  25. See infra notes 98–103 and accompanying text. ↑
  26. See Jonathan S. Gould & David E. Pozen, Structural Biases in Structural Constitutional Law, 97 N.Y.U. L. Rev. (manuscript at 20) (forthcoming 2022), https://papers.ss​rn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3797051 [https://perma.cc/56BE-6CKF] (noting the pro-Republican structural biases in our method for selecting judges); Joshua P. Zoffer & David Singh Grewal, The Counter-Majoritarian Difficulty of a Minoritarian Judiciary, 11 Calif. L. Rev. Online 437, 454–62 (2020) (documenting the rise of federal judges appointed by Presidents and Senators representing a minority of the populace and the resulting legitimacy crisis in the federal judiciary). ↑
  27. See generally Presidential Comm’n on the Sup. Ct. of the U.S., Final Report

    (2021), https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/SCOTUS-Report-Final-12.8.21-1.​pdf [https://perma.cc/K69J-T2C8] (summarizing and assessing potential Supreme Court reforms). ↑

  28. Michael D. Shear & Carl Hulse, Biden Orders Panel’s Review on Expanding Supreme Court, N.Y. Times, Apr. 10, 2021, at A13; cf. David E. Pozen, Self-Help and the Separation of Powers, 124 Yale L.J. 2, 34 (2014) (“‘Court packing’ is especially out of bounds.”). ↑
  29. E.g., Samuel L. Bray, Multiple Chancellors: Reforming the National Injunction, 131 Harv. L. Rev. 417, 457–65 (2017). ↑
  30. Jedediah Britton-Purdy, David Singh Grewal, Amy Kapczynksi & K. Sabeel Rahman, Building a Law-and-Political-Economy Framework: Beyond the Twentieth-Century Synthesis, 129 Yale L.J. 1784, 1807, 1829 (2020). ↑
  31. See, e.g., Ryan D. Doerfler & Samuel Moyn, Democratizing the Supreme Court, 109 Calif. L. Rev. 1703, 1727 (2021) (proposing that a supermajority of Justices be required to strike down federal legislation); Howard M. Wasserman, Congress and Universal Injunctions, 2021 Cardozo L. Rev. De Novo 187, 192–201 (discussing various proposals to reform nationwide or “universal” injunctions in Congress); cf. K. Sabeel Rahman, Constitutional Law 101: A Primer for the Law and Political Economy Blog, LPE Project (Nov. 23, 2018), https://lpeproject.org/blog/constitutional-law-101-a-primer-for-the-law-and-political-econom​y-blog-3/ [https://perma.cc/UK7N-BSVU] (“[V]iewed from a political economic lens, the battle for inclusion may sometimes involve judicial intervention, and other times involve judicial minimalism.”). ↑
  32. See supra notes 10, 24. Indeed, it is even possible that lower court reform could achieve some of the same ends as “packing” the Supreme Court. See McNollgast, Politics and the Courts: A Positive Theory of Judicial Doctrine and the Rule of Law, 68 S. Cal. L. Rev. 1631, 1634 (1995) (“[U]nder the appropriate circumstances, expansion of the lower judiciary can have the same effect on judicial doctrine as packing the Supreme Court.”). ↑
  33. Cass R. Sunstein, One Case at a Time: Judicial Minimalism on the Supreme Court 3–6 (1999) [hereinafter Sunstein, One Case at a Time]; Cass R. Sunstein, Foreword: Leaving Things Undecided, 110 Harv. L. Rev. 4, 6–10 (1996) [hereinafter Sunstein, Leaving Things Undecided]. ↑
  34. Alexander M. Bickel, The Least Dangerous Branch: The Supreme Court at the Bar of Politics
    111–98

    (1962) [hereinafter Bickel, Least Dangerous Branch]; Alexander M. Bickel, Foreword: The Passive Virtues, 75 Harv. L. Rev. 40, 47–51 (1961) [hereinafter Bickel, Passive Virtues]. ↑

  35. James B. Thayer, The Origin and Scope of the American Doctrine of Constitutional Law, 7 Harv. L. Rev. 129, 144 (1893). ↑
  36. This Article is confined to the federal district courts and courts of appeals. There is much greater institutional variety among state courts than there is among lower federal courts, and that variety would have to inform any analysis of minimalism in those venues. Judicial elections, in particular, would affect the democracy-based justifications for minimalism. See Pozen, supra note 23, at 2052 (“Elected judges . . . might claim a special license to incorporate public opinion into their decisional process, to engage in majoritarian review.”); Pamela K. Bookman & Colleen F. Shanahan, A Tale of Two Civil Procedures, 122 Colum. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2022) (manuscript at 5–14), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstra​ct_id=4016573 [https://perma.cc/WWC6-P82S] (laying out similarities and differences between state and federal courts). Nor will I discuss minimalism for so-called “Article I” judges or administrative agencies. See Laura K. Donohue & Jeremy McCabe, Federal Courts: Art. III(1), Art. I(8), Art. IV(3)(2), Art. II(2)/I(8)(3), and Art. II(1) Adjudication, 71 Cath. U. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2022) (manuscript at 3–5), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abst​ract_id=3825670 [https://perma.cc/4ZVH-XHJY] (discussing the full range of congressionally created courts); Charles F. Sabel & William H. Simon, Minimalism and Experimentalism in the Administrative State, 100 Geo. L.J. 53, 56–77 (2011) (discussing a form of “minimalism” in agency policymaking). ↑
  37. My focus is public law cases, particularly constitutional and administrative law. See Hanoch Dagan & Benjamin C. Zipursky, Introduction: The Distinction Between Private Law and Public Law, in Research Handbook on Private Law Theory 1, 3 (Benjamin C. Zipursky & Hanoch Dagan eds., 2020). Private law in lower federal courts is complicated by Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins and the frequent primacy of state law. See 304 U.S. 64, 78 (1938). That said, decisional minimalism is a framework that is potentially applicable in any case, and this Article may very well have implications for federalized areas of private law like intellectual property, antitrust, or labor law. Cf. Shyamkrishna Balganesh, The Pragmatic Incrementalism of Common Law Intellectual Property, 63 Vand. L. Rev. 1543, 1564–67 (2010) (defending a minimalist approach to intellectual property disputes). But my normative prescriptions will probably have the most bite in prominent public law cases because that is where non-minimalist decisions will be rewarded most in our current partisan ecosystem. See infra notes 42, 375. ↑
  38. See Frederick Schauer, Abandoning the Guidance Function: Morse v Frederick, 2007 Sup. Ct. Rev. 205, 207–08 (criticizing decisional minimalism for undermining the Court’s “guidance function” in light of its limited case load); Tara Leigh Grove, The Structural Case for Vertical Maximalism, 95 Cornell L. Rev. 1, 3 (2009) (arguing that minimalism is in tension with the Constitution, which makes the Supreme Court “supreme” in defining the content of federal law). On the Supreme Court’s extensive powers of agenda control, see Henry Paul Monaghan, On Avoiding Avoidance, Agenda Control, and Related Matters, 112 Colum. L. Rev.

    665, 683–711 (2012). ↑

  39. The concept of judicial “role fidelity” was pioneered by Professor Robert Cover in his study of anti-slavery judges before the Civil War. See Cover, supra note 2, at 7, 192–93; see also Pozen, supra note 23, at 2084 (defining “role fidelity”). ↑
  40. See Barrett, supra note 19, at 352 (“We tend to take a one-size-fits-all approach to federal court decision-making, assuming that the same interpretive practices should apply throughout the federal courts.”). ↑
  41. Pozen, supra note 23, at 2084 (noting the view that “there is no global ideal of judicial craft that exists independent of judicial structure”); Coenen & Davis, supra note 21, at 783 (arguing in favor of “assigning to different types of federal courts differentiated approaches to reviewing government action”) (italicization omitted). ↑

  42. Professor Suzanna Sherry has observed that Supreme Court Justices increasingly seem to “seek[] the approval of [their] own ideologically-polarized in-group” and that “[j]udicial polarization becomes a larger problem when coupled with the modern trend of declining institutional loyalty.” Suzanna Sherry, Our Kardashian Court (and How to Fix It), 106 Iowa L. Rev. 181, 191–92 (2020). Some recent instances of lower court maximalism suggest that similar forces may be seeping into all levels of the federal judiciary. Cf. Neal Devins & Allison Orr Larsen, Weaponizing En Banc, 96 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 1373, 1437 (2021) (documenting a “dramatic spike in partisan en banc decision-making” in the courts of appeals and suggesting that there “are significant red flags to indicate that longstanding rule-of-law and collegiality norms on the federal bench are eroding”). One virtue of lower court minimalism is that it insists on a kind of judicial craft and humility that could resist the encroachments of polarization in the lower federal judiciary. See Frederick Schauer, Incentives, Reputation, and the Inglorious Determinants of Judicial Behavior, 68 U. Cin. L. Rev. 615, 631 (2000) (suggesting that, at least twenty years ago, “prose and craft” might have been more important “determinants of reputation” for lower court judges than substantive outcomes, in contrast to Supreme Court Justices). ↑

A Modern Poor Debtor’s Oath

Bankruptcy offers a fresh start that frees individuals from crushing debt burdens. Many insolvent Americans are, however, simply too poor to afford bankruptcy. Filing for even the simplest type of bankruptcy costs around $1,800, with most of this money paid to attorneys who help complete more than twenty required forms and schedules. These forms verify that the debtor qualifies for relief and help divide the debtor’s estate among creditors, but for the large majority of debtors, this paperwork is unnecessary because the debtor easily qualifies for relief and has no assets to distribute.

History offers a better model. Two centuries ago, the law granted release from debtor’s prison through the simple execution of a “poor debtor’s oath”—a short declaration that the debtor lacked substantial assets. For most debtors, modern bankruptcy law should require no more than an updated version of a poor debtor’s oath that provides relief unless creditors or their trustees are willing to pay some cost to challenge the oath’s validity. To discourage the wealthy from taking false oaths, Congress could sharply limit the exemptions available in the simplified procedure. Even dramatically smaller exemptions would protect all of the assets of the overwhelming majority of bankrupt debtors. By avoiding costly processes for debtors who obviously qualify for bankruptcy relief, a modern poor debtor’s oath could save hundreds of millions of dollars in transaction costs each year and greatly expand access to bankruptcy.

Introduction

“The principal purpose of the Bankruptcy Code is to grant a fresh start to the honest but unfortunate debtor.”1 1.See Marrama v. Citizens Bank of Mass., 549 U.S. 365, 367 (2007) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted).Show More The fresh start offers insurance against adverse events, such as unemployment or illness, that debtors either cannot purchase in the marketplace or will not purchase due to volitional or cognitive failures.2 2.Thomas H. Jackson, The Fresh-Start Policy in Bankruptcy Law, 98 Harv. L. Rev. 1393, 1405–18 (1985).Show More The fresh start also protects a debtor’s friends, family, and acquaintances from the consequences of the debtor’s financial distress. It may even protect the broader economy.3 3.Id. at 1418–24.Show More Insolvent debtors may have little reason to work hard if creditors can seize their earnings.4 4.Id. at 1420–24. For qualifications to this argument, see Richard M. Hynes, Non-Procrustean Bankruptcy, 2004 Univ. Ill. L. Rev. 301, 321–26.Show More

Bankruptcy cannot provide these benefits to debtors who cannot afford to file. Even the simplest form of bankruptcy, Chapter 7, requires more than twenty complex forms and schedules,5 5.For example, in the Central District of California Bankruptcy Courts, at least twenty-seven forms are required to be submitted to the court by Chapter 7 debtors. U.S. Bankr. Ct. for the Cent. Dist. of Cal., Chapter 7 Petition Package (Individual Debtors), 3–6 (Dec. 2020), https://www.cacb.uscourts.gov/sites/cacb/files/documents/forms/Ch7%20IndividualPetitionPackage.pdf [https://perma.cc/JHR2-HMMG].Show More so nearly all debtors hire a lawyer.6 6.Just 6.5% of Chapter 7 debtors file pro se. See infra note 158 and accompanying text.Show More On average, debtors spend more than $1,800 on filing and attorney’s fees.7 7.See Lois R. Lupica, The Consumer Bankruptcy Fee Study: Final Report, Am. Bankr. Inst. 130, tbl.A-6 (Dec. 2011) (listing total direct access costs (attorney’s fees plus filing fees) for no-asset Chapter 7 cases of $1,304 in 2005 dollars). The Bureau of Labor Statistics Inflation calculator converts $1,304 in May of 2005 into $1,806 in May of 2021. CPI Inflation Calculator, U.S. Bureau of Lab. Stat., https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm [https://perma.cc/33FK-GRDN] (last visited Apr. 3, 2022).Show More These debtors must also pay their attorneys up front because, if the payment were financed, that debt too would be cancelled in bankruptcy. Debtors thus need to “sav[e] up for bankruptcy,”8 8.See, e.g., Ronald J. Mann & Katherine Porter, Saving Up for Bankruptcy, 98 Geo. L.J. 289, 292 (2010). Then-Professor Porter has since been elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.Show More and yet the debtors most in need of bankruptcy are often those who live paycheck-to-paycheck and cannot afford to save up for anything.

Some of the cost of the modern bankruptcy petition is due to the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 (“BAPCPA”),9 9.Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005, Pub. L. No. 109-8, 119 Stat. 23 (codified in scattered sections of 11 U.S.C.).Show More legislation supported by then-Senator Joe Biden.10 10.151 Cong. Rec. 3, 4351 (2005) (statement of then-Senator Joe Biden) (arguing in favor of the bill’s adoption during debate, concluding that “[a] vote for this bill is a vote to protect family support payments in bankruptcy. That is why I support this bill”).Show More Arguing that some debtors were filing for bankruptcy when they could afford to pay some or all of their debts, creditors successfully lobbied Congress to increase the evidence that debtors must produce when filing.11 11.SeeRobert H. Scott, III, Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005: How the Credit Card Industry’s Perseverance Paid Off, 41 J. Econ. Issues 943, 945 (2007).Show More Many consumer advocates, including then-Professor Elizabeth Warren, strongly opposed BAPCPA, arguing that the reforms would unduly raise the cost of filing for the vast majority of debtors who truly deserved relief.12 12.See, e.g., Robert M. Lawless et al., Did Bankruptcy Reform Fail? An Empirical Study of Consumer Debtors, 82 Am. Bankr. L.J. 349, 362 n.53 (2008).Show More

Now-President Joe Biden has endorsed bankruptcy legislation sponsored by now-Senator Elizabeth Warren.13 13.Katie Glueck & Thomas Kaplan, Biden, Looking to Attract Progressives, Endorses Warren Bankruptcy Plan, N.Y. Times (May 22, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/14​/us/politics/biden-warren-bankruptcy.html [https://perma.cc/Y3V9-YN9Y].Show More With respect to making bankruptcy more accessible,14 14.We express no judgment on other aspects of the reforms, such as making it easier to discharge student debt. Consumer Bankruptcy Reform Act of 2020, S. 4991, 116th Cong. § 101(b)(8) (2020).Show More these reforms do not go far enough. By repealing some of BAPCPA’s requirements, Senator Warren’s reforms may reduce the current cost of filing,15 15.Elizabeth Warren, Fixing Our Bankruptcy System to Give People a Second Chance, Warren Democrats (Jan. 7, 2020), https://elizabethwarren.com/plans/bankruptcy-reform [https://perma.cc/Q529-HMSB].Show More but even before 2005, filing under Chapter 7 still cost consumers around $1,200 (in 2020 dollars).16 16.See Lupica, supra note 7, at 130 tbl.A-6 (reporting total direct costs of $866 in 2005 dollars). Adjusting for inflation, this is roughly $1,199 in 2020 dollars. CPI Inflation Calculator, supra note 7.Show More Warren’s reforms would also allow more debtors to finance their attorney’s fees.17 17.Consumer Bankruptcy Reform Act of 2020, S. 4991, 116th Cong. § 101(b)(4) (2020); Warren, supra note 15.Show More Yet that reform still leaves debtors spending significant sums just to prove an inability to pay their creditors and impedes bankruptcy’s fresh start by immediately saddling individuals emerging from bankruptcy with debt.

The complex forms and schedules required of debtors filing for bankruptcy stand in sharp contrast to the simple notice-filing standards available to creditors, who can file debt collection suits with just “a short and plain statement of the claim.”18 18.See, e.g., Fed. R. Civ. P. 8. Even a plausibility standard requires only that the complaint allege “enough facts to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.” Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007).Show More Of the “eight million debt claims . . . filed [every year,] . . . six million . . . turn into default judgments,”19 19.See, e.g., Yonathan A. Arbel, Adminization: Gatekeeping Consumer Contracts, 71 Vand. L. Rev. 121, 123 (2018).Show More meaning that the plaintiff will never have to produce any evidence.

By going all the way back to the Founding era, one can find an insolvent debtor’s action that matched the simplicity of modern notice filing—the poor debtor’s oath. “Debt was an inescapable fact of life in early America . . . [that] cut across regional, class, and occupational lines. Whether one was an Atlantic merchant or a rural shopkeeper, a tidewater planter or a backwoods farmer, debt was an integral part of daily life.”20 20.Bruce H. Mann, Republic of Debtors: Bankruptcy in the Age of American Independence 3 (2002).Show More The United States lacked a lasting federal bankruptcy law until the end of the nineteenth century,21 21.Prior to 1898, Congress enacted three bankruptcy acts that together lasted less than twenty years. Congress repealed the Bankruptcy Act of 1800 in 1803, Act of Dec. 19, 1803, ch. 6, 2 Stat. 248, the Bankruptcy Act of 1841 in 1843, Act of Mar. 3, 1843, ch. 82, 5 Stat. 614, and the Bankruptcy Act of 1867 in 1878, Act of June 7, 1878, ch. 160, 20 Stat. 99. For a history of bankruptcy in the United States, see generally David A. Skeel, Jr., Debt’s Dominion: A History of Bankruptcy Law in America (2001) and Charles Jordan Tabb, The History of Bankruptcy Laws in the United States, 3 Am. Bankr. Inst. L. Rev. 5 (1995).Show More and many Founding-era Americans found themselves in debtor’s prison.22 22.See infra notes 52–55 and accompanying text.Show More The poor debtor’s oath was an early reform that freed many debtors from this prison. In contrast to the numerous documents that a modern bankrupt debtor must submit, a federal version of this oath fit into just a few lines: “You solemnly swear (or affirm) that you have not estate, real or personal, nor is any to your knowledge holden in trust for you to the amount or value of twenty dollars, nor sufficient to pay the debt for which you are imprisoned.”23 23.Act of May 5, 1792, ch. 29, § 2, 1 Stat. 265, 266. For other versions of the poor debtor’s oath, see infra note 64 and accompanying text.Show More

Legal historian Bruce Mann suggests that the fact that the poor debtor’s oath was not part of a bankruptcy system explains the oath’s simplicity.

Insolvency and bankruptcy process create procedures for determining creditors’ claims against a debtor and for distributing the debtor’s property among his or her creditors in proportion to their claims. Poor debtor’s oaths offered neither, nor could they when they applied only to debtors with too little property to be worth distributing.24 24.Mann, supra note 20, at 51.Show More

Although modern bankruptcy law has procedures for determining creditors’ claims and distributing the debtor’s property, these procedures are not used in around 95% of consumer Chapter 7 cases because there are no assets to distribute.25 25.See infra Table 1.Show More Well less than 2% of these cases distribute more than $5,000 to unsecured creditors.26 26.See infra notes 129–33 and accompanying text.Show More The Supreme Court of the United States understated matters when it said that the fresh start is bankruptcy’s “principal purpose.”27 27.See Marrama v. Citizens Bank of Mass., 549 U.S. 365, 367 (2007).Show More In the overwhelming majority of consumer bankruptcies, the fresh start is bankruptcy’s sole purpose.28 28.Tom Jackson recognized this point when he noted that “[t]he fresh-start policy is thus substantively unrelated to the creditor-oriented distributional rules that give bankruptcy law its general shape and complexity.” Jackson, supra note 2, at 1396.Show More

Bankruptcy’s numerous schedules and other required documents could still play a useful role if they are needed to determine whether a debtor deserves a fresh start. However, because nearly all consumers who file under Chapter 7 receive the same relief—a discharge of debt without forfeiting any assets—a court does not need full disclosure of the specifics of a debtor’s financial condition. The court only needs to know that the debtor’s financial condition is bad enough to qualify for a Chapter 7 discharge without any distribution to unsecured creditors. For many debtors, this purpose can be achieved with a modern version of the poor debtor’s oath. One possible version of this oath based on the current law’s substantive rules would read, “After any exempt property is excluded and administrative expenses are paid, no funds will be available to distribute to unsecured creditors, and my household income is below [median income].”29 29.For a longer discussion of the possible text of this oath, see infra Section III.D.Show More Little more is actually needed from most debtors beyond their identifying information; creditors could learn of the debtor’s filing from the credit bureaus such as Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion.30 30.See infra Section IV.A. Our proposal is similar to Tom Jackson’s suggestion that the fresh start could be tied to a public declaration of insolvency. See Jackson, supra note 2, at 1396 n.8. (“For example, the law might grant discharge through a system of public notice whereby certain assets (such as future wages) would be freed from the claims of existing creditors. The mechanism of public notice would inform creditors of the debtor’s election.”).Show More

Although we call for a modern version of the poor debtor’s oath, we do not envision restricting the oath to the truly destitute. During her tenure as a law professor, Senator Warren and her colleagues persuasively argued that most bankrupt debtors are drawn from the “middle class,”31 31.See, e.g., Teresa A. Sullivan, Elizabeth Warren & Jay Lawrence Westbrook, The Fragile Middle Class: Americans in Debt 2–3 (2000).Show More and in this paper, we demonstrate that the overwhelming majority of bankrupt debtors could rightfully take the above oath. As a result, we will primarily use the less common label for a poor debtor’s oath—an insolvent debtor’s oath.32 32.For others using this phrase, see, for example, Robert A. Feer, Imprisonment for Debt in Massachusetts before 1800, 48 Miss. Valley Hist. Rev. 252, 259 (1961) and Walter H. Moses, Enforcement of Judgments Against Hidden Assets, 1951 U. Ill. L.F. 73, 79.Show More

That so many debtors can rightfully take the oath is partly due to bankruptcy’s current substantive rules. By definition, half of all households earn less than the median income, which makes them automatically pass bankruptcy’s income-based means test,33 33.See infra note 125 and accompanying text.Show More and many states provide exemptions that allow debtors to protect substantial wealth in bankruptcy. For example, twenty states allow debtors to exempt at least $100,000 in home equity,34 34.See infra note 104 and accompanying text.Show More and seven states (and the District of Columbia) have homestead exemptions with no dollar limit.35 35.See infra notes 101–03 and accompanying text.Show More We do not try to justify or reform these substantive rules. Rather, we argue that, given these substantive rules, bankruptcy should use very different procedures.

During the Founding era, an insolvent debtor’s oath shifted the burden of proof to the creditor to show that the debtor actually had assets.36 36.See Feer, supra note 32, at 255 (“The creditors were to be notified of the oath, and if they did not prove within fifty days that it was false, the prisoner was to be freed unless his creditors agreed to pay his weekly board charges.”).Show More However, a modern version could instead serve the same role that notice pleading serves in consumer debt collection—delaying the time when moving parties must present evidence and excusing presentation when their opponents concede or do nothing. Although the plaintiff retains the burden of proof in consumer debt collection, notice pleading shifts some burden to the defendant, who must challenge the complaint and force the plaintiff to provide evidence. If the defendant does nothing, the plaintiff will win a judgment by default. Similarly, creditors or their trustees could challenge an insolvent debtor’s oath and thereby force the debtor to complete the extensive schedules required by existing law. If such challenges are sufficiently costly, creditors will not challenge an oath unless there is a reasonably high probability that the oath was falsely taken. If an oath goes unchallenged, the debtor will receive a discharge by default.37 37.As is true under current law, courts could revoke a discharge if it is found to have been obtained by fraud or if a subsequent audit by the U.S. Trustee suggests revocation is appropriate. See 11 U.S.C. § 727(d); infra notes 165–69 and accompanying text.Show More

Lawsuits and other efforts to pursue a defaulting debtor cost money. Therefore, creditors and debt collectors have developed tools to predict whether debtors are likely to have sufficient assets or income to satisfy their judgments.38 38.See infra Section III.B.Show More We show that these same tools could be used to identify false oaths with a high degree of accuracy.39 39.See infra Section III.BShow More

By discouraging high-asset debtors from falsely taking an insolvent debtor’s oath, the law could reduce the incentive for creditors and trustees to challenge oaths and thereby lessen the administrative burden on those debtors who truly qualify for relief. In the Founding era, this was done by threatening severe punishment for perjury. This threat remains today in the form of bankruptcy fraud. Over time, however, consumers may learn that such a threat is largely empty. In our current system, debtors who make a material misstatement on their bankruptcy petition face more risk of being struck by lightning than being convicted of bankruptcy fraud.40 40.See infra notes 202–06 and accompanying text.Show More

Sharply limiting asset exemptions would more effectively deter wealthy debtors from falsely taking an insolvent debtor’s oath. Such a punishment is unlikely to harm debtors who rightfully take an oath because most debtors have assets that are far below currently available exemptions.41 41.See infra Table 2 and accompanying text.Show More Homestead exemptions can be quite generous. However, over the last decade, roughly 80% of Chapter 7 debtors reported no home equity at all,42 42.See Nathaniel Pattison & Richard M. Hynes, Asset Exemptions and Consumer Bankruptcies: Evidence from Individual Filings, 63 J.L. & Econ. 557, 569 tbl.2 (2020).Show More making the size of the homestead exemption available to them irrelevant.

Part I explores the debtor-creditor law of the Founding era. Although this law was much less generous than modern law, it did provide a very simple way for debtors to declare their inability to pay—the insolvent debtor’s oath. Part II describes a modern bankruptcy law that offers consumers very generous relief but requires complex paperwork and is unaffordable for many in financial distress. Part III proposes a new and greatly simplified bankruptcy procedure that would allow some debtors to take an updated version of the insolvent debtor’s oath in lieu of completing the complicated forms and schedules required by current law. The potential benefits are enormous. Because so many consumers file, the population of bankrupt consumers spends more than one billion each year on Chapter 7 filing costs alone,43 43.See infra notes 128–30 and accompanying text.Show More and the indirect costs of the paperwork may be even larger. Some insolvent debtors are too broke to file; they either forego bankruptcy protection altogether or file under a different chapter that allows them to pay their attorneys over time but rarely discharges their debts.44 44.See infra Section II.B.Show More Our proposal offers something for supporters of means testing as well. Procedures that require the production of costly information are easier to justify if they are restricted to the small number of debtors who are likely to have significant assets or income. Part IV addresses likely criticisms of our proposal, and Part V concludes.

  1. See Marrama v. Citizens Bank of Mass., 549 U.S. 365, 367 (2007) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). ↑
  2. Thomas H. Jackson, The Fresh-Start Policy in Bankruptcy Law, 98 Harv. L. Rev. 1393, 1405–18 (1985). ↑
  3. Id. at 1418–24. ↑
  4.  Id. at 1420–24. For qualifications to this argument, see Richard M. Hynes, Non-Procrustean Bankruptcy, 2004 Univ. Ill. L. Rev. 301, 321–26. ↑
  5. For example, in the Central District of California Bankruptcy Courts, at least twenty-seven forms are required to be submitted to the court by Chapter 7 debtors. U.S. Bankr. Ct. for the Cent. Dist. of Cal., Chapter 7 Petition Package (Individual Debtors), 3–6 (Dec. 2020), https://www.cacb.uscourts.gov/sites/cacb/files/documents/forms/Ch7%20IndividualPetitionPackage.pdf [https://perma.cc/JHR2-HMMG]. ↑
  6. Just 6.5% of Chapter 7 debtors file pro se. See infra note 158 and accompanying text. ↑
  7. See Lois R. Lupica, The Consumer Bankruptcy Fee Study: Final Report, Am. Bankr. Inst. 130, tbl.A-6 (Dec. 2011) (listing total direct access costs (attorney’s fees plus filing fees) for no-asset Chapter 7 cases of $1,304 in 2005 dollars). The Bureau of Labor Statistics Inflation calculator converts $1,304 in May of 2005 into $1,806 in May of 2021. CPI Inflation Calculator, U.S. Bureau of Lab. Stat., https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm [https://perma.cc/33FK-GRDN] (last visited Apr. 3, 2022). ↑
  8. See, e.g., Ronald J. Mann & Katherine Porter, Saving Up for Bankruptcy, 98 Geo. L.J. 289, 292 (2010). Then-Professor Porter has since been elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. ↑
  9. Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005, Pub. L. No. 109-8, 119 Stat. 23 (codified in scattered sections of 11 U.S.C.). ↑
  10. 151 Cong. Rec. 3, 4351 (2005) (statement of then-Senator Joe Biden) (arguing in favor of the bill’s adoption during debate, concluding that “[a] vote for this bill is a vote to protect family support payments in bankruptcy. That is why I support this bill”). ↑
  11. See Robert H. Scott, III, Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005: How the Credit Card Industry’s Perseverance Paid Off, 41 J. Econ. Issues 943, 945 (2007). ↑
  12. See, e.g., Robert M. Lawless et al., Did Bankruptcy Reform Fail? An Empirical Study of Consumer Debtors, 82 Am. Bankr. L.J. 349, 362 n.53 (2008). ↑
  13. Katie Glueck & Thomas Kaplan, Biden, Looking to Attract Progressives, Endorses Warren Bankruptcy Plan, N.Y. Times (May 22, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/14​/us/politics/biden-warren-bankruptcy.html [https://perma.cc/Y3V9-YN9Y]. ↑
  14. We express no judgment on other aspects of the reforms, such as making it easier to discharge student debt. Consumer Bankruptcy Reform Act of 2020, S. 4991, 116th Cong. § 101(b)(8) (2020). ↑
  15. Elizabeth Warren, Fixing Our Bankruptcy System to Give People a Second Chance, Warren Democrats (Jan. 7, 2020), https://elizabethwarren.com/plans/bankruptcy-reform [https://perma.cc/Q529-HMSB]. ↑
  16. See Lupica, supra note 7, at 130 tbl.A-6 (reporting total direct costs of $866 in 2005 dollars). Adjusting for inflation, this is roughly $1,199 in 2020 dollars. CPI Inflation Calculator, supra note 7. ↑
  17. Consumer Bankruptcy Reform Act of 2020, S. 4991, 116th Cong. § 101(b)(4) (2020); Warren, supra note 15. ↑
  18. See, e.g., Fed. R. Civ. P. 8. Even a plausibility standard requires only that the complaint allege “enough facts to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.” Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007). ↑
  19. See, e.g., Yonathan A. Arbel, Adminization: Gatekeeping Consumer Contracts, 71 Vand. L. Rev. 121, 123 (2018). ↑
  20. Bruce H. Mann, Republic of Debtors: Bankruptcy in the Age of American Independence 3 (2002). ↑
  21. Prior to 1898, Congress enacted three bankruptcy acts that together lasted less than twenty years. Congress repealed the Bankruptcy Act of 1800 in 1803, Act of Dec. 19, 1803, ch. 6, 2 Stat. 248, the Bankruptcy Act of 1841 in 1843, Act of Mar. 3, 1843, ch. 82, 5 Stat. 614, and the Bankruptcy Act of 1867 in 1878, Act of June 7, 1878, ch. 160, 20 Stat. 99. For a history of bankruptcy in the United States, see generally David A. Skeel, Jr., Debt’s Dominion: A History of Bankruptcy Law in America (2001) and Charles Jordan Tabb, The History of Bankruptcy Laws in the United States, 3 Am. Bankr. Inst. L. Rev. 5 (1995). ↑
  22. See infra notes 52–55 and accompanying text. ↑
  23. Act of May 5, 1792, ch. 29, § 2, 1 Stat. 265, 266. For other versions of the poor debtor’s oath, see infra note 64 and accompanying text. ↑
  24. Mann, supra note 20, at 51. ↑
  25. See infra Table 1. ↑
  26. See infra notes 129–33 and accompanying text. ↑
  27. See Marrama v. Citizens Bank of Mass., 549 U.S. 365, 367 (2007). ↑
  28. Tom Jackson recognized this point when he noted that “[t]he fresh-start policy is thus substantively unrelated to the creditor-oriented distributional rules that give bankruptcy law its general shape and complexity.” Jackson, supra note 2, at 1396. ↑
  29. For a longer discussion of the possible text of this oath, see infra Section III.D. ↑
  30. See infra Section IV.A. Our proposal is similar to Tom Jackson’s suggestion that the fresh start could be tied to a public declaration of insolvency. See Jackson, supra note 2, at 1396 n.8. (“For example, the law might grant discharge through a system of public notice whereby certain assets (such as future wages) would be freed from the claims of existing creditors. The mechanism of public notice would inform creditors of the debtor’s election.”). ↑
  31. See, e.g., Teresa A. Sullivan, Elizabeth Warren & Jay Lawrence Westbrook, The Fragile Middle Class: Americans in Debt 2–3 (2000). ↑
  32. For others using this phrase, see, for example, Robert A. Feer, Imprisonment for Debt in Massachusetts before 1800, 48 Miss. Valley Hist. Rev. 252, 259 (1961) and Walter H. Moses, Enforcement of Judgments Against Hidden Assets, 1951 U. Ill. L.F. 73, 79. ↑
  33. See infra note 125 and accompanying text. ↑
  34. See infra note 104 and accompanying text. ↑
  35. See infra notes 101–03 and accompanying text. ↑
  36. See Feer, supra note 32, at 255 (“The creditors were to be notified of the oath, and if they did not prove within fifty days that it was false, the prisoner was to be freed unless his creditors agreed to pay his weekly board charges.”). ↑
  37. As is true under current law, courts could revoke a discharge if it is found to have been obtained by fraud or if a subsequent audit by the U.S. Trustee suggests revocation is appropriate. See 11 U.S.C. § 727(d); infra notes 165–69 and accompanying text. ↑
  38. See infra Section III.B. ↑
  39. See infra Section III.B ↑
  40. See infra notes 202–06 and accompanying text. ↑
  41. See infra Table 2 and accompanying text. ↑
  42.  See Nathaniel Pattison & Richard M. Hynes, Asset Exemptions and Consumer Bankruptcies: Evidence from Individual Filings, 63 J.L. & Econ. 557, 569 tbl.2 (2020). ↑
  43. See infra notes 128–30 and accompanying text. ↑

  44. See infra Section II.B. ↑

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