Issue 8 - Virginia Law Review

Liberalism and Disagreement in American Constitutional Theory

For forty years, American constitutional theory has been viewed as a clash between originalists and non-originalists. This depiction misunderstands and oversimplifies the nature of the debate within constitutional theory. Although originalism and non-originalism describe important differences between families of constitutional methodologies, the foundations of the disagreement among theorists are the justifications that they offer for those methodologies, not the methodologies themselves. Once the debate is refocused on the justifications that theorists offer for their constitutional methodologies, it becomes clear that the debate within constitutional theory is ultimately a debate about liberalism as a political theory. Specifically, it is a debate about two propositions that are central to the liberal tradition: individualism and rationalism. Viewed in this way, constitutional theorists often thought to be opposed to each other are, in fact, allies in the debate over liberalism, even if they disagree about whether their shared theoretical premises imply an originalist or non-originalist methodology. Conversely, theorists often seen as allies profoundly disagree about the premises of their constitutional theories because they disagree about liberalism. Reorienting American constitutional theory to focus on the disagreement over liberalism will help us identify which constitutional theory is best and better understand the outcomes in important constitutional cases.

Introduction

The story of American constitutional theory over the last forty years has been the battle between originalism and non-originalism. In the academy, the field of constitutional theory has been organized into these two camps¹1.See, e.g., Lawrence B. Solum, The Constraint Principle: Original Meaning and Constitutional Practice 26 (Apr. 3, 2019) (unpublished manuscript) (on file with author), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2940215 [https://perma.cc/27DK-CPBY] (“normative constitutional theory is currently in a state of dialectical impasse” between originalists and non-originalists); Jack M. Balkin, Why Liberals and Conservatives Flipped on Judicial Restraint: Judicial Review in the Cycles of Constitutional Time, 98 Tex. L. Rev. 215, 245 (2019) (describing originalism and living constitutionalism as “the two major schools of modern constitutional theory”); David Singh Grewal & Jedediah Purdy, The Original Theory of Constitutionalism, 127 Yale L.J. 664, 666 (2018) (book review) (“The conflict between various versions of ‘originalism’ and ‘living constitutionalism’ has defined the landscape of constitutional theory and practice for more than a generation, and it shows no sign of abating.”); Joel K. Goldstein, History and Constitutional Interpretation: Some Lessons from the Vice Presidency, 69 Ark. L. Rev. 647, 647 (2016) (“In recent times, the principal demarcation in academic discussions of constitutional theory and judicial decision-making separates originalists and living constitutionalists.”); Louis J. Virelli III, Constitutional Traditionalism in the Roberts Court, 73 U. Pitt. L. Rev. 1, 11 (2011) (“Constitutional theory is often described as consisting of two distinct and entrenched camps: ‘living constitutionalism’ and ‘originalism.’”); David A. Strauss, The Living Constitution 7–49 (2010) (framing his argument in terms of originalism versus living constitutionalism); Thomas B. Colby & Peter J. Smith, Living Originalism, 59 Duke L.J. 239, 241 (2009) (“For the last several decades, the primary divide in American constitutional theory has been between those theorists who label themselves as ‘originalists’ and those who do not.”); Brannon P. Denning, Brother, Can You Paradigm?, 23 Const. Comment. 81, 81 (2006) (book review) (describing the debate between originalism and non-originalism as having “dominated constitutional theory since at least the mid-twentieth century”); Antonin Scalia, Common-Law Courts in a Civil-Law System: The Role of United States Federal Courts in Interpreting the Constitution and Laws, in A Matter of Interpretation: Federal Courts and the Law 3, 38 (Amy Gutmann ed., 1997) (“[T]he Great Divide with regard to constitutional interpretation is not that between Framers’ intent and objective meaning, but rather that between original meaning (whether derived from Framers’ intent or not) and current meaning.”); Michael P. Zuckert, The New Rawls and Constitutional Theory: Does It Really Taste That Much Better?, 11 Const. Comment. 227, 236 (1994); Robert H. Bork, The Tempting of America: The Political Seduction of the Law 251–59 (1990) (framing his argument in terms of originalism versus “revisionist” non-originalism).Show More since Paul Brest first coined the term “originalism” in 1980.²2.Paul Brest, The Misconceived Quest for the Original Understanding, 60 B.U. L. Rev. 204, 204 (1980); see Lawrence B. Solum, Originalism and Constitutional Construction, 82 Fordham L. Rev. 453, 459 (2013) (identifying Brest’s 1980 article as having coined the term “originalism”).Show More In our politics, the originalism/non-originalism dichotomy has been a defining feature of judicial confirmation battles since the Reagan Administration.³3.Johnathan O’Neill, Originalism in American Law and Politics: A Constitutional History 133–89 (2005).Show More The conflict between originalism and non-originalism has accordingly been described as “the great debate” in constitutional theory,⁴4.Lawrence B. Solum, Originalism Versus Living Constitutionalism: The Conceptual Structure of the Great Debate, 113 Nw. U. L. Rev. 1243, 1244 (2019).Show More with the future of constitutional law depending on which side emerges triumphant.⁵5.See, e.g., Strauss, supra note 1, at 12–18; Tobin Harshaw, Kennedy, Bork and the Politics of Judicial Destruction, N.Y. Times: Opinionator (Aug. 28, 2009, 7:23 PM), https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/28/weekend-opinionator-kennedy-bork-and-the-politics-of-judicial-destruction/ [https://perma.cc/3F28-XDP9] (describing Senator Ted Kennedy’s “Robert Bork’s America” speech).Show More This binary and zero-sum way of understanding American constitutional theory has been prominent in recent years, with Donald Trump’s three Supreme Court appointments seen as potentially ushering in a new era of originalist jurisprudence at the Court.⁶6.See, e.g., Jess Bravin, Brent Kendall & Jacob Gershman, What Trump Pick Amy Coney Barrett Could Mean for Future of the Supreme Court, Wall St. J. (Sept. 26, 2020, 5:19 PM), https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-trump-pick-amy-coney-barrett-could-mean-for-future-of-the-supreme-court-11601155192 [https://perma.cc/P3R9-AKLS].Show More In both law and politics, then, understanding the debate within American constitutional theory as a battle between originalism and non-originalism—a way of understanding the debate that I will call the “Standard Approach” to constitutional theory—is so common that it is rarely questioned.⁷7.But see Keith E. Whittington, Originalism: A Critical Introduction, 82 Fordham L. Rev. 375, 404 n.120 (2013) (“I wish it went without saying that I do not believe that constitutional theory can simply be reduced to this particular dichotomy between originalists and nonoriginalists.”).Show More

Yet, there is a general sense that, for all its fervor, the argument between originalists and non-originalists has become exhausted.⁸8.Jonathan L. Marshfield, Amendment Creep, 115 Mich. L. Rev. 215, 224 (2016) (describing “the tired normative debate regarding the best method of constitutional interpretation”); Richard H. Fallon, Jr., The Many and Varied Roles of History in Constitutional Adjudication, 90 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1753, 1753 (2015) (describing “increasingly tired, stylized debates of the form ‘Originalism: For or Against?’”); William Baude, Is Originalism Our Law?, 115 Colum. L. Rev. 2349, 2351 (2015) (asserting that the debate over originalism is “at a standstill”); Brannon P. Denning, The New Doctrinalism in Constitutional Scholarship and District of Columbia v. Heller, 75 Tenn. L. Rev. 789, 794 (2008) (describing “the stalemated (and stale) debates between originalists and nonoriginalists”). Some might disagree and say that the debate remains fruitful, but even if one thinks the current debate is robust, my argument below should prompt a reevaluation of whether the current framing of the debate is the most productive form that the debate could take within constitutional theory, or whether instead we would be better served by reframing the debate in the manner suggested below. See infra Section II.C.Show More While the first few decades of the debate between originalists and non-originalists featured significant advances,⁹9.See generally Keith E. Whittington, The New Originalism, 2 Geo. J.L. Pub. Pol’y 599 (2004) (describing the development of originalism in response to non-originalist criticisms in the 1980s and 1990s); see also O’Neill, supra note 3, at 133–216 (same).Show More recent developments have largely consisted—with rare exceptions¹⁰10.William Baude and Stephen Sachs have recently proposed a genuinely novel argument in favor of originalism that relies on legal positivism. See Stephen E. Sachs, Originalism as a Theory of Legal Change, 38 Harv. J.L. Pub. Pol’y 817, 822–38 (2015); Baude, supra note 8, at 2363–91.Show More—of refinements of each side’s previous arguments.¹¹11.See Steven D. Smith, That Old-Time Originalism, in The Challenge of Originalism: Theories of Constitutional Interpretation 223, 224–42 (Grant Huscroft & Bradley W. Miller eds., 2011) (describing the increasingly abstruse refinements of originalist theory).Show More Many of these refinements are insightful and important, to be sure, but they have generally failed to change the contours of the debate.¹²12.The development that arguably has changed the contours of the debate is the introduction of the interpretation/construction distinction, but that distinction has mostly tended to confuse the debate. See infra Subsection I.B.1.Show More

But what if we have been misunderstanding the nature of the debate within American constitutional theory? What if the fundamental disagreement within American constitutional theory is not between originalists and non-originalists, and our focus on that (though real and important) distinction has obscured our ability to see more profound areas of agreement and disagreement among theorists that transcend the originalism/non-originalism dichotomy? What if, in short, the Standard Approach is impeding constitutional theory?

I want to suggest that this is indeed the case. The debate within American constitutional theory is not, ultimately, about originalism and non-originalism; it is about liberalism. I do not mean “liberalism” as that term is understood in contemporary American political discourse, where the term “liberal” is associated with the Democratic Party and its policy proposals. Liberalism, as I am using the term, refers instead to a politico-theoretical tradition that has its roots in the Renaissance¹³13.Anthony Arblaster, The Rise and Decline of Western Liberalism 95 (1984). Some might date the birth of liberalism to the immediate aftermath of the Renaissance, see John Gray, Liberalism, at xi, 9 (2d ed. 1995), though the distinction is somewhat arbitrary.Show More and includes among its foremost theorists figures like John Locke and John Stuart Mill.¹⁴14.Alan Ryan, The Making of Modern Liberalism 21–26 (2012).Show More It could be argued that the American Constitution is a “liberal” constitution in this sense of the word,¹⁵15.Patrick J. Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed 101 (2018); Gray, supra note 13, at 22–24.Show More since it was influenced by Lockean thought,¹⁶16.Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America: An Interpretation of American Political Thought Since the Revolution 3–32 (reprt., 2d Harvest ed. 1991) (1955); Patrick J. Deneen, Better Than Our Philosophy: A Response to Muñoz, Pub. Discourse (Nov. 29, 2012), https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/11/7156/ [https://perma.cc/VB83-7JVD]. The extent of Locke’s influence on the American Founding is, however, contested. See, e.g., Robert R. Reilly, For God and Country, XVII Claremont Rev. of Books 44, 47 (2017); Nathan Schlueter, Sustainable Liberalism, Pub. Discourse (Dec. 7, 2012), https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/12/7322/ [https://perma.cc/5YUP-WJQ9].Show More and many in both the Republican and Democratic parties could be considered “liberals” insofar as they implicitly or explicitly begin from certain philosophical premises that are antecedent to their disagreements about things like marginal tax rates.¹⁷17.Deneen, supra note 15, at 43–63.Show More My argument, then, is that the debate within American constitutional theory is, at its deepest level, a debate about political theory.

Specifically, it is a debate about some of the core philosophical propositions associated with the liberal tradition, and although there are undoubtedly many such propositions that are debated within American constitutional theory, the two most salient in that debate are individualism and rationalism. These are contested terms, and I will describe them more fully below.¹⁸18.See infra Section II.A.Show More By “individualism,” I mean the view that the individual has primacy over society, in the sense that the obligation to obey political authority must be grounded in the individual’s choice to submit to that authority.¹⁹19.See Yuval Levin, The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left 91–125 (2014); Arblaster, supra note 13, at 21–23.Show More The idea of individualism is well-captured by state-of-nature theorists in the liberal tradition, who derive political principles from a hypothetical world before the advent of government.²⁰20.See infra Subsection II.A.1.Show More Rationalism is closely related to this view and asserts the primacy of individual reason above all other sources of knowledge, such as tradition or custom.²¹21.See infra Subsection II.A.2.Show More In Michael Oakeshott’s famous description, for a rationalist, “there is no opinion, no habit, no belief, nothing so firmly rooted or so widely held that he hesitates to question it and to judge it by what he calls his ‘reason.’”²²22.Michael Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics, in Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays 5, 6 (1991).Show More These beliefs about the human person are controversial, and they are opposed by philosophical conservatism, among other intellectual traditions.²³23.As discussed below, I will assume, solely for the sake of clarity of presentation, that philosophical conservatism is distinct from liberalism. See infra Section II.A.Show More

The politico-theoretical debates about individualism and rationalism are, I will argue, at the core of the debates within American constitutional theory,²⁴24.See infra Section II.B.Show More and they reveal agreements and disagreements among theorists that cut across the originalism/non-originalism divide.²⁵25.See infra Section II.B.Show More Whereas Robert Bork (an originalist) and David Strauss (a non-originalist) might be thought of as polar opposites under the Standard Approach, they in fact share key philosophical premises, and, conversely, Bork and Jack Balkin, despite both being originalists under the Standard Approach, are in fact deeply opposed to each other philosophically.²⁶26.See infra Section II.C.Show More Recognizing these cross-cutting agreements and disagreements about the premises of constitutional theory will make it more likely that we will be able to identify which theories are sounder than others and provide us with insight into the deeper basis for disagreement among theorists about cases like Obergefell v. Hodges²⁷27.Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644 (2015); see infra Section II.C.Show More and, though arising in a statutory context, Bostock v. Clayton County.²⁸28.Bostock v. Clayton Cnty., 140 S. Ct. 1731 (2020); see infra Section III.A.Show More

For example, subsurface disagreements about liberalism explain why, at an intuitive level, it seems strange to classify Bork and Balkin as being part of the same school of thought: Bork and Balkin have radically opposed understandings of human reason. Balkin stakes the legitimacy of the Constitution on its ability to reflect human progress through changes in constitutional meaning, a faith in progress that assumes an exalted view of individual reason.²⁹29.See infra Section II.B.Show More By contrast, Bork’s anti-rationalism comes through in his skepticism of abstract theorizing and attempt to ground his theory in our constitutional tradition.³⁰30.See infra Section II.B.Show More These philosophical differences lead to an irreconcilable, intra-originalist methodological dispute: Balkin’s rationalistic theory leads him to a methodology that places minimal constraints on judges, while Bork’s anti-rationalism leads him to a methodology with a much more modest judicial role.³¹31.See infra Section II.C.Show More Bork and Balkin are ultimately disagreeing about liberal rationalism, and in light of such a profound disagreement, the strangeness of thinking of them as allies becomes understandable.

But it is often difficult to see these unexpected areas of agreement and disagreement among theorists—and the important questions they raise—because of the focus on the originalism/non-originalism dichotomy that results from the Standard Approach. And this is a major reason—perhaps the reason—why constitutional theory has reached an impasse. The Standard Approach, by dividing constitutional theory into originalism and non-originalism, causes us to focus on methodologies—that is, decision procedures for adjudicating constitutional disputes—rather than focusing on the justifications that theorists offer for their methodologies.³²32.See infra Part I.Show More That is not to say that the Standard Approach ignores justifications; nor is it to say that theorists should cease categorizing theories as originalist or non-originalist. But viewing constitutional theory through a methodological lens causes debates about justifications to become distorted, with justifications being viewed as either originalist or non-originalist.³³33.See infra Part I.Show More Perhaps ironically, by focusing on methodologies, the Standard Approach prevents us from seeing the extent to which some theorists disagree about methodologies.³⁴34.See infra Section II.C.Show More A principal goal of this Article is to demonstrate the problems with the Standard Approach’s emphasis on methodologies and the advantages of a justifications-based approach to constitutional theory.

Indeed, since that is a threshold task, it is where this Article will begin. In Part I, I will describe the Standard Approach to constitutional theory and identify the two main problems with organizing the debate in constitutional theory around methodologies of constitutional adjudication rather than the justifications for those methodologies.

This sets up the argument of Part II, in which I will sketch a justifications-based approach to constitutional theory. Section II.A will provide a fuller account of individualism and rationalism, and Section II.B, in turn, will show that the premises of several major constitutional theories—both originalist and non-originalist—depend on the acceptance or rejection of these two liberal propositions. I will argue that individualism and rationalism are foundational to some constitutional theories, while anti-individualism and anti-rationalism are foundational to others, and the acceptance or rejection of these two liberal propositions, far from tracking the originalism/non-originalism dichotomy, transcends it. Section II.C will pull these strands of argument together and show that the benefit of a justifications-based approach to constitutional theory is that we can identify crucial areas of agreement and disagreement across the originalism/non-originalism divide, which makes it much more likely that theorists will be able to identify the best constitutional theory and better understand doctrinal disagreements.

Finally, Part III will address various objections and counterarguments that are best left for the end, such as the argument that a justifications-based approach would shift constitutional scholarship too far in the direction of political theory and away from doctrine.

American constitutional theory is too complex, and the stakes are too high, for any single idea to serve as a panacea, and I certainly do not claim to be offering one. But the Standard Approach makes progress in constitutional theory less likely, and after forty years, it is time to try a new approach.

* Assistant Professor of Law, the Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law. I thank Richard Fallon, Jack Goldsmith, Jeff Pojanowski, Nelson Lund, Yuval Levin, Sherif Girgis, Alex Potapov, John Ohlendorf, and Henry Stephan for their comments on earlier drafts. I also thank Bonaventure Chapman, Melissa Lane, Philip Neri Reese, Dominic Verner, and the participants of the Catholic Law Faculty Research Series workshop for helpful conversations or email exchanges. Finally, I thank Steve Young and Tabitha Kempf for outstanding research assistance. ↑
See, e.g., Lawrence B. Solum, The Constraint Principle: Original Meaning and Constitutional Practice 26 (Apr. 3, 2019) (unpublished manuscript) (on file with author), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2940215 [https://perma.cc/27DK-CPBY] (“normative constitutional theory is currently in a state of dialectical impasse” between originalists and non-originalists); Jack M. Balkin, Why Liberals and Conservatives Flipped on Judicial Restraint: Judicial Review in the Cycles of Constitutional Time, 98 Tex. L. Rev. 215, 245 (2019) (describing originalism and living constitutionalism as “the two major schools of modern constitutional theory”); David Singh Grewal & Jedediah Purdy, The Original Theory of Constitutionalism, 127 Yale L.J. 664, 666 (2018) (book review) (“The conflict between various versions of ‘originalism’ and ‘living constitutionalism’ has defined the landscape of constitutional theory and practice for more than a generation, and it shows no sign of abating.”); Joel K. Goldstein, History and Constitutional Interpretation: Some Lessons from the Vice Presidency, 69 Ark. L. Rev. 647, 647 (2016) (“In recent times, the principal demarcation in academic discussions of constitutional theory and judicial decision-making separates originalists and living constitutionalists.”); Louis J. Virelli III, Constitutional Traditionalism in the Roberts Court, 73 U. Pitt. L. Rev. 1, 11 (2011) (“Constitutional theory is often described as consisting of two distinct and entrenched camps: ‘living constitutionalism’ and ‘originalism.’”); David A. Strauss, The Living Constitution 7–49 (2010) (framing his argument in terms of originalism versus living constitutionalism); Thomas B. Colby & Peter J. Smith, Living Originalism, 59 Duke L.J. 239, 241 (2009) (“For the last several decades, the primary divide in American constitutional theory has been between those theorists who label themselves as ‘originalists’ and those who do not.”); Brannon P. Denning, Brother, Can You Paradigm?, 23 Const. Comment. 81, 81 (2006) (book review) (describing the debate between originalism and non-originalism as having “dominated constitutional theory since at least the mid-twentieth century”); Antonin Scalia, Common-Law Courts in a Civil-Law System: The Role of United States Federal Courts in Interpreting the Constitution and Laws, in A Matter of Interpretation: Federal Courts and the Law 3, 38 (Amy Gutmann ed., 1997) (“[T]he Great Divide with regard to constitutional interpretation is not that between Framers’ intent and objective meaning, but rather that between original meaning (whether derived from Framers’ intent or not) and current meaning.”); Michael P. Zuckert, The New Rawls and Constitutional Theory: Does It Really Taste That Much Better?, 11 Const. Comment. 227, 236 (1994); Robert H. Bork, The Tempting of America: The Political Seduction of the Law 251–59 (1990) (framing his argument in terms of originalism versus “revisionist” non-originalism). ↑
Paul Brest, The Misconceived Quest for the Original Understanding, 60 B.U. L. Rev. 204, 204 (1980); see Lawrence B. Solum, Originalism and Constitutional Construction, 82 Fordham L. Rev. 453, 459 (2013) (identifying Brest’s 1980 article as having coined the term “originalism”). ↑
Johnathan O’Neill, Originalism in American Law and Politics: A Constitutional History 133–89 (2005). ↑
Lawrence B. Solum, Originalism Versus Living Constitutionalism: The Conceptual Structure of the Great Debate, 113 Nw. U. L. Rev. 1243, 1244 (2019). ↑
See, e.g., Strauss, supra note 1, at 12–18; Tobin Harshaw, Kennedy, Bork and the Politics of Judicial Destruction, N.Y. Times: Opinionator (Aug. 28, 2009, 7:23 PM), https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/28/weekend-opinionator-kennedy-bork-and-the-politics-of-judicial-destruction/ [https://perma.cc/3F28-XDP9] (describing Senator Ted Kennedy’s “Robert Bork’s America” speech). ↑
See, e.g., Jess Bravin, Brent Kendall & Jacob Gershman, What Trump Pick Amy Coney Barrett Could Mean for Future of the Supreme Court, Wall St. J. (Sept. 26, 2020, 5:19 PM), https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-trump-pick-amy-coney-barrett-could-mean-for-future-of-the-supreme-court-11601155192 [https://perma.cc/P3R9-AKLS]. ↑
But see Keith E. Whittington, Originalism: A Critical Introduction, 82 Fordham L. Rev. 375, 404 n.120 (2013) (“I wish it went without saying that I do not believe that constitutional theory can simply be reduced to this particular dichotomy between originalists and nonoriginalists.”). ↑
Jonathan L. Marshfield, Amendment Creep, 115 Mich. L. Rev. 215, 224 (2016) (describing “the tired normative debate regarding the best method of constitutional interpretation”); Richard H. Fallon, Jr., The Many and Varied Roles of History in Constitutional Adjudication, 90 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1753, 1753 (2015) (describing “increasingly tired, stylized debates of the form ‘Originalism: For or Against?’”); William Baude, Is Originalism Our Law?, 115 Colum. L. Rev. 2349, 2351 (2015) (asserting that the debate over originalism is “at a standstill”); Brannon P. Denning, The New Doctrinalism in Constitutional Scholarship and District of Columbia v. Heller, 75 Tenn. L. Rev. 789, 794 (2008) (describing “the stalemated (and stale) debates between originalists and nonoriginalists”). Some might disagree and say that the debate remains fruitful, but even if one thinks the current debate is robust, my argument below should prompt a reevaluation of whether the current framing of the debate is the most productive form that the debate could take within constitutional theory, or whether instead we would be better served by reframing the debate in the manner suggested below. See infra Section II.C. ↑
See generally Keith E. Whittington, The New Originalism, 2 Geo. J.L. Pub. Pol’y 599 (2004) (describing the development of originalism in response to non-originalist criticisms in the 1980s and 1990s); see also O’Neill, supra note 3, at 133–216 (same). ↑
William Baude and Stephen Sachs have recently proposed a genuinely novel argument in favor of originalism that relies on legal positivism. See Stephen E. Sachs, Originalism as a Theory of Legal Change, 38 Harv. J.L. Pub. Pol’y 817, 822–38 (2015); Baude, supra note 8, at 2363–91. ↑
See Steven D. Smith, That Old-Time Originalism, in The Challenge of Originalism: Theories of Constitutional Interpretation 223, 224–42 (Grant Huscroft & Bradley W. Miller eds., 2011) (describing the increasingly abstruse refinements of originalist theory). ↑
The development that arguably has changed the contours of the debate is the introduction of the interpretation/construction distinction, but that distinction has mostly tended to confuse the debate. See infra Subsection I.B.1. ↑
Anthony Arblaster, The Rise and Decline of Western Liberalism 95 (1984). Some might date the birth of liberalism to the immediate aftermath of the Renaissance, see John Gray, Liberalism, at xi, 9 (2d ed. 1995), though the distinction is somewhat arbitrary. ↑
Alan Ryan, The Making of Modern Liberalism 21–26 (2012). ↑
Patrick J. Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed 101 (2018); Gray, supra note 13, at 22–24. ↑
Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America: An Interpretation of American Political Thought Since the Revolution 3–32 (reprt., 2d Harvest ed. 1991) (1955); Patrick J. Deneen, Better Than Our Philosophy: A Response to Muñoz, Pub. Discourse (Nov. 29, 2012), https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/11/7156/ [https://perma.cc/VB83-7JVD]. The extent of Locke’s influence on the American Founding is, however, contested. See, e.g., Robert R. Reilly, For God and Country, XVII Claremont Rev. of Books 44, 47 (2017); Nathan Schlueter, Sustainable Liberalism, Pub. Discourse (Dec. 7, 2012), https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/12/7322/ [https://perma.cc/5YUP-WJQ9]. ↑
Deneen, supra note 15, at 43–63. ↑
See infra Section II.A. ↑
See Yuval Levin, The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left 91–125 (2014); Arblaster, supra note 13, at 21–23. ↑
See infra Subsection II.A.1. ↑
See infra Subsection II.A.2. ↑
Michael Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics, in Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays 5, 6 (1991). ↑
As discussed below, I will assume, solely for the sake of clarity of presentation, that philosophical conservatism is distinct from liberalism. See infra Section II.A. ↑
See infra Section II.B. ↑
See infra Section II.B. ↑
See infra Section II.C. ↑
Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644 (2015); see infra Section II.C. ↑
Bostock v. Clayton Cnty., 140 S. Ct. 1731 (2020); see infra Section III.A. ↑
See infra Section II.B. ↑
See infra Section II.B. ↑
See infra Section II.C. ↑
See infra Part I. ↑
See infra Part I. ↑
See infra Section II.C. ↑
See David A. Strauss, What Is Constitutional Theory?, 87 Calif. L. Rev. 581, 582–83 (1999); Richard H. Fallon, Jr., How to Choose a Constitutional Theory, 87 Calif. L. Rev. 535, 537 (1999); Richard A. Posner, Against Constitutional Theory, 73 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 1, 1–4 (1998). Although “adjudication” has a distinctively judicial connotation, I do not intend to exclude methodologies describing how the political branches should interpret the Constitution. See, e.g., Amy Coney Barrett & John Copeland Nagle, Congressional Originalism, 19 U. Pa. J. Const. L. 1, 9–13 (2016); see generally Joel Alicea, Stare Decisis in an Originalist Congress, 35 Harv. J.L. Pub. Pol’y 797 (2012). ↑
See, e.g., Lawrence Lessig, The Puzzling Persistence of Bellbottom Theory: What a Constitutional Theory Should Be, 85 Geo. L.J. 1837, 1838–39 (1997). ↑
I use the phrase “constitutional adjudication” rather than “constitutional interpretation” because, as discussed below, see infra Subsection I.B.1, some scholars have proposed distinguishing between constitutional “interpretation” and constitutional “construction.” By “adjudication,” I mean to encompass both “interpretation” and “construction,” as these theorists have used those terms. ↑
Andrew Coan, The Foundations of Constitutional Theory, 2017 Wis. L. Rev. 833, 835–36 (2017) (emphasis omitted). It is also consistent with how other theorists think about the elements of a constitutional theory. See Richard H. Fallon, Jr., Law and Legitimacy in the Supreme Court 132–33 (2018) (distinguishing between “methodological premises or commitments” that “seek to specify the criteria of decision that the Justices should, or at least legitimately can, apply” and “defense[s] on partly normative grounds” that “the embrace of an interpretive methodology requires”); Randy J. Kozel, Settled Versus Right: A Theory of Precedent 64 (2017) (similar). But see Stephen E. Sachs, Originalism: Standard and Procedure, 135 Harv. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2022) (arguing that originalism should not be understood as a decision procedure). ↑
James Bradley Thayer, The Origin and Scope of the American Doctrine of Constitutional Law, 7 Harv. L. Rev. 129, 144 (1893). ↑
Id. ↑
Id. at 134–35. ↑
See supra notes 1–2 and accompanying text. ↑
Coan, supra note 38, at 835 (noting that scholars have generally tended to focus on methodologies over justifications). ↑
Solum, supra note 4, at 1265–66. ↑
See, e.g., Larry Alexander, Simple-Minded Originalism, in The Challenge of Originalism, supra note 11, at 87; Larry Alexander & Saikrishna Prakash, “Is That English You’re Speaking?” Why Intention Free Interpretation is an Impossibility, 41 San Diego L. Rev. 967, 972, 982 (2004). ↑
See, e.g., Vasan Kesavan & Michael Stokes Paulsen, The Interpretive Force of the Constitution’s Secret Drafting History, 91 Geo. L.J. 1113, 1132 (2003); Scalia, supra note 1, at 38. ↑
See, e.g., John O. McGinnis & Michael B. Rappaport, Reconciling Originalism and Precedent, 103 Nw. U. L. Rev. 803, 829 (2009); Caleb Nelson, Stare Decisis and Demonstrably Erroneous Precedents, 87 Va. L. Rev. 1, 5–8 (2001). ↑
See, e.g., Gary Lawson, Mostly Unconstitutional: The Case Against Precedent Revisited, 5 Ave Maria L. Rev. 1, 5–8 (2007); Michael Stokes Paulsen, The Intrinsically Corrupting Influence of Precedent, 22 Const. Comment. 289, 289–98 (2005). ↑
See, e.g., Strauss, supra note 1, at 33–40; David A. Strauss, Common Law Constitutional Interpretation, 63 U. Chi. L. Rev. 877, 884–91 (1996). ↑
See, e.g., Ronald Dworkin, Law’s Empire 225–75 (1986). ↑
See, e.g., Stephen M. Griffin, Pluralism in Constitutional Interpretation, 72 Tex. L. Rev. 1753, 1758–62 (1994); Richard H. Fallon, Jr., A Constructivist Coherence Theory of Constitutional Interpretation, 100 Harv. L. Rev. 1189, 1209–23, 1240–46 (1987). ↑
Solum, supra note 2, at 460–61; see generally Solum, supra note 1, at 139. Solum also relies on the “Fixation Thesis” to define originalism, but as discussed below, that principle is not what primarily divides originalists from non-originalists. See infra Subsection I.B.1. ↑
See Griffin, supra note 51, at 1762–64. ↑
Solum, supra note 2, at 460–61; see also Solum, supra note 1, at 105–28. ↑
Solum, supra note 2, at 472–73; Solum, supra note 1, at 26–30. ↑
Coan, supra note 38, at 882–84. ↑
See generally Keith E. Whittington, Constitutional Construction: Divided Powers and Constitutional Meaning (1999). For the history of the distinction generally and within originalism specifically, see Solum, supra note 2, at 467–69; Randy E. Barnett & Evan D. Bernick, The Letter and the Spirit: A Unified Theory of Originalism, 107 Geo. L.J. 1, 10–13 (2018). ↑
Lawrence B. Solum, The Interpretation-Construction Distinction, 27 Const. Comment. 95, 100 (2010). Although Solum has been the principal developer of the interpretation/construction distinction, it was introduced into constitutional theory by Professor Whittington, see Barnett & Bernick, supra note 57, at 10–11, whose understanding of the distinction was somewhat different from Solum’s. ↑
Lawrence B. Solum, Communicative Content and Legal Content, 89 Notre Dame L. Rev. 479, 502 (2013). ↑
Solum, supra note 58, at 99. ↑
Id. at 103. ↑
Id. at 104–06. ↑
Id. at 103 n.19. ↑
Id. at 104–05. ↑
See Antonin Scalia & Bryan A. Garner, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts 13–15 (2012); Gary Lawson, Dead Document Walking, 92 B.U. L. Rev. 1225, 1231–36 (2012); John O. McGinnis & Michael B. Rappaport, Original Methods Originalism: A New Theory of Interpretation and the Case Against Construction, 103 Nw. U. L. Rev. 751, 772–80 (2009); see also Smith, supra note 11, at 227–42 (increasingly abstract distinctions within originalism take away from the attractive simplicity of originalism). ↑
See generally Barnett & Bernick, supra note 57 (tracing the history of these concepts within originalism); Jack M. Balkin, Living Originalism (2011); Keith E. Whittington, Constitutional Interpretation: Textual Meaning, Original Intent, and Judicial Review (1999); Whittington, supra note 57. ↑
Solum, supra note 58, at 116–17; see also Barnett & Bernick, supra note 57, at 14. ↑
Solum, supra note 58, at 116–17; see also Barnett & Bernick, supra note 57, at 14. ↑
Solum, supra note 1, at 16; Solum, supra note 2, at 472–73. Barnett has recently argued that the range of permissible theories of constitutional construction is narrower than he had previously recognized. See Barnett & Bernick, supra note 57, at 14 & n.58. But Barnett’s view has not been broadly accepted by other originalists (at least not yet), so as things now stand, my description of the upshot of the interpretation/construction distinction remains true. ↑
Solum, supra note 1, at 16; see also Sachs, supra note 10, at 831–32 (”Most everyone accepts that some kind of original meaning is legally relevant sometimes.”); Mitchell N. Berman, Originalism Is Bunk, 84 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 1, 32–33 (2009). But see Lawrence B. Solum, The Fixation Thesis: The Role of Historical Fact in Original Meaning, 91 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1, 62–70 (2015) (arguing that some non-originalist theories deny the Fixation Thesis). ↑
Barnett & Bernick, supra note 57, at 15–17; see Solum, supra note 2, at 499–523 (arguing that the construction zone is substantial). ↑
Solum, supra note 58, at 117. As noted above, Solum seems to have retreated from that view in later writings. See Solum, supra note 4, at 1284. ↑
Peter J. Smith, How Different Are Originalism and Non-Originalism?, 62 Hastings L.J. 707, 723 & n.94 (2011) (collecting sources making similar observations); see also Thomas B. Colby, The Sacrifice of the New Originalism, 99 Geo. L.J. 713, 750 (2011) (modern originalism mirrors non-originalism in practice). ↑
See, e.g., Joel Alicea, Originalism and the Rule of the Dead, Nat’l Affs., Spring 2015, at 149, https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/originalism-and-the-rule-of-the-dead [https://perma.cc/9F5A-M77L]; Smith, supra note 11, at 230–33; Nelson Lund, Living Originalism: The Magical Mystery Tour, 3 Tex. A&M L. Rev. 31, 43 (2015). ↑
Colby & Smith, supra note 1, at 258 (2009). ↑
Balkin, supra note 66. I will describe Balkin’s theory in more detail below. See infra Subsections II.B.1–2. ↑
Balkin, supra note 66, at 20. ↑
Id. at 35–39, 282. ↑
Id. at 21–34, 282. ↑
Balkin’s thin view of constitutional interpretation is dictated by the justification he offers for his theory. See infra Section II.C. ↑
Balkin, supra note 66, at 12–49; Solum, supra note 4, at 1282–83; Lund, supra note 74, at 32–36. ↑
Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973); see generally Jack M. Balkin, Abortion and Original Meaning, 24 Const. Comment. 291 (2007) (arguing that the right to abortion is consistent with the original meaning of the Constitution). ↑
Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111 (1942); see Jack M. Balkin, Commerce, 109 Mich. L. Rev. 1, 34–35 (2010); Balkin, supra note 66, at 164–65. ↑
See United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549, 584–602 (1995) (Thomas, J., concurring) (arguing that Wickard has no basis in the original meaning of the Constitution); Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833, 979–1002 (1992) (Scalia, J., concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part) (arguing that Roe has no basis in the original meaning of the Constitution). ↑
Solum, supra note 4, at 1282–84. ↑
Solum, supra note 1, at 20 n.55. ↑
See Stephen E. Sachs, Originalism Without Text, 127 Yale L.J. 156, 165–66 (2017); Smith, supra note 11, at 230–33. ↑
Solum, supra note 4, at 1254. ↑
Lawrence B. Solum, What Is Originalism? The Evolution of Contemporary Originalist Theory, in The Challenge of Originalism, supra note 11, at 12, 32. ↑
Though some have tried. See supra note 65. ↑
See, e.g., Alicea, supra note 74, at 154–61. ↑
Compare Randy E. Barnett, Am I “Imperiling” Originalism? A Reply to Joel Alicea, Volokh Conspiracy (Mar. 30, 2015), https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/03/30/am-i-imperiling-originalism/ [https://perma.cc/Q4BU-MJ5Z] (responding to Alicea’s article which criticizes Barnett’s view of originalism), with Joel Alicea, “Yes, You are Imperiling Originalism:” A Response to Professor Barnett, Volokh Conspiracy (Apr. 4, 2015), https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/04/04/yes-you-are-imperiling-originalism-a-response-to-professor-barnett/ [https://perma.cc/25S6-RE75] (refuting perceived similarities between his view of originalism and Barnett’s). ↑
See Solum, supra note 4, at 1244–48. ↑
See id. at 1247–48. ↑
See Smith, supra note 73, at 729–30. ↑
See supra note 35. ↑
Fallon, supra note 38, at 136–37. ↑
Id. at 137. ↑
Id. at 142–48. ↑
See, e.g., Berman, supra note 70, at 4–8; Mark. S. Stein, Originalism and Original Exclusions, 98 Ky. L.J. 397, 397–406 (2009–2010). ↑
See, e.g., Whittington, supra note 9, at 599. ↑
Of course, as pluralist theories of constitutional adjudication like Fallon’s demonstrate, the question of whether there is a correct methodology of constitutional adjudication is distinct from the question of whether there are correct (or at least privileged) modalities of constitutional adjudication, though one must answer the latter question to determine which methodology is correct. See Fallon, supra note 51, at 1209–17 (arguing, in the context of an article justifying a pluralist methodology, that originalism errs by privileging text and history over other modalities). ↑
Some theorists would answer “no.” See, e.g., Richard A. Posner, Legal Pragmatism Defended, 71 U. Chi. L. Rev. 683, 683–84 (2004); see also Solum, supra note 1, at 122–26 (describing theories that reject a single methodology of adjudication). ↑
Even if I am wrong about this, the principal goal of constitutional theorists is, at the very least, to describe and justify the best subset of methodologies of constitutional adjudication, even if there is no single correct theory. My argument in the rest of this Section would remain valid under this more modest description of constitutional theory’s goal. ↑
Kozel, supra note 38, at 64 (“Normative commitments are the paths to interpretive methodology.”). ↑
See John Rawls, Political Liberalism 133–72 (expanded ed. 1996). I thank John Ohlendorf for pointing out this important objection. ↑
See Michael W. McConnell, Textualism and the Dead Hand of the Past, 66 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 1127, 1128 (1998). ↑
See infra Subsection II.B.1. ↑
See supra Subsection I.B.1. ↑
See John D. Arras, Methods in Bioethics: The Way We Reason Now 192–96 (James Childress & Matthew Adams eds., 2017) (making a similar argument about the possibility of an overlapping consensus in bioethics). ↑
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice 17–18, 42–45 (rev. ed. 1999). ↑
Id. at 18. ↑
See Fallon, supra note 38, at 142–48; Richard H. Fallon, Jr., Arguing in Good Faith About the Constitution: Ideology, Methodology, and Reflective Equilibrium, 84 U. Chi. L. Rev. 123, 139–44 (2017); Fallon, supra note 35, at 576 n.224. ↑
See Solum, supra note 1, at 30–35. Solum, for instance, employs it only for justifying the Constraint Principle, and he does not use canonical cases as part of his equilibrium analysis. See id. at 83–86. ↑
Arras, supra note 110, at 197–200. This implicates deep questions about how we know whether something is true, which is beyond the scope of this Article. ↑
Id. at 192–96. I understand Solum to be making the same point. See Solum, supra note 1, at 33–35. ↑
This was Rawls’s aim, Arras, supra note 110, at 194–95, and it appears to be Solum’s as well. See Solum, supra note 1, at 34–35. ↑
See, e.g., John O. McGinnis & Michael B. Rappaport, Originalism and the Good Constitution 1–115 (2013); Strauss, supra note 1, at 1–50; Randy E. Barnett, Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty 1–88 (2004); Whittington, supra note 66, at 47–159. ↑
See, e.g., Adrian Vermeule, Common Law Constitutionalism and the Limits of Reason, 107 Colum. L. Rev. 1482 (2007); Fallon, supra note 38, at 1–19; Richard H. Fallon, Jr., Legitimacy and the Constitution, 118 Harv. L. Rev. 1787 (2005). ↑
Smith, supra note 11, at 227–30 (warning of the dangers of increasing levels of abstraction in constitutional theory); see also Bork, supra note 1, at 133–35 (same). ↑
For example, although I describe Locke as an individualist, some would disagree with that description. See Ruth W. Grant, John Locke on Custom’s Power and Reason’s Authority, 74 Rev. Pol. 607, 608 n.2 (2012) (cataloguing contrasting views about whether Lockeanism is individualistic). And while I put forward an interpretation of Mill, “what the liberalism is that [Mill] defends and how [he] defends it remain matters of controversy.” Ryan, supra note 14, at 292. ↑
Ryan, supra note 14, at 23. ↑
Id. at 21; see also Jeremy Waldron, Theoretical Foundations of Liberalism, 37 Phil. Q. 127, 127–28 (1987) (the term “liberalism” includes a range of views without “any set of doctrines or principles that are held in common”). ↑
Assuming, that is, that I have successfully shown that justifications, rather than methodologies, are the fundamental areas of disagreement in constitutional theory. See supra Subsection I.B.2. ↑
This is partly because conservatism is itself a contested concept. See, e.g., Samuel P. Huntington, Conservatism as an Ideology, 51 Am. Pol. Sci. Rev. 454, 454–61 (1957). ↑
See, e.g., Levin, supra note 19, at xvi; Pierre Manent, An Intellectual History of Liberalism 80 (Rebecca Balinski trans., 1994); Gray, supra note 13, at 20; Guido de Ruggiero, The History of European Liberalism 78–84 (R.G. Collingwood trans., Beacon Press 1959) (1927). ↑
See generally Sanford Lakoff, Tocqueville, Burke, and the Origins of Liberal Conservatism, 60 Rev. of Pol. 435, 442–46 (1998). ↑
Ryan, supra note 14, at 24. ↑
Roger Scruton, The Meaning of Conservatism 182–94 (3d ed. Palgrave 2001) (1980). ↑
See, e.g., Deneen, supra note 15, at 1–42; Yuval Levin, After Progressivism, First Things (May 2012), https://www.firstthings.com/article/2012/05/after-progressivism [https://perma.cc/U45J-Y2S7]. ↑
Levin, supra note 130. ↑
Waldron, supra note 123, at 140 (“[L]iberalism is not a monolithic tradition.”). ↑
Gray, supra note 13, at xiii; see also D.J. Manning, Liberalism 13 (1976) (noting persistent themes throughout the differing strains of liberalism). ↑
Ryan, supra note 14, at 23–40. So did Waldron. See Waldron, supra note 123, at 129–40. ↑
Arblaster, supra note 13, at 13 (emphasis omitted). ↑
My analysis in this Article was developed independently of Coan’s and differs from his important project in several ways. To take just two examples: (1) he does not argue against the Standard Approach, choosing instead to argue in favor of more attention to justifications; and (2) he organizes justifications based on types of arguments (e.g., whether a justification is procedural in nature) rather than on whether theorists agree or disagree about particular substantive claims, such as individualism or rationalism. ↑
See Coan, supra note 38, at 840. ↑
Arblaster, supra note 13, at 15. ↑
See id. at 15–54; Gray, supra note 13, at xii; see also Deneen, supra note 15, at 31–34, 43–63; Kenneth Minogue, The Liberal Mind 46–52 (Liberty Fund, Inc. 2000) (1963); Scruton, supra note 129, at 64–66; C.B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke 1 (1962). ↑
John Finnis, Natural Law & Natural Rights 198–210 (2d ed. 2011) (rights-talk, though modern, is simply a useful way of describing the demands of justice in the natural-law tradition); see also Russell Hittinger, The First Grace: Rediscovering the Natural Law in a Post-Christian World 115–16 (2002) (noting that classical lawyers saw justice as the giving of rights due); Gray, supra note 13, at 6. ↑
Arblaster, supra note 13, at 21–23. ↑
Id. at 40–41. ↑
Levin, supra note 19, at 91–125. ↑
John Locke, The Second Treatise of Government, in The Second Treatise of Government and a Letter Concerning Toleration 2–7 (Tom Crawford ed., Dover Publ’ns, Inc. 2002) (1946); see also Levin, supra note 19, at 44–52; Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, in Collected Writings 464–65 (Eric Foner ed., 1995). ↑
Locke, supra note 144, at 2–10; see also L.T. Hobhouse, Liberalism 20–21 (1911). Locke’s description of the state of nature is complicated, see Macpherson, supra note 139, at 240–41, and I have oversimplified for present purposes. ↑
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin and Foundation of Inequality Among Men, or Second Discourse, in Rousseau: The Discourses and Other Early Political Writings 115, 145–46, 149 (Victor Gourevitch ed. & trans., 1997). ↑
Locke, supra note 144, at 35–38; Manent, supra note 126, at 44; Manning, supra note 133, at 121. Nonetheless, Deneen has argued that Locke’s conception of familial relations is individualistic and anti-social. See, e.g., Deneen, supra note 15, at 32–33. ↑
Manent, supra note 126, at 42. ↑
Id. at 48. ↑
Id.; Locke, supra note 144, at 8–10, 44. ↑
Locke, supra note 144, at 44–45; Gray, supra note 13, at 13–14. ↑
Locke, supra note 144, at 44. ↑
Id. at 57–59. ↑
Rawls, supra note 111, at 10. ↑
Id. at 10–19, 118–30; Ryan, supra note 14, at 509. ↑
On the individualism of Rawls’s theory, see Michael J. Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice 59–65 (1982). ↑
Gray, supra note 13, at 30; Hobhouse, supra note 145, at 43. ↑
Ryan, supra note 14, at 318; Manning, supra note 133, at 13. ↑
Ryan, supra note 14, at 318; John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, in On Liberty and Other Writings 1, 75 (Stefan Collini ed., 1989). ↑
See Mill, supra note 159, at 14 (“I regard utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions.”); Ryan, supra note 14, at 263–64. ↑
See Ryan, supra note 14, at 262 (observing that Mill “advanced a much enlarged role for government and public opinion alike” with respect to enforcing parental responsibilities); Gray, supra note 13, at 29–30; Hobhouse, supra note 145, at 25–26. ↑
Arblaster, supra note 13, at 41–43. ↑
Mill, supra note 159, at 15. ↑
Id. at 5; see also id. at 8–9 (describing the tyranny of public opinion). ↑
See infra Subsection II.A.2. There is, therefore, a close connection between Mill’s individualism and rationalism. ↑
Mill, supra note 159, at 13. ↑
Id. ↑
Ryan, supra note 14, at 362. ↑
Id.; Mill, supra note 159, at 13. One might object that I have defined liberalism solely based on the English liberal tradition and that other liberal traditions, such as the French tradition, are not as individualistic. See Larry Siedentop, Two Liberal Traditions, in The Idea of Freedom: Essays in Honour of Isaiah Berlin 153, 153–56 (Alan Ryan ed., 1979). Such a clean division between English and French liberalism is contested. See Gray, supra note 13, at 22–23; Ruggiero, supra note 126, at 347. In any event, nothing important would change about my argument if the reader chose to substitute “English liberalism” for “liberalism” throughout this text. ↑
Mill, supra note 159, at 56–74 (arguing for the primacy of individuality); see also Gray, supra note 13, at 29 (In On Liberty, “Mill’s commitment to liberal individualism is much more prominent than his commitment to Utilitarian social reform.”); Macpherson, supra note 139, at 2 (describing the utilitarian doctrine as a restatement of individualist principles); Hobhouse, supra note 145, at 112, 120. ↑
Deneen, supra note 15, at 46–47; see also id. at 16–18, 43–63 (arguing that individualism and statism reinforce each other). Others have made similar arguments or observations, with Macpherson’s argument being among the most detailed. See Macpherson, supra note 139, at 255–57 (arguing that individualism and collectivism reinforce each other and that Locke’s individualism requires the role of the state); see also Scruton, supra note 129, at 38–41; Manning, supra note 133, at 53. That being said, I do not mean to suggest that the transition from state-of-nature theories to Mill is seamless; they differ in important ways. See, e.g., Ryan, supra note 14, at 310–11; Gray, supra note 13, at 29–30. I am only arguing that they share a commitment to individualism. ↑
Jed Rubenfeld has noted this connection between individualism and the severing of intergenerational relations, though he seems to think that the breakdown in intergenerational relations precedes individualism rather than vice-versa. See Jed Rubenfeld, Freedom and Time: A Theory of Constitutional Self-Government 22–26, 68–70 (2001). ↑
Locke, supra note 144, at 23–35. Although he was writing about democracy, not liberalism per se, Tocqueville’s description of the way in which individualism leads to a severing of relationships between generations is applicable here. See 2 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America 99 (Phillips Bradley ed., Henry Reeve trans., Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. 1945) (“Thus not only does democracy make every man forget his ancestors, but it hides his descendants and separates his contemporaries from him . . . .”). ↑
Locke, supra note 144, at 54; see also Paine, supra note 144, at 438–41 (arguing against intergenerational authority). ↑
Mill, supra note 159, at 56–74. ↑
Scruton, supra note 129, at 10; see also Gray, supra note 13, at 80 (conservatives “mostly repudiated the abstract individualism they found in liberal thought and rejected liberal ideas of civil society in favour of conceptions of moral community”). ↑
See Levin, supra note 19, at 101–08 (arguing that Burke’s account of political authority was not based on consent). ↑
Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France 52 (J.G.A. Pocock ed., Hackett Publ’g Co. 1987) (1789–1790). ↑
Levin, supra note 19, at 54. ↑
Scruton, supra note 129, at 19–21 (arguing that conservatism rejects social-contract theory). ↑
Burke, supra note 178, at 52; see also Levin, supra note 19, at 101–08 (describing Burke’s objections to the liberal notion of a state of nature); Scruton, supra note 129, at 19–21 (arguing against the state of nature hypothetical). ↑
Thomas Aquinas, De Regno, in St Thomas Aquinas: Political Writings 5, 5–6 (R.W. Dyson ed. & trans., Cambridge Univ. Press 2002) (Bk. I, ch. 1); see also Aristotle, The Politics, in Aristotle: The Politics and the Constitution of Athens 13 (Stephen Everson ed., B. Jowett trans., 1996) (Bk. I.2) (“Hence it is evident that the state is a creation of nature, and that man is by nature a political animal.”); see also Deneen, supra note 15, at 34–35 (describing premodern political thought); Arblaster, supra note 13, at 22–23. For an insightful and somewhat revisionist discussion of Burke’s importance to natural-law thinking, see Matthew D. Wright, A Vindication of Politics: On the Common Good and Human Flourishing 120–58 (2019). But see Huntington, supra note 125, at 459 n.6 (asserting that “any theory of natural law as a set of transcendent and universal moral principles is inherently nonconservative”); see also 1 F.A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism 66–88 (W.W. Bartley III ed., Univ. of Chicago Press 1991) (1988). ↑
Levin, supra note 19, at 101–09. ↑
Scruton, supra note 129, at 45–48; 1 G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, in The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton 251 (David Dooley ed., 1986) (1908) (“We will have the dead at our councils. The ancient Greeks voted by stones; these shall vote by tombstones.”). ↑
Burke, supra note 178, at 84. ↑
Id. at 85. ↑
Locke, supra note 144, at 23–35. ↑
Burke, supra note 178, at 30; see also id. at 27–33; Scruton, supra note 129, at 21–24, 129–31. ↑
Levin, supra note 19, at 214–19. ↑
Locke, supra note 144, at 54–57; see also Levin, supra note 19, at 95–96 (describing this feature of Paine’s theory). ↑
Burke, supra note 178, at 29–31. ↑
Arblaster, supra note 13, at 23. ↑
See Minogue, supra note 139, at 56–59 (stating that there is no necessary connection between liberalism and rationalism (what he calls “libertarianism”), while noting that it is nonetheless a key component of the liberal tradition). Ryan, for instance, implies that the classical liberal tradition associated with Locke takes a more modest view of human reason, see Ryan, supra note 14, at 24–26, and Arblaster points out that liberalism has always contained more- and less-rationalist veins, see Arblaster, supra note 13, at 79–84. ↑
See Minogue, supra note 139, at 27 (drawing this distinction). ↑
See Peter Markie, Rationalism vs. Empiricism, Stan. Encyclopedia of Phil. (July 6, 2017), https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/#Bib [https://perma.cc/9R8K-YFPE]; see also Adam Adatto Sandel, The Place of Prejudice: A Case for Reasoning Within the World 24–33 (2014) (describing Descartes as a rationalist in the sense that I invoke here). ↑
Oakeshott, supra note 22, at 5–6. ↑
Minogue, supra note 139, at 54–55; Hayek, supra note 182, at 48–52. A similar description of rationalism is found in then-Pope Benedict XVI’s Regensburg Address. See generally Pope Benedict XVI, Faith, Reason, and the University, in A Reason Open to God 7, 7–19 (J. Steven Brown ed., 2013). ↑
Mill, supra note 159, at 23. ↑
Id. ↑
Id. at 58. ↑
Id. (emphasis added). ↑
Id. at 59. ↑
Id. at 14. ↑
Id. at 23, 45; see also Manning, supra note 133, at 53–55. ↑
Ryan, supra note 14, at 267. ↑
Mill, supra note 159, at 70. ↑
Id.; see also Deneen, supra note 15, at 143–48 (describing Mill’s hostility toward custom and tradition). ↑
Minogue, supra note 139, at 54-55 (describing the union of rationalism—what he calls “libertarianism”—and a progressive view of history); Hobhouse, supra note 145, at 49–50, 53. ↑
See John Dewey, The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy, in The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy and Other Essays in Contemporary Thought 1, 9–19 (1910); see also Bradley C. S. Watson, Living Constitution, Dying Faith: Progressivism and the New Science of Jurisprudence 55–109 (2009); Gray, supra note 13, at 88 (recognizing the connection between Mill’s anthropology and theory of history). But see Ryan, supra note 14, at 318 (arguing that Mill had a less optimistic view of human nature than Dewey). ↑
A very similar dynamic can be seen in Paine’s writings. See Levin, supra note 19, at 150–68 (describing the rationalism of Paine). For a discussion of this view of the relationship between history and progress, see generally Herbert Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation of History (photo. reprt. 1978) (1931). ↑
Arblaster, supra note 13, at 35–37 (describing two strands of liberal tradition regarding human reason, with one being more rationalist); see also Ryan, supra note 14, at 25–26 (same). Hayek, for example, argues that Locke does not subscribe to this strong form of rationalism. See Hayek, supra note 182, at 49. But see Grant, supra note 121, at 616–21, 623 (describing Locke’s rationalism). As noted above, one could argue that Burke, Hayek, and Tocqueville are part of the liberal tradition, in which case they would be examples of liberal theories that reject rationalism. ↑
See Levin, supra note 19, at 150–68 (describing Paine’s rationalism). ↑
Grant, supra note 121, at 616–21, 623 (describing Locke’s rationalism); see also John Dunn, The Political Thought of John Locke: An Historical Account of the Argument of the “Two Treatises of Government” 116 (1969) (describing Locke’s move from the state of nature to political society as “rationalistic and abstract”). ↑
See Deneen, supra note 15, at 72–77 (describing the state of nature as being divorced from tradition and custom); Grant, supra note 121, at 610–16 (describing Locke’s view on the influence of custom, especially within a family). ↑
Rawls, supra note 111, at 118–19. ↑
Waldron, supra note 123, at 135; see also id. at 149–50 (explicitly distinguishing liberalism and conservatism on this basis); Deneen, supra note 15, at 25–27 (describing liberalism as a being defined in part by its disregard for culture and tradition). ↑
Arblaster, supra note 13, at 79–84. ↑
Scruton, supra note 129, at 31. See also Minogue, supra note 139, at 53. Hayek articulates a similar idea in his landmark essay on the problem of knowledge. See generally F.A. Hayek, The Use of Knowledge in Society, 35 Am. Econ. Rev. 519 (1945). ↑
Scruton, supra note 129, at 31–32. ↑
Hayek, supra note 182, at 23. ↑
Id. ↑
Burke, supra note 178, at 76. ↑
Id. at 35. ↑
Id. at 33. ↑
Id. at 31–36; see also Levin, supra note 19, at 128–50. Deneen argues that Burkean conservatism is properly viewed as the antithesis of Millian liberalism. See Deneen, supra note 15, at 143–48. ↑
Levin, supra note 19, at 134. ↑
Minogue, supra note 139, at 30, 35–38. ↑
As we will see, David Strauss’s constitutional theory is individualistic but purports to reject rationalism. See infra Section II.B. ↑
Alicea, supra note 74, at 151–54; see also Rubenfeld, supra note 172, at 45–73. That is why rejecting any form of intergenerational authority necessarily requires rejecting the authority of the American Constitution, no matter how interpreted. See Louis Michael Seidman, On Constitutional Disobedience 11–28 (2012); McConnell, supra note 107, at 1127. For a discussion of the role of rationalism in British constitutional culture, see generally Graham Gee & Grégoire Webber, Rationalism in Public Law, 76 Modern L. Rev. 708 (2013). ↑
McConnell, supra note 107, at 1128. ↑
Rubenfeld, supra note 172, at 43 (“[T]o an extraordinary extent, the Jeffersonian thesis [that the earth belongs to the living] remains the dominant starting point for modern democratic and constitutional theory.”). ↑
Barnett, supra note 118, at 9–10. ↑
Randy E. Barnett, Our Republican Constitution: Securing the Liberty and Sovereignty of We the People 69–73 (2016). ↑
Barnett, supra note 118, at 11. ↑
Id. at 14–25. ↑
Id. at 14–19, 22–25. ↑
Id. at 19–22. ↑
By legitimacy, Barnett means legitimacy as a moral concept. See Fallon, supra note 119, at 1796–1801. ↑
Barnett, supra note 233, at 74. Rawls offered a similar principle of legitimacy. See Rawls, supra note 106, at 217. ↑
Barnett, supra note 118, at 44. ↑
Id. ↑
Id. at 100–13. ↑
Barnett’s justification has undergone refinement over the years and now stretches across three books. My description of his theory is an attempt to synthesize his refinements in his later works with his earlier writings. ↑
Barnett, supra note 118, at 19–22. ↑
Id. at 114 (“[W]e are bound to respect the original meaning of a text, not by the dead hand of the past, but because we today—right here, right now—profess our commitment to this written Constitution.”). ↑
Mill, supra note 159, at 14. ↑
Balkin, supra note 66, at 59–61, 66–67, 76–77, 93, 114. Balkin also discusses “basic law,” but I focus on the “higher law” and “our law” components of his theory because they are the most relevant to my point here. ↑
Id. at 62. ↑
Id. at 63. ↑
Id. at 62–63. ↑
Id. at 62, 78–79. ↑
Id. at 64. ↑
Id. at 29–34, 282, 300–19; see also Solum, supra note 4, at 1282–83; Lund, supra note 74, at 32–36. ↑
Balkin, supra note 66, at 56–57, 63. In this limited sense, Balkin disagrees with Strauss, see id. at 49–58, but both theories are ultimately grounded in individualism. ↑
Id. at 56–57, 64, 281–82; Jack M. Balkin, Constitutional Redemption 54 (2011). ↑
Balkin, supra note 66, at 75 (defining redemptive constitutionalism). ↑
It is important to note, however, that Balkin concedes that constitutional redemption is not guaranteed. Id. at 76; see also Jack M. Balkin, Constitutional Rot, in Can It Happen Here?: Authoritarianism in America 19, 19–35 (Cass R. Sunstein ed., 2018) (asserting that republics are susceptible to constitutional rot and patterns of success are not guaranteed to continue). Thus, while he has a Millian faith in human progress, he does not seem to carry that belief as far as some Progressives, who view social progress as inevitable. See Balkin, supra note 255, at 8. ↑
David A. Strauss, Common Law, Common Ground, and Jefferson’s Principle, 112 Yale L.J. 1717, 1718 (2003). ↑
Strauss, supra note 49, at 928 & n.116; see also Strauss, supra note 1, at 18, 44, 100–01 (questioning why people from a different era should decide fundamental questions about our society today). ↑
Strauss, supra note 258, at 1724. ↑
Indeed, Strauss describes and rejects this conservative view. See Strauss, supra note 49, at 891 (asserting that the past is not “somehow constitutive of one’s own or one’s nation’s ‘identity’”). ↑
Strauss emphasizes that the precedents that his common-law methodology takes into account are not limited to judicial precedents, see id. at 925, but I use the term “judicial precedent” here because it is easier to understand his point when thinking about the judicial context. ↑
See David A. Strauss, The Supreme Court 2014 Term—Foreword: Does the Constitution Mean What It Says?, 129 Harv. L. Rev. 2, 2–5, 28–52 (2015). ↑
Strauss, supra note 49, at 906–11. ↑
Strauss, supra note 1, at 51–97; Strauss, supra note 49, at 898–906, 916–24. ↑
Strauss, supra note 1, at 12–18. ↑
Id. at 40–42; Strauss, supra note 49, at 891–98. ↑
Strauss, supra note 1, at 100 (emphasis added). ↑
I will discuss Strauss’s epistemological basis for his methodology in more detail below, see infra Subsection II.B.2, but he stresses that his epistemological argument is not based on the authority of the past. See Strauss, supra note 49, at 891–98. ↑
McConnell, supra note 107, at 1130–31. McConnell presents this as a possible response to the dead-hand argument, but he makes clear later in his article that it is, in fact, his own view. See id. at 1133–35, 1140. ↑
Id. at 1134. ↑
Id. ↑
See id. at 1136; see also Alicea, supra note 74, at 152–54 (asserting that recognizing the authority of predecessors’ judgments is essential to preserving the legitimacy of present-day decisions). ↑
Ernest Young, Rediscovering Conservatism: Burkean Political Theory and Constitutional Interpretation, 72 N.C. L. Rev. 619, 650–59 (1994). ↑
Id. at 672–73; see also Rubenfeld, supra note 172, at 62–65 (arguing that the meaning of a society’s commitments evolves alongside that society). ↑
Young, supra note 274, at 688–91. For another Burkean approach to constitutional adjudication, see generally Anthony T. Kronman, Precedent and Tradition, 99 Yale L.J. 1029 (1990) (arguing that the common-law model is more descriptively accurate than other methods of constitutional adjudication). ↑
There is a good argument for including natural-law based theories in the anti-individualist camp, since (as noted above) conservatism and the national-law tradition tend to have a similar view of the relationship of the individual to society. Natural-law theories come in both originalist, see generally Lee J. Strang, Originalism’s Promise (2019) (basing originalism on a natural-law account); Jeffrey A. Pojanowski & Kevin C. Walsh, Enduring Originalism, 105 Geo. L.J. 97 (2016) (same), and non-originalist varieties, see generally Adrian Vermeule, Common-Good Constitutionalism: A Model Opinion, Ius & Iustitium (June 17, 2020), https://iusetiustitium.com/common-good-constitutionalism-a-model-opinion/ [https://perma.cc/NUE4-UV3Q] (arguing for a framework for interpreting the U.S. Constitution that centers on its commitment to the general welfare); Adrian Vermeule, Beyond Originalism, Atlantic (Mar. 31, 2020), https://www.theatlantic.com/‌ideas/archive/2020/03/‌common‌-good-constitutionalism/609037/ [https://perma.cc/84PE-L96V] (asserting the legitimacy of interpreting the Constitution in such a manner as to allow the government to promote the common good). ↑
Young, supra note 274, at 622. ↑
See supra notes 246–57 and accompanying text. ↑
Balkin, supra note 66, at 76. ↑
Id. at 81–93, 277–319. ↑
Id. at 76. ↑
Id. at 74. ↑
Id. at 78. ↑
Id. at 28–29, 62. ↑
Mill, supra note 159, at 14. Indeed, Balkin acknowledges that his “focus on progress is characteristically modernist,” with its “assumptions about the proper direction of history, which is a story of potential improvement.” See Balkin, supra note 255, at 49–50; see also id. at 76 (describing redemption as a narrative of progress). ↑
James E. Fleming, Fidelity to Our Imperfect Constitution: For Moral Readings and Against Originalisms 130 (2015) (“[T]here are unmistakable affinities here between Balkin’s commitment to interpret the Constitution so as to redeem citizens’ faith in its promises and aspirations and Dworkin’s and [Fleming’s] commitment to interpret the Constitution in its best light.”). ↑
Dworkin, supra note 50, at 190–92, 216. ↑
Id. at 176; see also id. at 184 (stating that integrity is flouted whenever a society enacts laws that express incoherent principles of justice). ↑
Id. at 191–92. ↑
Id. at 225. ↑
See id. at 228. ↑
Id. at 228–32; Ronald Dworkin, Freedom’s Law: The Moral Reading of the American Constitution 10–12 (1996). ↑
Dworkin, supra note 293, at 2. ↑
See Richard A. Posner, Conceptions of Legal Theory: A Response to Ronald Dworkin, 29 Ariz. St. L.J. 377, 383 (1997) (describing Dworkin as “a universalizing rationalist”). ↑
See Dworkin, supra note 50, at 245. ↑
Id. ↑
See id. at 239. ↑
Id. at 264–65. ↑
See Cass R. Sunstein, Second-Order Perfectionism, 75 Fordham L. Rev. 2867, 2879–81 (2007); Cass R. Sunstein, Burkean Minimalism, 105 Mich. L. Rev. 353, 394–96 (2006); Young, supra note 274, at 690–91 & n.356. ↑
See Fleming, supra note 287, at 102–05 (disclaiming the notion that “fit” entails obligations to the past). ↑
I could perhaps add Barnett to the list of rationalistic theories, since his premises track Locke’s so closely, but Locke’s writings make his rationalism more explicit than Barnett’s do. Moreover, to the extent that pluralist constitutional theories are based on Dworkin’s fit-and-justification approach, see Griffin, supra note 51, at 1756–57; Fallon, supra note 51, at 1233–34, one might consider them rationalist as well, but it is not clear whether all pluralist theorists understand “fit” in the same law-as-integrity way that Dworkin does, with its far-reaching requirements of coherence across the corpus of law. ↑
See Strauss, supra note 1, at 40–42; Strauss, supra note 49, at 891–94; Young, supra note 274, at 642–50. Thomas Merrill could also be added to that list. See Thomas W. Merrill, Bork v. Burke, 19 Harv. J.L. & Pub. Pol’y 509, 519–21 (1996). ↑
See, e.g., Strauss, supra note 1, at 40–44; Merrill, supra note 303, at 518–21; Young, supra note 274, at 667–69 & n.240. ↑
See Bork, supra note 1, at 177 (conceding, in response to Dworkin’s assertion that “the choice of [originalism] is itself a political decision,” that “[i]t certainly is”); see also Dworkin, supra note 50, at 259–60; Ronald Dworkin, A Matter of Principle 54–55, 162–65 (1985). ↑
See Robert H. Bork, Tradition and Morality in Constitutional Law, in A Time to Speak: Selected Writings and Arguments 397, 401–02 (2008). ↑
Dworkin, supra note 50, at 108–12, 190–92. ↑
See, e.g., Balkin, supra note 66, at 59–99; Barnett, supra note 118, at 1–86; Dworkin, supra note 50, at 176-224. ↑
Bork, supra note 1, at 173–74. ↑
See id. at 133–38. ↑
Bork, supra note 306, at 400. ↑
Id. at 401; see also Robert H. Bork, Styles in Constitutional Theory, in A Time to Speak: Selected Writings and Arguments, supra note 306, at 223, 235. ↑
Bork, supra note 312, at 223, 235. ↑
Bork, supra note 1, at 153–55. ↑
Bork, supra note 312, at 223–26. ↑
Bork, supra note 1, at 143–53. ↑
Id. at 155 (“The philosophy of original understanding is thus a necessary inference from the structure of government apparent on the face of the Constitution.”). ↑
Bork, supra note 312, at 235. ↑
See Coan, supra note 38, at 876–84. ↑
Coan would call this an example of “hidden disagreements.” See id. at 878–80. ↑
Balkin expressly links his theory of legitimacy with his thin view of original meaning. See Jack M. Balkin, Nine Perspectives on Living Originalism, 2012 U. Ill. L. Rev. 815, 828–29. ↑
Balkin, supra note 66, at 59–73. ↑
Mill, supra note 159, at 14. ↑
See generally John O. McGinnis & Michael B. Rappaport, The Abstract Meaning Fallacy, 2012 U. Ill. L. Rev. 737 (arguing that Balkin’s theory erroneously assumes that abstract constitutional provisions are necessarily vague and underdetermined); see also Barnett & Bernick, supra note 57, at 33–36. ↑
Coan would call this an example of “hidden agreement.” Coan, supra note 38, at 877–78. ↑
Vermeule, supra note 119, at 1484. ↑
Id. at 1502–06. Vermeule’s purpose was not to defend originalism, but I believe his arguments at least undercut Strauss’s Burkean arguments against originalism. ↑
576 U.S. 644 (2015). ↑
See Strauss, supra note 263, at 6–7. ↑
See United States v. Windsor, 570 U.S. 744, 808 (2013) (Alito, J., dissenting). ↑
Indeed, one of the reasons why Bork rejected methodologies like Strauss’s is that they allow judges to rely too much on their individual reason. See Bork, supra note 1, at 234–35. ↑
Fleming, supra note 287, at 125–41. ↑
Id. at 130–32. ↑
Id. at 130. ↑
Id. at 131–32. ↑
See supra Subsection II.B.2. ↑
See supra Subsection II.B.1. ↑
Strauss, supra note 49, at 895–96. Strauss’s conception of tradition is arguably inconsistent with his Burkean anti-rationalism, which could explain why he and Bork disagree so strongly about methodology. ↑
Young, supra note 274, at 650–53, 673, 689. ↑
Id. at 652, 656, 689. ↑
As noted above, Vermeule’s article is a rare example of a justifications-based argument. ↑
Dworkin, supra note 50, at 111. ↑
See, e.g., Balkin, supra note 66, at 59–99; Barnett, supra note 118, at 1–86; Dworkin, supra note 50, at 176–224. ↑
Jacob Gershman, Study Casts Doubt on Kantian Link to Bulgarian Law, Wall St. J. L. Blog (Mar. 31, 2015, 4:20 PM), https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-LB-50958 [https://perma.cc/4NEK-ZGE4]; Smith, supra note 11, at 227–30. ↑
Bork, supra note 1, at 134. ↑
See Barnett, supra note 118, at 279–80. ↑
See supra Subsection II.B.2; see also Balkin, supra note 66, at 104–08 (expressly linking the debate about expected applications with delegation of authority to future adjudicators); John O. McGinnis & Michael Rappaport, Original Interpretive Principles as the Core of Originalism, 24 Const. Comment. 371, 380–81 (2007) (observing that the relevance of expected applications is linked to how much faith the enactors had in the reasoning of future generations). ↑
Compare Bostock v. Clayton Cnty., 140 S. Ct. 1731, 1749–54 (2020), with 140 S. Ct. at 1766–73 (Alito, J., dissenting). But see Tara Grove, Which Textualism?, 134 Harv. L. Rev. 265, 291–96 (2020) (arguing that Justice Gorsuch’s approach to textualism actually leads to less judicial discretion). Grove identifies Justices Alito and Gorsuch as proposing different kinds of textualism—that is, different variations of the same methodology—and I would suggest that their differences might be based, at least in part, on their different politico-theoretical premises that shape their justifications for textualism. ↑
Bostock, 140 S. Ct. at 1757 (Alito, J., dissenting) (citation omitted). Although Bostock is a statutory interpretation case, the debate between the majority and dissents about expected applications is similar to the debate seen in the constitutional theory literature, see supra note 347, so it strikes me as a good example despite its non-constitutional context. ↑
Cf. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory 1–22 (3d ed. 2007) (making an even more radical version of this argument). ↑
See Joseph William Singer, Legal Realism Now, 76 Calif. L. Rev. 465, 467 (1988). ↑
McConnell, supra note 107, at 1128; see also Christopher J. Peters, What Lies Beneath: Interpretive Methodology, Constitutional Authority, and the Case of Originalism, 2013 BYU L. Rev. 1251, 1276. ↑
See Fallon, supra note 113, at 127, 129 (recognizing this distinction); see also Bork, supra note 1, at 177 (same). ↑
See, e.g., supra notes 298–313 and accompanying text (describing Dworkin’s methodology). ↑
See generally John O. McGinnis & Michael B. Rappaport, The Power of Interpretation: Minimizing the Construction Zone, 96 Notre Dame L. Rev. 919 (2021) (arguing that various tools of interpretation can minimize—if not eliminate—the construction zone). ↑
Peters, supra note 352, at 1273–83. ↑
Whittington, supra note 66, at 111–12; Gray, supra note 13, at 23–24. ↑
Gray, supra note 13, at xiii; see also Ryan, supra note 14, at 23–40; Waldron, supra note 123, at 129–40; Arblaster, supra note 13, at 13. ↑
For a refutation of this position in general, see Fallon, supra note 35, at 545–49. ↑
Solum, supra note 70, at 20–30; Saikrishna B. Prakash, The Misunderstood Relationship Between Originalism and Popular Sovereignty, 31 Harv. J.L. & Pub. Pol’y 485, 486–89 (2008); Gary Lawson, On Reading Recipes . . . and Constitutions, 85 Geo. L.J. 1823, 1825–34 (1997). Michael Stokes Paulsen’s argument is less about linguistic theory than it is about the Constitution’s own prescribed methodology. See Michael Stokes Paulsen, Does the Constitution Prescribe Rules for Its Own Interpretation?, 103 Nw. U. L. Rev. 857, 858–64 (2009). ↑
See, e.g., Richard H. Fallon, Jr., The Meaning of Legal “Meaning” and Its Implications for Theories of Legal Interpretation, 82 U. Chi. L. Rev. 1235, 1289–95 (2015); Cass R. Sunstein, There Is Nothing that Interpretation Just Is, 30 Const. Comment. 193, 194–98 (2015). ↑
See Sachs, supra note 10, at 829–35. ↑
See, e.g., Strauss, supra note 263, at 3–5. ↑
Peters, supra note 352, at 1278–84. ↑
Coan, supra note 38, at 839 (noting that the proposition that “approaches to constitutional decision-making require justification in the form of sound normative foundations” is “widely accepted but not entirely uncontroversial”). ↑
Solum, supra note 2, at 472–73. ↑
Lawson, supra note 360, at 1823–25, 1835–36. ↑
Paulsen, supra note 360, at 919. ↑
Prakash, supra note 360, at 489–91. ↑
Lawson, Paulsen, and Prakash would likely object to describing originalism as a theory of constitutional adjudication, rather than as a theory of constitutional interpretation, because they define originalism as concerned only with how to interpret texts, not with telling judges how to decide cases. See Paulsen, supra note 360, at 918–19; Prakash, supra note 360, at 491; Lawson, supra note 360, at 1823–25. I disagree with that conception of originalism, but even if those three theorists are right, it does not make a difference to my argument that constitutional theory more generally—which is concerned with adjudication—requires normative arguments. ↑
See, e.g., Strauss, supra note 49, at 898–906. ↑
Dworkin, for example, based the need for “fit” on the law-as-integrity principle, which is a normative argument. See Dworkin, supra note 50, at 176–224. ↑
Fallon, supra note 35, at 545–49. ↑
Id. at 540–41, 541 n.13. ↑
Sachs, supra note 10, at 822–38; Baude, supra note 8, at 2363–91. ↑
Pojanowski & Walsh, supra note 277, at 110. ↑
Baude, supra note 8, at 2395. ↑
Solum, supra note 1, at 79–80. ↑

The Role of the Doctrine of Laches in Undermining the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act

From 1933 to 1945, the Nazi regime looted art on a scale with few historical competitors. The Nazis used this state-sanctioned theft to dehumanize the Jewish population and carry out the “Aryanization” of German society.

To provide redress for the victims of Nazi looting, the United States and the international community adopted the Washington Principles in 1998—a set of guidelines intended to promote a “just and fair” solution for claims over Nazi-looted art. Unfortunately, despite this commitment, lawsuits to recover stolen artwork are often barred by time-based defenses.

In 2016, Congress passed the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act (“HEAR Act”) to promote resolution on the merits by effectively removing the statute of limitations as an affirmative defense. Surprisingly, however, Congress left the doctrine of laches available, thereby frustrating the effectiveness and stated purpose of the HEAR Act. The doctrine of laches bars a claim upon a showing that the claimant unreasonably delayed in bringing suit, and that the delay caused the artwork’s possessor to suffer prejudice. Yet because lawsuits for restitution of Nazi-looted artwork have only recently become viable, delay and the resulting prejudice—taking the form of lost evidence—are inherent in these claims. The doctrine of laches thereby undermines resolution on the merits, which is antithetical to the HEAR Act’s putative goals.

This Note argues that for the HEAR Act to provide the relief it ostensibly envisions, the doctrine of laches should be precluded as an available defense. Alternatively, the ability to assert the defense should be restricted to those parties who acquired contested artwork in true good faith. By revising the HEAR Act accordingly, a “just and fair” solution can be achieved.

Introduction

The destruction of Jewish cultural and economic identity was an integral component of the Nazi regime’s genocidal campaign.¹1.Ori Z. Soltes, Cultural Plunder and Restitution and Human Identity, 15 J. Marshall Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 460, 461–62 (2016).Show More The Nazis partly carried out this aim through the systematic looting of artwork, stripping the Jewish population of their possessions and casting them as outsiders.²2.See Jonathan Petropoulos, Art as Politics in the Third Reich 14, 92–94 (1996); discussion infra Part I.Show More The scale of the theft highlights its importance to the Nazis—in 1948, the United States estimated that it had found approximately 10.7 million looted art and cultural objects.³3.Presidential Advisory Comm’n on Holocaust Assets in the U.S., Plunder and Restitution: The U.S. and Holocaust Victims’ Assets (2000), at SR–97 [hereinafter Commission Report].Show More The United States and European governments set up restitution programs,⁴4.Id. at SR–137 to SR–139.Show More though these efforts soon gave way to a focus on the Cold War.⁵5.See Nicholas M. O’Donnell, A Tragic Fate: Law and Ethics in the Battle Over Nazi-Looted Art, at xi (2017).Show More After the Soviet Union fell, however, interest re-emerged in the Holocaust, as Allied governments declassified archives and scholars devoted attention to the unresolved problem of Nazi-looted art.⁶6.See Commission Report, supra note 3, at 4–5; O’Donnell, supra note 5, at 29, 46; Phillipe de Montebello, Dir., Metro. Museum of Art, Panel at National Press Club Luncheon: Art Plundered During the Holocaust (July 14, 1998), transcript available at https://www.metmuseum.org/-/media/files/about-the-met/provenance-research/philippe-de-montebello-transcript.pdf [https://perma.cc/7V4W-57G9]) (commenting that “the fall of the Iron Curtain” led to “the declassification of a host of national archives”).Show More In 1998, at the Washington Conference on Holocaust-Era Assets, the representatives of forty-four countries, including the United States, agreed to a set of guidelines known as the Washington Principles.⁷7.See U.S. Dep’t of State & U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Proceedings of the Washington Conference on Holocaust-Era Assets, app. G., at 791–92 (1998) [hereinafter Washington Principles]; Stuart E. Eizenstat, Imperfect Justice: Looted Assets, Slave Labor, and the Unfinished Business of World War II, at 196–99 (2003).Show More This document set forth the parameters for countries to work within their own legal systems to promote the “just and fair” resolution of claims for Nazi-looted art.⁸8.Washington Principles, supra note 7, at 972 (Principles VIII & IX).Show More Since the adoption of the Washington Principles, United States courts have heard a growing number of cases seeking the restitution of artwork stolen by the Nazis.⁹9.See infra Part II.Show More

Despite the United States’ commitment to the Washington Principles, time-based defenses like the statute of limitations and its equitable counterpart, the doctrine of laches, have been used to bar many of these claims.¹⁰10.See id.Show More A laches defense is intended to prevent a claimant from delaying in asserting her rights in a way that—in the context of this Note—harms the party in possession of disputed artwork.¹¹11.The doctrine is an application of equity’s maxim that its jurisdiction is meant to “aid[] the vigilant.” See Bert Demarsin, Has the Time (of Laches) Come? Recent Nazi-Era Art Litigation in the New York Forum, 59 Buff. L. Rev. 621, 627 n.28 (2011) (citing Stone v. Williams, 873 F.2d 620, 623 (2d Cir. 1989)).Show More Recognizing the obstacles posed by time-based defenses, Congress acted in 2016 to reduce the difficulties descendants face in obtaining restitution.¹²12.See Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act of 2016, Pub. L. No. 114-308, § 3(2), 130 Stat. 1524, 1526.Show More The resulting legislation, the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act (“HEAR Act”), set a federal statute of limitations for actions seeking the recovery of Nazi-looted art.¹³13.Id. § 5(a). The most common claims are for replevin and conversion. See, e.g., Zuckerman v. Metro. Museum of Art, 307 F. Supp. 3d 304, 315 (S.D.N.Y. 2018), aff’d on other grounds, 928 F.3d 186 (2d Cir. 2019), cert. denied, 140 S. Ct. 1269 (2020) (mem.). For a summary of these causes of action, see Emily J. Henson, Comment, The Last Prisoners of War: Returning World War II Art to Its Rightful Owners—Can Moral Obligations Be Translated Into Legal Duties?, 51 DePaul L. Rev. 1103, 1137–41 (2002).Show More This six-year limitations period starts running when a claimant gains knowledge of the “identity and location of the artwork” and “a possessory interest” in the artwork.¹⁴14.Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act § 5(a).Show More However, the HEAR Act’s final text did not address laches.¹⁵15.See id. Compared to the initial draft discussed infra Section I.C, there is no mention of equitable defenses or the doctrine of laches in the Act’s operative provision.Show More Legislative history suggests that Congress intended for the defense to remain available. The initial draft explicitly precluded the doctrine of laches,¹⁶16.S. 2763, 114th Cong. § 5(a) (2016).Show More but the enacted bill removed this language.¹⁷17.Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act § 5(a).Show More Congress knew that the change would restrict the HEAR Act’s impact and allow laches to frustrate the efforts of the very families the Act purported to help.¹⁸18.S. 2763, the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act—Reuniting Victims with Their Lost Heritage: Hearing on S. 2763 Before the S. Subcomm. on the Const., Subcomm. on Oversight, Agency Action, Fed. Rts. & Fed. Cts., 114th Cong. 2–3 (2016) (statement of Agnes Peresztegi, President, Comm’n for Art Recovery), https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/meetings/s-2763-the-holocaust-expropriated-art-recovery-act_reuniting-victims-with-their-lost-heritage [https://perma.cc/ETQ7-S8AQ] [hereinafter Peresztegi Testimony] (To access the hearing transcript, click on the first hyperlink and scroll down to the various witnesses. Under each witness is a link to the transcript of that individual’s hearing testimony. The second “permanent” hyperlink links directly to the cited hearing testimony transcript.).Show More

This Note focuses on Congress’s decision to leave laches intact—along with its consequences for claimants—and two possible revisions to the HEAR Act. By making the statute of limitations a non-issue in many disputes, Congress sought to ensure that these cases would be decided on the merits, thereby increasing the availability of restitution. Leaving laches intact, however, undermines that goal. A successful laches defense requires the party in possession¹⁹19.The labels for the party seeking restitution and the party currently in possession of the artwork will occasionally change throughout the text. For the party in possession, this Note will generally use “possessor” and, in certain contexts, “purchaser.” For the party seeking restitution, this Note will use “claimant,” “victim,” or “descendant.” “Plaintiff” and “defendant,” while simple, do not always reflect the claimant and possessor, as some current possessors will bring declaratory suits as the plaintiff. See, e.g., Bakalar v. Vavra, 819 F. Supp. 2d 293, 294 (S.D.N.Y. 2011), aff’d, 500 F. App’x 6 (2d Cir. 2012).Show More of the artwork to show: (1) that the claimant unreasonably delayed in bringing suit against the possessor, and (2) that the delay caused prejudice to the possessor.²⁰20.Conopco, Inc. v. Campbell Soup Co., 95 F.3d 187, 192 (2d Cir. 1996) (citing Tri-Star Pictures, Inc. v. Leisure Time Prods., B.V., 17 F.3d 38, 44 (2d Cir. 1994); Saratoga Vichy Spring Co. v. Lehman, 625 F.2d 1037, 1040 (2d Cir. 1980)).Show More This defense is frequently easy for possessors of Nazi-looted art to demonstrate. These claims are inevitably delayed because the world largely treated art restitution as “a closed chapter” for half a century after World War II.²¹21.S. 2763, the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act—Reuniting Victims with Their Lost Heritage: Hearing on S. 2763 Before the S. Subcomm. on the Const., Subcomm. on Oversight, Agency Action, Fed. Rts. and Fed. Cts., 114th Cong. 1 (2016) (statement of Monica Dugot, Int’l Dir. of Restitution, Senior Vice President, Christie’s Inc.), https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/meetings/s-2763-the-holocaust-expropriated-art-recovery-act_reuniting-victims-with-their-lost-heritage [https://perma.cc/2TY6-KZY4] (To access the hearing transcript, click on the first hyperlink and scroll down to the various witnesses. Under each witness is a link to the transcript of that individual’s hearing testimony. The second “permanent” hyperlink links directly to the quoted hearing testimony transcript.).Show More Moreover, possessors can show prejudice based on lost evidence, as potential witnesses have passed away in the intervening decades. Even though such circumstances are inherent to these claims, courts have held that the doctrine of laches should prevent resolution on the merits.

Since passage of the HEAR Act, the tension between the legislation’s purpose to grant relief and the availability of laches has played out in two cases. The first, Zuckerman v. Metropolitan Museum of Art, in the Second Circuit, demonstrates how a laches defense can decide a dispute otherwise capable of resolution on the merits.²²22.928 F.3d 186, 193–94 (2d Cir. 2019).Show More The second, Reif v. Nagy, in New York state courts, shows how an expansive, albeit incorrect, purposive reading of the HEAR Act can sidestep laches and facilitate relief on the merits.²³23.80 N.Y.S.3d 629, 634–35 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 2018) (taking note of the guidance provided by the HEAR Act’s purpose and holding that laches is unavailable); see also Simon J. Frankel & Sari Sharoni, Navigating the Ambiguities and Uncertainties of the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act of 2016, 42 Colum. J.L. & Arts 157, 176–77 (2019) (concluding that Reif held laches unavailable under the HEAR Act).Show More Recently, the appellants in Zuckerman had their petition for certiorari to the Supreme Court denied,²⁴24.Zuckerman v. Metro. Museum of Art, 140 S. Ct. 1269 (2020) (mem.).Show More meaning that the availability of laches under the HEAR Act is now binding precedent in the Second Circuit. Reif, on the other hand, signals that the New York state courts may prove to be a more hospitable forum for claimants going forward.

It is not too late to aid survivors and their families in their quest for justice. Over a year after passing the HEAR Act, Congress enacted the Justice for Uncompensated Survivors Today (JUST) Act of 2017.²⁵25.Pub. L. No. 115-171, 132 Stat. 1288 (2018).Show More The JUST Act directs the State Department to report on the steps taken by countries that, like the United States, have themselves committed to promoting restitution for Holocaust survivors.²⁶26.Id. § 2(b).Show More And in early 2020, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced a conference “aimed at improving the State’s ability to help recover works of art and other property lost due to Nazi persecution.”²⁷27.Press Release, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, On Holocaust Remembrance Day, Governor Cuomo Announces International Conference Aimed at Helping Victims of Nazi Crimes Recover Stolen Property (Jan. 27, 2020), https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/holocaust-remembrance-day-governor-cuomo-announces-international-conference-aimed-helping [https://perma.cc/ZR3S-TM86].Show More Congress should build on the political will in this area of bipartisan consensus²⁸28.Press Release, Senator Ted Cruz, Sens. Cruz, Cornyn Praise Unanimous Passage of the Bipartisan HEAR Act, (Dec. 10, 2016), https://www.cruz.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=2916 [https://perma.cc/3326-7EVS].Show More and modify the HEAR Act to ensure that claimants are able to resolve their claims on the merits.

Part I of this Note provides a brief history of Nazi looting as well as a history of the Washington Principles and other international and domestic initiatives prior to the HEAR Act. This background illustrates the moral and legal issues that Congress designed the Act to address. The remainder of Part I traces the HEAR Act’s legislative history and the explanations Congress did and did not offer for setting a statute of limitations while leaving laches untouched.

Part II then discusses a sample of the case law in the state and federal courts of New York, the international art capital of the world. Courts in New York have had frequent occasion to consider the application of laches to claims for artwork looted during World War II due to the state’s “demand and refusal” rule.²⁹29.See discussion infra Section II.A. Under this rule, the statute of limitations does not begin to run until the claimant demands that the possessor return the artwork, and the possessor refuses that demand. See Menzel v. List, 267 N.Y.S.2d 804, 809 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 1966). As a result, laches has been invoked to reduce the potential unfairness that results from such a generous limitations period. Demarsin, supra note 11, at 621–22, 658.Show More

Part III presents the argument briefly described above—that application of the doctrine of laches to claims for restitution of Nazi-looted art is irreconcilable with the HEAR Act and the Washington Principles. Part III then proposes two solutions. The first, and preferable, solution is to preclude a laches defense entirely, faithful to the first draft of the HEAR Act. This would guarantee that the Act fulfills the Washington Principles’ call to promote “a just and fair” solution.³⁰30.Washington Principles, supra note 7, at 792 (Principles XIII & IX).Show More As a more moderate solution, courts should be directed to inquire into whether a possessor sufficiently investigated title to contested artwork. This will allow courts to determine whether current possessors acquired artwork in true good faith, or whether they have dealt in Nazi-looted art when problems with a piece’s provenance³¹31.“Provenance is a technical art world term meaning documentation of origin or history of ownership.” Kelly Diane Walton, Leave No Stone Unturned: The Search for Art Stolen by the Nazis and the Legal Rules Governing Restitution of Stolen Art, 9 Fordham Intell. Prop. Media & Ent. L.J. 549, 551–52 (1999). Provenance as used in this Note is therefore distinct from the actual ownership history of a work.Show More should have been apparent. Only when a possessor exercised appropriate diligence would a laches defense be available.

* J.D., University of Virginia School of Law, 2020. I am grateful to Professor Julia Mahoney for her guidance throughout the drafting of this Note. Thank you to Samantha Caravello, Read Mills, and Anna Rennich for their thoughtful comments on earlier versions. I also owe thanks to the members of the Virginia Law Review, especially Andrew Kintner, for diligent editing and insightful feedback. All errors are my own. ↑
Ori Z. Soltes, Cultural Plunder and Restitution and Human Identity, 15 J. Marshall Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 460, 461–62 (2016). ↑
See Jonathan Petropoulos, Art as Politics in the Third Reich 14, 92–94 (1996); discussion infra Part I. ↑
Presidential Advisory Comm’n on Holocaust Assets in the U.S., Plunder and Restitution: The U.S. and Holocaust Victims’ Assets (2000), at SR–97 [hereinafter Commission Report]. ↑
Id. at SR–137 to SR–139. ↑
See Nicholas M. O’Donnell, A Tragic Fate: Law and Ethics in the Battle Over Nazi-Looted Art, at xi (2017). ↑
See Commission Report, supra note 3, at 4–5; O’Donnell, supra note 5, at 29, 46; Phillipe de Montebello, Dir., Metro. Museum of Art, Panel at National Press Club Luncheon: Art Plundered During the Holocaust (July 14, 1998), transcript available at https://www.metmuseum.org/-/media/files/about-the-met/provenance-research/philippe-de-montebello-transcript.pdf [https://perma.cc/7V4W-57G9]) (commenting that “the fall of the Iron Curtain” led to “the declassification of a host of national archives”). ↑
See U.S. Dep’t of State & U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Proceedings of the Washington Conference on Holocaust-Era Assets, app. G., at 791–92 (1998) [hereinafter Washington Principles]; Stuart E. Eizenstat, Imperfect Justice: Looted Assets, Slave Labor, and the Unfinished Business of World War II, at 196–99 (2003). ↑
Washington Principles, supra note 7, at 972 (Principles VIII & IX). ↑
See infra Part II. ↑
See id. ↑
The doctrine is an application of equity’s maxim that its jurisdiction is meant to “aid[] the vigilant.” See Bert Demarsin, Has the Time (of Laches) Come? Recent Nazi-Era Art Litigation in the New York Forum, 59 Buff. L. Rev. 621, 627 n.28 (2011) (citing Stone v. Williams, 873 F.2d 620, 623 (2d Cir. 1989)). ↑
See Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act of 2016, Pub. L. No. 114-308, § 3(2), 130 Stat. 1524, 1526. ↑
Id. § 5(a). The most common claims are for replevin and conversion. See, e.g., Zuckerman v. Metro. Museum of Art, 307 F. Supp. 3d 304, 315 (S.D.N.Y. 2018), aff’d on other grounds, 928 F.3d 186 (2d Cir. 2019), cert. denied, 140 S. Ct. 1269 (2020) (mem.). For a summary of these causes of action, see Emily J. Henson, Comment, The Last Prisoners of War: Returning World War II Art to Its Rightful Owners—Can Moral Obligations Be Translated Into Legal Duties?, 51 DePaul L. Rev. 1103, 1137–41 (2002). ↑
Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act § 5(a). ↑
See id. Compared to the initial draft discussed infra Section I.C, there is no mention of equitable defenses or the doctrine of laches in the Act’s operative provision. ↑
S. 2763, 114th Cong. § 5(a) (2016). ↑
Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act § 5(a). ↑
S. 2763, the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act—Reuniting Victims with Their Lost Heritage: Hearing on S. 2763 Before the S. Subcomm. on the Const., Subcomm. on Oversight, Agency Action, Fed. Rts. & Fed. Cts., 114th Cong. 2–3 (2016) (statement of Agnes Peresztegi, President, Comm’n for Art Recovery), https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/meetings/s-2763-the-holocaust-expropriated-art-recovery-act_reuniting-victims-with-their-lost-heritage [https://perma.cc/ETQ7-S8AQ] [hereinafter Peresztegi Testimony] (To access the hearing transcript, click on the first hyperlink and scroll down to the various witnesses. Under each witness is a link to the transcript of that individual’s hearing testimony. The second “permanent” hyperlink links directly to the cited hearing testimony transcript.). ↑
The labels for the party seeking restitution and the party currently in possession of the artwork will occasionally change throughout the text. For the party in possession, this Note will generally use “possessor” and, in certain contexts, “purchaser.” For the party seeking restitution, this Note will use “claimant,” “victim,” or “descendant.” “Plaintiff” and “defendant,” while simple, do not always reflect the claimant and possessor, as some current possessors will bring declaratory suits as the plaintiff. See, e.g., Bakalar v. Vavra, 819 F. Supp. 2d 293, 294 (S.D.N.Y. 2011), aff’d, 500 F. App’x 6 (2d Cir. 2012). ↑
Conopco, Inc. v. Campbell Soup Co., 95 F.3d 187, 192 (2d Cir. 1996) (citing Tri-Star Pictures, Inc. v. Leisure Time Prods., B.V., 17 F.3d 38, 44 (2d Cir. 1994); Saratoga Vichy Spring Co. v. Lehman, 625 F.2d 1037, 1040 (2d Cir. 1980)). ↑
S. 2763, the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act—Reuniting Victims with Their Lost Heritage: Hearing on S. 2763 Before the S. Subcomm. on the Const., Subcomm. on Oversight, Agency Action, Fed. Rts. and Fed. Cts., 114th Cong. 1 (2016) (statement of Monica Dugot, Int’l Dir. of Restitution, Senior Vice President, Christie’s Inc.), https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/meetings/s-2763-the-holocaust-expropriated-art-recovery-act_reuniting-victims-with-their-lost-heritage [https://perma.cc/2TY6-KZY4] (To access the hearing transcript, click on the first hyperlink and scroll down to the various witnesses. Under each witness is a link to the transcript of that individual’s hearing testimony. The second “permanent” hyperlink links directly to the quoted hearing testimony transcript.). ↑
928 F.3d 186, 193–94 (2d Cir. 2019). ↑
80 N.Y.S.3d 629, 634–35 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 2018) (taking note of the guidance provided by the HEAR Act’s purpose and holding that laches is unavailable); see also Simon J. Frankel & Sari Sharoni, Navigating the Ambiguities and Uncertainties of the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act of 2016, 42 Colum. J.L. & Arts 157, 176–77 (2019) (concluding that Reif held laches unavailable under the HEAR Act). ↑
Zuckerman v. Metro. Museum of Art, 140 S. Ct. 1269 (2020) (mem.). ↑
Pub. L. No. 115-171, 132 Stat. 1288 (2018). ↑
Id. § 2(b). ↑
Press Release, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, On Holocaust Remembrance Day, Governor Cuomo Announces International Conference Aimed at Helping Victims of Nazi Crimes Recover Stolen Property (Jan. 27, 2020), https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/holocaust-remembrance-day-governor-cuomo-announces-international-conference-aimed-helping [https://perma.cc/ZR3S-TM86]. ↑
Press Release, Senator Ted Cruz, Sens. Cruz, Cornyn Praise Unanimous Passage of the Bipartisan HEAR Act, (Dec. 10, 2016), https://www.cruz.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=2916 [https://perma.cc/3326-7EVS]. ↑
See discussion infra Section II.A. Under this rule, the statute of limitations does not begin to run until the claimant demands that the possessor return the artwork, and the possessor refuses that demand. See Menzel v. List, 267 N.Y.S.2d 804, 809 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 1966). As a result, laches has been invoked to reduce the potential unfairness that results from such a generous limitations period. Demarsin, supra note 11, at 621–22, 658. ↑
Washington Principles, supra note 7, at 792 (Principles XIII & IX). ↑
“Provenance is a technical art world term meaning documentation of origin or history of ownership.” Kelly Diane Walton, Leave No Stone Unturned: The Search for Art Stolen by the Nazis and the Legal Rules Governing Restitution of Stolen Art, 9 Fordham Intell. Prop. Media & Ent. L.J. 549, 551–52 (1999). Provenance as used in this Note is therefore distinct from the actual ownership history of a work. ↑

The Unlimited Jurisdiction of the Federal Courts

Federal courts are courts of limited jurisdiction—but only in part. A federal court’s subject-matter jurisdiction is limited by the Constitution; its territorial, personal jurisdiction is not. Current doctrine notwithstanding, a federal court’s writ may run as far as Congress, within its enumerated powers, would have it go.

Today’s doctrine limits federal jurisdiction by borrowing Fourteenth Amendment principles thought to govern state courts. This borrowing blocks recoveries by injured plaintiffs, such as American victims of foreign terrorist attacks; and it’s become a font of confusion for procedure scholars, giving rise to incisive critiques of the Federal Rules.

It’s also a mistake. The Fourteenth Amendment didn’t impose new limits on state personal jurisdiction; it enabled federal enforcement of limits that already applied. Current doctrine retroactively forces the Fifth Amendment into the mold of the modern Fourteenth, transforming an expansion of federal power into a strict constraint on federal authority.

The federal courts’ territorial jurisdiction depends, in the first instance, on Congress’s powers. It may be that Congress can authorize fully global jurisdiction over any suit within Article III. If not, Congress may have ways to make better use of its jurisdictional powers at home. Either way, the existing mix of statutes and procedural rules seems fully valid. If the Constitution didn’t impose limits on Congress or on the federal courts, modern doctrine shouldn’t either.

Introduction

Everyone knows that “[f]ederal courts are courts of limited jurisdiction.”¹1.Kokkonen v. Guardian Life Ins. Co. of Am., 511 U.S. 375, 377 (1994).Show More But this is only half right. A federal court’s subject-matter jurisdiction is affirmatively limited by the Constitution. Its territorial, personal jurisdiction is not. A federal court’s writ may run as far as Congress, within its enumerated powers, would have it go.

That this view might seem unusual—even alarming—reflects profound and widespread confusion about personal jurisdiction. Under current doctrine, state-court jurisdiction is hemmed in by the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause,²2.U.S. Const. amend. XIV (“[N]or shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law . . . .”).Show More which requires “minimum contacts” that satisfy “traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice.”³3.Int’l Shoe Co. v. Washington, 326 U.S. 310, 316 (1945) (internal quotation marks omitted).Show More The Fifth Amendment has a Due Process Clause too,⁴4.U.S. Const. amend. V (“[N]or shall any person . . . be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law . . . .”).Show More so it’s easy to imagine similar rules for federal courts. Without Supreme Court precedent on point,⁵5.See Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Super. Ct., 137 S. Ct. 1773, 1783–84 (2017) (“leav[ing] open the question [which restrictions] the Fifth Amendment imposes . . . on the exercise of personal jurisdiction by a federal court”); Omni Cap. Int’l, Ltd. v. Rudolf Wolff & Co., 484 U.S. 97, 102 n.5 (1987) (declining to decide whether “a federal court could exercise personal jurisdiction, consistent with the Fifth Amendment, based on an aggregation of the defendant’s contacts with the Nation as a whole, rather than on its contacts with the State in which the federal court sits”); Asahi Metal Indus. Co. v. Super. Ct., 480 U.S. 102, 113 n.* (1987) (“We have no occasion here to determine whether Congress could, consistent with the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment, authorize federal court personal jurisdiction over alien defendants based on the aggregate of national contacts, rather than on the contacts between the defendant and the State in which the federal court sits.”).Show More the courts of appeals all agree that the Fifth Amendment requires at least the sorts of national contacts that the Fourteenth Amendment requires of a state.⁶6.See Double Eagle Energy Servs., L.L.C. v. MarkWest Utica EMG, L.L.C., 936 F.3d 260, 264 (5th Cir. 2019); Livnat v. Palestinian Auth., 851 F.3d 45, 54 (D.C. Cir. 2017); Xilinx, Inc. v. Papst Licensing GmbH & Co. KG, 848 F.3d 1346, 1352–53, 1353 n.2 (Fed. Cir. 2017); Waldman v. Palestine Liberation Org., 835 F.3d 317, 330–31 (2d Cir. 2016), motion to recall the mandate denied, 925 F.3d 570 (2d Cir. 2019), vacated and remanded sub nom. Sokolow v. Palestine Liberation Org., 140 S. Ct. 2714 (2020); Trs. of the Plumbers & Pipefitters Nat’l Pension Fund v. Plumbing Servs., Inc., 791 F.3d 436, 443–44 (4th Cir. 2015); Klein v. Cornelius, 786 F.3d 1310, 1318 (10th Cir. 2015); KM Enters., Inc. v. Glob. Traffic Techs., Inc., 725 F.3d 718, 731 (7th Cir. 2013); Action Embroidery Corp. v. Atl. Embroidery, Inc., 368 F.3d 1174, 1180 (9th Cir. 2004); Pinker v. Roche Holdings Ltd., 292 F.3d 361, 370–71, 370 n.2 (3d Cir. 2002); United States v. Swiss Am. Bank, Ltd., 274 F.3d 610, 618 (1st Cir. 2001); Med. Mut. of Ohio v. deSoto, 245 F.3d 561, 567–68 (6th Cir. 2001); In re Fed. Fountain, Inc., 165 F.3d 600, 601–02 (8th Cir. 1999) (en banc); Republic of Panama v. BCCI Holdings (Lux.) S.A., 119 F.3d 935, 946–47 (11th Cir. 1997); accord Brief for the United States as Amicus Curiae at 15 & n.3, Sokolow v. Palestine Liberation Org., 138 S. Ct. 1438 (2018) (No. 16-1071).Show More In other words, current doctrine treats the United States as a state, but larger; it takes the Fourteenth Amendment as given, and remakes the Fifth Amendment in its image.⁷7.See, e.g., 4 Charles Alan Wright, Arthur R. Miller & Adam N. Steinman, Federal Practice and Procedure § 1068.1, at 694–95, 695 n.10 (4th ed. 2015); Chimène I. Keitner, Personal Jurisdiction and Fifth Amendment Due Process Revisited, in The Restatement and Beyond: The Past, Present, and Future of U.S. Foreign Relations Law 231, 248 (Paul B. Stephan & Sarah H. Cleveland eds., 2020); William S. Dodge & Scott Dodson, Personal Jurisdiction and Aliens, 116 Mich. L. Rev. 1205, 1210 (2018) (noting that “[o]ther authors have advocated a national-contacts approach in various contexts, including . . . under the Fifth but not the Fourteenth Amendment,” and collecting citations); Allan Erbsen, Reorienting Personal Jurisdiction Doctrine Around Horizontal Federalism Rather than Liberty After Walden v. Fiore, 19 Lewis & Clark L. Rev. 769, 776 (2015); Leslie M. Kelleher, Amenability to Jurisdiction as a “Substantive Right”: The Invalidity of Rule 4(k) Under the Rules Enabling Act, 75 Ind. L.J. 1191, 1216 (2000) (describing it as “generally . . . accepted” that the Fifth Amendment “requires sufficient affiliating contacts with the nation as a whole, rather than just the forum state”); Jonathan Remy Nash, National Personal Jurisdiction, 68 Emory L.J. 509, 523–24 (2019).Show More

This is all backwards. The Fifth Amendment came first, and the Fourteenth was modeled on it. We need to understand how personal jurisdiction was supposed to work—before the Fourteenth Amendment—if we want to understand what the Due Process Clauses actually do.

For the first 150 years of the Republic, today’s conventional view of personal jurisdiction wasn’t so conventional. Though the early Congress refrained from exercising its full powers, the recognized doctrines of jurisdiction worked very differently for state and federal courts. The narrow limits on state jurisdiction discussed in Picquet v. Swan,⁸8.19 F. Cas. 609 (C.C.D. Mass. 1828) (No. 11,134).Show More a widely cited opinion by Justice Story, were still influential a half-century later in Pennoyer v. Neff.⁹9.95 U.S. 714, 724 (1878); see also, e.g., Toland v. Sprague, 37 U.S. (12 Pet.) 300, 328 (1838) (endorsing Picquet’s reasoning); Warren Mfg. Co. v. Etna Ins. Co., 29 F. Cas. 294, 298 n.4 (C.C.D. Conn. 1837) (No. 17,206) (citing Picquet) (date ascribed in Gerard Carl Henderson, The Position of Foreign Corporations in American Constitutional Law 81 n.1 (1918)); Dearing v. Bank of Charleston, 5 Ga. 497, 515 (1848) (citing Picquet); Steel v. Smith, 7 Watts & Serg. 447, 450 (Pa. 1844) (same).Show More Yet Picquet maintained that a federal court’s ability to have “a subject of England, or France, or Russia . . . summoned from the other end of the globe to obey our process, and submit to the judgment of our courts,” was up to Congress.¹⁰10.19 F. Cas. at 613.Show More If Congress wanted to exercise exorbitant jurisdiction, contrary to “principles of public law, public convenience, and immutable justice,” a federal court “would certainly be bound to follow it, and proceed upon the law.”¹¹11.Id. at 614–15.Show More

The contrary modern assumption, that federal and state courts face roughly the same constitutional limits, has serious practical consequences. Two circuits recently invalidated, as applied, an act of Congress authorizing jurisdiction over foreign terrorists and sponsors for attacks on Americans abroad.¹²12.See Estate of Klieman v. Palestinian Auth., 923 F.3d 1115, 1118, 1128, 1131 (D.C. Cir. 2019) (applying the Anti-Terrorism Act, 18 U.S.C. §§ 2331, 2333–2334), vacated and remanded, 140 S. Ct. 2713 (2020); Livnat v. Palestinian Auth., 851 F.3d 45, 53 (D.C. Cir. 2017); Waldman v. Palestine Liberation Org., 835 F.3d 317, 335–37 (2d Cir. 2016), motion to recall the mandate denied, 925 F.3d 570 (2d Cir. 2019), vacated and remanded sub nom. Sokolow v. Palestine Liberation Org., 140 S. Ct. 2714 (2020).Show More Responding to the murder of Leon Klinghoffer, the statute specifically sought to expand Americans’ right to sue over terrorist attacks in foreign countries.¹³13.See Boim v. Quranic Literacy Inst., 291 F.3d 1000, 1010–11 (7th Cir. 2002).Show More But because the individual states lack jurisdiction in these cases,¹⁴14.See Walden v. Fiore, 571 U.S. 277, 286–89 (2014).Show More and because the attacks weren’t specifically aimed at Americans, the defendants’ U.S. contacts fell short. Congress has twice amended the statute to try different approaches, and these may yet succeed.¹⁵15.See Promoting Security and Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act of 2019, Pub. L. No. 116-94, § 903, 133 Stat. 3082, 3082–83; Anti-Terrorism Clarification Act of 2018, Pub. L. No. 115-253, § 4, 132 Stat. 3183, 3184; Klieman, 140 S. Ct. 2713; Sokolow, 140 S. Ct. 2714.Show More If, though, Congress really does have power to authorize these suits—if its powers haven’t shrunk since Justice Story’s day—then the courts have no business sending the plaintiffs home empty-handed, or letting the defendants off scot-free.

The assumption that jurisdiction works the same way in state and federal court has serious theoretical consequences too. Today federal personal jurisdiction is litigated primarily under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.¹⁶16.See Fed. R. Civ. P. 4(k).Show More But the relevant rules’ validity has been questioned since their adoption, and the skeptics have recently grown in number.¹⁷17.See, e.g., Kelleher, supra note 7; A. Benjamin Spencer, Substance, Procedure, and the Rules Enabling Act, 66 UCLA L. Rev. 654 (2019); Patrick Woolley, Rediscovering the Limited Role of the Federal Rules in Regulating Personal Jurisdiction, 56 Hous. L. Rev. 565 (2019); accord Lumen N. Mulligan, Is Personal Jurisdiction Constitutionally Self-Enacting?, Jotwell (May 7, 2019), https://courtslaw.jotwell.com/is-personal-jurisdiction-constitutionally-self-enacting/ [https://perma.cc/E8G4-NVDR].Show More Limits on state jurisdiction stem from external principles of law, principles that can’t be amended by state rules of practice and procedure. If similar limits apply to federal jurisdiction, then much current practice is unlawful. But if not—if all the federal courts really need is authorization to issue process, in a particular place and in a particular way—then the Federal Rules are still valid, and the Supreme Court can still address the issue via rulemaking.

Given the stakes, federal personal jurisdiction deserves another look. Many scholars have called for expanding federal jurisdiction through new rules or statutes,¹⁸18.See, e.g., Robert Haskell Abrams, Power, Convenience, and the Elimination of Personal Jurisdiction in the Federal Courts, 58 Ind. L.J. 1, 32–49 (1982); Edward L. Barrett, Jr., Venue and Service of Process in the Federal Courts—Suggestions for Reform, 7 Vand. L. Rev. 608, 627–35 (1954); Allan Erbsen, Impersonal Jurisdiction, 60 Emory L.J. 1, 77–84 (2010); Geoffrey C. Hazard, Jr., Interstate Venue, 74 Nw. U. L. Rev. 711, 712–13 (1979); Arthur T. von Mehren & Donald T. Trautman, Jurisdiction To Adjudicate: A Suggested Analysis, 79 Harv. L. Rev. 1121, 1123 (1966); Nash, supra note 7, at 557–61; Stephen E. Sachs, How Congress Should Fix Personal Jurisdiction, 108 Nw. U. L. Rev. 1301, 1315–46 (2014); A. Benjamin Spencer, Nationwide Personal Jurisdiction for Our Federal Courts, 87 Denv. U. L. Rev. 325, 329–34 (2010); A. Benjamin Spencer, The Territorial Reach of Federal Courts, 71 Fla. L. Rev. 979, 991–94 (2019).Show More or for reinterpreting present law for policy-adjacent reasons—say, because the federal government has broader interests in foreign affairs,¹⁹19.E.g., A. Mark Weisburd, Due Process Limits on Federal Extraterritorial Legislation?, 35 Colum. J. Transnat’l L. 379, 409, 415–16, 428 (1997); Ariel Winawer, Comment, Too Far from Home: Why Daimler’s “At Home” Standard Does Not Apply to Personal Jurisdiction Challenges in Anti-Terrorism Act Cases, 66 Emory L.J. 161, 185–87 (2016).Show More or because principles of reciprocity or horizontal federalism no longer apply at the federal level.²⁰20.E.g., Wendy Perdue, Aliens, the Internet, and “Purposeful Availment”: A Reassessment of Fifth Amendment Limits on Personal Jurisdiction, 98 Nw. U. L. Rev. 455, 461 (2004); Aaron D. Simowitz, Legislating Transnational Jurisdiction, 57 Va. J. Int’l L. 325, 328 & n.13 (2018); cf. World-Wide Volkswagen Corp. v. Woodson, 444 U.S. 286, 294 (1980) (discussing the role of “interstate federalism”).Show More Historical or formalist studies of jurisdiction tend to focus on state courts, not federal ones—and on due process, not congressional power.²¹21.See, e.g., Patrick J. Borchers, The Death of the Constitutional Law of Personal Jurisdiction: From Pennoyer to Burnham and Back Again, 24 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 19, 24, 43–56 (1990); Jay Conison, What Does Due Process Have To Do with Jurisdiction?, 46 Rutgers L. Rev. 1071, 1073–74, 1140–58 (1994); Geoffrey C. Hazard, Jr., A General Theory of State-Court Jurisdiction, 1965 Sup. Ct. Rev. 241, 262–81; John B. Oakley, The Pitfalls of “Hint and Run” History: A Critique of Professor Borchers’s “Limited View” of Pennoyer v. Neff, 28 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 591, 596–97, 616–746 (1995); Wendy Collins Perdue, What’s “Sovereignty” Got To Do with It? Due Process, Personal Jurisdiction, and the Supreme Court, 63 S.C. L. Rev. 729, 730–39 (2012); Martin H. Redish, Due Process, Federalism, and Personal Jurisdiction: A Theoretical Evaluation, 75 Nw. U. L. Rev. 1112, 1115–20 (1981); Stephen E. Sachs, Pennoyer Was Right, 95 Tex. L. Rev. 1249, 1273–78, 1287–1313 (2017); Roger H. Trangsrud, The Federal Common Law of Personal Jurisdiction, 57 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 849, 871–898 (1989); James Weinstein, The Federal Common Law Origins of Judicial Jurisdiction: Implications for Modern Doctrine, 90 Va. L. Rev. 169, 191–230 (2004); Ralph U. Whitten, The Constitutional Limitations on State-Court Jurisdiction: A Historical-Interpretative Reexamination of the Full Faith and Credit and Due Process Clauses (Part One), 14 Creighton L. Rev. 499, 570–89 (1981) [hereinafter Whitten, Part One]; Ralph U. Whitten, The Constitutional Limitations on State-Court Jurisdiction: A Historical-Interpretative Reexamination of the Full Faith and Credit and Due Process Clauses (Part Two), 14 Creighton L. Rev. 735, 768–835 (1981) [hereinafter Whitten, Part Two].Show More (Justice Story’s striking discussion in Picquet, for example, has attracted virtually no scholarly interest.²²22.As of October 3, 2020, key phrases from the opinion such as “England, or France, or Russia,” “other end of the globe,” or “proceed upon the law” yield no relevant hits in Westlaw’s Secondary Sources: Law Reviews & Journals database, aside from this author.Show More)

This Article suggests a change of course. We should stop looking for jurisdictional limits in the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, and start thinking about Congress’s enumerated powers instead.

The argument proceeds as follows. Jurisdictional limits have always been with us, but Fifth Amendment limits are a recent innovation. When American courts first began articulating limits on personal jurisdiction, they didn’t look to state or federal due process clauses, but to rules of general or international law that regulated the authority of separate sovereigns.²³23.SeeSachs, supra note 21, at 1269–87.Show More The Fourteenth Amendment changed this picture for state courts, because it enabled direct federal-question review of their jurisdictional rulings: as Pennoyer explained, “proceedings in a court of justice to determine the personal rights and obligations of parties over whom that court has no jurisdiction do not constitute due process of law.”²⁴24.Pennoyer v. Neff, 95 U.S. 714, 733 (1878).Show More

The picture for federal courts, however, is very different. Federal courts generally look to state laws only “in cases where they apply.”²⁵25.Rules of Decision Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1652 (2018).Show More Yet all valid federal law is “the supreme Law of the Land,” with “the Judges in every State . . . bound thereby.”²⁶26.U.S. Const. art. VI, cl. 2.Show More A federal long-arm provision, if within Congress’s enumerated powers, establishes territorial jurisdiction to the satisfaction of the courts; the due process objection to a judgment-without-jurisdiction can never get started. The federal government can look past a state’s assertion of jurisdiction, but not the other way round.

The Article then examines what enumerated powers Congress might use to expand federal personal jurisdiction beyond what modern doctrine allows. Broad jurisdiction might be necessary and proper to carry into execution the federal courts’ subject-matter jurisdiction.²⁷27.See id. art. I, § 8, cl. 18 (granting power “[t]o make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution . . . all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof”).Show More If a foreigner manages to breach a federal duty, or if a citizen of a state has a controversy with a citizen or subject of a foreign state, those cases and controversies may be heard in federal court.²⁸28.See id. art. III, § 2, cl. 1.Show More So Congress may be within its rights to “summon[]” such defendants “from the other end of the globe to obey our process, and submit to the judgment of our courts.”²⁹29.Picquet v. Swan, 19 F. Cas. 609, 613 (C.C.D. Mass. 1828) (No. 11,134) (Story, Circuit Justice).Show More Or, if it can’t have process sent abroad, Congress might try unusual methods of serving foreign defendants here, parlaying what would ordinarily be limited jurisdiction into a general jurisdiction on any topic whatsoever.³⁰30.See id. at 615 (suggesting that Congress could authorize unorthodox jurisdiction predicated on service by attachment of property in the United States).Show More Either way, we should leave the Fifth Amendment to its own work. Due process may still require that defendants receive adequate notice,³¹31.SeeMullane v. Cent. Hanover Bank & Tr. Co., 339 U.S. 306, 320 (1950).Show More that the forum not be so burdensome as to render the proceedings a sham,³²32.See Bd. of Trs., Sheet Metal Workers’ Nat’l Pension Fund v. Elite Erectors, Inc., 212 F.3d 1031, 1036 (7th Cir. 2000) (Easterbrook, J.).Show More and so on. But as to the scope of the courts’ territorial jurisdiction, the Clause has nothing to say.

Finally, the Article turns to what Congress has actually done with its powers. A handful of statutes achieve universal jurisdiction through worldwide service of process, but most federal jurisdictional work is performed by the Federal Rules. And while the drafters of those Rules may not have fully understood their handiwork, its result appears to be lawful: the Rules Enabling Act’s “power to prescribe general rules of practice and procedure”³³33.28 U.S.C. § 2072 (2018).Show More encompasses the power to make rules for service of process, including rules for when that process will or won’t be taken as asserting the court’s jurisdiction.

So this Article may be less revisionist than first appears. If its arguments are correct, their most immediate consequence is to preserve the status quo, including the validity of the Federal Rules. The next result is to let the federal courts exercise the full breadth of the jurisdiction Congress has already conferred. And the final implication is to put Congress back in the driver’s seat, with authority to redefine the federal courts’ reach without regard to recently invented judicial barriers. If the Court adopts new standards via rulemaking, if Congress expands federal personal jurisdiction by statute, or if the President makes a jurisdictional treaty with the Senate’s advice and consent, these policy decisions wouldn’t—and shouldn’t—be hampered by an ever-expanding vision of the Due Process Clause.³⁴34.Cf. Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co., 556 U.S. 868, 903 (2009) (Scalia, J., dissenting) (“Turn it over, and turn it over, for all is therein.” (quoting 8 The Babylonian Talmud: Seder Nezikin, Tractate Aboth 76–77 (I. Epstein ed. & trans., 1935))).Show More

* Colin W. Brown Professor of Law, Duke University School of Law. The author is grateful to William Baude, Samuel Bray, Nathan Chapman, Robin Effron, James Grimmelmann, Chimène Keitner, Richard Re, Amanda Schwoerke, Patrick Woolley, Ingrid Wuerth, Ernest Young, and the attendees of the Civil Procedure Workshop and the University of Chicago Work-in-Progress Workshop for advice and comments, and to Scotty Schenck and Siqi Wang for excellent research assistance. ↑
Kokkonen v. Guardian Life Ins. Co. of Am., 511 U.S. 375, 377 (1994). ↑
U.S. Const. amend. XIV (“[N]or shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law . . . .”). ↑
Int’l Shoe Co. v. Washington, 326 U.S. 310, 316 (1945) (internal quotation marks omitted). ↑
U.S. Const. amend. V (“[N]or shall any person . . . be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law . . . .”). ↑
See Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Super. Ct., 137 S. Ct. 1773, 1783–84 (2017) (“leav[ing] open the question [which restrictions] the Fifth Amendment imposes . . . on the exercise of personal jurisdiction by a federal court”); Omni Cap. Int’l, Ltd. v. Rudolf Wolff & Co., 484 U.S. 97, 102 n.5 (1987) (declining to decide whether “a federal court could exercise personal jurisdiction, consistent with the Fifth Amendment, based on an aggregation of the defendant’s contacts with the Nation as a whole, rather than on its contacts with the State in which the federal court sits”); Asahi Metal Indus. Co. v. Super. Ct., 480 U.S. 102, 113 n.* (1987) (“We have no occasion here to determine whether Congress could, consistent with the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment, authorize federal court personal jurisdiction over alien defendants based on the aggregate of national contacts, rather than on the contacts between the defendant and the State in which the federal court sits.”). ↑
See Double Eagle Energy Servs., L.L.C. v. MarkWest Utica EMG, L.L.C., 936 F.3d 260, 264 (5th Cir. 2019); Livnat v. Palestinian Auth., 851 F.3d 45, 54 (D.C. Cir. 2017); Xilinx, Inc. v. Papst Licensing GmbH & Co. KG, 848 F.3d 1346, 1352–53, 1353 n.2 (Fed. Cir. 2017); Waldman v. Palestine Liberation Org., 835 F.3d 317, 330–31 (2d Cir. 2016), motion to recall the mandate denied, 925 F.3d 570 (2d Cir. 2019), vacated and remanded sub nom. Sokolow v. Palestine Liberation Org., 140 S. Ct. 2714 (2020); Trs. of the Plumbers & Pipefitters Nat’l Pension Fund v. Plumbing Servs., Inc., 791 F.3d 436, 443–44 (4th Cir. 2015); Klein v. Cornelius, 786 F.3d 1310, 1318 (10th Cir. 2015); KM Enters., Inc. v. Glob. Traffic Techs., Inc., 725 F.3d 718, 731 (7th Cir. 2013); Action Embroidery Corp. v. Atl. Embroidery, Inc., 368 F.3d 1174, 1180 (9th Cir. 2004); Pinker v. Roche Holdings Ltd., 292 F.3d 361, 370–71, 370 n.2 (3d Cir. 2002); United States v. Swiss Am. Bank, Ltd., 274 F.3d 610, 618 (1st Cir. 2001); Med. Mut. of Ohio v. deSoto, 245 F.3d 561, 567–68 (6th Cir. 2001); In re Fed. Fountain, Inc., 165 F.3d 600, 601–02 (8th Cir. 1999) (en banc); Republic of Panama v. BCCI Holdings (Lux.) S.A., 119 F.3d 935, 946–47 (11th Cir. 1997); accord Brief for the United States as Amicus Curiae at 15 & n.3, Sokolow v. Palestine Liberation Org., 138 S. Ct. 1438 (2018) (No. 16-1071). ↑
See, e.g., 4 Charles Alan Wright, Arthur R. Miller & Adam N. Steinman, Federal Practice and Procedure § 1068.1, at 694–95, 695 n.10 (4th ed. 2015); Chimène I. Keitner, Personal Jurisdiction and Fifth Amendment Due Process Revisited, in The Restatement and Beyond: The Past, Present, and Future of U.S. Foreign Relations Law 231, 248 (Paul B. Stephan & Sarah H. Cleveland eds., 2020); William S. Dodge & Scott Dodson, Personal Jurisdiction and Aliens, 116 Mich. L. Rev. 1205, 1210 (2018) (noting that “[o]ther authors have advocated a national-contacts approach in various contexts, including . . . under the Fifth but not the Fourteenth Amendment,” and collecting citations); Allan Erbsen, Reorienting Personal Jurisdiction Doctrine Around Horizontal Federalism Rather than Liberty After Walden v. Fiore, 19 Lewis & Clark L. Rev. 769, 776 (2015); Leslie M. Kelleher, Amenability to Jurisdiction as a “Substantive Right”: The Invalidity of Rule 4(k) Under the Rules Enabling Act, 75 Ind. L.J. 1191, 1216 (2000) (describing it as “generally . . . accepted” that the Fifth Amendment “requires sufficient affiliating contacts with the nation as a whole, rather than just the forum state”); Jonathan Remy Nash, National Personal Jurisdiction, 68 Emory L.J. 509, 523–24 (2019). ↑
19 F. Cas. 609 (C.C.D. Mass. 1828) (No. 11,134). ↑
95 U.S. 714, 724 (1878); see also, e.g., Toland v. Sprague, 37 U.S. (12 Pet.) 300, 328 (1838) (endorsing Picquet’s reasoning); Warren Mfg. Co. v. Etna Ins. Co., 29 F. Cas. 294, 298 n.4 (C.C.D. Conn. 1837) (No. 17,206) (citing Picquet) (date ascribed in Gerard Carl Henderson, The Position of Foreign Corporations in American Constitutional Law 81 n.1 (1918)); Dearing v. Bank of Charleston, 5 Ga. 497, 515 (1848) (citing Picquet); Steel v. Smith, 7 Watts & Serg. 447, 450 (Pa. 1844) (same). ↑
19 F. Cas. at 613. ↑
Id. at 614–15. ↑
See Estate of Klieman v. Palestinian Auth., 923 F.3d 1115, 1118, 1128, 1131 (D.C. Cir. 2019) (applying the Anti-Terrorism Act, 18 U.S.C. §§ 2331, 2333–2334), vacated and remanded, 140 S. Ct. 2713 (2020); Livnat v. Palestinian Auth., 851 F.3d 45, 53 (D.C. Cir. 2017); Waldman v. Palestine Liberation Org., 835 F.3d 317, 335–37 (2d Cir. 2016), motion to recall the mandate denied, 925 F.3d 570 (2d Cir. 2019), vacated and remanded sub nom. Sokolow v. Palestine Liberation Org., 140 S. Ct. 2714 (2020). ↑
See Boim v. Quranic Literacy Inst., 291 F.3d 1000, 1010–11 (7th Cir. 2002). ↑
See Walden v. Fiore, 571 U.S. 277, 286–89 (2014). ↑
See Promoting Security and Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act of 2019, Pub. L. No. 116-94, § 903, 133 Stat. 3082, 3082–83; Anti-Terrorism Clarification Act of 2018, Pub. L. No. 115-253, § 4, 132 Stat. 3183, 3184; Klieman, 140 S. Ct. 2713; Sokolow, 140 S. Ct. 2714. ↑
See Fed. R. Civ. P. 4(k). ↑
See, e.g., Kelleher, supra note 7; A. Benjamin Spencer, Substance, Procedure, and the Rules Enabling Act, 66 UCLA L. Rev. 654 (2019); Patrick Woolley, Rediscovering the Limited Role of the Federal Rules in Regulating Personal Jurisdiction, 56 Hous. L. Rev. 565 (2019); accord Lumen N. Mulligan, Is Personal Jurisdiction Constitutionally Self-Enacting?, Jotwell (May 7, 2019), https://courtslaw.jotwell.com/is-personal-jurisdiction-constitutionally-self-enacting/ [https://perma.cc/E8G4-NVDR]. ↑
See, e.g., Robert Haskell Abrams, Power, Convenience, and the Elimination of Personal Jurisdiction in the Federal Courts, 58 Ind. L.J. 1, 32–49 (1982); Edward L. Barrett, Jr., Venue and Service of Process in the Federal Courts—Suggestions for Reform, 7 Vand. L. Rev. 608, 627–35 (1954); Allan Erbsen, Impersonal Jurisdiction, 60 Emory L.J. 1, 77–84 (2010); Geoffrey C. Hazard, Jr., Interstate Venue, 74 Nw. U. L. Rev. 711, 712–13 (1979); Arthur T. von Mehren & Donald T. Trautman, Jurisdiction To Adjudicate: A Suggested Analysis, 79 Harv. L. Rev. 1121, 1123 (1966); Nash, supra note 7, at 557–61; Stephen E. Sachs, How Congress Should Fix Personal Jurisdiction, 108 Nw. U. L. Rev. 1301, 1315–46 (2014); A. Benjamin Spencer, Nationwide Personal Jurisdiction for Our Federal Courts, 87 Denv. U. L. Rev. 325, 329–34 (2010); A. Benjamin Spencer, The Territorial Reach of Federal Courts, 71 Fla. L. Rev. 979, 991–94 (2019). ↑
E.g., A. Mark Weisburd, Due Process Limits on Federal Extraterritorial Legislation?, 35 Colum. J. Transnat’l L. 379, 409, 415–16, 428 (1997); Ariel Winawer, Comment, Too Far from Home: Why Daimler’s “At Home” Standard Does Not Apply to Personal Jurisdiction Challenges in Anti-Terrorism Act Cases, 66 Emory L.J. 161, 185–87 (2016). ↑
E.g., Wendy Perdue, Aliens, the Internet, and “Purposeful Availment”: A Reassessment of Fifth Amendment Limits on Personal Jurisdiction, 98 Nw. U. L. Rev. 455, 461 (2004); Aaron D. Simowitz, Legislating Transnational Jurisdiction, 57 Va. J. Int’l L. 325, 328 & n.13 (2018); cf. World-Wide Volkswagen Corp. v. Woodson, 444 U.S. 286, 294 (1980) (discussing the role of “interstate federalism”). ↑
See, e.g., Patrick J. Borchers, The Death of the Constitutional Law of Personal Jurisdiction: From Pennoyer to Burnham and Back Again, 24 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 19, 24, 43–56 (1990); Jay Conison, What Does Due Process Have To Do with Jurisdiction?, 46 Rutgers L. Rev. 1071, 1073–74, 1140–58 (1994); Geoffrey C. Hazard, Jr., A General Theory of State-Court Jurisdiction, 1965 Sup. Ct. Rev. 241, 262–81; John B. Oakley, The Pitfalls of “Hint and Run” History: A Critique of Professor Borchers’s “Limited View” of Pennoyer v. Neff, 28 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 591, 596–97, 616–746 (1995); Wendy Collins Perdue, What’s “Sovereignty” Got To Do with It? Due Process, Personal Jurisdiction, and the Supreme Court, 63 S.C. L. Rev. 729, 730–39 (2012); Martin H. Redish, Due Process, Federalism, and Personal Jurisdiction: A Theoretical Evaluation, 75 Nw. U. L. Rev. 1112, 1115–20 (1981); Stephen E. Sachs, Pennoyer Was Right, 95 Tex. L. Rev. 1249, 1273–78, 1287–1313 (2017); Roger H. Trangsrud, The Federal Common Law of Personal Jurisdiction, 57 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 849, 871–898 (1989); James Weinstein, The Federal Common Law Origins of Judicial Jurisdiction: Implications for Modern Doctrine, 90 Va. L. Rev. 169, 191–230 (2004); Ralph U. Whitten, The Constitutional Limitations on State-Court Jurisdiction: A Historical-Interpretative Reexamination of the Full Faith and Credit and Due Process Clauses (Part One), 14 Creighton L. Rev. 499, 570–89 (1981) [hereinafter Whitten, Part One]; Ralph U. Whitten, The Constitutional Limitations on State-Court Jurisdiction: A Historical-Interpretative Reexamination of the Full Faith and Credit and Due Process Clauses (Part Two), 14 Creighton L. Rev. 735, 768–835 (1981) [hereinafter Whitten, Part Two]. ↑
As of October 3, 2020, key phrases from the opinion such as “England, or France, or Russia,” “other end of the globe,” or “proceed upon the law” yield no relevant hits in Westlaw’s Secondary Sources: Law Reviews & Journals database, aside from this author. ↑
See Sachs, supra note 21, at 1269–87. ↑
Pennoyer v. Neff, 95 U.S. 714, 733 (1878). ↑
Rules of Decision Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1652 (2018). ↑
U.S. Const. art. VI, cl. 2. ↑
See id. art. I, § 8, cl. 18 (granting power “[t]o make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution . . . all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof”). ↑
See id. art. III, § 2, cl. 1. ↑
Picquet v. Swan, 19 F. Cas. 609, 613 (C.C.D. Mass. 1828) (No. 11,134) (Story, Circuit Justice). ↑
See id. at 615 (suggesting that Congress could authorize unorthodox jurisdiction predicated on service by attachment of property in the United States). ↑
See Mullane v. Cent. Hanover Bank & Tr. Co., 339 U.S. 306, 320 (1950). ↑
See Bd. of Trs., Sheet Metal Workers’ Nat’l Pension Fund v. Elite Erectors, Inc., 212 F.3d 1031, 1036 (7th Cir. 2000) (Easterbrook, J.). ↑
28 U.S.C. § 2072 (2018). ↑
Cf. Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co., 556 U.S. 868, 903 (2009) (Scalia, J., dissenting) (“Turn it over, and turn it over, for all is therein.” (quoting 8 The Babylonian Talmud: Seder Nezikin, Tractate Aboth 76–77 (I. Epstein ed. & trans., 1935))). ↑

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