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16 Oct 08

Seminole Tribe of Florida v. Florida, 517 U.S. 44 (1996)

  • That presupposition, first observed over a century ago in Hans v.
    Louisiana,     134 U.S. 1, 10 S.Ct. 504, 33 L.Ed. 842 (1890), has two parts:
    first, that each State is a sovereign entity in our federal system; and second,
    that " '[i]t is inherent in the nature of sovereignty not to be amenable to the
    suit of an individual without its consent.
  • Congress' intent to abrogate the States' immunity from suit must be obvious from
    "a clear legislative statement."
  • 1 more annotations...
18 Sep 08

Clinton v. NY, 524 U.S. 417 (1998)

  • Insofar as the degree of political, "law-making'' power conferred upon the
    Executive is concerned, there is not a dime's worth of difference between
    Congress's authorizing the President to cancel a spending item, and
    Congress's authorizing money to be spent on a particular item at the President's
    discretion. And the latter has been done since the Founding of the Nation.
04 Sep 08

Youngstown Sheet and Tube Co. v. Sawyer (The Steel Seizure Case), 343 U.S. 579 (1952)

  • A basic rule is the duty of the Court not to pass on a constitutional issue at
    all, however narrowly it may be confined, if the case may, as a matter of
    intellectual honesty, be decided without even considering delicate problems of
    power under the Constitution. It ought to be, but apparently is not a matter of
    common understanding that clashes between different branches of the government
    should be avoided if a legal ground of less explosive potentialities is properly
    available. Constitutional adjudications are apt by exposing differences to
    exacerbate them.

  • 1. When the President acts pursuant to an express or implied
    authorization of Congress, his authority is at its maximum, for it includes all
    that he possesses in his own right plus all that Congress can delegate.2
    In these circumstances, and in these only, may he be said (for what it may be
    worth), to personify the federal sovereignty. If his act is held
    unconstitutional under these circumstances, it usually means that the Federal
    Government as an undivided whole lacks power. A seizure executed by the
    President pursuant to an Act of Congress would be supported by the strongest of
    presumptions and the widest latitude of judicial interpretation, and the burden
    of persuasion would rest heavily upon any who might attack it.


    341

    2. When the President acts in absence of either a congressional
    grant or denial of authority, he can only rely upon his own independent powers,
    but there is a zone of twilight in which he and Congress may have concurrent
    authority, or in which its distribution is uncertain. Therefore, congressional
    inertia, indifference or quiescence may sometimes, at least as a practical
    matter, enable, if not invite, measures on independent presidential
    responsibility. In this area, any actual test of power is likely to depend on
    the imperatives of events and contemporary imponderables rather than on abstract
    theories of law.3


    342

    3. When the President takes measures incompatible with the
    expressed or implied will of Congress, his power is at its lowest ebb, for then
    he can rely only upon his own constitutional powers minus any constitutional
    powers of Congress over the matter. Courts can sustain exclusive Presidential
    control in such a case only be disabling the Congress from acting upon the
    subject.4
    Presidential claim to a power at once so conclusive and preclusive must be
    scrutinized with caution, for what is at stake is the equilibruim established by
    our constitutional system.

01 Sep 08

Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186 (1962)

  • 'In determining whether a question falls within (the political question)
    category, the appropriateness under our system of government of attributing
    finality to the action of the political departments and also the lack of
    satisfactory criteria for a judicial determination are dominant considerations.'
  • The nonjusticiability of a political question is primarily a function of the
    separation of powers. Much confusion results from the capacity of the 'political
    question' label to obscure the need for case-by-case inquiry. Deciding whether a
    matter has in any measure been committed by the Constitution to another branch
    of government, or whether the action of that branch exceeds whatever authority
    has been committed, is itself a delicate exercise in constitutional
    interpretation, and is a responsibility of this Court as ultimate interpreter of
    the Constitution. To demonstrate this requires no less than to analyze
    representative cases and to infer from them the analytical threads that make up
    the political question doctrine.
  • 1 more annotations...

Abbott Laboratories v. Gardner, 387 U.S. 136 (1967)

  • Without undertaking to survey the intricacies of the ripeness doctrine15
    it is fair to say that its basic rationale is to prevent the courts, through
    avoidance of premature adjudication, from entangling themselves in abstract
    disagreements over administrative policies, and also to protect the agencies
    from judicial interference until an administrative decision has been formalized
    and its effects felt in a concrete way by the challenging parties. The problem
    is best seen in a twofold aspect, requiring us to evaluate both the fitness of
    the issues for judicial decision and the hardship to the parties of withholding
    court consideration.
28 Aug 08

Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737 (1984)


  • "(a) constitutes tangible federal financial aid and other
    support for racially segregated educational institutions, and


    9

    "(b) fosters and encourages the organization, operation and
    expansion of institutions providing racially segregated educational
    opportunities for white children avoiding attendance in desegregating public
    school districts and thereby interferes with the efforts of federal courts, HEW
    and local school authorities to desegregate public school districts which have
    been operating racially dual school systems."

  • Moreover, it is entirely speculative, as respondents themselves conceded in the
    Court of Appeals, see n. 17, supra, whether withdrawal of a tax exemption from
    any particular school would lead the school to change its policies. See 480
    F.Supp., at 796. It is just as speculative whether any given parent of a child
    attending such a private school would decide to transfer the child to public
    school as a result of any changes in educational or financial policy made by the
    private school once it was threatened with loss of tax-exempt status. It is also
    pure speculation whether, in a particular community, a large enough number of
    the numerous relevant school officials and parents would reach decisions that
    collectively would have a significant impact on the racial composition of the
    public schools.
25 Aug 08

Dickerson v. U.S., 530 U.S. 428 (2000)

  • Given §3501's express designation of voluntariness as the touchstone of
  • Because of the obvious conflict between our decision in Miranda and §3501, we
    must address whether Congress has constitutional authority to thus supersede
    Miranda. If Congress has such authority, §3501's totality-of-the-circumstances
    approach must prevail over Miranda's requirement of warnings; if not, that
    section must yield to Miranda's more specific requirements.
  • 3 more annotations...

Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U.S. 1 (1958)

  • The controlling legal principles are plain. The command of the Fourteenth
    Amendment is that no 'State' shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction
    the equal protection of the laws. 'A State acts by its legislative, its
    executive, or its judicial authorities. It can act in no other way. The
    constitutional provision, therefore, must mean that no agency of the State, or
    of the officers or agents by whom its powers are exerted, shall deny to any
    person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Whoever, by
    virtue of public position under a State government, * * * denies or takes away
    the equal protection of the laws, violates the constitutional inhibition; and as
    he acts in the name and for the State, and is clothed with the State's power,
    his act is that of the State. This must be so, or the constitutional prohibition
    has no meaning.'
  • In short, the constitutional rights of children not to be discriminated against
    in school admission on grounds of race or color declared by this Court in the
    Brown case can neither be nullified openly and directly by state legislators or
    state executive or judicial officers, nor nullified indirectly by them through
    evasive schemes for segregation whether attempted 'ingeniously or ingenuously.'

Cohens v. Virginia, 19 U.S. 264 (1821)

  • It is authorized to decide all cases of every description, arising under the
    constitution or laws of the United States. From this general grant of
    jurisdiction, no exception is made of those cases in which a State may be a
    party.
  • Will the spirit of the constitution justify this attempt to control its words?
    We think it will not. We think a case arising under the constitution or laws of
    the United States, is cognizable in the Courts of the Union, whoever may be the
    parties to that case.
  • 4 more annotations...
21 Aug 08

Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803)


  • The government of the United States has been emphatically termed
    a government of laws, and not of men. It will certainly cease to deserve this
    high appellation, if the laws furnish no remedy for the violation of a vested
    legal right.


    62

    If this obloquy is to be cast on the jurisprudence of our
    country, it must arise from the peculiar character of the case.


20 Aug 08

http://ul451.gsu.edu/courts.gov/c/editedUS/14/14.US.304.html

  • The constitution of the United States was ordained and
    established, not by the states in their sovereign capacities, but emphatically,
    as the preamble of the constitution declares, by 'the people of the United
    States.' There can be no doubt that it was competent to the people to invest the
    general government with all the powers which they might deem proper and
    necessary; to extend or restrain these powers according to their own good
    pleasure, and to give them a paramount and supreme authority. As little doubt
    can there be, that the people had a right to prohibit to the states the exercise
    of any powers which were, in their judgment, incompatible with the objects of
    the general compact; to make the powers of the state governments, in given
    cases, subordinate to those of the nation, or to reserve to themselves those
    sovereign authorities which they might not choose to delegate to either. The
    constitution was not, therefore, necessarily carved out of existing state
    sovereignties, nor a surrender of powers already existing in state institutions,
    for the powers of the states depend upon their own constitutions; and the people
    of every state had the right to modify and restrain them, according to their own
    views of the policy or principle. On the other hand, it is perfectly clear that
    the sovereign powers vested in the state governments, by their respective
    constitutions, remained unaltered and unimpaired, except so far as they were
    granted to the government of the United States.

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