Material rights, underenforcement, and the adjudication thesis

Boston University Law Review

Volumn 90, Issue 2, 2010, Pages 579-593

  Sager, Lawrence ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 77954323222     PISSN: 00068047     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (61)

1. See generally, e.g., RONALD DWORHN, LIFE'S DOMINION: AN ARGUMENT ABOUT ABORTION, EUTHANASIA, AND INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM (1993);
2. RONALD DWORHN, TAHNG RIGHTS SERIOUSLY (1977).
3. See, e.g., LAWRENCE G. SAGER, JUSTICE IN PLAINCLOTHES: A THEORY OF AMERICAN CONSTrrunONAL PRACTICE 93-128 (2004);
4. Lawrence G. Sager, Justice in Plain Clothes: Reflections on the Thinness of Constitutional Law, 88 Nw. U. L. REV. 410 (1993).
5. See, e.g., Lawrence G. Sager, Thin Constitutions and the Good Society, 69 FORDHAM L. REV. 1989,1990 (2001).
6. See SAGER, supra note 2, at 94;
7. Lawrence Gene Sager, Fair Measure: The Legal Status ofUnderenforced Constitutional Norms, 91 HARV. L. REV. 1212,1214 (1978).
8. See RONALD DWORHN, JUSTICE FOR HEDGEHOGS (forthcoming 2010) (Apr. 17, 2009 manuscript at 257, on file with the Boston University Law Review).
9. See RONALD DWORHN, FREEDOM'S LAW: THE MORAL READING OF THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTION 34 (1996)
10. [hereinafter DWORHN, FREEDOM'S LAW] ("[Courts] have power to enforce many of the rights, principles, and standards the Constitution creates ... but not all of them.").
11. See DWORHN, supra note 5 (manuscript at 257) ("The distinction between theories of law and adjudication is erasefd], and the doctrine of under-enforcement falls with it.").
12. Id. (manuscript at 255).
13. Id.
14. Id. (manuscript at 257).
15. Id. (manuscript at 210).
16. See id. (manuscript at 257).
17. See, e.g., Steven J. Burton, Ronald Dworkin and Legal Positivism, 73 IOWA L. REV. 109, 129 (1987);
18. Ken Kress, Why No Judge Should Be a Dworkinian Coherentist, 77 TEX. L. REV. 1375,1378-79 (1999).
19. See Sager, supra note 4, at 1214.
20. See DWORHN, supra note 5 (manuscript at 257).
21. -5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137 (1803).
22. A close look at the roiling judicial waters in Brazil with regard to material rights is provided by Florian F. Hoffmann & Fernando R.N.M. Bentes, Accountability for Social and Economic Rights in Brazil, in COURTING SOCIAL JUSTICE: JUDICIAL ENFORCEMENT OF SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC RIGHTS IN THE DEVELOPING WORLD 100 (Varan Gauri & Daniel M. Brinks eds., 2008).
23. See supra note 3 and accompanying text.
24. See supra text accompanying note 3.
25. See SAGER, supra note 2, at 93-128 (examining the "[c]onceptual [s]alience of [u]nderenforcement" and examining cases such as Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center, 473 U.S. 432 (1985),
26. Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202 (1982),
27. United States Department of Agriculture v. Moreno, 413 U.S. 528 (1973),
28. and United States Department of Agriculture v. Murry, 413 U.S. 508 (1973)).
29. See supra text accompanying note 18.
30. U.S. CONST, amend. I.
31. See generally WALTER F. MURPHY, JAMES E. FLEMING, SOTIRIOS A. BARBER & STEPHEN MACEDO, AMERICAN CONSTITUTION AL INTERPRETATION 731-833 (4th ed. 2008);
32. see also, e.g., Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568, 572 (1942)
33. (establishing high and low level speech and finding that "the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous, and the insulting or 'fighting' words" deserve less protection).
34. The juxtaposition of constitutional meaning and constitutional implementation draws on the felicitous conceptual vocabularies of two scholars:
35. RICHARD H. FALLON, JR., IMPLEMENTING THE CONSTITUTION (2001)
36. and Mitchell N. Berman, Constitutional Decision Rules, 90 VA. L. REV. 1 (2004).
37. See Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444,447 (1969).
38. See, e.g., Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Pena, 515 U.S. 200,227 (1995).
39. -384 U.S. 436 (1966).
40. Id. at 444-45.
41. U.S. CONST, amend. V.
42. See generally RONALD DWORKIN, LAW'S EMPIRE (1986).
43. Dworkin has also dealt with this elsewhere. See also DWORHN, supra note 5 (manuscript at 257) ("[A] legal right is a right we have in virtue of the political community's history rather than through morality itself.");
44. DWORHN, TAHNG RIGHTS SERIOUSLY, supra note 1, at 87 ("[I] nstitutional history acts not as a constraint on the political judgment of judges but as an ingredient of that judgment, because institutional history is part of the background that any plausible judgment about rights of an individual must accommodate.").
45. See DWORHN, FREEDOM'S LAW,
46. supra note 6, at 10 ("[Judges] may not may not read the abstract moral clauses as expressing any particular moral judgment, no matter how much that judgment appeals to them, unless they find it consistent in principle with the structural design of the Constitution as a whole, and also with the dominant lines of past constitutional interpretation by other judges.");
47. DWORHN, TAHNG RIGHTS SERIOUSLY, supra note 1, at 82 ("Judges should apply the law that other institutions have made; they should not make new law.").
48. See SAGER, supra note 2, at 94.
49. See id.
50. For example, I have in mind cases that approve the United States Congress's authority to enforce the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment.
51. See, e.g., Katzenbach v. Morgan, 384 U.S. 641,651 (1966)
52. (upholding the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and finding that Section Five "is a positive grant of legislative power authorizing Congress to exercise its discretion in determining whether and what legislation is needed to secure the guarantees of the Fourteenth Amendment").
53. For example, if the beneficiary enterprises were banks, and the officials thought that demanding that the banks lend more generously would just start the cycle of bad debts over again.
54. See DWORHN, supra note 5 (manuscript at 255-57).
55. See id. (manuscript at 257).
56. Id.
57. Id.
58. See supra text accompanying notes 20-23.
59. See, e.g., DWORKIN, TAHNG RIGHTS SERIOUSLY, supra note 1, at 23-24 ("My immediate purpose, however, is to distinguish principles in the generic sense from rules... Rules are applicable in an all or nothing fashion.").
60. Id. at 26.
61. Cf. Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202, 210 (1982) (finding a Texas statute withholding funds from schools for the education of children of illegal aliens unconstitutional).