The Supreme Court is a tiny institution that can resolve only a fraction of the constitutional issues generated by the American government. This simple yet startling fact is impossible to deny, but few students of the Court have seriously considered its implications. In Rationing the Constitution, Andrew Coan explains how the Court's limited capacity shapes U.S. constitutional law and argues that the limits of judicial capacity powerfully constrain Supreme Court decision-making on many of the most important constitutional questions, spanning federalism, separation of powers, and individual rights. Examples include the commerce power, presidential powers, Equal Protection, and regulatory takings. The implications for U.S. constitutional law are profound. Lawyers, academics, and social activists pursuing social reform through the courts must consider whether their goals can be accomplished within the constraints of judicial capacity.--

In this groundbreaking analysis of Supreme Court decision-making, Andrew Coan explains how judicial caseload shapes the course of American constitutional law and the role of the Court in American society. Compared with the vast machinery surrounding Congress and the president, the Supreme Court is a tiny institution that can resolve only a small fraction of the constitutional issues that arise in any given year. Rationing the Constitution shows that this simple yet frequently ignored fact is essential to understanding how the Supreme Court makes constitutional law. Due to the structural organization of the judiciary and certain widely shared professional norms, the capacity of the Supreme Court to review lower-court decisions is severely limited. From this fact, Andrew Coan develops a novel and arresting theory of Supreme Court decision-making. In deciding cases, the Court must not invite more litigation than it can handle. On many of the most important constitutional questions—touching on federalism, the separation of powers, and individual rights—this constraint creates a strong pressure to adopt hard-edged categorical rules, or defer to the political process, or both. The implications for U.S. constitutional law are profound. Lawyers, academics, and social activists pursuing social reform through the courts must consider whether their goals can be accomplished within the constraints of judicial capacity. Often the answer will be no. The limits of judicial capacity also substantially constrain the Court’s much touted—and frequently lamented—power to overrule democratic majorities. As Rationing the Constitution demonstrates, the Supreme Court is David, not Goliath.

It has long been contended that the Indian Constitution of 1950, a document in English created by elite consensus, has had little influence on India’s greater population. Drawing upon the previously unexplored records of the Supreme Court of India, A People’s Constitution upends this narrative and shows how the Constitution actually transformed the daily lives of citizens in profound and lasting ways. This remarkable legal process was led by individuals on the margins of society, and Rohit De looks at how drinkers, smugglers, petty vendors, butchers, and prostitutes—all despised minorities—shaped the constitutional culture. The Constitution came alive in the popular imagination so much that ordinary people attributed meaning to its existence, took recourse to it, and argued with it. Focusing on the use of constitutional remedies by citizens against new state regulations seeking to reshape the society and economy, De illustrates how laws and policies were frequently undone or renegotiated from below using the state’s own procedures. De examines four important cases that set legal precedents: a Parsi journalist’s contestation of new alcohol prohibition laws, Marwari petty traders’ challenge to the system of commodity control, Muslim butchers’ petition against cow protection laws, and sex workers’ battle to protect their right to practice prostitution. Exploring how the Indian Constitution of 1950 enfranchised the largest population in the world, A People’s Constitution considers the ways that ordinary citizens produced, through litigation, alternative ethical models of citizenship.

A scientific study of the political and economic factors influencing democratic decision making

This Article analyzes the doctrinal instruments federal courts use to allocate scarce adjudicative resources over competing demands for constitutional remedies. It advances two claims. The first is that a central, hitherto underappreciated, doctrinal instrument for rationing judicial resources is a demand that most constitutional claimants demonstrate that an official violated an exceptionally clear, unambiguous constitutional rule - that is, not only that the Constitution was violated, but that the violation evinced a demanding species of fault. This fault rule first emerged in constitutional tort jurisprudence. It has diffused to the suppression and postconviction review contexts. The Article's second claim is that fault-based rationing of constitutional remedies flows, to an underappreciated degree, from a commitment to judicial independence. Federal courts have developed branch-level autonomy, along with distinctly institutional interests, over the twentieth century. These interests are inconsistent with the vindication of many individualized constitutional claims. While ideological preferences and changing socioeconomic conditions have had well-recognized influences on the path of constitutional remedies, I argue that the judiciary's institutional preferences have also played a large role. This causal link between judicial independence and remedial rationing raises questions about federal courts' function in the Separation of Powers.

Shines new light on America's brilliant constitutional and presidential history, from George Washington to Barack Obama. In this sweepingly ambitious volume, the nation’s foremost experts on the American presidency and the U.S. Constitution join together to tell the intertwined stories of how each American president has confronted and shaped the Constitution. Each occupant of the office—the first president to the forty-fourth—has contributed to the story of the Constitution through the decisions he made and the actions he took as the nation’s chief executive. By examining presidential history through the lens of constitutional conflicts and challenges, The Presidents and the Constitution offers a fresh perspective on how the Constitution has evolved in the hands of individual presidents. It delves into key moments in American history, from Washington’s early battles with Congress to the advent of the national security presidency under George W. Bush and Barack Obama, to reveal the dramatic historical forces that drove these presidents to action. Historians and legal experts, including Richard Ellis, Gary Hart, Stanley Kutler and Kenneth Starr, bring the Constitution to life, and show how the awesome powers of the American presidency have been shapes by the men who were granted them. The book brings to the fore the overarching constitutional themes that span this country’s history and ties together presidencies in a way never before accomplished.