Transcript PowerPoint - Cornell College

The Marshall & Taney Courts
1801-1863
Contrasting Approaches to
Constitutional Interpretation
Comparing the Court’s First Two Important Eras
Marshall Court
1801-1835
Taney Court
1836-1863
Judicial
Power
Marbury v. Madison (1803) –
seize the power
Luther v. Borden (1849) –
defer to president
Legislative
Power
McCulloch v. Maryland (1819)
– expansive reading of
enumerated & implied
powers
Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)
–narrow reading of
enumerated & implied
powers
Commerce
Clause
Gibbons v. Ogden (1824) –
Commerce Clause power over
navigation is exclusive
Cooley v. Board of Wardens
(1852) – Commerce Clause
power over navigation is not
exclusive
Contract
Clause
Fletcher v. Peck (1810) &
Trustees of Dartmouth College
v. Woodward (1819) – broad
reading of Contract Clause
Charles River Bridge v.
Warren Bridge (1837) –
narrow reading of Contract
Clause
The Civil War Amendments
1865-1870
Constitutional Watershed in American
Federalism
§
Dred Scott Overtuned
13th Amendment [1865]
• Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary
servitude, except as punishment for crime
whereof the party shall have been duly
convicted, shall exist within the United
States, or any place subject to their
jurisdiction.
• Section 2. Congress shall have power to
enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
14th Amendment, ¶§ 1 [1868]
• All persons born or naturalized in the United
States, and subject to the jurisdiction
thereof, are citizens of the United States and
of the State wherein they reside. No state
shall make or enforce any law which shall
abridge the privileges or immunities of
citizens of the United States; nor shall any
State deprive any person of life, liberty, or
property, without due process of law; nor
deny to any person within its jurisdiction the
equal protection of the laws.
15th Amendment [1870]
• Section 1. The right of citizens of the
United States to vote shall not be
denied or abridged by the United
States or by any State on account of
race, color, or previous condition of
servitude.
• Section 2. The Congress shall have
power to enforce this article by
appropriate legislation.
The Judiciary & the Welfare State
1900-1942
Economic Regulation
Dual Federalism
• The Constitution is a compact among sovereign states,
which having ceded a portion of their sovereignty to the
national government, have retained the rest.
• To the powers of the national government and of the
states are mutually exclusive, conflicting, and
antagonistic. What belongs to the nation is forbidden to
the states and vice versa.
• The layer cake metaphor for federalism.
• Narrow interpretation enumerated powers including
Necessary and Proper.
• Broad interpretation of the Tenth Amendment.
• 1835-1864 (Taney Court), 1895-1937.
• Modest revival in 1970s and 1990s.
MEMBERSHIP OF THE U.S. SUPREME COURT
1932-1937
Conservative*
Swing
Liberal
Van DeVanter (R) 19101937
Hughes, C.J. (R) 19301941
Brandeis (R) 1916-1939
McReynolds (D) 1914-1940
Roberts (R) 1930-1945
Stone (R) 1925-1941
Cardozo (D) 1932-1938
Sutherland (R) 1922-1938
Butler (D) 1922-1939
*The fearsome foursome of substantive due process–a remarkably consistent voting
bloc:
Willis Van DeVanter (Republican, Wyoming, Chair of Republican National
Committee, Taft)
James C. McReynolds (Democrat, Tennessee, U.S. Attorney General, Wilson)
George Sutherland (Republican, Utah, state senator, Harding)
Pierce Butler (Democrat, Minnesota, railroad attorney, Harding)
THE SUPREME COURT'S RESPONSE TO ECONOMIC
REGULATIONBEFORE AND AFTER THE SWITCH IN TIME
THAT SAVED NINE
[Cases won by the government, i.e., where regulation was sustained, are printed in bold blue type.]
NATIONAL REGULATION
STATE REGULATION
Slaughterhouse Cases (1873)
Munn v. Illinois (1877)
pre-switch
U.S. v. E.C. Knight (1895)
Allgeyer v. Louisiana (1897)
Champion v. Ames (1903)
McCray v. U.S. (1904)
Jacobson v. Massachusetts (1905)
Lochner v. New York (1905)
Muller v. Oregon (1908)
Shreveport Rate Case (1914)
Hammer v. Dagenhart (1918)
Stafford v. Wallace (1922)
Bailey v. Drexel Furniture (1922)
Burns Baking Company v. Bryan (1924)
Home Building & Loan v. Blaisdell (1934)
Carter v. Carter Coal (1936)
U.S. v. Butler (1936)
post-switch
Steward Machine Co. v. Davis (1937)
N.L.R.B. v. Jones & Laughlin (1937)
U.S. v. Darby (1941)
Wickard v. Filburn (1942)
West Coast Hotel v. Parrish (1937)
Edwards v. California (1941) [state lost, but strong
view of national commerce power prevailed]
The Judiciary & the Welfare State
1900-1937
The Foreign Policy Exception
Key Cases
• MISSOURI V. HOLLAND (1920): Article VI establishes the
supremacy of treaties over state law, even when those treaties require
exercise powers not expressly granted to the federal government. If
the treaty is valid, the implementing statute is valid as necessary and
proper.
• U.S. V. CURTISS-WRIGHT EXPORT CORP. (1936): the view that
the federal government has only enumerated powers “is categorically
true only in respect of our internal affairs.” Courts describes the
“plenary and exclusive power of the president as the sole organ of the
federal government in the field of international relations.”
• U.S. V. BELMONT (1937) : executive agreements are not treaties
requiring Senate approval, but they have the force of treaties
domestically.
Rise & Fall of the
Warren Court
1953 - 1969
Preferred Freedoms
• All constitutional rights are not equal.
• Rights of speech, press, association, and assembly are so
fundamental to democratic processes that any legislation
infringing them must be accorded strict scrutiny [judicial
activism].
• Preference for the individual over the government when
government action intrudes on fundamental rights.
• Particular solicitude toward (a) individual political rights,
(b) the processes of democratic government, or (c) the
well-being of persistent minorities.
• Fundamental rights don't include the economic rights,
which were the darlings of the Lochner Court.