Cross-posted from Justia's Verdict.

The U.S. Supreme Court last week heard oral arguments in an important case involving federalism and election regulation, Arizona Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission. As I have explained in a two-part series of columns (beginning with this one), Arizona is one of only two states (California being the other) where voters—responding to state legislatures’ tendency to engage in problematic gerrymandering—passed an initiative giving the job of drawing congressional districts to an independent redistricting commission (IRC) instead of the regular state legislature. The elected Arizona legislature brought a lawsuit and appealed the lower court ruling to the Court, arguing that the so-called Elections Clause, Article I, section 4 of the federal Constitution, which gives power to undertake districting in the first instance to the “legislature” of each state, prevents the people of a state from divesting the elected state legislature of district-drawing power.

One Generally (and Recurringly) Surprising Aspect: Federalism Inversion

Many aspects of the oral argument weren’t shocking. I continue to believe, for reasons I explained in the earlier column, that the challenge to the IRC is flawed, but many analysts anticipated that the more conservative Justices would be sympathetic to the arguments made by the elected legislature, which is being represented by former Bush Administration Solicitor General Paul Clement, and these Justices did seem to be. On the other hand, some liberal Justices generally seemed more receptive to the arguments in favor of the IRC, made by its lawyer, former Clinton Administration Solicitor General Seth Waxman. Though expected by Court watchers, this coalitional breakdown is itself surprising in at least one historical respect: the liberal Justices seem more inclined to favor “states’ rights” by giving states latitude to experiment with different modes of district drawing, while the conservative Justices seem disinclined to permit states free reign. In the 1980s and 1990s, conservative Justices were the ones who generally thought the federal Constitution allowed for broad state experimentation, and the liberals thought that states did not have as much running room. But beginning with Bush v. Gore, it is now hard to know how the conservative/liberal framework (which is, of course, overly simple but nonetheless somewhat useful) maps onto federalism matters. We see the same potential complexity in the pending Obamacare case, King v. Burwell, where liberal rather than conservative Justices will likely construe the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) in a particular way so as to avoid imposing costs on states that might not have been fully aware of the potential consequences of their decisions not to set up their own healthcare exchanges.

A Surprising Inattention to Standing

In a few other respects, though, the oral argument in the Arizona case was surprising by any standard. For one thing, the Court included in the grant of review a question of whether the elected legislature had standing to sue (and the matter was briefed), yet the Justices asked no questions of Mr. Clement about whether his client did enjoy standing. There were some standing questions asked of the lawyer representing the United States (which supported the IRC as an amicus in the case) when he said he thought the elected legislature lacked standing, but one would think that if there is a question raised in a case about the plaintiff’s standing, the Justices would ask the lawyer representing the plaintiff to explain why the Court can hear the case. The burden to establish standing is on the party seeking to invoke federal judicial power, and yet the Justices gave Mr. Clement a pass on this in oral argument, even though the standing question is far from easy. (For an explanation of why the standing question is a complex one, readers may want to consult an earlier Verdict column focusing on that question).

And when they did engage in the standing analysis at all, the Justices seemed not to know what they themselves had said in past standing cases, including a particularly relevant one. Justice Kennedy, in questioning the lawyer for the federal government, intimated that the Court’s cases do not say that just because another plaintiff might be a better candidate to bring a lawsuit, the Court should deny standing to the party actually in front of it. And the federal government’s lawyer acknowledged that the Court often says close to the opposite—that the “even if [the Court’s rejection of standing in a given case] would mean no one would have standing to sue, that’s not a reason to find standing.” But what both of them seemed to forget is that in the standing case most germane to the Arizona legislature’s dispute, Raines v. Byrd—where the Court denied standing to members of Congress in a case challenging the Line Item Veto Act—the majority did suggest that whether another party might be a better candidate for standing was a factor that might cut against standing for the members of Congress. As Chief Justice Rehnquist’s opinion put it: “We also note that our conclusion . . . [that Congresspersons lack standing does not] foreclose[] the Act from constitutional challenge (by someone who suffers judicially cognizable injury as a result of the Act). Whether the case would be different if . . . [this] circumstance[] were different we need not now decide.” The clear implication of that last sentence is that the existence of a “better” candidate for standing may very well affect whether the Court is willing to stretch standing doctrine for the sake of the plaintiff actually before the Court.

A Surprisingly (and Problematically) Narrow View of Past Cases and U.S. History

This isn’t the only passage from previous cases that the Justices seemed to have forgotten they said. Justices Kennedy and Scalia repeatedly pressed Mr. Waxman for any instances elsewhere in the Constitution in which the Court had indicated that the word “legislature” was not necessarily a limited reference to the elected representative legislature, but could include the people themselves—the lawmaking authority. While Mr. Waxman had no clear answer, one thing he could have said is that Justice Scalia himself has intimated that “legislature” might in some constitutional contexts be read to include the people. In Salazar v. Colorado, in 2003, a case involving whether Colorado could involve state courts in discharging the power that Article II of the Constitution gives to “the legislature” of each state to prescribe the manner in which presidential electors shall be selected, Justice Scalia (along with Justice Thomas) joined an opinion, dissenting from a denial of certiorari, which said: “Conspicuously absent from the Colorado lawmaking regime, under the Supreme Court of Colorado’s construction of the Colorado Constitution to include state-court orders as part of the lawmaking, is participation in the process by a body representing the people, or the people themselves in a referendum” (emphasis added).

The Justices seemed somewhat forgetful not just of past statements in cases, but also of American history, in particular, the path by which U.S. senators came to be directly elected by the people. The text of the original Constitution (prior to the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913) provided that senators should be picked by the “legislature” of each state. Justice Kennedy, trying to draw a sharp distinction between the “legislature” and the people of the state based on this textual feature of the 1787 document, observed at argument that “until 1913, for close to a hundred years, many States wanted to have direct election of the senators . . . and not one State, not one State, displaced the legislature. It took the Seventeenth Amendment to do that. . . It seems to me that [for this reason] history works against the IRC.”

With all due respect, Justice Kennedy’s historical account here is extremely and problematically simplistic, in that many states did effectively, to use his term, “displace[] the legislature” in picking U.S. senators. Beginning in the mid-1800s, state-level political parties and organizations sought ways to involve the people more directly in selecting senators, and were devising increasingly effective ways to limit state legislators’ discretion in their choice of federal senators. What evolved into the most sophisticated approach, the so-called “Oregon Plan” (or Scheme), began simply as an opportunity for state legislative candidates to formally pledge to follow the will of the voters, as expressed through an advisory popular election, when it came time to pick the next federal senator. The pledges were considered merely moral at first. But as other states began to follow Oregon’s lead, more creative and more coercive devices were employed. Nebraska, for example, pioneered a “scarlet letter” approach, in which elected legislators who broke the pledge they took as state legislative candidates were burdened with a ballot notation to that effect in the event they sought state legislative reelection. Other states followed suit, crafting variations on the Oregon and Nebraska devices to suit their local needs. Oregon voters ultimately adopted a state constitutional amendment that, as a matter of state law, legally bound state legislators to select the U.S. Senate candidates who were most popular among state voters. By 1912, when the U.S. Senate approved the Seventeenth Amendment, nearly sixty percent of the senators were already selected by some means of direct election (and thus had nothing to fear from it). For this reason, it seems likely that even without ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment, direct election would in fact be with us today in most, if not all, states. In reality then, the Seventeenth Amendment was a formalizing final step in an evolutionary process.

Of course, the Oregon state constitutional provision binding state legislators, the Nebraska scarlet letter devices, and the somewhat similar measures from other states were never litigated in the U.S. Supreme Court or in lower courts. Yet that fact may itself be telling. Does Justice Kennedy think that these devices were in fact unconstitutional because they improperly deprived the elected legislatures of power Article I gave to them? If so, would Justice Kennedy be prepared to call into question the legitimacy of the senators elected from all the states that employed such devices for over a decade? And the actions taken by these Senates? And if not, doesn’t this historical episode support the Arizona electorate and its desire to experiment via the IRC?

In deciding what the word “legislature” in the Constitution means, in Article I and elsewhere—and whether that term can be read to include the people themselves—the Court should, at a minimum, be more careful and sophisticated in taking account of what the Court or various of its Justices have said, and what the full historical record of American democracy reveals.

Cross-posted from Justia's Verdict.

In my last column, I explored some aspects of an important case, Arizona Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission, pending at the Supreme Court. As I explained, the merits question presented is whether the people of a state may create an independent redistricting commission (IRC)-i.e., one that is not controllable by the elected state legislature-to devise congressional districts, as Arizona voters did in 2000. The elected Arizona legislature (acting as a body) brought suit, arguing the so-called Elections Clause of Article I of the Constitution (Article I, section 4)-which provides that "[t]he [districts for] Representatives . . . shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations"-protects elected state legislatures from state laws that take congressional districting out of their hands. In the space below, I continue to explore the questions the case raises, especially in light of the additional briefs that have been filed.

Does the Elected Legislature Have Standing to Sue the State (Voters)? The Two Key Precedents

One issue Court will take up-indeed, an issue the parties initially did not address but on which the Court specifically sought briefing-is whether the elected legislature has "standing" to challenge the Arizona initiative in federal court. Elected state legislatures have been found to have standing in a number of cases in federal court, but the more ordinary situation in which an elected legislature seeks to be in court involves the legislature's attempt to defend rather than attack state law. When the executive branch of a state does not defend a state law that is challenged by private individuals, the elected legislature may under certain circumstances be permitted to do so instead.

In the Arizona case, by contrast, the elected legislature seeks to invalidate, not preserve, the Arizona law that voters passed in 2000. To do so, the legislature, like any plaintiff in federal court, must demonstrate that it has suffered (or is reasonably certain to suffer) an "injury" that is "cognizable." The elected legislature's asserted injury here is that it has been removed from an important job that the federal Constitution (in the Elections Clause) assigns directly to it. Because, under the Arizona initiative, any congressional districting legislation passed by the elected legislature will not be put into effect, the elected legislature's vote on any such districting will be (improperly, to its way of thinking) nullified.

There is one older Supreme Court case that may support the Arizona legislature's standing argument. In Coleman v. Miller (1939), a majority of the Kansas state senate brought suit to challenge the actions of the state executive branch in connection with the ratification of a proposed federal constitutional amendment dealing with child labor. The state senate had deadlocked 20-20 on the question of ratification of the amendment, an outcome that ordinarily would be construed as a decision not to ratify. But the lieutenant governor of the state (as presiding officer of the senate), decided to cast a vote-as he would in ordinary legislation-and voted in favor of ratification.

When state officials prepared to communicate that Kansas had ratified, for purposes of determining whether three-quarters of the states had ratified (the threshold required for an amendment to go into effect), the state senators who had voted against ratification, joined by three others to make a majority of the senate, sued, claiming that the lieutenant governor had no business participating in the ratification vote because Article V's conferral of power to state "legislatures" to ratify federal amendments excludes participation of state executive officials. As a result, the Kansas senators argued, their decision not to ratify (by an equally divided vote) was being improperly overridden.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the plaintiffs had standing, reasoning that the lieutenant governor's actions, if indeed violative of Article V, completely and improperly nullified the valid votes of the elected state legislators. Because their votes had been unconstitutionally ignored altogether, they had suffered an injury cognizable in federal court.

Coleman was explained, distinguished and perhaps narrowed in 1997 in Raines v. Byrd. In that case, a handful of U.S. Senators and House members brought suit to challenge the constitutionality of the federal Line Item Veto Act (LIVA), a statute passed by Congress and signed into law that purported to give the President, with respect to each future budget bill in which Congress had not indicated an intent otherwise, the power to sign the budget bill into law but then decline to spend any money on certain budget items of his choosing. The plaintiffs in Raines claimed that giving the President such authority diluted the power of Congress, because any votes on subsequent budget bills in Congress might not be given full effect by a President who decided to spend on some, but not on all, the budget items Congress had adopted.

The Court in Raines found plaintiffs lacked standing. It distinguished Coleman in at least three ways: (1) in Coleman, a majority of the Kansas senate voted to sue, whereas Raines involved only a handful of members of Congress, and neither house of Congress authorized the suit; (2) in Coleman, the vote of the twenty Kansas senators was being nullified altogether by the lieutenant governor's actions, whereas in Raines the dilution or diminution of the "effectiveness" of Congress's votes in any future budget bill may not have been as extreme; and (3) the Kansas state senate had already voted on the ratification measure in question in Coleman (and the effect of its vote in a particular case was thus at stake), whereas in Raines the alleged harm related to future votes Congress might cast.

How Should Coleman and Raines Play Out in the Arizona Case?

In some ways, the Arizona case is similar to aspects of both Coleman and Raines, a feature which gives the Court some leeway to resolve the standing question any way it wants without having to formally overrule a past case. Like Coleman, the Arizona case involves a suit by a majority of a legislative branch-and not just a few individual members. Also similar to that in Coleman, the claim here is not just that the (redistricting) laws by the elected legislature might be affected or influenced by the Arizona initiative, but that they are foreclosed altogether: all the votes by the elected legislature on a districting bill would be completely ignored. But as in Raines, the alleged harm to voting power is in the future, insofar as the elected Arizona legislature has not actually cast any redistricting votes that have been (or are about to be) ignored or nullified on account of the Arizona initiative.

Here's another potentially relevant factor. In Coleman, the injury to the Kansas senate was inflicted from outside the senate, by the lieutenant governor. The same is true in Arizona, insofar as the People wrested power from the elected legislature without the legislature's consent. In Raines, by contrast, Congress itself passed the LIVA that some of its members believe improperly diluted Congress's own power. The Raines Court did not actually rely on the self-inflicted character of the alleged institutional injury, but that may be a significant background fact.

And here's yet one more possible consideration. In Raines, the Court suggested that even if the members of Congress lacked standing to challenge the LIVA, someone else outside Congress-the intended beneficiary of a spending item that Congress approved but that the President cancelled under the LIVA-would be able to sue later to challenge the Act. And, in fact, such a challenge did occur (and the LIVA was struck down-wrongly, to my mind) in Clinton v. New York. In the present case, it is possible that a voter or congressional candidate could sue to challenge the Arizona initiative, claiming that the district in which she finds herself on account of the lines drawn by the IRC is less desirable to her than the district in which she would have been located had the elected legislature retained control, but it is far from clear that such a case would actually be filed and survive the standing hurdle. The Supreme Court has elsewhere said that just because it is hard to imagine anyone other than the plaintiff before it who would have a better claim of standing is no reason to relax standing rules, but the presence or absence of better plaintiffs might be an unstated factor in a very flexible standing doctrine. (There are intimations of that in Raines itself.) If the Arizona legislature is correct that the federal Constitution gives it particular power that is being wrongly taken away from it, a sensible system should allow someone to go to court to fix the constitutional violation.

In the end, I think the Court can-and could very well-go either way on the standing question. I note that if the Court limits Raines and allows the elected Arizona legislature to sue, it might be open to the criticism that it manipulates standing rules out of a perceived hostility to direct democracy. Two years ago, in Hollingsworth v. Perry (one of the same-sex marriage cases), the Court used questionable reasoning (even if its result was correct) to make it hard for proponents of initiatives to defend those initiatives in federal court when elected state officials decline to defend. If the Court in the pending Arizona case relaxes the standing bar to make it easier for the elected legislature to attack the Arizona initiative, some will think the Court is just plain anti-initiative.

Back to the Merits and the Key Question of Congressional Approval Power

Of course, one way to avoid that perception would be uphold the Arizona initiative on the merits. As I argued in my last column, I think there is a compelling argument on the merits that Congress, in 2 U.S.C. § 2a(c), approved the use of initiative and other direct democracy devices in the drawing of congressional districts by states, and that such a decision by Congress should be controlling regardless of whether the word "legislature" in the Elections Clause means elected legislature only or something else. The more I have examined the congressional statute in question, the more controlling I think it is, because its text is quite broad and clear in allowing states to use whatever state law devices they want to conduct districting, and because the legislative history suggests that one reason Congress wanted states to be able to use direct democracy in this arena was that elected legislatures were prone to engage in mischievous gerrymandering, the very problem to which the Arizona initiative was directed. So I think the congressional statute here is right on point.

The key question - and one that the briefs don't fully engage - then becomes whether Congress has the power to authorize states to use initiative devices to draw district lines. The Arizona elected legislature says no, but as I pointed out in my last column, the Supreme Court (in Ohio ex. rel. Davis v. Hildebrant), in upholding Ohio's use of the referendum in districting), relied explicitly on Congress's having, in adopting (the predecessor to) 2 U.S.C. § 2a(c), invoked its Article I, section 4 powers, which "expressly gave [Congress] the right to" act in this realm. As I observed, Congress, in exercising its power, might have passed a law creating the very identical Arizona IRC to do the districting within the state, and that would be completely permissible. If Congress could have enacted the IRC law itself (or incorporated it by reference into binding federal law shortly after the Arizona voters approved it), then why can't it simply approve, before the fact, any districting approach it wants? The recently filed brief for the IRC points out that it is much more convenient for Congress to approve state laws prospectively than it would be to monitor what states are doing and then enact laws itself. But that doesn't quite answer the question whether Congress has the authority to approve state laws that aren't on the books at the time Congress adopts the approval. The IRC's brief, which is superb overall, doesn't delve deeply into this matter, and the federal government's amicus brief is the only one I've seen that has more engagement with this question.

The best (albeit losing) argument against such congressional power is that prospective approval is an impermissible delegation of congressional authority to states. In the nineteenth century, such an argument might have had traction. Chief Justice Marshall in the well-known case of Gibbons v. Ogden opined that Congress cannot enable states to legislate when the Constitution disabled them from doing so because such prospective empowerment would in effect constitute a delegation of federal legislative authority back to the states. And as Justice Story observed in 1838, federal statutes that approved or incorporated state laws were generally construed as approving or incorporating state laws in effect at the time Congress acted, because there are "very serious doubts, whether [C]ongress does possess a constitutional authority to adopt prospectively state legislation on any given subject; for that, it seems to me, would amount to a delegation of its own legislative power."

But all this changed in the 1900s. In two seminal cases, the Court signaled that prospective incorporation of state laws by Congress, or prospective congressional approval of state laws that would otherwise violate the Constitution, is allowed. In United States v. Sharpnack (cited by the United States in its amicus brief), the Court allowed Congress to incorporate state criminal laws for use as federal laws in federal enclave (donut hole) territories, and the Court did not construe the incorporation as static, but instead as ongoing, incorporating into the federal law state laws that were passed after Congress acted. In rejecting a delegation attack, the Court said that rather than being a delegation by Congress of its legislative authority to the states, "[the 1948 Act] is deliberate continuing adoption by Congress for federal enclaves of such . . . offenses and punishments as shall have been already put in effect by the respective states for their own government. Congress retains the power to exclude a particular state law from the assimilative effect of the Act." Thus, the prospective adoption does not constitute a delegation because Congress remains free to withdraw the power being exercised by the states if Congress disapproves. The opportunity to reclaim the delegated authority, under the Court's reasoning, dissolves the delegation issue.

An even more important case, one I haven't seen anyone cite in the Arizona case briefs, deals directly with congressional approval of state laws that would otherwise violate the Constitution. (I tend to think the congressional statute authorizing direct democracy in drawing district lines, 2 U.S.C. § 2a(c), as more of an authorization of state law than as an incorporation of state laws into federal law, since I don't think the ins and outs of the Arizona initiative are themselves federal law.) In Prudential Ins. Co. v. Benjamin, decided in 1946, the Court effectively held when the Constitution deprives states but not Congress of authority to do certain things, it does not restrict the "coordinated exercise" of federal and state authority. Put another way, if Congress can do something alone, Congress can consent (oven prospectively) to having the states do it instead. As Professor Cohen has correctly observed, the Court's theory sweeps broadly: "Congress may remove all constitutional limits on States when those limits are wholly inapplicable to Congress-that is, when they stem solely from divisions of power within the federal system."

As I have explained more fully in academic writings, I think the twentieth century attitude reflected in Sharpnack and Prudential may have something to do with the fact that, beginning in the early 1900s, U.S. Senators were no longer elected by state legislatures, such that delegations by Congress to state governments were less scary, insofar as states (through their clout over Senators) wouldn't be able to block efforts by Congress to reclaim federal power if states were abusing it. As Sharpnack pointed out, as long as Congress can pull back any power it has given to states, the delegation problem is minimized.

Perhaps delegation to state peoples to engage in direct democracy, as opposed to delegations to elected state legislatures, never raised reclamation problems even before the 1900s, so that even Chief Justice Marshall and Justice Story, in their times, would see no problem with a federal law that allowed states, freely and prospectively, to make use of direct democracy in congressional district drawing. But in any event, in light of Sharpnack and especially Prudential, the congressional statute at issue in the Arizona case, 2 U.S.C. § 2a(c), is a permissible exercise of congressional power, and thus should be an easy basis on which the Court could resolve the case, if it chooses to reach the merits at all.

Cross-posted from Justia's Verdict.

One of the important Supreme Court cases currently being briefed (with oral argument set for March), Arizona Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission, involves the question whether the U.S. Constitution and congressional statutes permit the people of a state to implement an initiative creating an independent redistricting commission (IRC) - i.e., one that is not controllable by the elected state legislature - to devise congressional districts. Arizona voters passed just such an initiative in 2000, and the elected Arizona legislature (acting as a body) has now brought the case to the Supreme Court, arguing primarily that the so-called Elections Clause of Article I of the Constitution (Article I, section 4) prevents a state from divesting district - drawing power from the elected state legislature. The Arizona legislature (represented by former Solicitor General Paul Clement) has filed its brief in the Court, and the IRC (also represented by a former Solicitor General, Seth Waxman) will file its written argument very soon. In the space below, I analyze the merits portion of Mr. Clement's brief on behalf of the Arizona legislature, and point out why I think it fails to demonstrate that the IRC's creation and powers violate federal law. (Another part of Mr. Clement's brief, addressing whether the Arizona legislature has "standing" in federal court to assert a challenge to the IRC at all, raises interesting questions of its own, but those will have to await another day.)

What the Constitution and Federal Statutes Say, and What Mr. Clement's Brief Argues

The Elections Clause of the Constitution reads in relevant part: "The [districts for] Representatives . . . shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulations . . . ."

And an important federal statute says that "u]ntil a State is redistricted in the manner provided by the law thereof after any apportionment, the Representatives to which such State is entitled under such apportionment shall be elected in [a particular way]." 2 U.S.C. § 2a(c) (emphasis added).

Mr. Clement's argument against the IRC is pretty straightforward. He contends that the term "legislature" in Article I refers, as a matter of constitutional text, history, and policy, specifically to the elected body of regular legislators of the state, and if another body - the IRC - is empowered to do the districting instead, the elected legislature has been improperly divested of its constitutionally conferred prerogative. As the brief observes, quoting from a case (Hawke v. Smith), "[t]he term 'the legislature' . . . 'was not a term of uncertain meaning when incorporated into the Constitution,' and 'what it meant when adopted it still means,' namely, 'the representative body which made the laws of the people.'" The brief adds that this precise wording by the framers was motivated by their "admiration for representative democracy and skepticism for other forms of government, including direct democracy." The brief then goes on to explain why "the IRC is not 'a legislature' at all [and is certainly] not 'the Legislature' in Arizona."

Mr. Clement does have to deal with two Supreme Court cases that seem to support the IRC. In Ohio ex. rel. Davis v. Hildebrant, in 1916, the Court upheld Ohio's use of the referendum (a popular vote veto by the people directly) to oversee the congressional districting done by the elected state legislature. The Court specifically rejected a challenge to the referendum based on Article I, section 4 of the Constitution, finding that "to include the referendum into the scope of the legislative process was [not] to introduce a virus which destroys that power," and also that Congress expressly chose language to include in a federal statute (the one quoted above) in order to make clear its desire that where under state law "the referendum was treated as part of the legislative power, the power as thus constituted should be held and treated to be the state legislative power for the purpose of" the Elections Clause (emphasis added).

And in Smiley v. Holm, in 1932, the Court upheld Minnesota law's inclusion of the governor in the districting process through the power of the veto, holding that there is nothing in the federal Constitution that suggests "an attempt to endow the Legislature of the state with the power to enact laws in any manner other than that in which the Constitution of the state has provided that all laws shall be enacted." As a result, a redistricting passed by the elected legislature but vetoed by the governor was not allowed to go into effect.

Mr. Clement argues that these two cases "do not aid the IRC" because "both decisions clearly contemplate a continuing role-indeed, a continuing preeminent role-for the state legislature in prescribing congressional districts," insofar as the referendum power and the gubernatorial veto at issue in those cases did not obviate the need for the elected legislature to itself agree on any districting plan that would go into effect. Because Arizona's IRC scheme totally replaces-rather than supplements-the power of the elected legislature, these cases, argues Mr. Clement, are readily distinguishable.

As to the federal statute that the IRC invokes to support it-2 U.S.C. § 2a(c)-Mr. Clement argues that a recent ruling by the Supreme Court (Branch v. Smith) that discusses that provision does not mention that it embodies a congressional blessing of all districting done pursuant to state law. Moreover, Mr. Clement argues, if Congress "ever passed a statute purporting" to "authorize states to oust from the congressional redistricting process the very state legislatures to which the Constitution delegates primary power," then such a law would "be plainly unconstitutional."

Why the Constitutional Reading Offered by the Arizona Elected Legislature Is Unpersuasive

Mr. Clement's argument on behalf of the Arizona elected legislature is flawed in several respects. Sometimes the argument frames questions improperly, and sometimes the argument's conclusions are not logically supported. At a relatively high level of abstraction, the brief misdescribes the relevant inquiry: the question is not whether the IRC can be considered a "legislature" within the meaning of the federal Constitution; the question is whether the Arizona electorate-which passed the measure creating, empowering and directing the IRC-can be considered the state's "legislature" for Article I, section 4 purposes. To see this, ask yourself whether the elected Arizona legislature could-if it wanted to-create and appoint a body like the IRC, and charge it with the task of actually drawing the district lines, without the need for formal ratification or approval of the final boundaries by the elected legislature. That is precisely what five other states do, and no one-even the Arizona elected legislature-seems to quarrel with that. In other words, no one argues that an elected legislature is violating Article I, section 4 by making use of a commission to help draw the lines. (The same is true for Congress; no one believes that the clause empowering "Congress" to "regulate commerce among the several states" is violated when Congress creates, empowers, and directs federal agencies to craft the specific commercial regulations in the name of the federal government.)

So if the people of Arizona can be considered a legislature for Article I, section 4 purposes, then it matters not whether the IRC is a legislature. The IRC is the tool of the popular legislature, just as commissions are the tools of the elected legislatures in states like Montana, Idaho, New Jersey, Washington, and Hawaii.

And when we turn to the question whether the people of a state can properly be considered the legislature of the state for these purposes, we see that the brief's treatment of the Hildebrant and Smiley cases is quite incomplete at the very least. The brief's claim that, as far as the facts go, the devices at issue in those cases did not completely displace the role of the elected legislature is true. But it is also true that the affirmative legal argument the brief makes-that the text, history and policy behind Article I, section 4 require that the word "legislature" be understood to mean the elected legislature and only the elected legislature-simply cannot be squared with the outcome, let alone the reasoning, of those cases. To put the point is quasi-mathematical terms, if "legislature" equals elected legislature and no more and no less, then "legislature" cannot equal "legislature plus people" or "legislature plus governor."

Indeed, what strikes me most in reading the brief is that its drafters make bold assertions without seeming to realize that these assertions conflict directly with Hildebrant and Smiley, the cases Mr. Clement argues pose no problems for him. For example, the brief asserts-in a section heading, no less-that "The Text of the Elections Clause Unambiguously Vests State Authority . . . in the State's Representative Lawmaking Body Alone" (emphasis added). The inclusion of the word "alone" is puzzling. If it is true that Article I, section 4 vests power in the elected legislature "alone," the how could a veto by the people (in the form of a referendum) be countenanced? (Similarly puzzling is the brief's insistence that the word "prescribe" in Article I, section 4 means "establish authoritatively" or "dictate." If the redistricting work product of the elected legislature can be made subject to a requirement of popular approval, as Hildebrant says it can, in what sense is the elected legislature "authoritatively establishing" or "dictating" anything?)

In a related vein, the brief observes that "the framers knew the differences between 'state legislatures' and the 'executive . . . branch[]'" and that "[t]hose contemporary understandings and usages are critical." Why would you make this (tangential) textual argument concerning the difference between "legislature" and "executive" when Smiley-a case whose relevance you are trying to minimize-expressly permits executive involvement in Article I, section 4 district drawing?

It is true that Mr. Clement's brief is able to quote, as noted earlier, language from one Court case, Hawke v. Smith (decided in 1920), to the effect that the meaning of the term "legislature" is the same now as it was in 1787-the elected representatives. What the brief does not mention, however, is that this language in Hawke did not involve Article I's Election Clause, but the word "legislature" as it appears in Article V's amendment process. The Hawke Court rejected the applicability of the referendum device in Article V. But Hildebrant explicitly permits the use of the referendum in congressional district drawing, which strongly suggests that the Court has a different conception of the what "legislature" means in Article I, section 4-a conception that focuses not on a specific elected body but on the lawmaking power of the state more generally and the democratically accountable legislative process that is being employed.

That the Court interprets Article I, section 4's reference to "legislature" in terms of a democratic legislative process, rather than in terms of a particular body, was made explicit by the Court in Smiley (the case involving a gubernatorial veto of an elected legislature's redistricting bill.) Responding directly to and rejecting the Hawke Court's "a legislature is a particular elected body" reasoning employed in Article V, the Smiley Court said: "The question [in the present case] is not with respect to the 'body' . . . but as to the function to be performed. The use in the Federal Constitution of the same term in different [parts] does not always imply the performance of the same function." So while Mr. Clement is able to quote language from Hawke, the brief doesn't explain that Hawke's interpretive approach has been overtly rejected by the Court in the Elections Clause context.

Just as Mr. Clement's textual arguments are in tension with the results and reasoning of case law, so too are his historical claims. If the framers of Article I, section 4 were so "skeptical" of direct democracy, and if such pure democracy "results in 'spectacles of turbulence and contention,'" as the brief argues, then how to explain the Court's decision in Hildebrant to permit a state to subject an elected legislature's districting plan to a popular referendum?

Overall, it almost seems as if one person wrote the first part of the brief-laying out an aggressive textual and historical argument-and then another person was tasked with trying to deflect potentially damaging cases, and no one realized that the proffered distinctions of cases had to mesh with the affirmative reading of Article I, section 4 offered in the main argument.

Why the Brief's Treatment of the Role of Congress in This Dispute Is Even Weaker

Putting aside what the word "legislature" means in Article I, section 4, the least persuasive part of the brief might well be its treatment of the crucial congressional statute. As noted above, one reason the Hildebrant Court gave for upholding the use of the referendum in district drawing was its view that Congress, when it was modifying a key federal statute regarding redistricting, replaced a reference to the "legislature" of a state with the phrase "in the manner provided by the law" of a state, specifically in order to convey its approval of any state redistricting that made use of the referendum, so long as the referendum was consistent with state law. Mr. Clement's brief does not deny that the Hildebrant Court read the statutory language this way (the brief never even refers specifically to the passage in Hildebrant.) Instead, the brief simply says that a more recent case, Branch v. Smith, discussing the same statutory provision, did not reiterate what Hildebrant said, and that some Justices in Branch believed that the statutory provision at issue had been implicitly repealed by other statutes.

But the brief does not mention that five Justices in Branch explicitly expressed their view that the provision at issue had not been implicitly repealed. Nor does the brief mention that while Branch does not reiterate the reading Hildebrant gave, neither does it pull back from Hildebrant's reading in any way. Indeed, the Branch Court had no occasion to even discuss the Hildebrant interpretation at all because although the statute at issue in Branch was the same one involved in Hildebrant (or, more specifically, a later rendition of the same law), the legal question presented in Branch had nothing to do with whether Congress has approved of all state districting that is done pursuant to state law. Hildebrant's interpretation thus is not called into question by Branch, and statutory stare decisis is, of course, supposed to be very strong.

Probably because its drafters sense vulnerability here, the brief does say Congress cannot constitutionally authorize state laws that cut elected state legislatures out of the district-drawing loop. But in making this assertion the brief is on very weak ground. Congress is explicitly empowered to override any state districting and do the districting itself. That is precisely why the Hildebrant Court found congressional endorsement of Ohio's scheme so relevant-because Article I, section 4 "expressly gave [Congress] the right to" decide. In exercising its power, Congress might have passed a law creating the very identical Arizona IRC to do the districting within the state, and that would be completely permissible. If Congress could have enacted the IRC law itself (or incorporated it by reference into binding federal law shortly after the Arizona voters approved it), then why can't it simply approve any districting approach that satisfies whichever requirements, such as compliance with state law procedures, that Congress thinks are important? That is the key question Mr. Clement brief's never begins to address. And while one could make noises that even though Congress can do something itself in this realm it cannot prospectively authorize a state to do it instead, any such arguments are unlikely to be convincing, especially in light of the use to which Hildebrant put the statute.

Perhaps it is possible to read the federal statute as approving the use of the referendum, as in Hildebrant, but not the use of the initiative, as in the present case. But the text of the statutory phrase relied on by Hildebrant-"in the manner provided by the law" of a state-would not seem to permit such a distinction. Neither would the statute's legislative history (also relied on by the Hildebrant Court), which mentioned a desire to permit states to use both the initiative and the referendum in districting processes.

In the end, this congressional blessing, coupled with Congress's broad override powers in the Elections Clause, might be the easiest, and narrowest, ground on which to decide the case and reject the Arizona legislature's attack. There would then be no need to decide whether, in the absence of the federal statute, a state could cut an elected legislature out of the districting process or whether such an effort would be foreclosed by a strict reading of the word "legislature" in Article I, section 4.

Faculty members at UC Davis School of Law publish truly unique scholarship that advances the legal profession. You can view their scholarly works via the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) Legal Scholarship Network. An archive can be found on this web page.

What follows here is the most recent collection of papers:

"Corporate Social Responsibility in India" 
The Conference Board Director Notes No. DN-V6N14 (August 2014)
UC Davis Legal Studies Research Paper No. 399

AFRA AFSHARIPOUR, University of California, Davis - School of Law
Email: aafsharipour@ucdavis.edu
SHRUTI RANA, University of Maryland
Email: shrutirana@yahoo.com

In an era of financial crises, widening income disparities, and environmental and other calamities linked to some corporations, calls around the world for greater corporate social responsibility (CSR) are increasing rapidly. Unlike the United States and other major players in the global arena, which have largely emphasized voluntary approaches to the adoption and spread of CSR, India has chosen to pursue a mandatory CSR approach. This report discusses India's emerging CSR regime and its potential strengths and weaknesses.

"The Advent of the LLP in India" 
Research Handbook on Partnerships, LLCs and Alternative Forms of Business Organizations (Robert W. Hillman and Mark J. Loewenstein eds.) (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2015, Forthcoming)
UC Davis Legal Studies Research Paper No. 408

AFRA AFSHARIPOUR, University of California, Davis - School of Law
Email: aafsharipour@ucdavis.edu

In 2008, India passed a ground-breaking law to introduce the Limited Liability Partnership form into Indian business law. The Indian LLP Act was the first major introduction of a new business form in India in over 50 years. While the partnership and corporate forms (i.e. companies under the Indian Companies Act) have long flourished in India, both forms have presented challenges for certain Indian businesses. The Indian government's impetus for the LLP Act was to develop a business association form that could better meet the needs of entrepreneurs and professionals with respect to liability exposure, regulatory compliance costs and growth. This chapter begins with a broad overview of the political and legislative process which led to the adoption of the LLP Act. It then addresses the critical aspects of the Indian LLP Act, and analyzes some of the challenges and uncertainties that may derail the success of the LLP form.

"Reed v. Town of Gilbert: Signs of (Dis)Content?" 
NYU Journal of Law & Liberty, Forthcoming
UC Davis Legal Studies Research Paper No. 403

ASHUTOSH AVINASH BHAGWAT, University of California, Davis - School of Law
Email: aabhagwat@ucdavis.edu

This essay provides a preview of the Reed v. Town of Gilbert, Arizona, a case currently (OT 2014) pending in the Supreme Court. The case concerns the regulation of signs by a town government, and requires the Supreme Court to resolve a three-way circuit split on the question of how to determine whether a law is content-based or content-neutral for First Amendment purposes. The basic question raised is whether courts should focus on the face of a statute, or on the legislative motivation behind a statute, in making that determination. I demonstrate that under extant Supreme Court doctrine, the focus should clearly be on the face of the statute, and that under this approach the Town of Gilbert's sign regulation is (contrary to the Ninth Circuit) clearly content-based.

That the Ninth Circuit erred here is, however, not the end of the matter. More interesting is why it erred. I argue that the Ninth Circuit's resistance to finding Gilbert's ordinance content-based was based on subterranean discontent with the most basic principle of modern free speech doctrine - that all content-based regulations are almost always invalid. At heart, what the Gilbert ordinance does is favor signs with political or ideological messages over other signs. Current doctrine says that this is problematic. I question whether that makes any sense. Given the broad consensus that the primary purpose of the First Amendment is to advance democratic self-government, why shouldn't legislators, and courts, favor speech that directly advances those purposes over other speech, especially when allocating a scarce resource such as a public right of way? Given the brevity of this essay, I only raise but do not seek to answer this question, but argue that it is worthy of further attention by the Court (and of course by scholars).

"Brand New World: Distinguishing Oneself in the Global Flow" 
UC Davis Law Review, Vol. 27, No. 2, December 2013
UC Davis Legal Studies Research Paper No. 410

MARIO BIAGIOLI, University of California, Davis - School of Law
Email: mbiagioli@ucdavis.edu
ANUPAM CHANDER, University of California, Davis - School of Law
Email: achander@ucdavis.edu
MADHAVI SUNDER, University of California, Davis - School of Law
Email: msunder@ucdavis.edu

Ancient physicians engaged in property disputes over the seals they impressed on the containers of their medications, making brand marks the oldest branch of intellectual property. The antiquity of brand marks, however, has not helped their proper understanding by the law. While the conceptual and historical foundations of copyrights and patents continue to be part and parcel of contemporary legal debates, the full history and theorizing on business marks is largely external to trademark doctrine. Furthermore, with only a few and by now outdated exceptions, whatever scholarship exists on these topics has been performed mostly not by legal scholars but by archaeologists, art historians, anthropologists, sociologists, and historians of material culture. Such a striking imbalance suggests that the law is more eager to assume and state what trademarks should be rather than understand how they actually work today. Nor does the law often acknowledge the many different ways in which marks have always been deployed to distinguish both goods and their makers. This is not just a scholarly problem: given the extraordinary importance of brands in the global economy, the growing disjuncture between the way brands function in different contexts and cultures and trademark law's simplified conceptualization of that function has become a problem with increasingly substantial policy implications.

"Justifying a Revised Voting Rights Act: The Guarantee Clause and the Problem of Minority Rule" 
Boston University Law Review, Vol. 94, No. 5, 2014
UC Davis Legal Studies Research Paper No. 411

GABRIEL J. CHIN, University of California, Davis - School of Law
Email: gjackchin@gmail.com

In Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court invalidated Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which required certain jurisdictions with histories of discrimination to "preclear" changes to their voting practices under Section 5 before those changes could become effective. This Article proposes that Congress ground its responsive voting rights legislation in the Constitution's Guarantee Clause, in addition to the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. The Court has made clear that the Guarantee Clause is a power granted exclusively to Congress and that questions of its exercise are nonjusticiable. It is also clear from the Federalist Papers and from scholarly writing - as well as from what little the Court has said - that the purpose of the Guarantee Clause is to protect majority rule. That is precisely what was at issue after the Civil War when Congress first used the Guarantee Clause to protect African American votes. As an absolute majority in three states and over forty percent of the population in four others, African Americans possessed political control when allowed to vote; when disenfranchised, they were subjected to minority rule. African Americans are no longer the majority in any state. But in a closely divided political environment, whether African Americans and other minorities can vote freely may be decisive in many elections. For this reason, Congress could legitimately ground a revised Voting Rights Act in the Guarantee Clause, and the Court should treat its validity as a nonjusticiable political question committed by the Constitution to Congress.

"Wills Law on the Ground" 
UCLA Law Review, Vol. 62, 2015 Forthcoming
UC Davis Legal Studies Research Paper No. 404

DAVID HORTON, University of California, Davis - School of Law
Email: dohorton@ucdavis.edu

Traditional wills doctrine was notorious for its formalism. Courts insisted that testators strictly comply with the Wills Act and refused to consider extrinsic evidence to construe instruments. However, the 1990 Uniform Probate Code revisions and the Restatement (Third) of Property: Wills and Donative Transfers replaced these venerable bright-line rules with fact-sensitive standards in an effort to foster individualized justice. Although some judges, scholars, and lawmakers welcomed this seismic shift, others objected that inflexible principles provide clarity and deter litigation. But with little hard evidence about the operation of probate court, the frequency of disputes, and decedents' preferences, these factions have battled to a stalemate. This Article casts fresh light on this debate by reporting the results of a study of every probate matter stemming from deaths during the course of a year in a major California county. This original dataset of 571 estates reveals how wills law plays out on the ground. The Article uses these insights to analyze the issues that divide the formalists and the functionalists, such as the requirement that wills be witnessed, holographic wills, the harmless error rule, ademption by extinction, and anti-lapse.

"Can Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research Escape its Troubled History?" 
44 Hastings Center Report 7 (Nov.-Dec. 2014)
UC Davis Legal Studies Research Paper No. 409

LISA CHIYEMI IKEMOTO, University of California, Davis - School of Law
Email: lcikemoto@law.ucdavis.edu

In 2013 and 2014, three U.S.-based research teams each reported success at creating cell lines after somatic cell nuclear transfer with human eggs. This essay assesses the disclosures about how oocytes were obtained from women for each of the three projects. The three reports described the methods used to obtain eggs with varying degrees of specificity. One description, in particular, provided too little information to assess whether or not the research complied with law or other ethical norms. This essay then considers methodological transparency as an ethical principle. Situating the research within the ethical and moral controversies that surround it and the high-profile fraudulent claims that preceded it, the essay concludes that transparency about methodology, including the means of obtaining human cells and tissues, should be understood as an ethical minimum.

"Evidence of a Third Party's Guilt of the Crime that the Accused is Charged with: The Constitutionalization of the SODDI (Some Other Dude Did It) Defense 2.0" 
UC Davis Legal Studies Research Paper No. 401

EDWARD J. IMWINKELRIED, University of California, Davis - School of Law
Email: EJIMWINKELRIED@ucdavis.edu

Defense counsel have employed a version of the SODDI defense for decades. The late Johnny Cochran successfully employed the defense in the O.J. Simpson prosecution, and the legendary fictional defense attorney Perry Mason used the defense in all his cases.

However, in most jurisdictions there are significant limitations on the availability of the defense. In an 1891 decision, the United States Supreme Court announced that evidence of a third party's misconduct is admissible only if it has a "legitimate tendency" to establish the accused's innocence. Today most jurisdictions follow a version of the "direct link" test. Under this test, standing alone evidence of a third party's motive or opportunity to commit the charged offense is inadmissible unless it is accompanied by substantial evidence tying the third party to the commission of the charged crime. Moreover, the evidence that the accused proffers to support the defense must satisfy both the hearsay and character evidence rules. If the defense offers out-of-court statements describing the third party's conduct, the statements must fall within an exemption from or exception to the hearsay rule. If the defense attempts to introduce evidence of the third party's perpetration of offenses similar to the charged crime, the defense must demonstrate that the evidence is admissible on a noncharacter theory under Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b)(2).

However, a new version of the SODDI defense has emerged - SODDI 2.0. When the defense relies on this theory, the accused makes a more limited contention. The defense does not contend that reasonable doubt exists because there is admissible evidence of the third party's guilt. Rather, the defense argues that there is reasonable doubt because the police neglected to investigate the potential guilt of a third party who was a plausible person of interest in the case. Two 2014 decisions, one from the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and another from an intermediate Utah court, approved this version of the defense. Even more importantly, both courts ruled that the trial judge violated the accused's constitutional right to present a defense by curtailing the accused's efforts to develop the defense at trial.

The advent of this new version of the defense is both significant and controversial. The development is significant because the defense can often invoke this version of the defense when the restrictions on the traditional SODDI defense preclude the accused from relying on the traditional defense. As the two 2014 decisions point out, when the defense invokes the 2.0 version of the defense, the hearsay rule does not bar testimony about reports to the police about the third party's misconduct. Under the 2.0 version of the defense, those reports are admissible as nonhearsay to show the reports' effect on the state of mind of the police officers: putting them on notice of facts that should have motivated them to investigate the third party. Similarly, when the defense relies on the 2.0 version of the defense, the prosecution cannot invoke the character evidence prohibition to bar testimony that the third party has committed offenses similar to the charged crime. The prohibition applies only when the ultimate inference of the proponent's chain of reasoning is that the person engaged in conduct consistent with his or her character trait. In this setting, the prohibition is inapplicable because the ultimate inference is the state of mind of the investigating officers.

Since the restrictions on the new version of the SODDI defense are much laxer than those on the traditional defense, the advent of this defense is also controversial. Are the inferences from the 2.0 version of the defense so speculative that as a matter of law, the defense is incapable of generating reasonable doubt? Moreover, is it wrong-minded to recognize a version of the defense with such minimal requirements when the prevailing view is that traditional version is subject to much more rigorous requirements?

This article addresses those questions and concludes that it is legitimate to recognize the SODDI defense 2.0. In the past few decades, there has been a growing realization of the incidence of wrongful convictions. In the late Johnny Cochran's words, some of those convictions were a product of a "rush to judgment" by the police. The recognition of the SODDI defense 2.0 will provide a significant disincentive to such premature judgments by police investigators.

"Should Arrestee DNA Databases Extend to Misdemeanors?" 
Recent Advances in DNA & Gene Sequences, 2015, Forthcoming
UC Davis Legal Studies Research Paper No. 406

ELIZABETH E. JOH, U.C. Davis School of Law
Email: eejoh@ucdavis.edu

The collection of DNA samples from felony arrestees will likely be adopted by many more states after the Supreme Court's 2013 decision in Maryland v. King. At the time of the decision, 28 states and the federal government already had arrestee DNA collection statutes in places. Nevada became the 29th state to collect DNA from arrestees in May 2013, and several others have bills under consideration. The federal government also encourages those states without arrestee DNA collection laws to enact them with the aid of federal grants. Should states collect DNA from misdemeanor arrestees as well? This article considers the as yet largely unrealized but nevertheless important potential expansion of arrestee DNA databases.

"Racial Profiling in the 'War on Drugs' Meets the Immigration Removal Process: The Case of Moncrieffe v. Holder" 
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform, Forthcoming
UC Davis Legal Studies Research Paper No. 402

KEVIN R. JOHNSON, University of California, Davis - School of Law
Email: krjohnson@ucdavis.edu

This paper is an invited contribution to an immigration symposium in the Michigan Journal of Law Reform.

In 2013, the Supreme Court in Moncrieffe v. Holder rejected a Board of Immigration Appeals order of removal from the United States of a long-term lawful permanent resident based on a single criminal conviction involving possession of a small amount of marijuana. In so doing, the Court answered a rather technical question concerning the definition of an "aggravated felony" under the U.S. immigration laws.

Because the arrest and drug conviction were not challenged in the federal removal proceedings, the Court in Moncrieffe v. Holder did not have before it the full set of facts surrounding the state criminal prosecution of Adrian Moncrieffe. However, examination of the facts surrounding the criminal case offers important lessons about how the criminal justice system works in combination with the modern immigration removal machinery to disparately impact communities of color. By all appearances, the traffic stop that led to Moncrieffe's arrest is a textbook example of racial profiling.

This Article considers the implications of the facts and circumstances surrounding the stop, arrest, and drug crimination of Adrian Moncrieffe for the racially disparate enforcement of the modern U.S. immigration laws. As we shall see, Latina/os, as well as other racial minorities, find themselves in the crosshairs of both the modern criminal justice and immigration removal systems.

Part II of the Article provides details from the police report of the stop and arrest that led to Adrian Moncrieffe's criminal conviction. The initial stop for a minor traffic infraction is highly suggestive of a pretextual traffic stop of two Black men on account of their race. Wholly ignoring the racial tinges to the criminal conviction, the U.S. Supreme Court only considered the conviction's immigration removal consequences - and specifically the Board of Immigration Appeals' interpretation of the federal immigration statute, not the lawfulness of the original traffic stop and subsequent search.

The police report describes what appears to be a routine traffic stop by a police officer who, while apparently trolling the interstate for drug arrests in the guise of "monitoring traffic." The officer stopped a vehicle with two Black men - "two B/M's," as the officer wrote - based on the tinting of the automobile windows. Even if the stop and subsequent search did not run afoul of the Fourth Amendment, Moncrieffe appears to have been the victim of racial profiling. A police officer, aided by a drug sniffing dog, in drug interdiction efforts relied on a minor vehicle infraction as the pretext to stop two Black men traveling on the interstate in a sports utility vehicle with tinted windows.

The Moncrieffe case exemplifies how a racially disparate criminal justice system exacerbates racially disparate removals in a time of record-setting deportations of noncitizens. Although he was fortunate enough to stave off deportation and separation from an entire life built in the United States, many lawful permanent residents are not nearly so lucky.

"Social Innovation" 
Washington University Law Review, Vol. 92, No. 1, 2014
UC Davis Legal Studies Research Paper No. 407

PETER LEE, University of California, Davis - School of Law
Email: ptrlee@ucdavis.edu

This Article provides the first legal examination of the immensely valuable but underappreciated phenomenon of social innovation. Innovations such as cognitive behavioral therapy, microfinance, and strategies to reduce hospital-based infections greatly enhance social welfare yet operate completely outside of the patent system, the primary legal mechanism for promoting innovation. This Article draws on empirical studies to elucidate this significant kind of innovation and explore its divergence from the classic model of technological innovation championed by the patent system. In so doing, it illustrates how patent law exhibits a rather crabbed, particularistic conception of innovation. Among other characteristics, innovation in the patent context is individualistic, arises from a discrete origin and history, and prioritizes novelty. Much social innovation, however, arises from communities rather than individual inventors, evolves from multiple histories, and entails expanding that which already exists from one context to another. These attributes, moreover, apply in large part to technological innovation as well, thus revealing how patent law relies upon and reinforces a rather distorted view of the innovative processes it seeks to promote. Moving from the descriptive to the prescriptive, this Article cautions against extending exclusive rights to social innovations and suggests several nonpatent mechanisms for accelerating this valuable activity. Finally, it examines the theoretical implications of social innovation for patent law, thus helping to contribute to a more holistic framework for innovation law and policy.

"Brief of Interested Law Professors as Amici Curiae Supporting Respondent in Direct Marketing Association v. Brohl" 
Stanford Public Law Working Paper No. 2516159
San Diego Legal Studies Paper No. 14-71
UC Davis Legal Studies Research Paper No. 400
UC Berkeley Public Law Research Paper No. 2516159
UCLA School of Law Research Paper No. 14-19

DARIEN SHANSKE, University of California, Davis - School of Law
Email: dshanske@ucdavis.edu
ALAN B. MORRISON, George Washington University - Law School
Email: abmorrison@law.gwu.edu
JOSEPH BANKMAN, Stanford Law School
Email: JBANKMAN@LELAND.STANFORD.EDU
JORDAN M. BARRY, University of San Diego School of Law
Email: jbarry@sandiego.edu
BARBARA H. FRIED, Stanford Law School
Email: bfried@stanford.edu
DAVID GAMAGE, University of California, Berkeley - Boalt Hall School of Law
Email: david.gamage@gmail.com
ANDREW J. HAILE, Elon University School of Law
Email: ahaile@brookspierce.com
KIRK J. STARK, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) - School of Law
Email: STARK@LAW.UCLA.EDU
JOHN A. SWAIN, University of Arizona - James E. Rogers College of Law
Email: john.swain@law.arizona.edu
DENNIS J. VENTRY, University of California, Davis - School of Law
Email: djventry@ucdavis.edu

The petitioner in this case has framed the question presented as follows: "Whether the Tax Injunction Act bars federal court jurisdiction over a suit brought by non-taxpayers to enjoin the informational notice and reporting requirements of a state law that neither imposes a tax, nor requires the collection of a tax, but serves only as a secondary aspect of state tax administration."

Amici agree with the respondent, the State of Colorado, that the Tax Injunction Act bars federal courts from enjoining the operation of the Colorado Statute at issue in this case because this lawsuit is intended to create the very kind of premature federal court interference with the operation of the Colorado use tax collection system that the TIA was designed to prevent. To assist the Court in understanding the application of the TIA to this case, amici (i) place the reporting requirements mandated by the Colorado Statute in the broader context of tax administration and (ii) explain the potential interaction between a decision on the TIA issue in this case and the underlying dispute concerning the dormant Commerce Clause.

Third-party reporting of tax information is a ubiquitous and longstanding feature of modern tax systems. When tax authorities rely on taxpayers to self-report their taxable activities, compliance rates for the collection of any tax is low. Like all states with a sales tax, Colorado faced - and faces - a voluntary compliance problem with the collection of its use tax. The use tax is a complement to the sales tax; in-state vendors collect and remit the sales tax, while in-state consumers are responsible for remitting the use tax on purchases made from out-of-state vendors that do not collect the sales tax. To this compliance challenge, Colorado turned to a third-party reporting solution. In broad strokes, the Colorado Statute imposes a modest requirement on one party to a taxable transaction - specifically on relatively large retailers who do not collect the use tax - to report information on their Colorado sales both to the consumer/taxpayer and to the taxing authorities.

Amici law professors contend that the centrality of third-party reporting to tax administration in general, and its aptness for this problem in particular, indicate that enjoining the operation of the Colorado Statute constitutes "restrain[ing] the assessment, levy or collection" of Colorado's use tax.

Amici also observe, however, that even a narrow ruling on the scope of the TIA in the Supreme Court could have an unexpected - and we would argue undesirable - impact on the federalism concerns that we think should decide this case. This is because any interpretation of the Colorado Statute for purposes of the TIA made by the Court might be erroneously construed as carrying over to interpreting the Statute for purposes of the dormant Commerce Clause.

We think it likely and reasonable for the courts below to look to the Supreme Court's decision on the TIA for guidance as to what test to apply under the dormant Commerce Clause. However, amici fear that a decision that held that Colorado's reporting requirement is integral to Colorado's "tax collection" for purposes of the TIA will exert a gravitational pull on the lower courts, encouraging them to apply the physical presence test from Quill Corp. v. North Dakota, 504 U.S. 298 (1992) to the Colorado Statute. The Quill test is an especially strict test under the dormant Commerce Clause, and one arguably meant only for "taxes." Thus, a victory for sensible state tax administration and federalism in this Court could be transmuted into a defeat for those principles below. Amici believe that NFIB v. Sebelius, 132 S. Ct. 2566 (2012), teaches that an answer on the TIA does not compel an answer concerning the dormant Commerce Clause. We call this issue to the Court's attention so that the Court is aware of how a decision on the TIA issue might be used - or misused - when the case reaches the merits, either in the state or federal court system.

"Non-Citizen Nationals: Neither Aliens Nor Citizens" 
UC Davis Legal Studies Research Paper No. 405

ROSE CUISON VILLAZOR, University of California, Davis
Email: rcvillazor@ucdavis.edu

The modern conception of the law of birthright citizenship operates along the citizen/noncitizen binary. Those born in the United States generally acquire automatic U.S. citizenship at birth. Those who do not are regarded as non-citizens. Unbeknownst to many, there is another form of birthright membership category: the non-citizen national. Judicially constructed in the 1900s and codified by Congress in 1940, non-citizen national was the status given to people who were born in U.S. territories acquired at the end of the Spanish-American War in 1898. Today, it is the status of people who are born in American Samoa, a current U.S. territory.

This Article explores the legal construction of non-citizen national status and its implications for our understanding of citizenship. On a narrow level, the Article recovers a forgotten part of U.S. racial history, revealing an interstitial form of birthright citizenship that emerged out of imperialism and racial restrictions to citizenship. On a broader scale, this Article calls into question the plenary authority of Congress over the territories and power to determine their people's membership status. Specifically, this Article contends that such plenary power over the citizenship status of those born in a U.S. possession conflicts with the common law principle of jus soli and the Fourteenth Amendment's Citizenship Clause. Accordingly, this Article offers a limiting principle to congressional power over birthright citizenship.

Co-authored with Professor Alan Brownstein. Cross-posted from Justia's Verdict.

As 2014 draws to a close, we thought it appropriate to reflect on some of the most significant constitutional developments of the past year. Recognizing that any short-list requires difficult choices, we present our catalog of five noteworthy constitutional events or trends (in no specific order) below. Most interestingly, none of the five involves a particular 2014 ruling from the Supreme Court; instead, the list shows that other institutional actors (sometimes feeding off what the Court has done in the past and often acting completely independently from the Court) are crucial in giving meaning to the Constitution.

#1. President Obama's Announcement of Immigration Enforcement (or non-Enforcement) Priorities

One of the biggest constitutional changes over the last century has surely been the rise in power and prominence of the presidency. The President and his executive branch have grown in influence and stature for a number of reasons. One is the modern need (in a world of increasing economic complexity and international linkages) for the federal government to make decisions quickly, decisively, and based on specialized expertise (as in the Great Depression) and sometimes making use of information that cannot be made fully public (as in the War on Terror). Another is the fact that, although the electoral college is still part of our constitutional fabric, we have moved in the direction of popular election of the President, such that he garners far more votes nationwide than does any other elected official, and thus has a special claim to national electoral legitimacy-unlike that of even the Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority leader, the two elected leaders of Congress.

Many people embrace broadened Presidential authority, and many lament it. Some folks seem to have evolved in this regard. An example of such evolution might be Chief Justice John Roberts, who seemed to advocate for broad executive powers as a young government lawyer but who has recently bemoaned the fact that "the Framers could hardly have envisioned today's vast and varied federal bureaucracy and the authority administrative agencies now hold over our economic, social and political activities." But love it or hate it, broad executive discretion about whether and how to enforce laws is part of the federal constitutional landscape. And President Obama's recent announcement removing the threat of deportation for four million or so persons who entered or stayed in the United States in violation of immigration laws is a good example. Drawing on his key role in foreign affairs and law enforcement, and reminding the American people that he was reelected in part to manage the immigration problem (thus playing on both the reasons for presidential ascension mentioned above), Mr. Obama laid out his plans for how best to implement immigration laws in the near term. His announcement was a reminder of how, in the normal run of things, the President makes a lot of important decisions over which the Supreme Court may never have a say. (There have been lawsuits filed that test the President's actions here, and lower court judges are likely to express a range of opinions on the matter, but it remains unclear how the lower federal courts will ultimately adjudicate this issue and whether the Supreme Court will wade into this thicket.)

#2. The Events in Ferguson and NYC Regarding Police Actions Toward African American Men

A second set of events, involving local government rather than the federal government, raises important normative questions about race relations in the United States and public policy questions about the best way both to avoid these tragedies and to deal with them when they occur. We speak here, of course, of recent events in Ferguson, Missouri, and in New York City involving the killing of unarmed African Americans by police officers and the failure of grand juries to indict the officers involved. These police actions and grand jury decisions, like President Obama's immigration announcement, remind us of how powerful a device executive discretion is within our constitutional system.

But these episodes also remind us of another important constitutional theme. The 14^th Amendment proclaims that "No State shall . . . deny to any person the equal protection of the laws." Surely, this provision requires the equal treatment of black and white Americans in the criminal justice system. If the equal protection of the laws means anything, it must mean that the use of force by police officers against persons alleged to violate the law cannot vary depending on the race of the perpetrator. Similarly, equal protection must require that prosecutors and grand juries ignore the race of both the police officer and the victim of the officer's conduct in determining whether the officer's use of force has violated the law.

Yet the Ferguson and New York City events reveal how little bite this constitutional guarantee has when the law gives government actors substantial, unguided discretion in performing their duties. Police officers have considerable discretion in determining whether and how much force should be used in the performance of their duties. Prosecutors have enormous discretion in deciding whether or not to bring charges to a grand jury and in determining how they will conduct the grand jury proceeding. Grand juries also have tremendous discretion. They can decide to indict a "ham sandwich," as the saying goes, or they can decide not to indict a police officer who has choked someone to death.

Because, in circumstances involving official discretion, it is often very difficult to determine the extent to which race influenced state action, the constitutional guarantee of equal protection has little ability to control such decision making. Perhaps the Constitution's primary and most effective role in these events is protecting the rights of individuals and groups to protest what they see as unsanctioned violations of the equal protection of the laws.

#3. Same-Sex Marriage in the Lower Courts

Equality was a theme not just in the Ferguson and New York controversies, but also in the treatment of same-sex marriage by the lower courts this year. Last year, in United States v. Windsor, the Supreme Court teed up but did not resolve the question of whether states were prohibited by the Fourteenth Amendment from treating same-sex marriages differently from opposite-sex marriages. And the lower federal courts have taken up that question in earnest ever since. Until the Sixth Circuit's decision to uphold same-sex marriage bans in four states this fall broke the momentum, same-sex marriage advocates had achieved an overwhelming number of lower court victories; four U.S. Courts of Appeals and over twenty federal district courts had struck down state laws discriminating against same-sex marriage. Indeed, until the Sixth Circuit's ruling by a divided three-judge panel in November, many commentators had concluded that the Supreme Court would not even take a marriage equality case anytime soon because the issue had essentially been resolved by the lower courts. Many of the lower court rulings took their cue from Windsor, of course, and now that the Sixth Circuit has created a split the Supreme Court will likely weigh in relatively soon-so no one is arguing the Supreme Court is irrelevant in this debate-but lower courts have definitely framed the issue and developed competing arguments in a way that makes it much harder for the Supreme Court to reject the right of same-sex couples to marry. For the marital equality movement, 2014 was the year of the lower courts.

# 4. Abortion Rights

The past year saw states continuing the recent trend of adopting and defending significant regulations of abortion services and access. The regulations vary in their content. Several states have enacted statutes (some of which are subject to lower court injunctions) that ban an abortion 20 weeks after fertilization occurs or at an even earlier time during the gestation period. Other regulations restrict the provision of medication used to induce an abortion. Other laws, responding to the new health care framework created by the Affordable Care Act, prohibit insurance offered through the Act's exchanges from covering abortions. Yet other laws regulate clinics that provide abortion services by requiring them to comply with the building, equipment, and staffing standards applicable to an ambulatory surgical center or a hospital. They also require physicians performing abortions to have admitting privileges at a local hospital. The lower courts are continually reviewing the constitutionality of many of these regulations, but it is (aggressive) state legislatures that are driving this issue right now.

Certainly, the need for greater clarity in this area of the law is obvious. Under the doctrine initially evolving from Roe v. Wade, the Court applied strict scrutiny review to pre-viability abortion regulations that ostensibly furthered some important state interest, such as promoting the health of the mother, but also increased the cost of abortions or otherwise limited access to providers. Under this rigorous standard of review, a state had to demonstrate that its regulations furthered a compelling state interest and that the state adopted the least restrictive means to further its objectives. This two- pronged approach required courts to balance the effectiveness of a state's regulations against the burden the law imposed on the right to have an abortion.

In Planned Parenthood v. Casey, however, the Court collapsed the two-pronged approach used in prior cases and adopted a unitary standard. All pre-viability abortion regulations are now constitutionally permissible as long as they do not have "the purpose or effect of imposing an undue burden on women seeking abortion." This standard focuses on the magnitude of the burden, the percentage of women seeking abortions who will experience that burden, and whether the regulation serves some purpose other than the goal of inhibiting access to abortion services. The Court's application of this standard to various regulations in the Casey case itself has mystified both constitutional law scholars and lower courts. The number and highly restrictive nature of new abortion regulations may require Supreme Court intervention and clarification of this standard in the near future.

#5. The 2014 Congressional Election

Although we have highlighted the way institutions other than the Supreme Court (e.g., the President, local governments, lower courts, state legislatures) have helped shape the meaning of the Constitution in 2014, we would never deny the centrality of the Court itself in constitutional interpretation. And yet we must remember that the Court is not a static institution, but rather one whose membership and decisions change over time. So our final candidate for important constitutional developments of the year is the congressional election in November that saw the Republicans gain solid control of the U.S. Senate. Because replacing departing Justices with new members is the single most important way the Constitution has been kept responsive to the values of the people, decisions by the American electorate about who shall be the President (and nominate new members to the Court) and who shall control the Senate (and decide whether to confirm presidential nominations) are quintessentially important constitutional events. Regardless of whether a Democrat or Republican wins the White House in 2016, Republican control of the Senate for the foreseeable future is likely to influence the kind of persons appointed to the (closely divided) Court in the coming years, which in turn is likely to affect how the Court rules in many controversial constitutional areas. It is fitting, even as it is sometimes overlooked, that We the People remain the most important institutional actors in giving content to our basic government charter.

Cross-posted from Justia's Verdict.

The past year or so has been a rough period for people who support the design of the direct democracy process in California. Last summer, as I explained at the time, the U.S. Supreme Court wrote its Hollingsworth v. Perry ruling (involving Proposition 8, a California initiative banning same-sex marriage) using overly broad reasoning that makes it hard, if not impossible, for official proponents of an initiative to ever defend the measure in federal court when elected representatives decline to defend.

More recently, the California legislature, Governor and state judiciary have themselves all taken actions that violate the state's direct democracy scheme. The legislature passed, and the Governor earlier this month signed, a repeal of parts of an initiative concerning immigration policy, despite the fact that initiatives are not supposed to be subject to ordinary legislative amendment or repeal. To be sure, the initiative at issue in this instance-Proposition 187-deserved to be repealed (insofar as it was a misguided measure from the start). But, as I argued in an earlier column, the legislature and Governor lacked power to repeal it, and yet they did so anyway, without any convincing legal basis.

As for the California judiciary, last month the California Supreme Court, for reasons that I am not fully persuaded by, blocked (at least temporarily) voters from being able to weigh in on Proposition 49, a measure that would have solicited voter views on the desirability of amending the U.S. Constitution to undo the highly publicized Citizens United ruling concerning campaign finance.

In the space below, I describe yet another blow to the California statutes and constitutional provisions that set up the Golden State's direct democracy system. This time, the injury was inflicted by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit; in June, in Chula Vista Citizens for Jobs and Fair Competition v. Norris, that court invalidated state statutory provisions that require the identities of the official proponents of an initiative be disclosed to would-be signatories of the initiative petition (whose signatures are needed to qualify the measure for the ballot) at the time that signatures are sought.

In striking down the so-called petition-proponent disclosure requirement, the three-judge Ninth Circuit panel found that requiring disclosure amounted to a direct regulation of the content of political speech, and impermissibly burdened, in violation of the First Amendment, the free speech choices of initiative proponents to engage in political expression anonymously. The State of California has requested the Ninth Circuit to rehear the case en banc, but unless something changes, the provisions in California law containing the petition-proponent disclosure requirement are unenforceable.

The Straightforward Case for the Permissibility of Disclosure Requirements

On the face of things, it is hard to understand why California cannot require disclosure of the identity of initiative proponents at the time signatures are sought. After all, the identity of proponents could be very relevant, non-misleading information that many would-be signatories might want to have in deciding whether a measure should be placed on the ballot. And, of course, California need not have an initiative at all; the greater power not to have initiative signature gatherers altogether would seem to subsume the lesser power of allowing them but regulating their activities. Of course, if state law required signature gatherers to disclose certain information in such a way as to create a partisan skew, or to disclose information that was false or misleading, or if the failure to comply with disclosure requirements subjected initiative proponents or signature gatherers to punishment, the First Amendment might very well be violated. But in the case of California's law, the petition-proponent disclosure requirement is not viewpoint based or skewed, and the only consequence of noncompliance with the requirement seems to be that the signatures do not count towards the requisite number needed to place a measure on the ballot; there doesn't seem to be a suggestion that the signature gatherers or initiative proponents would be punished in any other way for their failure to disclose.

Why, then, were these provisions struck down? The fault really lies not mainly with the Ninth Circuit, but rather with the U.S. Supreme Court, which in a few cases has mistakenly said that regulating signature gathering is regulating "petitioning," an activity singled out for protection by the First Amendment, rather than regulating access to the official election ballot, which is subject to much less judicial skepticism. Because of this category recognition mistake-the Supreme Court effectively has, as Justice Scalia put it in the context of a different case, been "faked out" by a label-the Court has subjected signature-gathering rules to "exacting" scrutiny under the First Amendment, rather than a much more generous "reasonableness" standard that normally applies to a state's decisions about how to regulate access to the official ballot. Because of these Supreme Court decisions (described in more depth in the following paragraphs), the three-judge panel really had little recourse but to apply rigorous scrutiny to the state laws. And under that searching review, the disclosure requirements did not survive.

The Misguided Supreme Court Rulings that Constrained the Ninth Circuit

One of the wrongheaded Supreme Court decisions that put the Ninth Circuit in something of a bind here is Buckley v. American Constitutional Law Foundation (ACLF), a 1999 ruling addressing a challenge to Colorado's initiative procedures. Colorado law provided that when a certain number of voters sign up in support of a given state initiative, the measure is placed on the statewide ballot. In ACLF, the Court reviewed and invalidated three particular Colorado regulations governing this process. First, Colorado required that each signature gatherer wear a badge bearing her name and indicating whether or not she was paid to collect the signatures. Second, each gatherer had to be a registered Colorado voter. Third, initiative backers had to disclose monthly exactly how much each gatherer was getting paid.

The Supreme Court struck down all of these state law requirements as violating the right to "petition" government protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments, presumably because initiative provisions often use the term "petition" in describing the beginning of the initiative process. The Court held that circulating an "initiative petition" is akin to distributing a handbill, and that Colorado's identity badge requirement was thus squarely foreclosed by a 1995 ruling in which the Court struck down an Ohio law banning the anonymous distribution of campaign handbills. Colorado's other rules met a similar fate; the Court found that requiring signature gatherers to be registered voters impermissibly limited the number of voices in the debate, and the Court held that the financial disclosure requirements impermissibly forced paid gatherers and their backers to surrender the anonymity enjoyed by their volunteer counterparts.'

In reaching these rulings, the Justices relied on Meyer v. Grant, another troubling case (from 1988) in which the Court invalidated another Colorado initiative provision which attempted to prohibit the payment of money to initiative signature gatherers altogether. As in ACLF, the Court in Meyer characterized the question as "involv[ing] a limitation on political expression subject to exacting scrutiny." From there, the Court quickly concluded that "[t]he refusal to permit appellees to pay petition circulators restricts political expression . . . [and that] [t]he First Amendment protects appellees' right not only to advocate their cause but also to select what they believe to be the most effective means for so doing.''

The Court's reasoning in these cases would be plausible if plaintiffs were in fact "petitioning" within the meaning of the First Amendment. But that label is inapt. The Colorado initiative process (like California's) is not about "petitioning the Government for a redress of grievances." It is about circumventing government by engaging in lawmaking itself. Thus, state law did not regulate "petitions" or "speech" at all. Instead, it merely provided that unless signatures were collected in a certain way, they would not count for purposes of qualifying an initiative for the statewide ballot.

In effect, citizens retained the right to collect signatures and present them to the government as a demonstration of the signers' views essentially as a handbill. None of the challenged provisions of Colorado (or California) law said otherwise. This right, however, does not include the right to have signatures count for purposes of triggering an election, when the signatures do not comply with the ballot access rules a state has put in place. No court would deny that I have the right to voice my preference for Jennifer Granholm for President, but I do not have a right to have my vote for Granholm count when that vote is made six months before the presidential election and for a person ineligible to hold the office because she is not a natural-born citizen. Indeed, the Supreme Court has repeatedly made clear that content neutral, reasonable ballot access requirements designed to limit the number of candidates or the number or issues placed on a ballot are not subject to strict judicial scrutiny.

If the Court in ACLF (and Meyer) had seen the Colorado laws for what they were (ballot access rules) and not for what they were not (impediments to pure speech) then the Court likely would have come out the other way. It would have evaluated Colorado law, not with reference to the First Amendment's protection of core political speech, but with reference to the Tenth Amendment's protections, buttressed by those provided in the so-called Guarantee Clause, of the core right of the people of each state to structure their lawmaking processes as they desire, so long as they do not discriminate on the basis of viewpoint, race, or some other illicit criterion.

The best outcome of the Chula Vista case from the Ninth Circuit would be for the Supreme Court to grant review (assuming that certiorari is, as it should be, sought) and to cut back or overrule altogether the erroneous decisions and reasoning of Meyer and ACLF. That is the only way to avoid future injuries to state direct democracy systems by lower courts.

Cross-posted from Justia's Verdict.

A few months ago, I wrote about an effort by the California legislature to undo an unwise (but duly enacted) voter initiative involving immigration policy. I argued that although removing the initiative's provisions from the books would certainly be a good thing, the legislature lacked the power to effect repeal on its own; respect for the initiative process requires that the people themselves formally weigh in on any proposed repeal. In the space below, I discuss another effort, albeit this time via the judiciary rather than the legislature, to prevent the people from formally weighing in on another hot-button issue: campaign finance reform.

Background and Content of SB 1272 (Which Attempted to Place Proposition 49 on the Ballot)

In July, both houses of the California legislature enacted a bill (SB 1272) that proposed to place an "advisory" question before the California voters in this November's election. SB 1272 submits the following question (designated by the California Secretary of State as Proposition 49) to the California electorate for its input:

Shall the Congress of the United States propose, and the California Legislature ratify, an amendment or amendments to the United States Constitution to overturn Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010) 558 U.S. 310, and other applicable judicial precedents, to allow the full regulation or limitation of campaign contributions and spending, to ensure that all citizens, regardless of wealth, may express their views to one another, and to make clear that the rights protected by the United States Constitution are rights of natural persons only?

The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and its president Jon Coupal (crusaders for lower taxes in California who have made extensive use of the initiative process for decades) filed a petition in state court seeking to block Proposition 49 from appearing on the November ballot. (The Secretary of State has been in the process over the last few weeks of finalizing the ballots that are being printed so as to be usable in November.) The petitioners argue that the legislature exceeded its powers in trying to place Proposition 49 on the ballot, since, they say, the measure "enacts no law" or "statute," but instead is purely advisory. In a surprise to some political observers, on August 11 the California Supreme Court, by a 5-1 vote (the court is temporarily down one member since Justice Kennard's retirement last spring), decided to block the measure from the ballot, at least for now. (Chief Justice Cantil-Sakauye was the lone dissenter and, as I explain below, she may well have had the right instinct.) The court asked for further briefing over the next month on the validity of advisory measures like Proposition 49, but decided that if Proposition 49 turns out to be permissible, it can be placed on a ballot after November. By contrast, if the measure turns out, on more reflection, to be impermissible, any damage it might create by virtue of its appearance on the November ballot would be hard to remedy.

Although the court did not conclusively decide the validity of Proposition 49, Justice Goodwin Liu wrote an opinion explaining why he believed there was a high likelihood that, after full briefing, he would find the measure to be improper. Putting aside whether trying to amend the federal Constitution to undo Citizens United is a good idea (and I have my doubts), the legality of Proposition 49 raises important and interesting questions under California law. And even though his opinion wasn't joined by other Justices and was preliminary in the sense that he is completely free to rethink things with the benefit of additional briefing and more time, Justice Liu's statement warrants careful attention because he is an intellectual leader on the court, and because he succinctly laid out the case against Proposition 49 that the measure's supporters need to engage.

Justice Liu's Reasoning in Doubting Proposition 49's Validity

Before I turn explicitly to Justice Liu's reasoning, I should say it's not clear to me that the challengers are correct in saying that SB 1272 does not enact a "law" or "statute" (to the extent that anything turns on this). SB 1272 directs that public monies be spent to print text on paper ballots, and that public monies be spent to count the votes in answering the question posed on the ballot. If the legislature passed a bill directing that money be spent on a university poll/study of citizen attitudes on global warming or drug legalization, that bill would be a law, even though the university-led poll/study might not have any self-executing legal effect. Why not the same for a poll/study conducted by the legislature itself?

The legislature argued before the California Supreme Court that SB 1272 is valid whether or not it "enacts a law," because the legislature has the power to do things "incidental and ancillary to the ultimate performance of lawmaking functions by the legislature itself." Seems like a pretty good argument. Justice Liu deflected this suggestion, though, because Proposition SB 1272 does not relate to any potential piece of legislation, but rather to the proposal and ratification of a potential federal constitutional amendment. Justice Liu pointed out (quoting a U.S. Supreme Court opinion) that "[r]atification by a State of a constitutional amendment is not an act of legislation within the proper sense of the word."

I am far from sure that it makes sense to distinguish between legislation and other important actions the legislature takes with regard to the outside world matter here. In the federal context (where the legislature's powers are even more rigorously confined), Congress is empowered to take actions that are "necessary and proper" to carrying into execution all the powers vested in the federal government, not just the legislative powers Congress enjoys.

To see why putting a great deal of weight on the legislation/ratification distinction is perilous, imagine that Proposition 49 were tweaked to include a clause asking the voters whether the California legislature should adopt laws that "test the reaches" or "limit the scope" of Citizens United. It's hard to imagine that this difference in wording should change whether the measure should be allowed on the ballot. And, to his credit, Justice Liu, soon after he draws the distinction between amendment ratification and legislation, makes clear that his real beef with Proposition 49 is that it is purely advisory, and does no more than seek voter opinions in a formal way. In other words, his tentative position seems to be that whether or not SB 1272 is or relates to a "law" or "statute," putting advisory measures before the voters runs afoul of the California Constitution.

But what, precisely, is wrong with the legislature formally asking for the views of the electorate? Justice Liu derives his answer from the concept of accountability. If, he says, "the legislature were to propose a statute for the voters to approve," or ask the voters whether the legislature should adopt a statute containing specific text, and then that statute became law, the lines of accountability would be obscured. If the statute turned out to be a disaster, the legislature might evade responsibility by saying something like (my words, not Justice Liu's): "But you voters approved (or told us to do) this, so you can't now blame us!" By contrast, when the legislature passes a law by itself, citizens can hold it accountable, and when the citizens themselves propose and enact an initiative, they have only themselves-and not the legislature-to blame. Keeping these lines of accountability clear and clean is an important principle that Justice Liu finds implicit in the structure of the California Constitution.

Three Possible Counterarguments to Justice Liu's Reading

On its face, this is a very plausible, creative, and elegant argument, but to my mind it suffers from some significant weaknesses-weaknesses that I hope will be explored in the full briefing for which the court asked. First, as Justice Liu acknowledges, the California Constitution explicitly allows the legislature to propose, for voter approval, state constitutional amendments and also certain statutes authorizing the issuance of bond debt. If these super-important matters can admit of a "mix and match" approach (Justice Liu's term) that makes use of both legislative vetting and popular approval, why wouldn't the same be true for other, less important, matters? Indeed, to the extent that accountability is an important value, wouldn't we want to promote the greatest degree of easy accountability when the stakes are the highest? (More generally, given the cluttered and ultra-detailed nature of the California Constitution, it's hard to draw any bright line that would explain why proposals for altering the state constitution raise fundamentally different concerns than do measures relating to possible statutes.) All of this suggests that easy accountability may not be the overriding constitutional value at work here; the U.S. Constitution and most state constitutions make consistent and convoluted use of shared governmental power that obscures accountability for the sake of other important values, such as deliberation and caution. And-like bicameralism, the veto, and any number of other accountability-blurring "checks and balances"-advisory measures may also promote such deliberation and caution.

Moreover, Justice Liu acknowledges that it would be perfectly appropriate for the legislature to commission a Gallup poll of state voters to assist it in its legislative agenda. Wouldn't the results of such a highly publicized poll also blur accountability? And to the extent that the legislature can more readily avoid responsibility by pointing to a public vote rather than a privately conducted poll, isn't that only because a public vote is a more reliable measure of true attitudes of the body politic? And wouldn't we want the legislature to have the most reliable data available to it?

Second, and quite important, notice that Justice Liu's straightforward accountability argument would seem to forbid not only the legislature's placement of an advisory measure on the ballot, but also the people's direct attempt to put an advisory measure on the ballot to give the legislature formal input. Such a result (which might be supported by, but is not dictated by, past California cases) would create a deep structural dilemma because citizens are not always skilled at drafting laws that will operate in the real world, even if they have a good sense of which values they'd like to promote. Indeed, one of the big drawbacks with the initiative device modernly is that areas like affirmative action, immigration, campaign finance, taxation, etc., are so complicated that initiatives written by non-experts often lock in sub-optimal specifics in attempted furtherance of (at least arguably) laudable and broadly supported sets of principles. In a sensible system that includes direct democracy, there ought to be a way for the voters to say, in a focused and formal way: "We'd like a law that does the following things, but we'd be better off leaving it to legislative experts to draft the details, because we might not do a good job on the fine points, and we thus might generate undesirable consequences that a legislature but not ordinary citizens would be able to foresee." Having citizen groups feel obligated to draft and implement the particulars of complex policy measures is one of the problems with direct democracy we should want to reduce, not one of its salutary features we should want to enhance.

Third, and in some respects most important, I note that there is a provision, Article 1, § 3(a), in the California Constitution that explicitly provides that "the people have the right to instruct their representatives." "Instruction" is a constitutional term of art that goes back to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; it is a formal device by which voters collectively direct their state (but not federal) legislators to undertake specific legislative actions, and legislators are bound to comply. As constitutional historians Dan Farber and Suzanna Sherry have observed: "[At the founding in 1787] [v]oters in most states . . . had the right to instruct their representatives and to direct votes on individual issues. [Four] state constitutions [explicitly] guaranteed such a right. In the others, the right was assumed." From what I can tell, the formal right of instruction has been included in every version of California's Constitution going back to 1849, shortly before California became a state.

Over the past two hundred years, the device of formal voter instruction has been invoked with decreasing frequency across the nation, and the idea that state legislators would be legally bound to follow any instruction has also been diluted. Indeed, the California Supreme Court has not meaningfully discussed Article 1, § 3(a)'s instruction provision in recent decades, if ever, even in instances in which the voters seem to have attempted instruction. (American Federation of Labor v. Eu, decided in 1984, is one such case where the court inexplicably failed to discuss the provision.) The Article 1, § 3(a) issue may not have been briefed to the court in the Proposition 49 papers, which would certainly account for and justify the failure of Justice Liu's opinion to mention it.

But the fact that the instruction device has fallen out of favor or lost its power to legally bind legislators does not mean that the device and its textual and historical pedigrees should be ignored. Before the California Supreme Court issues an opinion (after full briefing and careful deliberation in the Proposition 49 matter) holding that any statewide information-gathering "advisory" measure, whether the measure comes from the people directly or from the legislature, is per se inappropriate for the ballot, the court should explain why it is reading the instruction provision out of the state constitution (or at least reading it not to apply in these circumstances).

Finally, I do acknowledge that there might be arguments that distinguish between advisory measures originating from the people and advisory measures the legislature seeks to place onto a ballot. Such arguments could be used to strike down Proposition 49 without gutting the people's right to instruct. At present I am not convinced that any such arguments do forcefully undermine SB 1272 and Proposition 49, but I look forward to seeing what the briefing and the court's ultimate opinions say.

Cross-posted from Justia's Verdict.

In my last column, I began analyzing SB 396, a laudable but legally questionable effort by the California legislature to repeal, by ordinary legislation, provisions of Proposition 187, a 1994 voter-enacted measure that imposed harsh restrictions on unlawful immigrants in the State, restrictions that have since been blocked indefinitely by a federal district court judge. As I explained, the main problem with the repeal effort is Article II, section 10(c) of California Constitution. This provision, designed to maintain the integrity of the initiative device, prevents the legislature from repealing any voter-enacted measure unless the repeal measure is itself "approved by the electors" (i.e., the voters).

The Legal Defense of SB 396 and How That Defense Overreads the Import of a Judicial Block on Enforcement

A few days after my column was posted, the State Assembly Committee on the Judiciary held a hearing on the proposed legislation. This hearing and the report it generated give a glimpse of the opinion offered by the State Legislative Counsel-an opinion legislators appear to be relying on-setting forth the view that SB 396 is lawful and that Proposition 187 can be repealed by simple legislation. Here is the passage of the Committee Report that lays out the Legislative Counsel's legal defense of the bill:

Because [Proposition 187 was] enacted by initiative, the question arises whether the Legislature may act to strike these provisions from the codes. The California Constitution provides that the Legislature may amend or repeal a statutory initiative 'by another statute that becomes effective only when approved by the electors. . . .' (Cal. Const., art II, § 10, subd.(c).) While it may be argued that this bill proposes an improper 'repeal,' the better view would appear to be reflected in an opinion by Legislative Counsel concluding that the Legislature is within its powers to delete statutes that have been abrogated by the courts. As Counsel notes, the evident intent of the subdivision (c) is to 'protect the people's initiative powers by precluding the Legislature from undoing what the people have done, without the electorate's consent.' . . . Accordingly a subsequent statute will 'amend' a statutory initiative within the meaning of subdivision (c) only if it changes the scope or effect of that initiative by adding or taking away from it. . . . Because the provisions that would be deleted by SB 396 have previously been held to be unenforceable, it seems reasonable to conclude that this bill would not make a substantive change in the law as prohibited by subdivision (c), and therefore would not unconstitutionally change the scope or effect of Proposition 187.

In other words, a legislative measure that does not "change the scope or effect" of a previously enacted initiative cannot be said to amend or repeal the initiative, and does not require voter approval. While creative, this argument is not persuasive. Even assuming that the "scope or effect" standard is the right one to apply, SB 396 fails the test. For starters, as I pointed out at length in my earlier column, a law that is blocked by a court but that remains on the code books has significant potential effect down the road, insofar as circumstances could change to remove the judicial block. Courts can revisit their prior rulings, higher courts can change the legal landscape against which lower courts make decisions (as the Supreme Court in fact did in the immigration regulation setting in 2012 in Arizona v. United States), parties can seek to reopen cases, etc. All of these possibilities exist in the context of Proposition 187. Indeed, because the district judge who struck down parts of Proposition 187 did so in part because of congressional laws on the books, there is yet another possible change that could trigger revisiting the judicial block on enforcement-subsequent congressional action. For all these reasons, we cannot say that Proposition 187's operative provisions that remain on the books lack effect; at most, we can say that the present effects are blunted, and that the future effects are hard to gauge but potentially significant.

How the Defense of SB 396 (Selectively) Ignores the Expressive Effects of a Law

But there is an even more fundamental flaw in the Legislative Counsel's position; the Legislative Counsel seems not to recognize that a law whose operative provisions are being blocked continues to have an expressive effect, insofar as a state's laws, as written, send a message to the world about the state's values. Indeed, it is that expressive effect-of having the mean-spirited language of Proposition 187 still on the books-to which SB 396 is itself a response; repealing the text is a good idea primarily because leaving the text intact continues to send a message. But the people who voted for Proposition 187 may have wanted to accomplish the harsh message that Proposition 187 conveys, irrespective of whether the operative provisions of the measure could be enforced.

Even if 187's message is odious, there is nothing unconstitutional about a state having that message codified in its books, which is why the District Court Judge did not order that Proposition 187 be stricken from the code books, only that its provisions not be enforced. (Some kinds of messages, regarding race or religion, may themselves be unconstitutional, but messages about immigration benefits do not violate the federal Constitution in the same way.) Voters of a state have authority to convey even unkind and unwise messages in the initiatives they enact, and the California Constitution does not seem to give the legislature the power to override those messages. Indeed, the legislature cannot have it both ways, saying that the message sent by Proposition 187's continued presence on the books creates problems, but then denying that the message has any "effect."

Perhaps an example from a different constitutional area will help drive the point home. Imagine the California voters were to pass an initiative that says: "Catholic doctrine is religious truth, and that all other religions are false." The measure, by its terms, does not go on to tell anybody to do or refrain from doing anything-it is a purely expressive initiative. Putting aside whether such a measure violates the Establishment Clause of the Constitution and what a court might do about that, no one could plausibly argue that that the legislature could repeal and remove this measure from the code books without popular approval the day after it was enacted on the ground that the initiative, and thus its legislative repeal, is purely expressive and has no scope or effect in the real world.

Changes in Legislative Text, Even Those That Don't Seem to Change the Real World, Must Go Through a Prescribed Process

The codified text of a statute (or state constitution) matters, and legislatures are given authority to amend that text, but only if they go through the required legislative procedures. As I argued in my last column, the requirement of popular approval may be analogized to the requirement of bicameralism; just as one house of the state legislature may not repeal text-whether or not the repeal changes the present-day operative effect of that text-without the other house, neither may the two houses accomplish repeal of initiatives or state constitutional provisions without involving the people.

We can see this even more clearly using yet another hypothetical, this one an attempt by the California Legislature to change the language of the state constitution rather than a statute adopted by the voters. As with initiative statutes, the California lawmakers can, under the terms of the California Constitution, propose changes in constitutional text, but such changes require voter approval to go into effect. Suppose the California Supreme Court (the ultimate interpreter of State law) were to rule that search and seizure protections under the California Constitution do not extend to automobiles. The legislature could not, without getting the required popular consent for all constitutional amendments, tweak the text of the California Constitution to add words making explicit that car searches aren't covered, simply because (under the prevailing judicial decisions at the time) this amendment wouldn't change the real-world "scope or effect" of the provision in question.

The Effort to Repeal Proposition 187 Should Proceed, but Should Include Popular Approval

None of this is to say the legislature should abandon the efforts to repeal Proposition 187. Instead, it is to say simply that the legislature should act to repeal the Proposition, but that the repeal should take effect only when the voters approve it. And having the voters remove the hateful Proposition 187 themselves is the best solution for expressive reasons anyway. If State Senator Kevin De Leon is correct, as I believe he is, that erasing the language of Proposition 187 would be powerfully symbolic, think of how much more powerful it would be if the very electorate that passed Proposition 187 now wants to make clear that this measure no longer represents the views or values of the State.

And I think popular approval would be easily forthcoming. The State and its attitudes about immigration and ethnicity have evolved a great deal in the past two decades. Since the measure could be put to the voters without having to assemble signatures, no signature-gathering money would need to be expended. Indeed, because I can't imagine any organized opposition to a measure proposing repeal, I don't see the need for any expensive campaign to obtain enactment.

Having the voters undo their own misguided handiwork would be poetic, practical and (legally) proper. And, importantly, it would avoid opening up the legislature to the charge that it is riding roughshod over the will of the people and the initiative process.

Cross-posted from Justia's Verdict.

In the space below, I offer analysis of a campaign regulation case in which the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments this week, Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus. The case involves a challenge brought by a pro-life organization, the Susan B. Anthony List (SBA List), against an Ohio statute that imposes criminal liability on persons or organizations that make "a false statement concerning a candidate [for any public office] knowing the same to be false or with reckless disregard of whether it is false or not, if the statement is designed to promote the election, nomination or defeat of the candidate." The lower appellate court in the case, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, held that SBA List did not present a "ripe" controversy concerning the constitutionality of the statute, and thus dismissed the lawsuit for lack of jurisdiction. The Supreme Court will likely focus its ruling on the "ripeness" question as well, but-as I will explain below-questions of standing and ripeness are often tied up in complicated ways with the substantive question of whether a plaintiff has a winning constitutional claim on the merits.

How the Ohio Law Works and the Lower Court's Rejection of SBA List's Challenge

A little background on the way the Ohio statute operates is necessary to understand the issues before the Court. Under the Ohio law, if someone-anyone-complains that somebody has made a false statement within the meaning of the statute during an election campaign, a panel of the Ohio Elections Commission (an independent agency charged with implementing the State's campaign regulations) must make a prompt, preliminary determination of whether there is "probable cause" (i.e., some reasonable possibility but not necessarily a 50+% likelihood) to think that a statutory violation has occurred. If no probable cause is found, the Commission takes no further action. But if a panel concludes that probable cause exists, the case is referred to the full Commission, which then is charged with determining whether "clear and convincing" evidence supports the conclusion that a violation has in fact occurred. If it so finds, the Commission refers the case to the state prosecutors, who then have ordinary prosecutorial discretion (possibly overseen by the State Attorney General) to initiate a prosecution or not. If a prosecution is brought and a conviction (presumably requiring proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt) is obtained, a penalty (in the form of a fine or jail time) is imposed.

In the 2010 election cycle, SBA List sought to put up a billboard criticizing then-Congressman Steven Driehaus, who was running for reelection. The billboard read: "Shame on Steve Driehaus! Driehaus voted FOR taxpayer-funded abortion." Driehaus filed a complaint with the Ohio Commission, and a panel of the Commission found probable cause to suspect a violation of the statute and thus referred the Complaint to the full Commission. SBA List then filed suit in federal court challenging the Ohio scheme. After Driehaus lost the election, he withdrew his Commission complaint, so the full Commission never assessed the billboard message, and nothing involving this incident was ever referred to a prosecutor. But SBA List continued to press its federal lawsuit, asserting that it intended to engage in substantially similar conduct in the future and that Driehaus may run for Congress again. Driehaus then moved to Africa to work for the Peace Corps, and has not indicated any present intention to run for office again anytime soon.

Based on this record, the Sixth Circuit ruled that SBA List no longer has a ripe claim against the Ohio statute, for two reasons. First, there is insufficient reason to think that anyone will complain about SBA List under the statute in the future. As the Sixth Circuit put it, "SBA List does not say that it plans to lie or recklessly disregard the veracity of speech. Instead, it alleges the very opposite, insisting that the statement it made and plans to repeat-that [Obamacare] allows for taxpayer-funded abortions-is facially true." Because SBA List plans to speak only the truth, reasoned the Sixth Circuit, it hasn't shown that it is particularly likely to get ensnared by a statute regulating falsity.

Second, even if the Ohio statute is likely to be invoked against SBA List again, no criminal prosecution-let alone conviction-is sufficiently likely to ensue. Given all the steps that must precede conviction, it is simply too speculative to think that SBA List is in any real danger of having criminal sanctions imposed upon it.

What Will the Supreme Court Do?

While it is likely we cannot know the outcome of this case for a few months, a few observations are in order even now. Most important, the Supreme Court will probably reverse the Sixth Circuit. I say this in part because the Sixth Circuit's reasoning is open to serious question, and more so because the Court decided to grant review in the first place. The Sixth Circuit's opinion is unpublished, which means it can do no mischief in other lower court cases, yet still the Court granted review. To me that suggests a strong desire (by at least four Justices-the number needed to grant review) to correct error by the Sixth Circuit.

Why do I find the Sixth Circuit's reasoning troubling? Let us take the Sixth Circuit's first point, that SBA List is unlikely to be burdened by the Ohio law because SBA List disclaims any intent to lie. As Chief Justice Roberts sarcastically observed at oral argument: "[S]urely you don't expect them to come in and say, 'I'm going to say something totally false and I'm afraid I might be prosecuted for that." To put the Chief Justice's point more generally, a person challenging a statute for unconstitutionally restricting his speech should be able to do so provided he professes a specific intent to engage in speech that is reasonably likely to trigger punishment, regardless of whether punishment is actually warranted under (one interpretation of) the terms of the statute.

The second rationale of the Sixth Circuit-that criminal sanction is a remote possibility because of the number of steps involved-is on firmer ground, and is actually supported by the reasoning of recent ripeness cases by the Court such as Clapper v. Amnesty International USA (although I acknowledge that the 5-4 ruling in Clapper itself is in some tension with other cases, where the fact that there are multiple steps in a causal chain leading to enforcement is found not to be an insurmountable barrier to federal judicial review). But in any event, this "remote possibility of actual prosecution" argument it is undercut significantly by SBA List's assertion in its briefs that a probable cause determination by a panel of the Commission, all by itself, inflicts injury, whether or not any criminal prosecution is later brought. By making the probable cause finding, the government causes SBA List to suffer reputational injury, and harms the campaign that SBA List may be waging in favor of or against particular candidates. Because, SBA List argues, a probable cause determination was found with respect to the Driehaus billboard, it will also likely be found with respect to "substantially similar" speech that SBA List intends to utter. This kind of injury is cognizable and may indeed be ripe (as the Court seemed to suggest in Meese v. Keane), but as I will explain later, it raises its own complexities.

What Should the Court Do?

I suggested above that I expect the Court to reverse the Sixth Circuit. But is that the right result? Perhaps not. Though the Sixth Circuit's reasoning was flawed, its result may nonetheless have been correct. Even assuming that a probable cause determination by a panel of the Commission can cause injury that may be redressed in a federal lawsuit, there remains the question of precisely what speech SBA List plans to utter that might trigger such a determination. As the lawyer for Ohio pointed out at oral argument, the only forward-looking contention in SBA List's complaint is its statement that "it plans to engage in substantially similar activity in the future, but they don't identify any other candidates" whom they intend to criticize. If this is true, the vagueness of this statement should be a problem for SBA List. In past cases, the Supreme Court has said a generally stated intention to engage in some activity, without more details about the when, where, and how, can create ripeness problems. So, when a scientist who wanted to challenge under-enforcement of the Endangered Species Act contended that he desired to study a species that might be threatened by the under-enforcement, without indicating precisely where, when, and how he planned to conduct the study, standing/ripeness was denied (in Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife). And when a leafletter who was punished for distributing anonymous leaflets criticizing a Congressman sued to enjoin future enforcement of the law because he intended in subsequent elections to distribute in the same place "similar anonymous leaflets" even though the particular Congressman who was the target of the prior leaflet had since left Congress for a judicial post, the Court said (in Golden v. Zwickler) there was not a ripe controversy because the likelihood of a future conflict between the leafletter and the statute was too uncertain.

To me, the facts of these cases-and the plaintiffs' vague statements of future intentions-sound somewhat like SBA List's assertions regarding "substantially similar" speech in which it plans to engage. What, precisely, does "substantially similar" mean, especially in a setting where SBA List in 2010 did not criticize all Congresspersons who voted for Obamacare in 2010, but rather (as Ohio's lawyer pointed out in oral argument) only a small subset of them-Democrats who first opposed but then voted for the healthcare law? Since Mr. Driehaus himself is not running again anytime soon, it remains to be identified against whom SBA List plans to speak out.

I found it interesting that the Justices didn't seem to focus on these points when the Ohio lawyer mentioned them. The liberal Justices generally don't agree with high standing and ripeness hurdles, so they can be expected to be open to SBA List's arguments. But the conservative Justices-who in other cases do set the standing/ripeness bar pretty high-should have been interested in this line of argument advanced by Ohio's counsel. Maybe when the opinion issues they will embrace this route, or maybe they will find ripeness because they are so troubled by the Ohio law and want to permit the federal courts to adjudicate its merits.

A Few Observations on the Merits

Let us turn, then, to the merits, although any remotely complete discussion of the First Amendment claims here will require one or more additional columns. For starters, it is somewhat troubling to me that a panel of the Commission found probable cause to think a billboard stating that Congressman Driehaus voted for taxpayer-funded abortions was false. Incomplete, no doubt. Misleading, perhaps. But factually false? Even granting that executive regulations under Obamacare (and the Hyde Amendment law that may or may not apply to the Affordable Care Act) limit taxpayer-funded abortions to those involving rape, incest, or life of the mother, it's hard to say the law (for which Driehaus voted) does not, technically, involve some (albeit very limited) taxpayer-funded abortion procedures. And the concept of criminal falsity, to have any chance of surviving a First Amendment challenge in an election contest, will have to be assessed technically.

I should conclude by linking the ripeness and First Amendment merits questions. It may be that SBA List's best argument for ripeness focuses on the injury caused not by (somewhat speculative) prosecution, but by the specter of a probable cause determination, as discussed above. But if this is so, then-when the case is remanded to the Sixth Circuit-arguably the only ripe question is whether the probable cause aspect of Ohio's law (rather than the imposition of criminal sanctions themselves) violates the Constitution. And although an argument on the merits can be made that a state Commission's power to make a probable cause finding in a campaign-speech setting is itself problematic under the First Amendment, that seems a somewhat tougher argument than one challenging the imposition of criminal liability (because if the government is not imposing fines or jail terms, but only uttering its own view that someone's speech is or may be false, the government can claim to be more of a speaker itself). In other words, if the relevant injury is not the (real) threat of criminal liability, but the reputational harm caused by a government's (preliminary) characterization of possible falsehood, then the First Amendment challenge is itself harder to maintain. I will likely explore more of these merits questions in later columns.

Cross-posted from Justia's Verdict.

Yesterday the Federalism Working Group of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)-an influential and generally conservative policy-oriented institution that offers template legislation for state governments to consider adopting-was scheduled to meet to consider, among other things, a proposal that would empower state legislatures to add candidates to general election ballots for the office of United States Senator.  In the space below, I take up the question whether a proposal like this would be consistent with the federal Constitution.

Some Background on the Proposal and How It Might Be Analyzed

Here's more detail on how the proposal-entitled the "Equal State's Enfranchisement Act" (ESEA)-would work, were it to be adopted (as either a statute or a state constitutional amendment) by a state:  If twenty percent of the sitting members of the state legislature sign a petition nominating a person for the U.S. Senate (provided the person is not someone who has already been nominated by a primary election or political party committee), then that person is eligible (along with all others who also were nominated by twenty percent of the legislature) to be voted on by the entire legislature.  The legislature as a whole votes, and the person who gets the most support (even if that is less than a majority, presumably) is then included on the general election ballot (alongside candidates who earned ballot spots by more traditional means, e.g., winning party primaries) under the designation:  "State Legislature Candidate for United States Senate."  (For more background on the proposal, and on ALEC, readers can consult an item last month in The Huffington Post.)

Before I delve into the constitutionality of the ESEA, let me first make clear that I am not addressing the question, in this column at least, whether re-empowering state legislatures to pick U.S. Senators would be wise policy.  Remember that before the enactment of the Seventeenth Amendment (and the events that led up to it) in 1913, state legislatures did select U.S. Senators, but that system was altered by the Progressive era and a direct election movement that culminated in formal constitutional change.  Some modern commentators have lamented the extent to which popular election of U.S. Senators has led Congress to undervalue, and impose upon, state governments.  From their point of view, federal-state relations would be different, and better, if state legislative election of Senators were reinstituted.  But whether or not this perspective has any merit, the Seventeenth Amendment, and the distrust of state legislatures it reflects, is a part of the Constitution that must be respected until it is itself amended.

Let me also make clear that I am examining the question of what legitimate authority, if any, state legislatures have to place names on ballots for federal legislative offices.  The empowerment of state legislatures, under state law, to nominate candidates and place names on ballots respecting state legislative offices might raise important questions under the federal Constitution-questions involving, among other things, the First Amendment, the fundamental right to vote, and the provision in Article IV of the Constitution that guarantees in each state a "Republican Form of Government.  But these questions are distinct from the ones I explore below, even though there may be some analytic overlap.

A Key Question:  The Scope of State Legislative Power Under Article I, Section 4

With those caveats, let us turn to the heart of the matter, namely, whether a state legislature can be allowed to nominate a candidate for federal legislative office and direct that candidate's name be placed on the general election ballot bearing the designation "State Legislative Candidate." Answering this question begins with the recognition that the only power state legislatures enjoy in this regard is that which is affirmatively given to them by the U.S. Constitution, in Article I, Section 4, which provides that the legislatures of the states shall prescribe the "Times, Places and Manner" of holding elections for House members and Senators, subject to override by Congress itself.  The key follow-up question then becomes:  Can a state legislature successfully argue that its placement of a name on a congressional election ballot is a means of regulating the "manner" of the federal election?

Interestingly enough, there are no Supreme Court cases of which I am aware that are clearly on point.  Indeed, almost all of the cases dealing with the exercise of Article I, Section 4 powers by state legislatures that the Court has decided concern not the placement of candidates on the general election ballot, but instead the effective exclusion of particular candidates from the ballot.  That is, most of the so-called "ballot access" cases that the Supreme Court has issued involve state laws that are challenged by persons or groups on the ground that these persons or groups were wrongly denied places on the ballot, not on the ground that the state government has directly put someone else on the ballot who does not belong there.  In this conventional ballot access setting, the Court has recognized that states enjoy "broad power" to prescribe the procedural mechanisms for conducting congressional elections, to deal with such matters as voter notification, voter registration, supervision of ballot places, prevention of fraud and corruption, and the counting of votes, to ensure that elections are "fair and honest" and that "some sort of order, rather than chaos, is to accompany the democratic process."

But even as the Court has been generous to state legislatures in some of these cases, it has been careful to adhere to a line between procedure and substance; state legislatures are allowed "to issue procedural regulations," but are not granted the "power to dictate electoral outcomes, to favor or disfavor a class of candidates, or to evade important constitutional restraints."  A state legislature's constitutional inability to favor particular federal legislative candidates and disfavor others explains why the Supreme Court held a dozen years ago in Cook v. Gralike (where it employed the crucial language just quoted) that the state of Missouri could not, on its federal election general ballot, print the statement "DECLINED TO PLEDGE TO SUPPORT TERM LIMITS" next to the name of a candidate for the House of Representatives who was unwilling to promise to support a particular federal constitutional amendment, seemingly supported by the voters of Missouri, that would create term limits for members of Congress.  The ballot designation Missouri wanted to impose was, said the Court, "plainly designed to favor candidates who are willing to support a particular form of a [federal] term limits amendment . . . and to disfavor those who either oppose term limits entirely or would prefer a different proposal" and as such was not a "generally applicable and evenhanded" regulation designed to protect the integrity and reliability of the electoral process itself.  Instead, by the state's weighing in with the voters "at the most crucial stage in the election process-the instant before the vote is cast," the Missouri regulation impermissibly "attempt[ed] to dictate electoral outcomes."

It is hard to see how the ESEA would fare any better under this reasoning.  By adding the name of a candidate to the ballot, and by designating this person as the "State Legislature Candidate," the state legislature is clearly endorsing one person on the ballot.  As a result, the legislature is, to use the words of the Cook Court, "favor[ing]" one candidate, and thereby "disfavor[ing]" the rest (since single-seat elections are zero-sum affairs).  And this influence by the state should not be taken lightly; as Chief Justice Rehnquist observed in his separate opinion concurring in the result in Cook, when a state adds things onto a ballot, it "injects itself into the election process at an absolutely critical point-the composition of the ballot . . . is the last thing the voter sees before he makes his choice. . . ."  Whether or not state legislatures can require or allow the placement of more neutral kinds of information on federal ballots (such as the occupation of each candidate, which might be okay, but which also might be problematic to the extent that it may tend to favor incumbents, who list their current office as their occupation), placement of an additional candidate and an implicit or explicit endorsement of that candidate on the ballot itself by the legislature would have to be viewed as an attempt to influence or dictate the result of the election.  (Individual state legislators or groups of legislators remain free, of course, outside the ballot itself and outside of formal legislative actions, to endorse or lambaste particular U.S. Senate candidates.)

To the extent that Cook, building on earlier cases, draws a hard line between state legislative efforts to regulate election procedure, and attempts to influence the substantive outcomes of congressional contests, the ESEA would seem to fall on the wrong side of the line.  As such, it lies beyond Article I, Section 4 authority, which is the only source of power a state would have to adopt it.

Another Problem with the ESEA: The Thrust of the Seventeenth Amendment Itself

As if that weren't bad enough, the ESEA proposal also seems to violate another of the principles articulated by the Cook Court-the idea that state regulations of federal elections ought not "evade important constitutional restraints."  It is bad enough when a state legislature attempts to influence the substantive outcome of an election for the House of Representatives (as in Cook), but it is worse still when the legislature tries to do so with respect to U.S. Senate elections, because (moving beyond Article I, Section 4) the Seventeenth Amendment is itself an affirmative "important constitutional restraint" on state legislatures.  As I have written in a column for this site earlier this year (and in earlier columns as well), and have explained in greater detail in academic writings, the overall goal of the Seventeenth Amendment was to get state legislatures out of the business of deciding who should serve in the U.S. Senate.

The attack that Seventeenth Amendment reformers made on state legislatures was multipronged. It was not, as one of ALEC's staff has been quoted as suggesting (in The Huffington Post piece), limited to the fact that state legislatures were often deadlocked in the Nineteenth Century and thus were not filling Senate vacancies that arose.  The dissatisfaction with state legislatures was far deeper.  For starters, supporters of the Seventeenth Amendment accused legislatures of the same kind of excessive zeal and personal corruption that permeated the political party structure. As one prominent historian has put it,"[c]orruption, of both state legislators and senators, was the greatest evil blamed on the system of indirect election." Of course, whether that widely held perception of corruption in state legislatures was justified is a more complicated matter.  In any event, it is not hard to imagine ways, even today, in which permitting a state legislature to add names to a Senate ballot could open the door to partisan shenanigans.  Consider, for instance, a Democrat state legislature that added a second Republican name to a ballot that already was going to include one prominent Republican and one prominent Democrat Senate candidate (via the two major primaries), in order to split and thus weaken the Republican general election vote.  (In this regard, note that the ESEA proposal does not even require that the "State Legislature Candidate" agree to be a candidate before her name is placed on the ballot.)

Perhaps the strongest Seventeenth Amendment argument concerning distrust of state legislatures that buttresses the Article I, Section 4 textual case against substantive legislative involvement, and one that also remains relevant today, derives from the concerns Seventeenth Amendment's framers had about the way state legislatures fail to fairly represent the people of a state, and particular constituencies within the state, because of malapportionment. Although largely unnoticed in most modern discussions of direct Senate election, recognition of the "antiquated systems of representation" used to draw state legislative districts, and the resulting unfairness to, and misrepresentation of, various parts of the state peoples was clear, if not always trumpeted.  As an historian has written, such malapportioned systems, rife during the period leading up to the Seventeenth Amendment, "caused the legislatures' election of Senators to give far different results from those which would have been yielded" by truly popular elections. Of course, certain kinds of gerrymandering (designed to disfavor urban dwellers) are no longer possible in light of the one-person, one-vote cases. But concerns about partisan gerrymandering are not eliminated by the one-person, one-vote principle, as recent episodes from states like Pennsylvania and Texas illustrate.

What Should Happen if a State Were to Adopt and Try to Implement the ESEA?

It may occur to some observers that, even if my constitutional criticisms of the ESEA are powerful and persuasive, the federal courts, using the so-called "political question" doctrine, might be disinclined to intervene and declare invalid any state's enactment of the proposal.   And perhaps this is true, although lawsuits like Cook suggest that justiciability barriers in these kinds of cases can be overcome.  But even if no federal court is asked or is willing to step in, that doesn't mean that the questions I raise should go unexplored.

The Constitution makes each house, including the Senate, the "Judge of the . . . Qualifications of its own members." So if a majority of Senators believe that a state legislature has improperly influenced the substance of a Senate election by wrongly placing a candidate's name on the ballot, it could refuse to seat the "winner" of this flawed electoral contest.  And before we ever got to that point, I would hope that Congress, realizing that respect for Article I, Section 4 limits and the Seventeenth Amendment should be of interest to both parties, would pass a federal law setting aside any state's adoption of the ESEA.  Recall that Article I, Section 4 gives Congress the power to override any state regulation of the manner of congressional elections, and so to the extent that ESEA is defended as a "manner" regulation by a state legislature, Congress has the power to override it; if a state were to object to such a federal law on the ground that it exceeded Congress' Article I, Section 4 powers, the state would effectively be admitting that the ESEA itself is ultra vires. If federal courts may be reluctant to enforce the Constitution here (and I'm not saying that they necessarily would be), that doesn't mean Congress couldn't and shouldn't deal with the problem.