Today in Supreme Court History: June 20, 1837

6/20/1837: Justice David Josiah Brewer's birthday.

Justice David Josiah Brewer

Comments

[Supremacy Claus]

That lawyer could not read 1st grade English, where one learns the word, "another." The Eleventh Amendment states, "The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State."

I want to reverse Hans, and to open the floodgates of liability to its own citizens against these awful state governments, run by lawyers, destroying their quality of life, their economy, and their safety. Immunity grows an enterprise, like the railroads, telephone companies, and the internet in their times. Liability shrinks an enterprise, like all of manufacturing, and business startups. The scumbag lawyer should not be setting industrial policy. To shrink government quickly, open up its legal liability.

Sovereign immunity is from a psychotic delusion that the King speaks with the voice of God. It is unconstitutional. Titles of nobility are forbidden. It justifies violence in formal logic with its 100% certainty, and with its supremacy over all constitutions, laws, and regulations, and ratified treaties.

[Malika the Maiz]

Looks like the bad guy dean in an 80’s teen comedy.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

SCOTUS handed down six opinions today.

Sotomayor and Jackson dissented (at least in part) in four with the two concurring in judgment in a fifth, to note they believed the majority went too far. They went along without comment in one case.

Kagan strongly dissented in one case, noting at one point, "Those words mean what they say, or anyway should."

Alito dissented in one case with Gorsuch. He grumbled: "Veteran trial judges often complain that their appellate colleagues live in a world of airy abstractions and do not give enough thought to the practical effects of their holdings. Today’s decision is likely to earn the rank of Exhibit A in the trial bench’s catalog of appellate otherworldliness." Barrett at one point replied, "The dissent takes a curious tack here."

Jackson has a solo dissent (partially joined by Sotomayor but not this footnote) with a statement for which I concur:

The majority’s contention that I reject “‘pure textualism’ [a]s insufficiently pliable to secure the result [I] seek,” ante, at 10, stems from an unfortunate misunderstanding of the judicial role. Our interpretative task is not to seek our own desired results (whatever they may be). And, indeed, it is precisely because of this solemn duty that, in my view, it is imperative that we interpret statutes consistent with all relevant indicia of what Congress wanted, as best we can ascertain its intent. A methodology that includes consideration of Congress’s aims does exactly that— and no more. By contrast, pure textualism’s refusal to try to understand the text of a statute in the larger context of what Congress sought to achieve turns the interpretive task into a potent weapon for advancing judicial policy preferences. By “finding” answers in ambiguous text and not bothering to consider whether those answers align with other sources of statutory meaning, pure textualists can easily disguise their own preferences as “textual” inevitabilities. So, really, far from being “insufficiently pliable,” I think pure textualism is incessantly malleable—that’s its primary problem—and, indeed, it is certainly somehow always flexible enough to secure the majority’s desired outcome.

The text is regularly much less clear on its own than people argue (assert) it is. It is far from surprising that Jackson is responding to a comment by Gorusch, who is repeatedly a tad too sure of himself. We see this when applying, let's say, the Second Amendment, with each side having cocksure advocates that think the answer is crystal clear.

Instead, we see through the glass, darkly. And, especially for cases that reach the Supreme Court, the proper interpretative approach is not to put all your eggs in one basket.

The result might not be objectively ideal even then, but it is at least more likely to be closest to the best answer.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/23-997_6579.pdf

[F.D. Wolf]

I, conversely, concur with Justice Holmes' statement that, “We do not inquire what the legislature meant; we ask only what the statute means.”

"Congressional intent" is a nonsensical phrase, an illusory concept, as if all the members of Congress huddled as one to write a statute, and everyone that voted for it had the same "intent".

As it happens, our birthday boy, Justice Brewer, for a unanimous Court, authored an opinion relevant to this issue, one of the worst opinions in Supreme Court history, Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States (1892).

In 1885, Congress had passed the Alien Contract Labor Law, which prohibited the importation of aliens to work in the United States, though a few exceptions were explicitly listed, including actors, artists, and domestic servants. The Church of the Holy Trinity hired an English pastor and was charged with violating the statute. (Curiously, no party or judge seems to have raised the First Amendment issue, which, certainly today at least, would likely have quickly resolved the case in favor of the church.)

Justice Brewer wrote, well, Congress may not have included pastors in the list of exceptions, but surely they meant to. It may not be in the letter of the law, but is within its "spirit".

[W]e cannot think Congress intended to denounce with penalties a transaction like that in the present case. It is a familiar rule that a thing may be within the letter of the statute and yet not within the statute because not within its spirit nor within the intention of its makers.

143 U.S. 457, 459 (1892)

[JoeFromtheBronx]

The statement about "we ask only what the statute means" is not a "conversely" thing. Justice Jackson is trying, like each justice, to determine that. It is a question of how to go about it.

The fact that birthday boy used a specific method incorrectly, or not, doesn't clinch things either way. People use each interpretative method incorrectly in any given case. "Pure textualism" included.

The Supreme Court uses various methods, including examining intent and purpose, to interpret the Constitution. It can also be done with statutes. The "huddle" business is simplistic, just as if someone explained textualism as "just reading the words."

There are various "relevant indicia" in each case.