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Page Number: 39

4 

MURPHY v. NATIONAL COLLEGIATE ATHLETIC ASSN. 

THOMAS, J., concurring 

the power “to review and annul acts of Congress” is “little
more than the negative power to disregard an unconstitu-
tional  enactment”  and  that  “the  court  enjoins  . . .  not  the 
execution of the statute, but the acts of the official”).  And 
courts  do  not  have  the  power  to  “excise”  or  “strike  down” 
statutes.  See  39  Op.  Atty.  Gen.  22,  22–23  (1937)  (“The 
decisions  are  practically  in  accord  in  holding  that  the
courts  have  no  power  to  repeal  or  abolish  a  statute”);
Harrison  82  (“[C]ourts  do  not  make  [nonseverable]  provi-
sions inoperative . . . .  Invalidation by courts is a figure of
speech”);  Mitchell,  The  Writ-of-Erasure  Fallacy,  104  Va.
L. Rev. (forthcoming 2018) (manuscript, at 4) (“The federal 
courts have no authority to erase a duly enacted law from
the statute  books”), online at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/ 
papers.cfm?abstract_id=3158038  (as  last  visited  May  11, 
2018).

Because courts cannot take a blue pencil to statutes, the
severability  doctrine  must  be  an  exercise  in  statutory
interpretation.    In  other  words,  the  severability  doctrine
has  courts  decide  how  a  statute  operates  once  they  con-
clude  that  part  of  it  cannot  be  constitutionally  enforced.
See  Fallon,  As-Applied  and  Facial  Challenges  and  Third-
Party  Standing,  113  Harv.  L.  Rev.  1321,  1333–1334 
(2000); Harrison 88.  But even under this view, the sever-
ability doctrine is still dubious for at least two reasons.

First,  the  severability  doctrine  does  not  follow  basic
principles of statutory interpretation.  Instead of requiring
courts to determine what a statute means, the severability 
doctrine requires courts to make  “a nebulous inquiry into
hypothetical congressional intent.”  Booker, supra, at 320, 
n. 7 (THOMAS, J., dissenting in part).  It requires judges to
determine  what  Congress  would  have  intended  had  it
known that part of its statute was unconstitutional.*  But 

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* The first court to engage in this counterfactual exploration of legis-
lative intent was the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in Warren