Source: https://originalismblog.typepad.com/the-originalism-blog/2019/01/page/2/
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 06:47:39+00:00

Document:
Agreed. But how about a cite to Scalia & Garner?
That, we think, holds the key to the case. To many lawyerly ears today, the term “contracts of employment” might call to mind only agreements between employers and employees (or what the common law sometimes called masters and servants). Suggestively, at least one recently published law dictionary defines the word “employment” to mean “the relationship between master and servant.” Black’s Law Dictionary 641 (10th ed. 2014). But this modern intuition isn’t easily squared with evidence of the term’s meaning at the time of the Act’s adoption in 1925. At that time, a “contract of employment” usually meant nothing more than an agreement to perform work. As a result, most people then would have understood §1 to exclude not only agreements between employers and employees but also agreements that require independent contractors to perform work.
There follows extensive discussion of the original meaning from 1925.
Unable to squeeze more from the statute’s text, New Prime is left to appeal to its policy. This Court has said that Congress adopted the Arbitration Act in an effort to counteract judicial hostility to arbitration and establish “a liberal federal policy favoring arbitration agreements.” Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital v. Mercury Constr. Corp., 460 U. S. 1, 24 (1983). To abide that policy, New Prime suggests, we must order arbitration according to the terms of the parties’ agreement. But often and by design it is “hard-fought compromise,” not cold logic, that supplies the solvent needed for a bill to survive the legislative process. Board of Governors, FRS v. Dimension Financial Corp., 474 U. S. 361, 374 (1986). If courts felt free to pave over bumpy statutory texts in the name of more expeditiously advancing a policy goal, we would risk failing to “tak[e] . . . account of ” legislative compromises essential to a law’s passage and, in that way, thwart rather than honor “the effectuation of congressional intent.” Ibid. By respecting the qualifications of §1 today, we “respect the limits up to which Congress was prepared” to go when adopting the Arbitration Act. United States v. Sisson, 399 U. S. 267, 298 (1970).
Result: The truck driver wins, arbitration loses.
“[W]ords generally should be ‘interpreted as taking their ordinary . . . meaning . . . at the time Congress enacted the statute.’” Ante, at 6 (quoting Wisconsin Central Ltd. v. United States, 585 U. S. ___, ___ (2018) (slip op., at 9)). The Court so reaffirms, and I agree. Looking to the period of enactment to gauge statutory meaning ordinarily fosters fidelity to the “regime . . . Congress established.” MCI Telecommunications Corp. v. American Telephone & Telegraph Co., 512 U. S. 218, 234 (1994).
I recently read Judge Jeffrey Sutton's excellent new book, 51 Imperfect Solutions: States and the Making of American Constitutional Law. As readers may know, the book argues for a rejuvenation of state constitutionalism. Near the end of the book, Judge Sutton offers some practical ways that might happen. In his view, lawyers making constitutional claims should make them more often in state court; they should make constitutional arguments based on state constitutions; and state courts should prioritize state constitutional law claims over federal constitutional law ones. Part of the argument that caught my eye was also addressed to law schools and law professors. More law schools should offer more courses in state constitutionalism, Sutton argues. And more law professors should focus their work on state constitutionalism.
This raises an interesting question: Why don't more law professors write about state constitutions?
There are probably a bunch of reasons, but let me offer some amateurish speculation about just one. It seems to me that there aren't widely-known distinct theories of state constitutional interpretation. A lot of academic writing on federal constitutional law is about theories of interpretation. That subject tends to draw the most law-professor attention. But there doesn't seem to be a distinct set of theories on how to interpret state constitutions as compared to the federal constitution.
At least that's my sense from reading state court decisions, especially in my scholarly area of search and seizure law. State courts sometimes interpret their state search and seizure provisions as different from the federal Fourth Amendment. But they typically do so by simply reaching a different result using the same basic principles that federal courts follow. There are exceptions, but that seems to be the usual practice.
In my view, the most persuasive justifications for originalism at the federal constitutional level are not unique to the federal Constitution, but apply generally (or at least generally within Anglo-American jurisprudence). So the originalism/non-originalism debate should be as relevant and interesting at the state level as at the federal level. And I think there are interesting debates and developments going on (perhaps not sufficiently appreciated by federal-focused academics) in some states such as Utah and Michigan. But I also think it's likely that there's less going on than there might be in many of the states.
The statutory authorities that Trump would invoke to build (part of) his southern border wall cede power to the president in a way that is hard to square with the spirit of the Constitution--even in normal times with a normal president. Why do I say that? Because Sec. 202 of the National Emergencies Act says that when the president declares a national emergency--and thus invokes special powers that come with such a declaration--the emergency remains in effect until either the president or Congress ends it.
That's the wrong default. The whole point of permitting the president to unilaterally declare an emergency and therefore invoke extraordinary powers is that some crises require immediate action, leaving insufficient time for deliberation in Congress. But--with a categorical exception to which I'll return below--in just about any crisis that does not require a response on the order of minutes, hours, or at most days, Congress can convene in time to deliberate and decide on a response. Congress declared war on Japan the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Congress authorized force against the perpetrators of 9/11 one week after that attack.
Judged by that big-picture standard, it should be crystal clear that there is no emergency warranting unilateral presidential action to build a border wall. By that I don't mean just that the number of unlawful border crossings is substantially lower than it was in recent years--although it is. Nor do I mean just that a border wall would do little to address drug trafficking (because drugs mostly enter at ports of entry) or the uptick in Central American migrants seeking to present themselves to file asylum claims--although that's also an obvious problem with Trump's wall. No, mostly what I mean is simply this: Even if one thought that a southern border wall (made of concrete, steel, stones, bricks, or sticks and chewing gum) were vitally important to national security, building such a wall is a project that would necessarily unfold over a long period that can easily accommodate congressional deliberation. And indeed, that's what's happening. Congress is deliberating. The president doesn't like the current outcome of those deliberations, but in a constitutional republic with separation of powers in which the legislature has the power of the purse, a disagreement between the legislature and the executive does not constitute an emergency warranting unilateral executive action. If it did, there would be no real legislative power.
Accordingly, I regard the National Emergencies Act itself as a big part of the problem we currently face. Through that Act, Congress has ceded to the president power that it should have reserved for itself. A unilateral presidential emergency declaration should expire after a short period, unless ratified by Congress. That Congress has acquiesced in a practice of decades-long "emergencies" is shameful. It probably does not violate the Constitution as construed by the SCOTUS, because it would be judged under the essentially toothless nondelegation doctrine. Still, even if the National Emergencies Act complies with the letter of constitutional doctrine, it violates the spirit of the Constitution.
Does this critique depend on the notion that the delegation itself is predicated on an "emergency," suggesting that Congress's intent was only to cover situations in which it did not have time to act? If so, Congress abandoned that notion long ago, didn't it?: Think of IEEPA, which requires a presidential declaration of a "national emergency'" from an "unusual and extraordinary threat" in order to trigger its authorities (which are more liberty-restrictive than those we're discussing now). IEEPA is virtually never used in a case where Congress lacks time to act, and yet both political branches (and the courts) have acquiesced in a practice of robust presidential "emergency" findings under it--and they often last for decades.
Isn't it more accurate, then, to view these simply as broad delegation statutes, e.g., "the President may repurpose DOD funds when he thinks there's a really important reason to do so"? If they were phrased that way, I'd be surprised if you'd say that they violated the spirit of the Constitution, right? They'd be understood merely as very broad delegations to the POTUS, on the assumption that the executive ... knows better than Congress and/or ought to be afforded the flexibility to shift things around more quickly than the slow moving gears of legislation allow.
This seems right -- in this context "emergency" is both overused and overemphasized. The question is whether Congress can permit the President to spend money that has been authorized for one project on an entirely different project that has not itself been authorized.
Professor Dorf has a response (also in the comments) but it seems a bit weak -- he concedes that he's not generally sympathetic to nondelegation claims but thinks there's a problem here and in similar national security areas. That seems it too much like trying to have it both ways -- "delegation is fine for things I like, but not for things I don't like."

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