Person:

Fallon, Richard

The history and practice of strict judicial scrutiny are widely misunderstood. Historically, the modern strict scrutiny formula did not emerge until the 1960s, when it took root simultaneously in a number of doctrinal areas. It did not clearly originate in race discrimination cases, as some have suggested, nor in free speech jurisprudence, as Justice Harlan once claimed. Although strict scrutiny is widely assumed to be “strict in theory, but fatal in fact,” judicial practice in applying it has been complex, even conflicted. There are at least three identifiable versions of strict scrutiny, all subsumed under the same label. The result is uncertainty and sometimes confusion about which version the U.S. Supreme Court will apply in which cases. Some of the confusion arises from the strict scrutiny test’s vague and ambiguous terms, which leave critical questions unanswered. Seeking answers to those questions through normative rather than doctrinal inquiry, this Article argues that the strict scrutiny test is best understood as mandating a proportionality inquiry. At least when challenged regulations would at best reduce risks or incidences of harm, rather than extirpate them completely, courts applying strict scrutiny must ask whether the benefits justify the costs in light of regulatory alternatives that would trench less deeply on constitutional rights but also be less effective in promoting their goals.

The best case for judicial review in politically and morally healthy societies does not depend (as is commonly believed) on the idea that courts are more likely than legislatures to define vague rights correctly. It rests instead on the subtly different ground that legislatures and courts should both be enlisted to protect fundamental rights and, accordingly, that both should have veto powers over legislation that might reasonably be thought to violate such rights.

In developing this case for judicial review, Professor Fallon proceeds by confronting recent, influential, philosophically probing arguments against judicial review by Professor Jeremy Waldron. Professor Fallon concedes arguendo that, as Professor Waldron argues, courts are no better than legislatures at defining rights correctly, but maintains that the crucial question is not whether courts or legislatures are less likely to err, but which kinds of errors are most important to avoid — those that result in rights being overprotected or those that result in rights being infringed. Insofar as judicial review can be designed to prevent errors in just one direction, involving failures to protect rights adequately, then judicial review may be supportable even if courts are no better than legislatures at identifying rights correctly. Professor Fallon also argues, contra Professor Waldron, that judicial review can actually contribute to the political legitimacy of an otherwise democratic scheme of government when the demands of political legitimacy are understood correctly.

Professor Fallon’s revised justification for judicial review, which does not presume courts to be better than legislatures at identifying fundamental rights, has important implications for how judicial review should be practiced. It implies a diminished role for courts in cases in which fundamental rights are pitted against one another, such that the overenforcement of one entails the underenforcement of the other. It also implies that courts should withhold review when legislatures conscientiously seek to protect one fundamental right without plausibly threatening another.

This Article provides a broad-lens, synoptic perspective on war-on-terrorism questions arising within the habeas corpus jurisdiction of the federal courts. Analytically, it develops a clear framework for sorting out the tangle of jurisdictional, substantive, procedural, and scope-of-review issues that habeas cases often present. Methodologically, it champions a common law–like approach to habeas adjudication under which courts must exercise responsible judgment in adapting both statutory and constitutional language to unforeseen exigencies.

The Article also takes substantive positions on a number of important issues. In the jurisdictional domain, it defends the Supreme Court’s controversial decision in Rasul v. Bush, which interpreted the habeas statute as it then stood to authorize inquiry into the lawfulness of detentions at Guantánamo Bay. The Article also argues, however, that a court would overstep if it read the Constitution as mandating review of detentions of aliens in such wholly foreign locales as Afghanistan or Iraq. Scrutinizing post-Rasul legislation that eliminates habeas for alien detainees and substitutes more limited review in the D.C. Circuit, the Article argues that the resulting scheme is constitutionally valid as applied to most cases in which the D.C. Circuit can exercise review, but invalid insofar as it entirely precludes detainees in the United States or at Guantánamo Bay from challenging their detention or conditions of confinement before a civilian court.

With respect to substantive rights, the Article argues that American citizens seized outside of battlefield conditions have a right not to be detained indefinitely without civilian trial. It explains why the constitutional rights of noncitizens are more limited, but argues that existing statutes should not be read to authorize aliens’ detention as enemy combatants when they are seized in the United States, away from any theater of combat. Finally, the Article analyzes some of the most important procedural and scope-of-review questions likely to come before habeas courts.