Balkinization

The Importance of So-Called "Inferior Courts"

Deborah Sontag's article on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond Virgina in today's New York Times explains why it matters who sits on the circuit courts:

The appellate courts, created in the late 19th century to relieve overcrowding of the Supreme Court's docket, decide about 28,000 cases a year compared with the highest court's 75 or so. Practically speaking, they have the final say in most matters of law; their reach is broader, if not deeper, than the Supreme Court's itself.
Judges on the Fourth Circuit say that they just follow the Supreme Court's lead. And it is true that the Fourth Circuit is the appellate court closest in thinking to the Rehnquist Court. But the relationship is symbiotic: the Fourth Circuit does not just imitate; it also initiates. It pushes the envelope, testing the boundaries of conservative doctrine in the area of, say, reasserting states rights over big government. Sometimes, the Supreme Court reins in the Fourth Circuit, reversing its more experimental decisions, but it also upholds them or leaves them alone to become the law of the land. There is a cross-fertilization, which could see its apotheosis this spring: the Fourth Circuit is dominated intellectually by two very different conservative judges, J. Harvie Wilkinson 3rd and J. Michael Luttig, both of whom are leading candidates for the next Supreme Court vacancy.

Sandy Levinson and I have argued that major constitutional change occurs through a process of "partisan entrenchment." The theory is rather complicated, but put in its simplest terms, partisan entrenchment occurs when relatively ideologically coherent political parties stock the federal courts with their ideological allies. When a critical mass of such jurists are present, you can get significant shifts in constitutional doctrine over a long period of time. That is the best explanation of the conservative constitutional revolution in doctrine we have been seeing in the United States in the past decade.

Lower courts-- which are sometimes called "inferior courts" because Art. I. section 8, cl. 9 of the Constitution speaks of "Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court"-- play an important role in such constitutional transformations for four reasons. First, they are effectively the last word on the Constitution in a whole host of areas that the Supreme Court has not yet considered. Second, they apply and implement existing Supreme Court decisions, which can very often be spun in a more liberal or more conservative direction. Third, the lower courts are a proving and testing grounds for innovative constitutional claims by social movements and their ideological allies. Lower courts can provide either a sympathetic or hostile ear to innovative constitutional claims, helping to shape cases and caselaw in preparation for the moment when the Supreme Court focuses on them. Fourth, lower courts (and particularly district courts) have the ability to find facts or render procedural decisions that shape the record on appeal to the Supreme Court and limit what that court can do or else effectively insulate a decision from review.

Presidents reshape constitutional law through their appointments to the Supreme Court. But their appointments to the lower courts also matter, too, and perhaps even more, in determining what the Constitution means in day-to-day litigation. Moreover, because lower court nominees are generally subjected to much less scrutiny by Congress, Presidents often have a much freer hand in stocking the lower courts with more strongly ideological candidates. Although Supreme Court Justices get most of the glory, lower court judges are the shock troops of any effective and sustained constitutional revolution. This is a point that has not been lost on the Republican Party.

Posted 8:28 PM by JB [link]