To mark the beginning of the Supreme Court's October 2022 Term, here are two articles relevant to Moore v. Harper, likely the case where originalist arguments will play the most central role.
Franita Tolson (USC Gould School of Law) has posted The 'Independent' State Legislature in Republican Theory (Texas A&M Law Review, forthcoming) (22 pages) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
The independent state legislature theory provides that state legislatures are not constrained by their respective state constitutions in exercising the authority that the U.S. Constitution delegates to states over federal elections. In its most extreme form, the doctrine permits state legislatures, in overseeing the mechanics of federal elections, to disregard state court interpretations of state constitutions. Scholars have offered a number of criticisms of this doctrine, noting that it runs counter to the founding generation’s concerns about the lawlessness of state legislatures; is contrary to historical practice at the founding; and undermines the constitutional structure in which the more democratically accountable Congress, rather than the states, is vested with final say over federal elections.
This Essay, forthcoming in a special Texas A&M Law Review symposium issue celebrating Professor Richard Epstein, contributes to this growing literature by pointing to the constraints, centered in the constitutional text and history, that limit the ability of legislatures to disregard their state constitutions. Specifically, the Electors Clause of Article II, Section 1 provides that, “Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the state may be entitled in the Congress…” This text explicitly raises the question of who is the “state” on behalf of which the legislature deploys power?
Using this language as its jumping off point, this Essay argues that the “state” referenced in Article II, Section 1 refers to its citizens, whose preferences are conveyed to the state legislature through the state’s electorate and in the state constitution. Within a decade of the founding, the selection of officials by the state’s electorate became central to the theory of republicanism underlying the Guarantee Clause of Article IV, which predicated the legitimacy of government on majority support. By the adoption of the Twelfth Amendment, which changed the structure of presidential elections, political elites viewed republican government as requiring that state legislatures and, to a lesser extent, federal officials, be accountable to the people who elected them, accountability that prevented state legislatures from exercising their authority over federal elections in blatant disregard of the people’s wishes.
The Essay concludes that the independent state legislature theory, particularly in its strongest iteration, runs counter to the democratizing effect that the Twelfth Amendment was intended to have on presidential elections. The theory allows the state legislature to disregard the preferences of the people at a juncture in which they are exercising the oversight and accountability at the core of our system of republicanism: during the election of federal officials. Any version of the doctrine, if adopted, has to respect majoritarian preferences.
Dan T. Coenen (University of Georgia Law School) has posted Constitutional Text, Founding-Era History, and the Independent-State-Legislature Theory (Georgia Law Review, forthcoming Spring, 2023) (41 pages) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
One question raised by proponents of the so-called independent-state-legislature theory concerns the extent to which state courts can apply state constitutional requirements to invalidate state laws that concern federal elections. According to one proposed application of the theory, state courts can never subject such laws to state-constitution-based judicial review. According to another application, federal courts can broadly, though not invariably, foreclose state courts from drawing on state constitutions to invalidate federal-election-related state legislation. This article evaluates whether either of these positions comports with the original meaning of the Constitution. Given the article’s focus on the originalist methodology, it directs attention only to the text of the Constitution and the context in which that text was drafted and evaluated in 1787 and 1788. This study of the relevant text and framing-era history—particularly as that history is disclosed by the Federalist Papers—casts a long shadow over the independent-state-legislature theory. At the least, it indicates that, as an originalist matter, there is no sound basis for broadly empowering federal courts to constrict state-court judicial review of federal-election-related laws under state constitutions, far less for precluding such judicial review altogether.
Posted at 6:39 AM