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78 Ind. L.J. 73 (2003)
Thayerian Deference to Congress and Supreme Court Supermajority Rule: Lessons from the Past

handle is hein.journals/indana78 and id is 89 raw text is: Thayerian Deference to Congress and Supreme Court
Supermajority Rule: Lessons from the Pastt
EVAN H. CAMINKER*
INTRO DUCTION  ......................................................................................................... 73
I. THE ATOMISTIC NORM OF DEFERENCE TO CONGRESS ...................................... 79
II. THE HISTORICAL PEDIGREE OF SUPERMAJORITY RULES IN THE FEDERAL AND STATE
JUDICIAL  SYSTEM S  ............................................................................................... 87
III. USING A SUPERMAJORITY PROTOCOL TO ENFORCE THAYERIAN DEFERENCE.... 94
IV. LEARNING SOME LESSONS ABOUT ENFORCING THAYERIAN DEFERENCE ....... 101
A. Assessing the Optimal Strength of Thayerian Deference ........................... 101
B. Bifurcating Legal Reasoning and Legal Outcomes ................................... 105
1. The Complaint About Disrespect for the Court .................................. 105
2. The Complaint About Unfairness to Litigants .................................... 107
3. The Common Theme: Bifurcation of Legal Reasoning and Relevant
O utcom e  .................................................................................................. 109
4. Application of Theme to Atomistic Enforcement of Thayerian Deference
.................................................................................................................  112
V. BACK  TO  THE  M ODERN  COURT  ......................................................................... 115
A PPEN D IX  ............................................................................................................... 117
INTRODUCTION
The organizing theme of this Symposium is whether and how Congress might
respond to the recent reign of the Federalism Five. Over the past eight years, the
Supreme Court has been unusually aggressive in its exercise ofjudicial review over
federal statutes challenged on federalism grounds. Eleven times the Court has
invalidated provisions in federal statutes after determining that Congress exceeded the
scope of its limited regulatory authority. In ten of the eleven cases, the vote was 5-4
with the identical five-Justice conservative majority (Chief Justice Rehnquist and
Justices O'Connor, Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas) controlling the decision.
t Copyright 2002 Evan Caminker. All rights reserved.
* Professor of Law and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs, University of Michigan Law
School; B.A. 1983, UCLA; J.D. 1986, Yale University. I wish to thank Dawn Johnsen, Charlie
Geyh, and Lauren Robel for putting together this wonderful Symposium, and all of the
participants for such an interesting and insightful two-day conversation about federalism and
much more. I also wish specifically to thank Mitch Berman, Barry Friedman, Jed Shugerman,
and Mark Tushnet for providing helpful comments on an earlier draft, and Coulter Boeschen,
Ryan Junck, and several reference librarians of the Michigan Law School Library for helpful
research assistance.
1. The list of 5-4 invalidations includes: Fed. Mar. Comm'n v. S.C. State Ports Auth., 122 S.
Ct. 1864 (2002) (invalidating statutory scheme providing for adjudication of private complaints
against states through federal administrative agency procedures as violating state sovereign
immunity), Bd. of Trs. of Univ. of Ala. v. Garrett, 531 U.S. 356 (2001) (holding disability
discrimination statute beyond Congress's Section 5 enforcement power); United States v.
Morrison, 529 U.S. 598 (2000) (invalidating portion of Violence Against Women Act as beyond
Congress's Commerce Clause or Section 5 enforcement powers); Kimel v. Fla. Bd. of Regents,

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