Can constitutional rights be both personal and rule-dependent? Can it be true of constitutional adjudication (1) that a constitutional litigant must assert “her own” rights, and yet also (2) that the viability of a constitutional challenge depends (or sometimes depends) on whether a particular type of legal rule, for example, a discriminatory or poorly tailored rule, is in force?

I. INTRODUCTION

Do we have constitutional rights that certain states of affairs exist (for example, that I burn an American flag and am not punished); or do we instead have constitutional rights that certain rules not exist (for example, that there be no rule forbidding the burning of American flags on pain of punishment)? I believe that as a positive account of at least most of our constitutional law, our constitutional rights are best conceived as rights against rules. However, the question remains, Why should the Constitution concern itself with rules rather than with states of affairs, with rule-differentiated act-types rather than rule-independent act-tokens? Must not its concern for the former be based on its concern for the latter?

Professor Matthew Adler has argued that many constitutional rights are not personal moral rights, but “rights against rules” that are pragmatic and instrumental in nature.See Matthew D. Adler, Rights Against Rules: The Moral Structure of American Constitutional Law, 97 MICH. L. REV. 1 (1998); Matthew D. Adler, Personal Rights and Rule-Dependence: Can the Two Coexist?, 6 LEGAL THEORY (present issue). The reason rights are not personal, in Adler’s view, is that they are rule-dependent—the constitutionality of a statute depends not just on how it affects someone, but on what it says—its formulation of a rule. Constitutional litigants are in some cases allowed to challenge the formulation of rules, regardless of whether the error in formulation would make any difference to the way the litigant is treated. Adler argues that because the litigant would receive no different treatment whether the law is formulated correctly or not, the litigant does not suffer from the constitutional error any “personal” legal disability that would set him apart from any other citizen, and is, therefore, not enforcing a personal right. Instead, Adler believes that constitutional rights are better understood as positive-law creations that allow citizens to sue as private attorneys-general.

In an impressive and important article, Rights Against Rules: The Moral Structure of American Constitutional Law, Matthew Adler maintains that constitutional rights are “rights against rules: they protect citizens against the legislative enactment and judicial application of particular rules (rules with wrong act-type predicates); they do not provide guarantees that citizens can perform any particular sorts of actions free of governmental interference.”Matthew D. Adler, Rights Against Rules: The Moral Structure of American Constitutional Law, 97 MICH. L. REV. 1 (1998). As Adler writes:

INTRODUCTION

Economic accounts of tort law tell us why tortfeasors face monetary sanctions for certain sorts of conduct. That is not enough, according to corrective justice theorists Jules Coleman and Ernest Weinrib.See, e.g., Jules L. Coleman, RISKS AND WRONGS (1992); Ernest J. Weinrib, THE IDEA OF PRIVATE LAW (1995). See also Arthur Ripstein, EQUALITY, RESPONSIBILITY ANDTHE LAW (1998); Richard A. Epstein, A Theory of Strict Liability, 2 J. LEGAL STUD. 151 (1973); George P. Fletcher, Fairness and Utility in Tort Theory, 85 HARV. L. REV. 537 (1972); Stephen R. Perry, The Moral Foundations of Tort Law, 77 IOWA L. REV. 449 (1992). Economic theoriesThe most thorough, and impressive, attempt to provide a positive theory of tort law from an economic perspective is that of William Landes and Richard Posner. William M. Landes & Richard A. Posner, THE ECONOMIC STRUCTURE OF TORT LAW (1987). See also, Guido Calabresi, THE COSTS OF ACCIDENTS (1970); Steven Shavell, ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF ACCIDENT LAW (1987); Guido Calabresi & Douglas Melamed, Property Rules, Liability Rules, and Inalienability: One View of the Cathedral, 85 HARV. L. REV. 1089 (1972); Ronald Coase, The Problem of Social Cost, 3 J.L. & ECON. 1 (1960). do not offer an adequate explanation of why the defendant is required to pay these monetary sanctions to the plaintiff. Perhaps some argument can be made that it is efficient to reward private parties for bringing tort actions. Yet even if this were plausible, it would make the plaintiff-driven nature of tort law a purely contingent matter. The plaintiff-defendant structure of tort law is essential to it, not merely contingent. The economic account is therefore fatally flawed, like an account of the criminal law that fails to mention the role of the state, or an account of Shakespeare’s literary genius that fails to mention his poetry. This is called the “bipolarity” critique of law and economics.