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In Defense of Cooper v. Aaron: Distinguishing among Judicial Supremacy Claims

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 July 2016

Katy J. Harriger
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Abstract

In the debate about the legitimacy of judicial supremacy, Cooper v. Aaron, the Little Rock desegregation case, is identified by both sides as critical to their argument. Defenders insist that Cooper exemplifies the need for a final authority in matters constitutional. Critics argue that the Court was wrong as a matter of democratic theory or empirical reality. In this article I argue that while it is true as a matter of empirical reality that the Court's interpretation is not the final word, the Court's assertion can be defended nonetheless. Relying on archival sources from the case, I explore the conditions under which the Court made the claim. To defend Cooper, however, does not require the defense of all assertions of judicial supremacy. I conclude by offering a preliminary analysis of how we might distinguish between more legitimate assertions of judicial supremacy and less legitimate ones.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 78 , Issue 3 , Summer 2016 , pp. 443 - 465
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2016 

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References

1 Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. ____ (2015).

2 Alan Binder and Tamar Lewin, “Clerk Chooses Jail over Deal on Gay Unions,” New York Times, September 4, 2015.

3 358 U.S. 1 (1958).

4 Mark Tushnet, Taking the Constitution Away from the Courts (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 7–30.

5 Murphy, Walter F., “Who Shall Interpret? The Quest for the Ultimate Constitutional Interpreter,” Review of Politics 48 (Summer 1986): 401–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Ibid., 409–10.

7 Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 78, in James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay, The Federalist Papers (New York: Penguin Books, 1987), 436–42.

8 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137 (1803).

9 Ibid., 177.

10 Keith E. Whittington, Political Foundations of Judicial Supremacy: The Presidency, the Supreme Court, and Constitutional Leadership in U.S. History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 2–3.

11 Ibid.; Larry Kramer, The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); Devins, Neal and Fisher, Louis, “Judicial Exclusivity and Political Instability,” Virginia Law Review 84 (February 1998): 83–106CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Alexander, Larry and Schauer, Frederick, “On Extrajudicial Constitutional Interpretation,” Harvard Law Review 110 (May 1997): 1359–1387Google Scholar.

12 Cooper, 358 U.S. at 17.

13 Ibid., at 18.

14 Whittington, Political Foundations, 2–3.

15 Robert Lowry Clinton, Marbury v. Madison and Judicial Review (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1989); Louis Fisher, “Saying What the Law Is: On Campaign Finance It's Not Just for the Court; Congress Has a Co-equal Say,” National Law Journal, February 22, 2010, 38; Christopher Wolfe, The Rise of Modern Judicial Review: From Constitutional Interpretation to Judge-Made Law (New York: Basic Books, 1986).

16 Kramer, The People Themselves, 7.

17 Tushnet, Taking the Constitution Away, x–xi.

18 Devins and Fisher, “Judicial Exclusivity”; Whittington, Political Foundations; Gerald N. Rosenberg, The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring About Social Change?, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008).

19 James Madison, Federalist No. 51, in Federalist Papers, 319.

20 Devins and Fisher, “Judicial Exclusivity.”

21 Mark Graber, “The Law and Politics of Judicial Review,” in Separation of Powers: Documents and Commentary, ed. Katy J. Harriger (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2003), 49–63.

22 Whittington, Political Foundations.

23 Alexander and Schauer, “On Extrajudicial Constitutional Interpretation,” 1362.

24 Ibid., 1374.

25 Ibid., 1379.

26 Ibid., 1380.

27 Louis Fisher, Constitutional Dialogue: Interpretation as Political Process (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988).

28 Rosenberg, Hollow Hope; Charles J. Ogletree Jr., All Deliberate Speed: Reflections on the First Half-Century of Brown v. Board of Education (New York: Norton, 2004); John Charles Boger and Gary Orfield, School Resegregation: Must the South Turn Back? (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005).

29 Daisy Bates, The Long Shadow of Little Rock (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1987); Melba Pattillo Beals, Warriors Don't Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High (New York: Washington Square Books, 1994); Farber, Daniel A., “The Supreme Court and the Rule of Law: Cooper v. Aaron Revisited,” University of Illinois Law Review 1982 (1982): 387–412Google Scholar.

30 Farber, “The Supreme Court and the Rule of Law,” 390.

31 Ibid., 391–93.

32 Diary, notes dictated by President Eisenhower on October 8, 1957, Eisenhower Digital Archives, https://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/research/online_documents/civil_rights_little_rock.html.

33 Telegram, September 23, 1957, Eisenhower Digital Archives.

34 Press release, September 23, 1957, Eisenhower Digital Archives.

35 Telegram, September 24, 1957, Eisenhower Digital Archives.

36 Executive order, September 24, 1957, Eisenhower Digital Archives.

37 Oral argument for Cooper v. Aaron, in Landmark Briefs and Arguments of the Supreme Court of the United States: Constitutional Law, vol. 54, ed. Phillip B. Kurland and Gerhard Casper (Bethesda, MD: University Publications of America, 1975), 680–81.

38 Farber, “The Supreme Court and the Rule of Law,” 397.

39 Aaron v. Cooper, 163 F. Supp. 13 (E.D. Ark. 1958).

40 Aaron v. Cooper, 257 F.2d 33 (8th Cir. 1958).

41 Hutchinson, Dennis J., “Unanimity and Desegregation: Decisionmaking in the Supreme Court, 1948–1958,” Georgetown Law Journal 68 (1979–1980): 74Google Scholar.

42 Ibid., 77.

43 Ibid.

44 Ibid., 78–79.

45 See for example, Beals, Warriors Don't Cry.

46 Richard Kluger, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America's Struggle for Equality (New York: Vintage Books, 1975); Hutchinson, “Unanimity and Desegregation.”

47 Press release, September 5, 1957, Eisenhower Digital Archives.

48 Press release, September 14, 1957, Eisenhower Digital Archives.

49 Ibid.

50 Diary, October 8, 1957, Eisenhower Digital Archives.

51 Presidential address, September 25, 1957, Eisenhower Digital Archives.

52 Ibid.

53 Oral arguments, in Landmark Briefs and Argument, 723.

54 Ibid., 726.

55 Ibid., 727, emphasis added.

56 Lucas A. Powe Jr., The Supreme Court and the American Elite 1789–2008 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 246.

57 Lee Epstein and Joseph F. Kobylka, The Supreme Court and Legal Change (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992).

58 Cooper petition for writ, in Landmark Briefs and Argument, 537.

59 Cooper brief for petitioners, in Landmark Briefs and Argument, 560.

60 Ibid., 561.

61 Cooper motion to appear as amicus curiae, in Landmark Briefs and Argument, 644.

62 Ibid., 653–57.

63 Cooper brief for respondents, in Landmark Briefs and Argument, 602–3.

64 Cooper oral arguments, in Landmark Briefs and Argument, 681–82.

65 Ibid., 702.

66 Ibid., 703–4.

67 Ibid., 711–13.

68 Ibid., 713–14.

69 Alexander and Schauer, “On Extrajudicial Constitutional Interpretation,” 1380.

70 Hutchinson, “Unanimity and Desegregation.”

71 David M. O'Brien, “Institutional Norms and Supreme Court Opinions: On Reconsidering the Rise of Individual Opinions,” in Supreme Court Decisionmaking: New Institutionalist Approaches, ed. Cornell Clayton and Howard Gillman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 91–113.

72 Cooper, first draft of opinion, William O. Douglas Papers, Library of Congress, 1–9.

73 Ibid., 16.

74 Hutchinson, “Unanimity and Desegregation,” 79–81.

75 Powe, The Supreme Court and the American Elite, 246.

76 Notes on Cooper, October 8, 1958, Douglas Papers.

77 Hutchinson, “Unanimity and Desegregation,” 82–84.

78 The one criterion I do not include here is the Court's own awareness of its institutional weakness. That research on the other cases, using judicial memoranda within the Court, has not been completed.

79 395 U.S. 486 (1969).

80 521 U.S. 507 (1997).

81 Brief for respondents, Powell v. McCormack, filed March 17, 1969 (retrieved from Westlaw).

82 494 U.S. 872 (1990).

83 Brief of respondent Flores, City of Boerne v. Flores, 1997 WL 10293 (U.S.) (Appellant Brief), at 9.

84 Powell, 395 U.S. at 549.

85 City of Boerne, 521 U.S. at 524, 536.

86 418 U.S. 683 (1974).

87 369 U.S. 186 (1962).

88 L. A. Powe, “The Warren Court and the Political Process,” in The American Congress: The Building of Democracy, ed. Julian E. Zelizer (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2004), 548–65.

89 Brief for appellants, Baker v. Carr, filed Feb. 21, 1961, at 14–15 (retrieved from Westlaw).

90 Alexander and Schauer, “On Extrajudicial Constitutional Interpretation,” 1390.