Part II, The Nerdiest Debate

Professor Vladeck takes the view that “nothing at all turns on this debate (except the correct Bluebook citation form for Taney’s published opinion in Ex parte Merryman).” Steve Vladeck, SCOTUS Trivia: Circuit Justice or Chief Justice, In Chambers?, One First (Feb. 20, 2023), https://tinyurl.com/59rx6mhz. Not true. Many have criticized the parties for failing to appeal Taney’s Merryman decision to the Supreme Court. See [Justice] Stephen Breyer, The Court and the World: American Law and the New Global Realities 16 (2015) (“[Lincoln] did not release John Merryman. Neither did he appeal the ruling, as he might have done.” (emphasis added)); Harold H. Bruff, Untrodden Ground: How Presidents Interpret the Constitution 135 (2015) (“Lincoln should either have let Merryman go or appealed the order to release him.”); Thomas J. DiLorenzo, Lincoln Unmasked: What You’re not Supposed to Know About Dishonest Abe 93 (2006) (“The Lincoln administration could have appealed the chief justice’s ruling, but it chose to simply ignore it . . . .”); Michael Stokes Paulsen & Luke Paulsen, The Constitution: An Introduction 171 (2015) (“Lincoln defied Taney’s unilateral order . . . declining even to appeal Taney’s order to the full Supreme Court.”); Richard H. Fallon, Jr., Executive Power and the Political Constitution, 2007 Utah L. Rev. 1, 22 (“[T]ake the best-known example . . . Lincoln defied the court in Merryman without bothering to appeal . . . .” (footnote omitted)); Paul Finkelman, Limiting Rights in Times of Crisis: Our Civil War Experience—A History Lesson for a Post 9-11 America, 2 Cardozo Pub. L. Pol’y & Ethics J. 25, 39 (2003) (noting that “Merryman did not appeal his incarceration to the full Supreme Court”); Michael Stokes Paulsen, Lincoln and Judicial Authority, 83 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1227, 1285 (2008) (“[Lincoln] did not obey Taney’s order, nor did his administration seek any sort of appeal to the full Supreme Court.”); Michael Stokes Paulsen, The Merryman Power and the Dilemma of Autonomous Executive Branch Interpretation, 15 Cardozo L. Rev. 81, 92 (1993) (posing the question whether Lincoln was “required [in Merryman] either to comply or to seek review and reversal by the full Supreme Court”); see also Jonathan W. White, The Strangely Insignificant Role of the U.S. Supreme Court in the Civil War, 3 J. Civil War Era 211, 218 (2013) (“An appeal to the [full] Supreme Court, in other words, would have been imprudent.”); cf. Frank W. Dunham, Jr., Where Moussaoui Meets Hamdi, 183 Mil. L. Rev. 151, 156 (2005) (affirming, absent documentary support, that “[r]ather than adher[ing] to the ruling, Lincoln appealed [Merryman] to the full Supreme Court”). However, an appeal in Merryman was only possible if it was a federal circuit court decision—a forum from which such an appeal was provided for by statute. On the other hand, if Merryman was a chambers decision, then no such appeal was possible, and it follows that any criticism directed to the parties for failing to appeal was and remains an intellectual nonstarter. See The Federalist No. 63, at 338 (James Madison) (J.R. Pole ed., 2005) (“Responsibility in order to be reasonable must be limited to objects within the power of the responsible party . . . .”); C.H. McIlwain, Constitutionalism and the Changing World 282 (1939) (“[T]here can be no responsibility without power and there should be no power without responsibility.”); Enoch Powell, M.P. (for South Down, Northern Ireland), Christianity and the Curse of Cain, in Wrestling with the Angel 13 (1977) (“No one can be responsible for what he does not control.”); J. Enoch Powell, M.P. (for Wolverhampton, South-West, Eng.), Shadow Secretary of State for Defence, Speech at Wolverhampton (Dec. 12, 1966), in Freedom and Reality 197, 199, 260 (John Wood ed., 1969) (“‘[R]esponsibility’ depends upon the prior question of power . . . .”).

The above footnote is from: Seth Barrett Tillman, What Court (if any) Decided Ex parte Merryman?—A Correction for Justice Sotomayor (and others), 13(1) Br. J. Am. Leg. Studies (forth. circa Mar. 2024) (manuscript at 17 n.45) (peer review), <http://ssrn.com/abstract=4157572>. 

Seth Barrett Tillman, Part II, The Nerdiest Debate, New Reform Club (Mar. 8, 2023, 11:54 AM), <https://reformclub.blogspot.com/2023/03/part-ii-nerdiest-debate.html>; 

See also Seth Barrett Tillman, Part I, The Nerdiest Debate, New Reform Club (Mar. 3, 2023, 2:22 AM), <https://reformclub.blogspot.com/2023/03/the-nediest-debate.html>;