Date & time
Venue
Phillipa Weeks Library, Level 4, Building 7, ANU Law School
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Event description
U.S states are increasingly empowering private citizens to enforce state policy. States opposed to those policies are, in turn, adopting laws to obstruct private enforcement. In 2021, for example, Texas enacted S.B. 8, authorising “any person” to enforce stringent abortion limitations and guaranteeing bounties for victorious plaintiffs. Authorising bounties for those with no personal damages marks these statutes apart from traditional citizen suits and other means of private enforcement, such as class actions.
Other states reacted, some barring compliance with subpoenas and discovery requests in S.B. 8 and similar cases, and some even forbidding the execution of extradition requests and judgments. California trolled Texas by enacting an S.B. 8 copycat authorising any person to sue for bounties against those who violate certain gun controls. Similar statutes permit any person to enforce laws against online child pornography and immigration vigilantes; bills have been introduced that would permit private enforcement of climate change, diversity, and drug control policies.
These laws raise significant issues under the U.S. Constitution. These laws may also violate state constitutions, interstate compacts, and uniform laws, and states may even sue each other in the U.S. Supreme Court over these laws. Professor Elliott will give an overview of the current state-versus-state landscape and discuss the constitutional and political implications of this civil-war-through-litigation.
Note: Registration is not required for this event.
Speakers
Professor Heather Elliott
Heather Elliott is the John J. Sparkman Chair of Law at the University of Alabama School of Law. She currently teaches Civil Procedure, Land Use Law, and Water Law. She also regularly teaches Introduction to the Study of Law and Legislation & Regulation.
Professor Elliott is a former law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and to Judge Merrick B. Garland of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. From 2003-2005, she was an appellate litigation associate at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr LLP in Washington, DC, where she wrote briefs to the United States Supreme Court, the California Supreme Court, and numerous federal and state intermediate appellate courts in cases involving constitutional law, bankruptcy, Indian law, administrative law, and environmental law.