Paper, Order, or Assignment Requirements

Imagine that you are a Supreme Court justice and have been assigned the task of writing the opinion of the court in United States v. Bates. Your opinion of the court should be your appraisal of how, based on the issues raised in the Bates case and the precedents available to the Supreme Court, the case should be decided. Your paper should not be simply your personal views of how the Court should rule. Instead, it should be a logical justification for what you believe the Court’s decision should be rooted in both the issues raised and the available precedents. The first page, or so, of your opinion should be a concise summary of the background to the Bates case. This should include a brief summary of the legislation involved in the case and the claims that Bates has raised about its constitutionality. Your opinion announcing the Supreme Court’s ruling should discuss the relevant precedents and justify why the ones you have selected are the most relevant and thus most controlling of how the case should be decided. Don’t just summarize these previous cases. Your discussion should show how the principles derived from these precedents help determine how Bates should be decided. Again, the paper should not simply be your own personal view of how you would like to decide this issue. Nor is the relevant question whether you think Congress should have enacted the Public Accommodations Equal Access Act in the first place. The issue before the Supreme Court is not whether this is wise legislation. If fact, if you were a member of Congress you might have voted against it. Rather, the issue is whether the legislation is a constitutional use of the Congress’ power to regulate interstate commerce. How you frame this problem is found in the Supreme Court precedents dealing with the commerce power. For this assignment you a a judge, not a legislator. To write an effective paper you should review the details of the Bates case. You should also review the Supreme Court’s decisions dealing with the power of congress in Article I, Section 8 to regulate interstate commerce. Cases concerning federalism and the Tenth Amendment are also relevant to Bates and thus should be reviewed before you write your paper.