NYTimes: Our Increasingly Unenforceable Constitution

NYTimes: Our Increasingly Unenforceable Constitution by Stephen I. Vladeck

For all of the attention that we pay to our constitutional rights, we devote stunningly little attention to the more legalistic — but no less important — topic of how those rights are enforced. And as a largely unnoticed ruling last week by the full United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit demonstrates, the Supreme Court has quietly made it all but impossible for most victims of constitutional violations by the federal government to obtain relief.

Not only is this development antithetical to the core purpose of having an independent judiciary, but it will almost certainly lead to more unconstitutional conduct by even the most well-meaning federal officers, who, in most cases, no longer have to seriously worry about the specter of judicial review.