CAC on Access to the Courts

Check out the Constitutional Accountability Center's recently published report on access to the federal courts, The Keystone of the Arch: The Text and History of Article III and the Constitution's Promise of Access to the Courts. The report is the most recent addition to the CAC's excellent Narrative Series.

In it, David Gans, Director of the Human Rights, Civil Rights & Citizenship Program at the CAC, explainss how the Supreme Court has restricted access in the name of Article III "cases and controversies" and at the same time has expanded state sovereign immunity far beyond the text and history of the Eleventh Amendment. "The same cramped vision of the role of the federal courts in righting wrongs and in enforcing the Constitution and federal laws has been at the heart of numerous other Rehnquist and Roberts Court rulings that pervert statutes, court rules, and bodies of judge-made laws to limit access to the federal courts by those asserting federal claims."