{"id":5395,"date":"2026-09-25T10:53:27","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T14:53:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/?p=5395"},"modified":"2026-09-25T10:53:27","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T14:53:27","slug":"the-road-not-taken-in-trump-v-barbara-jonathan-h-adler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/the-road-not-taken-in-trump-v-barbara-jonathan-h-adler\/","title":{"rendered":"The Road not Taken in Trump v. Barbara \u2013 Jonathan H. Adler"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\u00a0It is a \u201cwell-established principle\u201d that the Supreme Court \u201cwill not decide a constitutional question if there is some other ground upon which to dispose of the case.\u201d This principle was nowhere to be found in Chief Justice Roberts\u2019s opinion for the Court in Trump v. Barbara<\/em>. It may be the Court\u2019s \u201cusual practice\u201d to resolve cases on statutory grounds so as to \u201cavoid the unnecessary resolution of constitutional questions.\u201d In Barbara<\/em>, however, the statutory question received no attention in the Chief Justice\u2019s opinion. Nor did it attract meaningful engagement from any of the dissents. Justice Kavanaugh was the only Justice to take the statutory arguments seriously, and he found them dispositive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Resolving Barbara <\/em>on statutory grounds would have allowed the Court to avoid the larger Constitutional question. It might also have provided a basis for broader agreement among the Justices. While there is a heated debate as to the original public meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment\u2019s Citizenship Clause, the meaning of Section 1401 at the time it was adopted is more readily resolved. It is well-established\u2014if not universally observed\u2014that the Court should \u201cinterpret statutory terms to \u2018mean what they conveyed to reasonable people at the time they were written<\/em>.\u201d As the Court reaffirmed in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo<\/em>, \u201cevery statute\u2019s meaning is fixed at the time of enactment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Click here<\/a> to continue reading the full piece.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0It is a \u201cwell-established principle\u201d that the Supreme Court \u201cwill not decide a constitutional question if there is some other ground upon which to dispose of the case.\u201d This principle was nowhere to be found in Chief Justice Roberts\u2019s opinion for the Court in Trump v. Barbara. It may be the Court\u2019s \u201cusual practice\u201d to resolve cases on statutory grounds so as to \u201cavoid the unnecessary resolution of constitutional questions.\u201d In Barbara, however, the statutory […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":250,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[120],"class_list":["post-5395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-per-curiam","tag-symposium"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZSiL-1p1","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/250"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5395"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5396,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5395\/revisions\/5396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}