Why American Law Should Stop Following Old English Rules

While Dean Chemerinsky rightly criticizes the reliance on outdated English legal precedents, the U.S. legal system should go further by fully rejecting colonial-era English practices as binding and interpreting American laws based solely on national principles.

Far be it from me to disagree on constitutional precepts with Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. But something in his recent column on the "imperial Supreme Court" struck me as strange. Chemerinsky, "The rise of the imperial Supreme Court," Jul. 15, 2025.

I fully agree with his idea that it is absurd for us to adopt by rote as legal precepts those things that the British did before we revolted and separated from them. His criticism of Trump v. CASA for holding that we must interpret the Judiciary Act of 1789 in the way that the British courts interpreted their law in (perhaps) similar circumstances seems more than strange. Indeed, shortly before Congress enacted that legislation, we fought a bloody war to divorce