Louis Fisher

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Join date: Apr 22, 2025

About

Louis Fisher is visiting scholar at the William and Mary Law School. From 1970 to 2010 he served at the Library of Congress as senior specialist in separation of powers at Congressional Research Service and specialist in constitutional law at the Law Library of Congress. He has testified before congressional committees more than fifty times on a range of constitutional issues. Author of 32 books and more than 600 articles, many of his articles and congressional testimony are posted on his personal webpage at http://www.loufisher.org.

Articles (1)

Nov 22, 2022 ∙ 34 min

The Claim of Judicial Finality in the United States: A Popular Theory that Lacks Evidence

In law schools as well as political science and history classes, students are generally taught that when the Supreme Court decides a constitutional issue it delivers the final word unless the Court changes its position. That is the prominent theory. In 1953, Justice Robert Jackson promoted the doctrine of judicial finality by making a statement that is often cited: ‘We are not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final’.[1] Perhaps a clever and witty turn...

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