Ex Parte Young Redux
When the main challenge to Texas’s then-unconstitutional abortion ban failed after a restrictive Supreme Court ruling in 2021 because there was no appropriate state official for the plaintiffs to sue, one professor wrote that “[w]ere it not for sovereign immunity, the logical defendant . . . would have been the state of Texas.” This Constitutional Conversation draws from research challenging that assumption in the face of ascendant state “bounty” schemes, like S.B. 8, that rely on members of the public to implement unconstitutional laws. Professor Crocker’s article Ex Parte Young Redux explores the development of the doctrine permitting federal courts to enjoin state officials from enforcing unlawful state statutes—and advocates extending that doctrine to allow suits against states themselves in limited circumstances.
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Katherine Mims Crocker is a Professor of Law and Faculty Co-Director of the Center on the Structural Constitution at Texas A&M University School of Law. She is also an affiliate of the Stanford Constitutional Law Center. Her scholarship focuses on federal courts, civil-rights litigation, constitutional law, and state and local-government law. She has also taught courses in civil procedure, property, and judicial decision-making. Professor Crocker has published papers (or has work forthcoming) in leading journals including the Duke Law Journal, the Harvard Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, the Minnesota Law Review, the Notre Dame Law Review, and the Virginia Law Review. Before joining Texas A&M, Professor Crocker was on the faculty at William & Mary Law School and completed a fellowship at Duke Law School. She also practiced at McGuireWoods LLP in Richmond, Virginia, where she concentrated on appellate litigation. Professor Crocker clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court of the United States and Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. She received her law degree from the University of Virginia, where she graduated first in her class and was an Articles Development Editor on the Virginia Law Review. She earned her undergraduate degree from Harvard University cum laude. |
