It is easy to forget sometimes that our hallowed federal courts are a collection of organizations and therefore subject to the mundane limitations that organizations face.The judges who compose those organizations must determine how to wade through hundreds of thousands of cases each year—a task that has become more challenging in the past few decades, as the ratio of cases to judges has increased. Judicial administration scholarship has long sought to understand how increases in caseload affect court procedure and practice. More recently, scholars have tried to assess how caseload can impact substantive law.

Against this background, Aziz Huq makes a significant contribution with his forthcoming article, Judicial Independence and the Rationing of Constitutional Remedies.

Huq begins with a stark observation: Article III adjudication is now a scarce good. He notes that in addition to a rising caseload, federal courts must contend with the fact that settled constitutional rules are broken on a daily basis. In particular, Huq argues, the constitutional criminal procedure rules developed by the Warren Court are consistently flouted. This constitutional problem quickly has become an organizational one, as the courts lack the ability to provide relief in all cases challenging violations of these rules, given their current resource constraints. Some rationing of constitutional remedies is an “inevitable” result. The question that follows is how courts have taken up that task.

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