Coleman v. Miller
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| Coleman v. Miller | ||||||||||||
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| Argued October 10, 1938 Reargued April 17 – April 18, 1939 Decided June 5, 1939 |
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| Holding | ||||||||||||
| All amendments to the Federal Constitution are considered pending before the states indefinitely unless Congress establishes a deadline within which the states must act. Further, Congress—not the courts—is responsible for deciding if an amendment has been validly ratified. | ||||||||||||
| Court membership | ||||||||||||
| Chief Justice: Charles Evans Hughes Associate Justices: James Clark McReynolds, Louis Brandeis, Pierce Butler, Harlan Fiske Stone, Owen Josephus Roberts, Hugo Black, Stanley Forman Reed, Felix Frankfurter, William O. Douglas |
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| Case opinions | ||||||||||||
| Majority by: Hughes Joined by: Brandeis, Roberts, Black, Reed, Frankfurter, Douglas Concurrence by: Black Joined by: Roberts, Frankfurter, Douglas Concurrence by: Frankfurter Dissent by: Butler Joined by: McReynolds |
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| Laws applied | ||||||||||||
| U.S. Const. Art. V | ||||||||||||
Coleman v. Miller, is a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court which clarified that if the Congress of the United States—when proposing for ratification an amendment to the United States Constitution pursuant to Article V thereof—chooses not to specify a deadline within which the state legislatures (or conventions held in the states) must act upon the proposed amendment, then the amendment remains pending business before the state legislatures (or conventions).
According to Coleman, it is none other than the Congress itself—if and when the Congress should later be presented with valid ratifications from the required number of states—which has the discretion to arbitrate the question of whether too much time has elapsed between Congress' initial proposal of the amendment and the most recent state ratification thereof assuming that, as a consequence of that most recent action, the legislatures of (or conventions conducted within) at least three-fourths of the states have approved the amendment at one time or another.
The Coleman ruling—which modified the 1921 finding in Dillon v. Gloss—formed the basis of the belated and unusual ratification of the 27th Amendment.
Thus far in American history, the 21st Amendment is the only one that was submitted to special ratifying conventions assembled in the states—rather than to the state legislatures—for ratification.
The Coleman decision has been described as the genesis of the "political question doctrine" which is sometimes espoused by federal courts in cases wherein the court deems the matter at hand to be properly assigned to the discretion of the legislative branch of the federal government.
