ON EXTRAJUDICIAL CONSTITUTIONAL INTERPRETATION

In Cooper v. Aaron, the Supreme Court asserted that its interpretation s of the Constitution bind all officials, and that the obligation of n onjudicial officials to obey the Constitution is an obligation to obey the Constitution as interpreted by the Supreme Court. Since Cooper, h owever, a consensus has developed among scholars and officials that Co oper cannot be taken at face value, and that nonjudicial officials nee d not treat Supreme Court opinions as authoritative in order to comply with their obligation to the Constitution. In this Article, Professor s Alexander and Schauer challenge this consensus, and offer an unquali fied defense of Cooper and the judicial supremacy that it asserted. Th ey argue that settlement of contested issues is a crucial component of constitutionalism, that this goal can be achieved only by having an a uthoritative interpreter whose interpretations bind all others, end th at the Supreme Court can best serve this role. They further argue that constitutionalism entails obeying a constitution even when its direct ives seem mistaken, and that once we accept the obligation of official s to follow a mistaken constitutional directive, it is only a small st ep to expect them to follow a court decision that they believe similar ly mistaken. Both constitutionalism itself and judicial supremacy embo dy the goal of providing settlement of issues as to which people disag ree, and the coordination function of law in general and constitutiona lism in particular yields not only an obligation to obey the law, but also an obligation to obey a single authoritative interpreter of the l aw.