Landmark Mandamus Case Law

The decisions, read one at a time

Summaries of mandamus doctrine repeat each other. The decisions themselves are shorter, stranger and more useful than the summaries, and several of the phrases that appear in every brief were written to resolve a dispute that had nothing to do with the case the reader is holding. This section reads them one at a time: the facts, the holding, and what the case does and does not stand for.

The line runs from Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137 (1803), where the Court found the right and the remedy and then held it had no jurisdiction to grant either, through the supervisory limits of Roche v. Evaporated Milk Ass'n, 319 U.S. 21 (1943), and Will v. United States, 389 U.S. 90 (1967), to the two-condition formulation of Kerr v. U.S. District Court, 426 U.S. 394 (1976), and its restatement with an explicit discretionary element in Cheney v. U.S. District Court, 542 U.S. 367 (2004). Two later decisions govern more filings than the rest combined: Telecommunications Research & Action Center v. FCC, 750 F.2d 70 (D.C. Cir. 1984), for delay, and Norton v. Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, 542 U.S. 55 (2004), for what can be compelled at all. Around them sit the cases that mark the edges: Allied Chemical Corp. v. Daiflon, Inc., 449 U.S. 33 (1980), on error that is not correctable by writ, Heckler v. Chaney, 470 U.S. 821 (1985), on enforcement discretion, and the circuit decisions, In re Volkswagen of America, Inc., 545 F.3d 304 (5th Cir. 2008) (en banc) among them, that shape what practitioners actually file.

One warning belongs at the front of this section. Because issuance is discretionary, courts deny mandamus petitions constantly in unexplained one-line orders, and such a denial settles nothing about the merits of the underlying grievance. It is not a holding that the duty did not exist, and it cannot be cited as one. Only reasoned decisions carry doctrine. Applying any of this to a specific problem is the work of Foundations and The Practice Desk; state doctrine develops separately and is treated in State Practice.