Writs of Quo Warranto - today.

Factual Questions
1

A writ of quo warranto, in a Common Law context, is basically a legal demand that the defendant justify the office they claim to hold or the legal power they claim to exercise. Wikipedia seems to indicate that this type of remedy is available in the US to pretty much anyone, at least in theory (it it’s original form, it could only be sought by the British Monarch).

Is this proceeding of any real importance today? How often does it actually happen? I’ve fantasized about filing for a writ of quo warranto against government administrative agencies or officers, but don’t really intend to do it.

E.g., filing for a Writ of Quo Warranto against a police department that issued you a ticket (i.e. you are challenging their status as a “real” and “legal” police department), filing one against the New Jersey Turnpike Authority because you think that the Turnpike should be free and hope you can find an irregularity that would invalidate their authority, or challenging the IRS and hoping that they will lose and thus void your income taxes.

2

The U.S. Court of Appeals recently issued a decision in a “birther” case, Drake v. Obama, which among other things discussed the requirements for filing a federal quo warranto action, including that it has to be filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by the Attorney General or U.S. Attorney.

The court held that dismissal of the quo warranto claim brought in California federal court, along with dismissal of all of the other “birther” claims, was proper.