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The Innocence Standard: Supreme Court Nominees And Sexual Misconduct, Lisa Avalos

Journal Articles

Should the United States Senate allow judicial nominees who have been credibly accused of sexual misconduct to be seated on the Supreme Court? How should we handle these allegations when they arise during the vetting process? Despite the importance of these questions, lawmakers have failed to address them.

The contentious Clarence Thomas hearings in 1991 featured testimony from Professor Anita Hill and did much to raise Americans' awareness about the prevalence of sexual misconduct in the workplace. Although ProfessorHill subsequently calledfor the Senate to implement aprocess for addressing future sexual misconduct allegations against Supreme Court nominees, her calls have gone …

Intolerable Asymmetry And Uncertainty: Congress Should Right The Wrongs Of The Civil Rights Act Of 1991, William R. Corbett

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Stare Decisis As Judicial Doctrine, Randy J. Kozel

Journal Articles

Stare decisis has been called many things, among them a principle of policy, a series of prudential and pragmatic considerations, and simply the preferred course. Often overlooked is the fact that stare decisis is also a judicial doctrine, an analytical system used to guide the rules of decision for resolving concrete disputes that come before the courts.

This Article examines stare decisis as applied by the U.S. Supreme Court, our nation’s highest doctrinal authority. A review of the Court’s jurisprudence yields two principal lessons about the modern doctrine of stare decisis. First, the doctrine is comprised largely of malleable factors …

Symposium: Stare Decisis And Nonjudicial Actors: Introduction, Amy Coney Barrett

Journal Articles

This essay is as an introduction to a symposium on stare decisis and nonjudicial actors. It frames the questions explored in the symposium by pausing to reflect upon the variety of ways in which nonjudicial actors have, over time, registered their disagreement with decisions of the United States Supreme Court. Both public officials and private citizens have battled the Court on any number of occasions since its inception, and historically, they have employed a diverse range of tactics in doing so. They have resisted Supreme Court judgments. They have denied the binding effect of Supreme Court opinions. They have sought …

Schiavone: An Un-Fortune-Ate Illustration Of The Supreme Court's Role As Interpreter Of The Federal Rules Of Civil Procedure, Joseph P. Bauer

Journal Articles

Let me identify the two basic theses of this paper. First, I believe that in the recent Schiavone v. Fortune case, the Supreme Court gave the Federal Rule of Civil Procedure under consideration there, Rule 15(c), an unduly restrictive reading. In this, the fiftieth year of the effective date of the Rules, it is particularly unfortunate to see any of the Rules given an unnecessarily grudging interpretation. My second assertion is that as a general matter, in interpreting the Federal Rules, courts should recognize that their role is different from the one they play in interpreting statutes or in applying …