Law Commons^™

U.S. Supreme Court Tort Reform: Limiting State Power To Articulate And Develop Its Own Tort Law–Defamation, Preemption, And Punitive Damages, Thomas C. Galligan

ExpressO

U.S. Supreme Court Tort Reform: Limiting State Power to Articulate and Develop Its Own Tort Law–Defamation, Preemption, and Punitive Damages analyzes and critiques the three primary areas in which the U.S. Supreme Court has found federal constitutional limits on a state’s power to articulate, develop, and apply its common law of torts. It is the first piece to consider all three areas together as an emerging body of jurisprudence which Professor Galligan calls U.S. Supreme Court tort reform. After setting forth a modest model of adjudication, the article applies that model to each of the three areas: defamation and related …

Purposeless Restraints: Fourteenth Amendment Rationality Scrutiny And The Constitutional Review Of Prison Sentences, Michael P. Oshea

ExpressO

This Article presents an analysis and defense of the Supreme Court's current Eighth Amendment case law on prison sentencing. I argue that in the pivotal cases of Ewing v. California and Harmelin v. Michigan, a plurality of the Supreme Court has assimilated Eighth Amendment review of individual prison sentences to rationality review of state action under the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause. When the cases are read rightly, it becomes clear that Eighth Amendment review does not really ask whether a sentence is "grossly disproportionate," as the Court has asserted; rather, it seeks to identify arbitrary and capricious prison sentences …

Punishing Tobacco Industry Misconduct: The Case For Exceeding A Single Digit Ratio Between Punitive And Compensatory Damages, Sara D. Guardino, Richard A. Daynard

ExpressO

This article addresses large punitive damages awards that juries have granted to plaintiffs in recent cases against the tobacco industry, and demonstrates why such high awards are a warranted and necessary incentive for the companies to change their dangerous course of conduct.

In State Farm v. Campbell, the United States Supreme Court announced that “few awards exceeding a single-digit ratio between punitive and compensatory damages” will be constitutional. In a subsequent smoking and health case brought against Philip Morris, however, a state appeals court allowed a punitive damages award that was almost 97 times the compensatory damages award. This decision …