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Judicial Retirements And The Staying Power Of U.S. Supreme Court Decisions, Stuart M. Benjamin, Georg Vanberg
Judicial Retirements And The Staying Power Of U.S. Supreme Court Decisions, Stuart M. Benjamin, Georg Vanberg
Faculty Scholarship
The influence of U.S. Supreme Court majority opinions depends critically on how these opinions are received and treated by lower courts, which decide the vast majority of legal disputes. We argue that the retirement of Justices on the Supreme Court serves as a simple heuristic device for lower court judges in deciding how much deference to show to Supreme Court precedent. Using a unique dataset of the treatment of all Supreme Court majority opinions in the courts of appeals from 1953 to 2012, we find that negative treatments of Supreme Court opinions increase, and positive treatments decrease, as the Justices …
Inherent National Sovereignty Constitutionalism: An Original Understanding Of The U.S. Constitution, Robert J. Kaczorowski
Inherent National Sovereignty Constitutionalism: An Original Understanding Of The U.S. Constitution, Robert J. Kaczorowski
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
The Concept Of The Speech Platform: Walker V. Texas Division, Abner S. Greene
The Concept Of The Speech Platform: Walker V. Texas Division, Abner S. Greene
Faculty Scholarship
In Walker, the Court deemed Texas’ specialty license plate program government speech, and thus applied no First Amendment review to the state’s refusal to allow a Confederate battle flag specialty plate, even though the reason for the refusal was that the plate was offensive. The dissent considered this unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination in a limited public forum. This article argues that the Walker result was correct, but for the wrong reason. Government should have the power to forbid hateful or vulgar speech from limited public forums such as specialty or vanity license plates, transit ads, and after-school extracurricular activities, even though …