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Full-Text Articles in Jurisprudence
Stare Decisis And The Supreme Court(S): What States Can Learn From Gamble, Zachary B. Pohlman
Stare Decisis And The Supreme Court(S): What States Can Learn From Gamble, Zachary B. Pohlman
Notre Dame Law Review
While almost all questions before the Supreme Court require statutory or constitutional interpretation, state courts of last resort occupy a unique place in the American judicial landscape. As common-law courts, state supreme courts are empowered to develop common-law doctrines in addition to interpreting democratically enacted texts. This Note argues that these two distinct state court functions—interpretation of statutes and constitutions, and common-law judging—call for two distinct approaches to stare decisis, a distinction that is often muddied in practice. Justice Thomas’s concurrence in Gamble v. United States provides the framework for each approach, a framework based on the genesis and development …
The Exceptional Role Of Courts In The Constitutional Order, N.W. Barber, Adrian Vermeule
The Exceptional Role Of Courts In The Constitutional Order, N.W. Barber, Adrian Vermeule
Notre Dame Law Review
This Article looks at a rare part of the judicial role: those exceptional cases when the judge is called upon to pass judgment on the constitution itself. This arises in three groups of cases, roughly speaking. First, in exceptional cases the validity of the constitution and the legal order is thrown into dispute. Second, on some occasions the judge is asked to rule on the transition from one constitutional order to another. Third, there are some cases in which the health of the constitutional order requires the judge to act not merely beyond the law, as it were, but actually …
Sotomayor's Empathy Moves The Court A Step Closer To Equitable Adjudication, Veronica Couzo
Sotomayor's Empathy Moves The Court A Step Closer To Equitable Adjudication, Veronica Couzo
Notre Dame Law Review
On August 6, 2009, then-Judge, now-Justice, Sonia Sotomayor was confirmed as the nation’s first Latina Supreme Court Justice. While many Latinos embraced the idea of having “Sonia from the Bronx” on the bench, others were fearful that her jurisprudence, combined with her background, would result in “reverse racism.” These fears, while arguably unfounded at the time, have been completely dispelled. Just as Justice Thurgood Marshall transformed the adjudications of the Supreme Court through experiential discourse, so too, to a lesser extent, has Justice Sotomayor. In both oral arguments and written opinions, Justice Sonia Sotomayor has demonstrated educative leadership—enlightening her colleagues …