Jurisprudence Commons^™

Three Stories: A Comment On Pritchard & Thompson’S A History Of Securities Laws In The Supreme Court, Harwell Wells

Seattle University Law Review

Adam Pritchard and Robert Thompson’s A History of Securities Laws in the Supreme Court should stand for decades as the definitive work on the Federal securities laws’ career in the Supreme Court across the twentieth century.1 Like all good histories, it both tells a story and makes an argument. The story recounts how the Court dealt with the major securities laws, as well the agency charged with enforcing them, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the rules it promulgated, from the 1930s into the twenty-first century. But the book does not just string together a series of events, “one …

The Pioneers, Waves, And Random Walks Of Securities Law In The Supreme Court, Elizabeth Pollman

Seattle University Law Review

After the pioneers, waves, and random walks that have animated the history of securities laws in the U.S. Supreme Court, we might now be on the precipice of a new chapter. Pritchard and Thompson’s superb book, A History of Securities Law in the Supreme Court, illuminates with rich archival detail how the Court’s view of the securities laws and the SEC have changed over time and how individuals have influenced this history. The book provides an invaluable resource for understanding nearly a century’s worth of Supreme Court jurisprudence in the area of securities law and much needed context for …

Students For Fair Admissions: Affirming Affirmative Action And Shapeshifting Towards Cognitive Diversity?, Steven A. Ramirez

Seattle University Law Review

The Roberts Court holds a well-earned reputation for overturning Supreme Court precedent regardless of the long-standing nature of the case. The Roberts Court knows how to overrule precedent. In Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (SFFA), the Court’s majority opinion never intimates that it overrules Grutter v. Bollinger, the Court’s leading opinion permitting race-based affirmative action in college admissions. Instead, the Roberts Court applied Grutter as authoritative to hold certain affirmative action programs entailing racial preferences violative of the Constitution. These programs did not provide an end point, nor did they require assessment, review, periodic expiration, or revision for greater …

Bureaucratic Overreach And The Role Of The Courts In Protecting Representative Democracy, Katie Cassady

Liberty University Journal of Statesmanship & Public Policy

The United States bureaucracy began as only four departments and has expanded to address nearly every issue of public life. While these bureaucratic agencies are ostensibly under congressional oversight and the supervision of the President as part of the executive branch, they consistently usurp their discretionary authority and bypass the Founding Fathers’ design of balancing legislative power in a bicameral Congress.

The Supreme Court holds an indispensable role in mitigating the overreach of executive agencies, yet the courts’ inability to hold bureaucrats accountable has diluted voters’ voices. Since the Supreme Court’s 1984 ruling in Chevron, U.S.A. v. Natural Resources Defense …

The Counterdemocratic Difficulty, Aziz Z. Huq

Northwestern University Law Review

Since the 2020 elections, debate about the Supreme Court’s relationship with the mechanisms of national democracy has intensified. One important thread of that debate focuses critically on the possibility of a judicial decision flipping a presidential election or thwarting the will of national majorities respecting progressive legislation, and pushes concerns about the Court’s effect on national democracy. A narrow focus on specific interventions, however, does not exhaust the subtle and consequential ways in which the Court influences whether and how the American democratic system thrives or fails. A narrow focus is partial because it construes democracy as merely the aggregation …

The Distribution Of Justices' Votes And Countering National Disunity, Nicholas L. Georgakopoulos

FIU Law Review

The estimation of the distribution that matches the voting of the justices of the Supreme Court shows that voting is correlated and reveals three phenomena: an outlier distribution produced by one composition of the Court, the surprising frequency of unanimous decisions, and the intensity with which the Court avoids 4–4 decisions. The intensity with which the Court avoids 4–4 splits and the strength of the drive to produce unanimous decisions seem sensitive to national disunity. At times of greater disunity, 1965 to 1975 and 2001 to 2020, the Court avoids 4–4 splits more intensely and has a greater fraction of …

Chisholm V. Georgia (1793): Laying The Foundation For Supreme Court Precedent, Abigail Stanger

The Cardinal Edge

No abstract provided.

Foreword: Criminal Procedure In Winter, Daniel Epps

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

No abstract provided.

Justice Blackmun And Individual Rights, Diane P. Wood

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Of the many contributions Justice Blackmun has made to American jurisprudence, surely his record in the area of individual rights stands out for its importance. Throughout his career on the Supreme Court, he has displayed concern for a wide variety of individual and civil rights. He has rendered decisions on matters ranging from the most personal interests in autonomy and freedom from interference from government in life’s private realms, to the increasingly complex problems posed by discrimination based upon race, sex, national origin, alienage, illegitimacy, sexual orientation, and other characteristics. As his views have become well known to the public, …

Bruce Ledewitz, American Religious Democracy: Coming To Terms With The End Of Secular Politics, Thomas A. Schweitzer

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Explaining The Supreme Court's Interest In Patent Law, Timothy R. Holbrook

IP Theory

No abstract provided.

Montesquieu's Theory Of Government And The Framing Of The American Constitution , Matthew P. Bergman

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Doubting Thomas: Confirmation Veracity Meets Performance Reality, Joyce A. Baugh, Christopher E. Smith

Seattle University Law Review

At the close of the United States Supreme Court's 1994 term, Justice Clarence Thomas became the center of news media attention for his important role as a prominent member of the Court's resurgent conservative bloc. More frequently than in past terms, Thomas's opinions articulated the conservative position for his fellow Justices. According to one report, "The newly energized Thomas has shown little hesitancy this term in leading the conservative charge. Another article referred to Thomas's "full-throated emergence as a distinctive and articulate judicial voice." Thomas's new prominence, assertiveness, and visibility have been attributed to his emergence from the shadows of …