Jurisprudence Commons^™

Institutional Rules, Strategic Behavior And The Legacy Of Chief Justice William Rehnquist: Setting The Record Straight On Dickerson V. United States, Daniel Katz

Daniel M Katz

Why did Justice Rehnquist behave the way he did in Dickerson v. United States? As written, many prevailing accounts accept Justice Rehnquist's opinion in Dickerson v. United States at face value and disavow the potential of a strategic explanation. The difficulty with the non-strategic accounts is their failure to outline explicitly the evidence supporting the uniqueness of their theory. Specifically, these explanations largely ignore the alternative set of preferences which could have produced the Chief's decision. This is troubling because prior scholarship demonstrates that a chief justice possesses a unique set of institutional powers which provides significant incentive for him …

Judicial Activism’S Effect On Judicial Elections, Nick Fernandes

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

High profile Supreme Court cases have become increasingly commonplace, particularly with the Citizens United court decision granting unprecedented rights to corporations. Many in the media have decried these as examples of increasing “judicial activism”. This trend has trickled down to the state supreme courts as justices have increasingly played a more active role in developing policy. Gay marriage has become legalized in numerous states due to this trend. While public sentiment is unlikely to affect the appointed Supreme Court, it could have a substantial impact on state judicial elections.

This paper will specifically be looking at judicial elections in Kentucky. …

In Search Of The Real Roberts Court, Stephen Wermiel

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

A Rhetorician’S Practical Wisdom, Linda L. Berger

Scholarly Works

For three years, I had the great good fortune to work in the office next to Jack Sammons. My good fortune extended to a coincidence of timing that allowed me to work with Jack on a co-authored article, The Law's Mystery. During the time I worked next door, I felt cursed by an inability to grasp concepts that to Jack appeared inevitable and essential, whether those inevitabilities and essences were to be found within the law, good lawyering, or good legal education. The curse persisted throughout the writing of The Law's Mystery.

For Jack, the essence of a …

Two Excursions Into Current U.S. Supreme Court Opinion-Writing, Paul F. Rothstein

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In the last weeks in June, 2015, as the present term of the U.S. Supreme Court drew to a close, many controversial and important decisions were handed down by the Court. The substance of the decisions has been written about extensively. Two of the decisions in particular, though, caught my eye as a teacher of legal techniques, not for the importance of the subject of the particular decision, but for what they may illustrate in a teachable fashion about at least some opinion writing. The two cases are Ohio v. Clark (June 18, 2015) interpreting the Confrontation Clause of the …