Supreme Court of the United States Commons^™

Abandoning The Subjective And Objective Components Of A Well-Founded Fear Of Persecution, Grace Kim

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

Current asylum law requires that asylum seekers prove that they have a “well-founded fear of persecution.” However, a “well-founded fear”—the evidentiary standard in asylum cases—has remained ambiguous and difficult to apply in asylum cases. In Cardoza-Fonseca, the Supreme Court held that an asylum seeker can establish a well-founded fear with less than a 50% probability of future persecution. Although the Supreme Court sought to clarify the meaning of a well-founded fear, the decision has complicated the evidentiary standard by implying that it consists of two parts: the subjective component and objective component. The “subjective” component—the asylum seekers ...

Third-Party Standing And Abortion Providers: The Hidden Dangers Of June Medical Services, Elika Nassirinia

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

Standing is a long held, judicially-created doctrine intended to establish the proper role of courts by identifying who may bring a case in federal court. While standing usually requires that a party asserts his or her own rights, the Supreme Court has created certain exceptions that allow litigants to bring suit on behalf of third parties when they suffer a concrete injury, they have a “close relation” to the third party, and there are obstacles to the third party's ability to protect his or her own interests. June Medical Services, heard by the Supreme Court on June 29, 2020 ...

The Expansive Scope Of The Ministerial Exception After Our Lady Of Guadalupe School V. Morrissey-Berru, Allison R. Ferraris

Boston College Law Review

On July 8th, 2020, the United States Supreme Court held in Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru that two parochial school teachers, Kristen Biel and Agnes-Morrissey-Berru, were ministers for purposes of the First Amendment’s ministerial exception. This meant that the First Amendment barred their respective employment discrimination actions notwithstanding the merit of their claims. When the Court first recognized the ministerial exception in 2012, in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church & School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, it determined that an employee qualified as a minister through a multi-factor, totality of the circumstances analysis. Yet, in reaching its conclusion in ...

The Customer Is Always Right: Trademark Law And Generic Website Names In U.S. Patent And Trademark Office V. Booking.Com B.V., Marina F. Rothberg

Boston College Law Review

In 2020, in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office v. Booking.com B.V., the Supreme Court clarified that the owner of a website with a descriptive domain name could trademark the name, even if it were styled “generic.com,” as long as it had acquired secondary meaning to consumers. Justice Breyer, in his dissent, vigorously argued that this ruling would limit competition. He claimed that allowing Booking.com to trademark its brand name, which contains terms that competitors use to describe similar business activities, would essentially be giving it a monopoly. This Comment supports the majority’s decision, as ...

Neither Force Nor Will, But Merely Judgement: Becoming A Supreme Court Justice, Dajé M. Brinson

Criminology Student Work

No abstract provided.

Brief Of Amici Curiae Scholars Of The Law Of Non-Profit Organizations In Support Of Respondent: Americans For Prosperity Foundation V. Matthew Rodriguez, Nos. 19-251 & 19-255, Ellen P. Aprill, Roger Colinvaux, Sean Delany, James Fishman, Brian D. Galle, Philip Hackney, Jill R. Horwitz, Cindy Lott, Ray D. Madoff, Jill S. Manny, Nancy A. Mclaughlin, Richard Schmalbeck

Amici Briefs

The twelve individuals filing this amicus brief are professors and scholars of the law of nonprofit organizations. No party in this case represents all three of charity’s key stakeholders: charities, states, and taxpayers who underwrite the charities’ funding. Amici are participating in this litigation in order to aid the Court in understanding how these three interests depend on one another. They also attempt to provide a clearer understanding of state supervision of charities and how that supervision related to federal tax law.

Tenth Circuit Ruled In Favor Of Sex-Plus-Age Claims Of Discrimination Under Title Vii In The Wake Of Bostock V. Clayton County, Kayla King

Boston College Law Review

On July 21, 2020, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in Frappied v. Affinity Gaming Black Hawk, LLC held that sex-plus-age discrimination claims are cognizable under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. By taking a stance on the viability of sex-plus-age claims, the Tenth Circuit became the first circuit court to weigh in on the debate among the lower courts. Many federal district courts, relying on the availability of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act to address age discrimination claims, have rejected sex-plus-age claims under Title VII. This Comment argues that the Tenth ...

Climate Torts: It’S A Conspiracy!, Joseph Manning

Boston College Law Review

As public concern about climate change grows, so does frustration with the federal government’s inability to develop a strategy for reducing greenhouse gas emission. Consequently, in the past decade, multiple states and municipalities have filed lawsuits seeking to address climate change through common law claims, such as public nuisance. Courts, however, dismissed many of these suits because the Supreme Court held in 2011, in American Electric Power Company v. Connecticut, that the Clean Air Act governs greenhouse gas emissions and therefore displaces the common law as a cause of action. Despite this unfavorable precedent, the past three years produced ...

The Elusive Zone Of Twilight, Michael Coenen, Scott M. Sullivan

Boston College Law Review

In his canonical concurring opinion in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, Justice Robert Jackson set forth a “tripartite” framework for evaluating exercises of presidential power. Regarding the middle category of that framework, Justice Jackson famously suggested that presidential actions undertaken “in absence of either a congressional grant or denial of authority” implicate “a zone of twilight,” within which “any actual test of power is likely to depend on the imperatives of events and contemporary imponderables rather than on abstract theories of law.” Since the articulation of this idea some seventy years ago, the Supreme Court has furnished little additional ...

“A Waiver Of The Trial Itself”: The Constitutional Threats Of Extending United States V. Mezzanatto And Contractual Solutions, Cherylann M. Pasha

Boston College Law Review

Prosecutors and criminal defendants resolve most cases through plea agreements. Often these agreements contain waivers of Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 11(f) and Federal Rule of Evidence 410, which prevent the admission of statements made during plea discussions into evidence at criminal trial. In 1995, the U.S. Supreme Court in United States v. Mezzanatto held that such waivers are enforceable for impeachment purposes. Numerous U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals have extended this holding by permitting the use of these statements for the prosecution’s rebuttal and case-in-chief. This Note asserts that the extension of Mezzanatto threatens the ...

Divided Court Issues Bright-Line Ruling On Fourth Amendment Seizures, Jeffrey Bellin

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Overruling Roe V. Wade: Lessons From The Death Penalty, Paul Benjamin Linton

Pepperdine Law Review

In Furman v. Georgia (1972), the Supreme Court struck down the Georgia and Texas death penalty statutes, thereby calling into question the validity of every other state death penalty statute. In their concurring opinions, Justices Brennan and Marshall expressed the view that, given society’s gradual abandonment of the death penalty, capital punishment violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishments.” Justice Powell and three other justices dissented, arguing that the Court had misread the state of the law regarding society’s acceptance of the death penalty. Four years after Furman, in a quintet of cases, the ...

Reply ‘Stop’ To Cancel: Whether Receiving One Unwanted Marketing Text Message Confers Standing In Federal Court, Curtis R. Crooke

Boston College Law Review

On August 28, 2019, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, in Salcedo v. Hanna, created a split regarding whether the receipt of a text message in violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA) confers standing to sue. The TCPA contains prohibitions on the use of telephonic equipment for telemarketing purposes, which the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has interpreted to include text messaging. The Act also provides a private right of action for citizens to sue for violations if they have standing, meaning, in part, that they have suffered an injury. In Salcedo, the ...

Corporations "Pac" A Punch: Corporate Involvement's Influence In Elections And A Proposal For Public Campaign Financing In Ohio, Taylor Hagen

Cleveland State Law Review

In 2010, the United States Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision ruled that limiting corporate spending in elections violates the First Amendment right to free speech. With this decision, the Supreme Court overturned election spending restrictions that dated back more than a century. Before Citizens United v. FEC was decided, the Court had previously held that these restrictions were permissible because there is a governmental interest in preventing election and campaign corruption. Now, corporations may expend unlimited funds for outside election spending, to super PACs, and may even establish their own PACs. Increased corporate involvement in elections has deteriorated American ...

The War On Drugs: Moral Panic And Excessive Sentences, Michael Vitiello

Cleveland State Law Review

The United States’ War on Drugs has not been pretty. Moral panic has repeatedly driven policy when states and the federal government have regulated drugs. Responding to that panic, legislators have authorized severe sentences for drug offenses.

By design, Article III gives federal judges independence, in part, to protect fundamental rights against mob rule. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has often failed to protect fundamental rights in times of moral panic. For example, it eroded Fourth Amendment protections during the War on Drugs. Similarly, it failed to protect drug offenders from excessive prison sentences during the War on Drugs. This Article ...

Taylor V. Riojas: Anatomy Of A Supreme Court Intervention That Should Not Have Been Necessary, Zamir Ben-Dan

Nevada Law Journal Forum

In September 2013, an inmate in a Texas prison allegedly spent six days in two uninhabitable cells. One cell was covered in “massive amounts of feces;” the other cell was freezing cold and lacked a sink, a bunk and a toilet, containing only a clogged floor drain for him to relieve himself. Confinement under these abominable conditions were plainly illegal under the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution. Yet, two lower federal courts found, for slightly different reasons, that the inmate had no actionable constitutional claim and that the defendants were entitled to qualified immunity. Both decisions displayed a ...

A (Solicited) Call For Clarity: The Definition Of Automatic Telephone Dialing System After Gadelhak, Scott J. Sheltra

Boston College Law Review

In 2020, in Gadelhak v. AT&T Services, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit upheld the Northern District of Illinois’s ruling that a tool that sends text message surveys to consumers was not an automatic telephone dialing system under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991. The Seventh Circuit reached this decision by rendering a different interpretation for the statutory definition of an automatic dialer than the district court. Gadelhak widened an already substantial circuit court split regarding what technologies the Act covers. This Comment evaluates the strengths and shortcomings of the Seventh Circuit’s ...

The Economics Of Class Action Waivers, Albert H. Choi, Kathryn E. Spier

Articles

Many firms require consumers, employees, and suppliers to sign class action waivers as a condition of doing business with the firm, and the U.S. Supreme Court has endorsed companies’ ability to block class actions through mandatory individual arbitration clauses. Are class action waivers serving the interests of society or are they facilitating socially harmful business practices? This paper synthesizes and extends the existing law and economics literature by analyzing the firms’ incentive to impose class action waivers. While in many settings the firms’ incentive to block class actions may be aligned with maximizing social welfare, in many other settings ...

Law School News: Rwu Law Alumnae Will Address Ginsburg Legacy, Workplace Gender Equity 03-11-2021, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Deconstructing Invisible Walls: Sotomayor's Dissents In An Era Of Immigration Exceptionalism, Karla Mckanders

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Recent Developments, Clinton T. Summers

Arkansas Law Review

The United States Supreme Court upheld an Arkansas law regulating how pharmacies are reimbursed by pharmacy benefit managers. In Rutledge v. Pharmaceutical Care Management Ass’n, a unanimous Court decided that Arkansas Act 900, passed in 2015, was not pre-empted by the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (“ERISA”).

Greenbacks, Consent, And Unwritten Amendments, John M. Bickers

Arkansas Law Review

I remember a German farmer expressing as much in a few words as the whole subject requires: “money is money, and paper is paper.”—All the invention of man cannot make them otherwise. The alchymist may cease his labours, and the hunter after the philosopher’s stone go to rest, if paper cannot be metamorphosed into gold and silver, or made to answer the same purpose in all cases. Every day Americans spend paper money, using it as legal tender. Yet the Constitution makes no mention of this phenomenon. Indeed, it clearly prevents the states from having the authority to ...

2nd Annual Women In Law Leadership Lecture: A Fireside Chat With Debra Katz, Esq. 03-03-2021, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Law School News: Meet The Rbg Essay Contest Winners! 03/03/2021, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

“Remarkable Influence”: The Unexpected Importance Of Justice Scalia's Deceptively Unanimous And Contested Majority Opinions, Linda L. Berger, Eric C. Nystrom

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

Free Speech, Strict Scrutiny And A Better Way To Handle Speech Restrictions, Aaron Pinsoneault

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

When it comes to unprotected speech categories, the Roberts Court has taken an amoral and inaccurate approach. When the Court first created unprotected speech categories-- defined categories of speech that are not protected by the First Amendment-- it was unclear what rendered a category of speech unprotected. One school of thought argued that speech was unprotected if it provided little or no value to society. The other school of thought argued that speech was unprotected if it fell into a certain category of speech that was simply categorically unprotected. Then, in 2010, the Court strongly sided with the latter approach ...

From Civil Rights To Blackmail: How The Civil Rights Attorney's Fees Awards Act Of 1976 (42 U.S.C. § 1988) Has Perverted One Of America's Most Historic Civil Rights Statutes, Steven W. Fitschen

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

For fourteen years, members of Congress repeatedly introduced legislation directed at a single subject. A key underpinning for the necessity of the legislation was provided by the opinions of two Supreme Court justices. Yet, for the past nine years, Congress has gone silent on the same topic. This Article argues that it is past time for Congress to reconsider this topic, and that if it will not do so, the Supreme Court can rectify the situation without engaging in judicial legislation.

Perhaps the best view of Congress's efforts can be seen by examining the high-water mark of those efforts ...

Before And After Hinckley: Legal Insanity In The United States, Stephen J. Morse

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law

This chapter first considers the direction of the affirmative defense of legal insanity in the United States before John Hinckley was acquitted by reason of insanity in 1982 for attempting to assassinate President Reagan and others and the immediate aftermath of that acquittal. Since the middle of the 20^th Century, the tale is one of the rise and fall of the American Law Institute’s Model Penal Code test for legal insanity. Then it turns to the constitutional decisions of the United States Supreme Court concerning the status of legal insanity. Finally, it addresses the substantive and procedural changes ...

Propertizing Fair Use, Abraham Bell, Gideon Parchomovsky

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law

In its current form, fair use doctrine provides a personal defense that applies narrowly to the specific use by the specific user. The landmark case of Google v. Oracle, currently pending before the Supreme Court, illustrates why this is problematic. Even if the Court were to rule that Google’s use of Oracle’s Java API’s was fair, the ruling would not protect the numerous parties that developed Java applications for the Android operating system; it would only shelter Google and Google’s particular use. This is not an isolated problem; the per use/per user rule cuts across ...

Predicting Supreme Court Behavior In Indian Law Cases, Grant Christensen

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This piece builds upon Matthew Fletcher’s call for additional empirical work in Indian law by creating a new dataset of Indian law opinions. The piece takes every Indian law case decided by the Supreme Court from the beginning of the Warren Court until the end of the 2019-2020 term. The scholarship first produces an Indian law scorecard that measures how often each Justice voted for the “pro- Indian” outcome. It then compares those results to the Justice’s political ideology to suggest that while there is a general trend that a more “liberal” Justice is more likely to favor ...