Supreme Court of the United States Commons^™

Education And Democracy From Brown To Plyler, Nicholas Espíritu

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

Judicial review has often been cast in terms of democratic legitimacy. Democratic legitimacy is often linked to whether it institutes the will of the people through majoritarian rule and whether it creates processes for reevaluation of these prior decisions by newly constituted majorities. Judicial review of majoritarian decisions has often been criticized as a overriding or circumventing of these democratic processes. Beginning with Brown v. Board of Education, the Warren Court adopted a resolution of the “counter-majoritarian difficulty” of judicial review by tacitly accepting Justice Stone’s formulation from footnote four of United States v. Carolene Products and engaging …

Opening Remarks, Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

Thank you. I am honored to be here. And there is no more fitting way to honor Michael than around the 40th anniversary of Plyler v. Doe.

This case centered on Texas statute § 21.031, which on its face, permitted the local school districts to exclude noncitizen children who entered the United States without immigration status or to charge admission for the same. The questions before the Court were: (1) whether a noncitizen under the statute who is present in the state without legal status is a “person” and therefore in the jurisdiction of the state within the meaning …

“You Don’T Bring Me Flowers Anymore”: President Clinton, Paula Jones, And Why Courts Should Expand The Definition Of “Adverse Employment Action” Under Title Vii’S Anti-Retaliation Provision, Lawrence Rosenthal

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

Anti-discrimination statutes such as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (“Title VII”), the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”), and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (“ADEA”) prohibit discrimination based on individuals’ protected characteristics. In addition to prohibiting this type of status-based discrimination, these statutes also prohibit employers from retaliating against employees who assert their rights under the statutes or who assist others in asserting their rights.

Over the past several years, retaliation charges filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) have made up an increasingly high percentage of all charges filed with the agency. Specifically, …

“The Past Got Broken Off”: Classifying “Indian” In The Indian Child Welfare Act, Lucia Kello

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

In her 1993 novel, Pigs in Heaven, Barbara Kingsolver chronicles the story of an American Indian child, Turtle, and her young, white, adoptive mother, Taylor Greer. In what has been criticized as a controversial imagined fact pattern, Kingsolver writes that while stopped in a parking lot in the middle of the night, Taylor is approached by an American Indian woman holding a baby. Rather mysteriously, the woman informs Taylor that the baby’s mother died and the baby was being abused, upon which Taylor notes that “it looked like someone had been hurting [the woman] too.” After placing the …

In Defense Of Moses, Tamar Meshel

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

In 1925, Congress enacted a short statute to make arbitration agreements in maritime transactions and interstate commerce “valid, irrevocable, and enforceable.” Yet the Federal Arbitration Act’s (FAA) simple objective of facilitating the resolution of disputes outside of the courtroom has proven much easier to declare than to implement in practice. In the century since its enactment, the FAA has become a frequently litigated statute and the subject of 59 opinions of the Supreme Court, the majority of which have reversed lower courts’ interpretations of the Act. The Supreme Court’s FAA jurisprudence has not only been abundant but also controversial. …

Activist Extremist Terrorist Traitor, J. Richard Broughton

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

Abraham Lincoln had a way of capturing, rhetorically, the national ethos. The “house divided.” “Right makes might” at Cooper Union. Gettysburg’s “last full measure of devotion” and the “new birth of freedom.” The “mystic chords of memory” and the “better angels of our nature.” “[M]alice toward none,” “charity for all,” and “firmness in the right.” But Lincoln not only evaluated America’s character; he also understood the fragility of those things upon which the success of the American constitutional experiment depended, and the consequences when the national ethos was in crisis. Perhaps no Lincoln speech better examines the threats to …

Statutory Interpretation And Agency Disgorgement Power, Caprice Roberts

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

In recent decades, the Supreme Court has showed enhanced interest in equitable principles and remedies. What began as periodic cases featuring one jurist’s idiosyncratic and sometimes misguided interpretations has manifested a broader, significant trend. A consequential theme emerges across varied cases: a revival in the Court’s emphasis on the jurisprudence of equitable remedies. The Court’s recent and current docket continues this momentum. Scholars are tracking the developments and advocating for a system of equity; focusing on historical constraints and federal equity power; and generating a restitution revival.

What happens when obstacles foreclose claims and threaten to leave parties without …