Supreme Court of the United States Commons^™

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, which …

Against Congressional Case Snatching, Ronald J. Krotoszynski, Atticus Deprospro

William & Mary Law Review

Congress has developed a deeply problematic habit of aggrandizing itself by snatching cases from the Article III courts. One form of contemporary case snatching involves directly legislating the outcome of pending litigation by statute. These laws do not involve generic amendments to existing statutes but rather dictate specific rulings by the Article III courts in particular cases. Another form of congressional case snatching involves rendering ongoing judicial proceedings essentially advisory by unilaterally permitting a disgruntled litigant to transfer a pending case from an Article III court to an executive agency for resolution. Both practices involve Congress reallocating the business of …