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Full-Text Articles in Supreme Court of the United States

Who Is Responsible For The Stealth Assault On Civil Rights?, Samuel R. Bagenstos Apr 2016

Who Is Responsible For The Stealth Assault On Civil Rights?, Samuel R. Bagenstos

Michigan Law Review

Staszak’s book does a great service in demonstrating the extent of the stealth assault on civil-rights litigation. As Staszak shows, procedural and remedial decisions fly under the public’s radar, but they have exceptionally important consequences. Indeed, one can draw a clear line between judicial decisions on such obscure topics as standing and qualified immunity and the persistent acts of police misconduct that have aroused great public concern in recent months. Any effort to ensure that civil-rights protections make a concrete difference in people’s lives must attend to the procedural and remedial issues Staszak discusses.


The Supreme Assimilation Of Patent Law, Peter Lee Jan 2016

The Supreme Assimilation Of Patent Law, Peter Lee

Michigan Law Review

Although tensions between universality and exceptionalism apply throughout law, they are particularly pronounced in patent law, a field that deals with highly technical subject matter. This Article explores these tensions by investigating an underappreciated descriptive theory of Supreme Court patent jurisprudence. Significantly extending previous scholarship, it argues that the Court’s recent decisions reflect a project of eliminating “patent exceptionalism” and assimilating patent doctrine to general legal principles (or, more precisely, to what the Court frames as general legal principles). Among other motivations, this trend responds to rather exceptional patent doctrine emanating from the Federal Circuit in areas as varied as …


Pleading With Congress To Resist The Urge To Overrule Twombly And Iqbal, Michael R. Huston Jan 2010

Pleading With Congress To Resist The Urge To Overrule Twombly And Iqbal, Michael R. Huston

Michigan Law Review

In Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly and Ashcroft v. Iqbal, the Supreme Court changed the rhetoric of the federal pleading system. Those decisions have been decried by members of the bar, scholars, and legislators as judicial activism and a rewriting of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Such criticism has led members of both houses of Congress to introduce legislation to overrule the decisions and return to some variation of the "notice pleading" regime that existed before Twombly. This Note argues that both of the current proposals to overrule Twombly and Iqbal should be rejected. Although the bills take different …


Awarding Attorney's Fees To Pro Se Litigants Under Rule 11, Jeremy D. Spector Jun 1997

Awarding Attorney's Fees To Pro Se Litigants Under Rule 11, Jeremy D. Spector

Michigan Law Review

Among the myriad rules and statutes designed to curb litigation abuse, Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure ("FRCP") is "the most widely used and most controversial of the sanctions rules." The increased use of Rule ll during the last fifteen years and the recent proliferation of fee-shifting provisions in federal statutes4 have led to an onslaught of motions for attorney's fees in the federal district courts. Simultaneously, these courts are seeing an increasing number of pro se litigants appear before them. The confluence of these two trends has produced the seemingly paradoxical result of pro se parties …


The Excessive History Of Federal Rule 15(C) And Its Lessons For Civil Rules Revision, Harold S. Lewis Jr. Jun 1987

The Excessive History Of Federal Rule 15(C) And Its Lessons For Civil Rules Revision, Harold S. Lewis Jr.

Michigan Law Review

This case study of one Federal Rule of Civil Procedure is designed to suggest affirmative answers to these questions. My focus is on the surprisingly extensive body of case law, culminating in the Supreme Court's 1986 decision in Schiavone v. Fortune, that parses the second sentence of Federal Rule 15(c). Added in 1966, that sentence attempts to set standards for the relation back of party-changing amendments to pleadings. A more prototypically pedestrian, less prepossessing topic of the traditionalist type could scarcely be imagined. Yet a review of its history brings larger points into sharp relief: something is seriously amiss in …


Contempt-Injunctions-Federal Civil Contempt Decree Orders Deputy Sheriff To Resign From Office-Lance V. Plummer, Michigan Law Review Jan 1967

Contempt-Injunctions-Federal Civil Contempt Decree Orders Deputy Sheriff To Resign From Office-Lance V. Plummer, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

During the summer of 1964, a federal district judge issued an injunction prohibiting various St. Augustine, Florida organizations and other persons with notice of the injunction from harassing or intimidating Negroes who were seeking motel or restaurant accommodations. Appellant Lance, an unpaid volunteer deputy sheriff, was not a member of any of the enjoined organizations, but he had actual notice of the order. Nonetheless, six days after the injunction was issued, he engaged in activities designed to intimidate a Negro citizen. In a subsequent civil contempt action arising from these activities, the federal district judge, asserting jurisdiction over him because …


Habeas Corpus--Custody And Release From Custody Requirements Of Habeas Corpus--Viability Of Mcnally V. Hill In The Moden Context, Michigan Law Review Nov 1966

Habeas Corpus--Custody And Release From Custody Requirements Of Habeas Corpus--Viability Of Mcnally V. Hill In The Moden Context, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

Section 2241 of Title 28 of the United States Code requires that a petitioner for a writ of habeas corpus be "in custody." As a corollary of the "custody" requirement, the common law tradition required that the effect of the writ must be the petitioner's "release from custody.'' Because the United States Constitution and the federal habeas corpus statutes guarantee the availability of the writ in general terms, it is to the common law that the courts have consistently turned for the definition of these terms and for the restrictive effect of these requirements on the availability of the writ …


Eleventh Amendment, Judicial Code, And Federal Rules Of Civil Procedure Restrict Ability Of United States To Implead A State In Connection With Suit Commenced By A Private Citizen--Parks V. United States, Michigan Law Review Jan 1966

Eleventh Amendment, Judicial Code, And Federal Rules Of Civil Procedure Restrict Ability Of United States To Implead A State In Connection With Suit Commenced By A Private Citizen--Parks V. United States, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

Suit was brought by an individual against the United States under the Federal Tort Claims Act to recover compensation for property damage alleged to have been caused by the Government's negligence in constructing and maintaining the physical components\ of a flood-control project in New York. Relying upon New York's promise to hold the United States harmless on any liability arising from damage of this nature, the Government impleaded the state. On a motion before the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York to dismiss the state as a third-party defendant, held, motion granted. The Federal …


Attachment And Garnishment In The Federal Courts, Brainerd Currie Jan 1961

Attachment And Garnishment In The Federal Courts, Brainerd Currie

Michigan Law Review

Personal injuries allegedly caused by the negligent manufacture of safety fuses used in blasting operations in a coal mine were suffered by Raymond Davis, apparently a citizen of Arkansas. The manufacturer, Ensign-Bickford Company, was a Connecticut corporation that could not be personally served with process within Arkansas. But it happened that two foreign corporations, amenable to process in the state, were indebted in substantial amounts to Ensign-Bickford Company. Accordingly, counsel for Davis, invoking the diversity jurisdiction, filed an action in the District Court for the Western District of Arkansas. Without issue of summons, the plaintiff, in conformity with Arkansas statutes, …


Compulsory Joinder Of Parties In Civil Actions, John W. Reed Feb 1957

Compulsory Joinder Of Parties In Civil Actions, John W. Reed

Michigan Law Review

Compulsory joinder cases involving interests in land display one peculiar and important characteristic: there is almost never any need in the state courts to wrestle with the question of whether a person is indispensable as distinguished from necessary. One hastens to add that this attribute of land cases appears to have gone largely unnoticed, but it exists none the less. It arises out of the fact that in a suit involving real property it is never impossible for the court to obtain jurisdiction over all persons interested therein to an extent which will enable the court to adjudicate controversies over …


Suits Against Unincorporated Associations Under The Federal Rules Of Civil Procedure, John Kaplan May 1955

Suits Against Unincorporated Associations Under The Federal Rules Of Civil Procedure, John Kaplan

Michigan Law Review

Concepts, Benjamin Cardozo has said, "are useful, indeed indispensable, if kept within their place. We will press them quite a distance. . . . A time comes, however, when the concepts carry us too far, or farther than we are ready to go with them, and behold, some other concept, with capacity to serve our needs is waiting at the gate. 'It is a peculiar virtue of our system of law that the process of inclusion and exclusion, so often employed in developing a rule, is not allowed to end with its enunciation, and that an expression in an opinion …