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The Roberts Court: Year 1, Lori A. Ringhand Jul 2006

The Roberts Court: Year 1, Lori A. Ringhand

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This paper is an empirical analysis of the Supreme Court's recently-ended 2005 term, including an examination of the issues raised by, and the ideological direction of, the decisions issued by the Court. In addition to reviewing the work of the Court as a whole, the paper also separately examines the jurisprudence of new Justices Roberts and Alito. In doing so, it raises the possibility that these justices may have more in common with each other than with the Court's more established conservative members. The paper also demonstrates that the Court, pursuant to one of Justice Roberts' frequently stated goals, was …


John Paul Stevens, Human Rights Judge, Diane Marie Amann Mar 2006

John Paul Stevens, Human Rights Judge, Diane Marie Amann

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This article explores the nature and origins of Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens' engagement with international and foreign law and norms. It first discusses Stevens' pivotal role in the revived use of such norms to aid constitutional interpretation, as well as 1990s opinions testing the extent to which constitutional protections reach beyond the water's edge and 2004 opinions on post-September 11 detention. It then turns to mid-century experiences that appear to have contributed to Stevens' willingness to consult foreign context. The article reveals that as a code breaker Stevens played a role in the downing of the Japanese general …


Supremacy And Diplomacy: The International Law Of The U.S. Supreme Court, Harlan G. Cohen Jan 2006

Supremacy And Diplomacy: The International Law Of The U.S. Supreme Court, Harlan G. Cohen

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In 2003-2004, a Presidential campaign year dominated by debates about international affairs and international law, the U.S. Supreme Court took an unusual number of cases of international import. The Court considered the Alien Tort Claims Act and the future of human rights suits in U.S. courts, the applicability of the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act to claims involving Nazi-stolen artwork, the applicability of American antitrust law to foreign anticompetitive activity, and the legality of the Guantanamo detentions. A great deal of ink has been spilled analyzing the individual impacts of each of these cases. What has been less considered is how …


Looking Ahead: October Term 2006, Peter B. Rutledge Jan 2005

Looking Ahead: October Term 2006, Peter B. Rutledge

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October Term 2006 will be the first full opportunity for Court-watchers to assess the impact of recent changes in the Court's membership. It will be Chief Justice Roberts' second full term and Justice Alito's first. It also will provide the first full term in which to assess whether Justice Kennedy will reclaim his role as "swing justice." Accompanying these changes in the Court's personnel will be a docket full of interesting cases on topics such as the constitutionality of racial diversity programs, abortion, environmental law, punitive damages, and criminal procedure. Consistent with prior contributions to this series, this essay offers …


Can Treasury Overrule The Supreme Court?, Gregg D. Polsky Feb 2004

Can Treasury Overrule The Supreme Court?, Gregg D. Polsky

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This article considers whether the Treasury's check-the-box regulations, which have been widely praised by tax practitioners, are valid. These regulations generally allow any unincorporated entity to elect whether it will be treated as a corporation or a partnership for tax purposes. When these regulations were first proposed, there was some debate as to whether such an elective regime was foreclosed by the statutory scheme, which requires that "associations" be taxed as corporations. This article argues that the focus of this debate was misplaced because, even assuming that the statutory scheme itself was sufficiently ambiguous as to permit an elective regime, …


An End Of Term Exam: Ot 2003 At The United States Supreme Court, Peter B. Rutledge, Nicole L. Angarella Jan 2004

An End Of Term Exam: Ot 2003 At The United States Supreme Court, Peter B. Rutledge, Nicole L. Angarella

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This Essay proceeds in two parts. The first part provides the broad overview of October Term 2003. It analyzes current statistics in the size and composition of the Court's caseload and compares those figures to past terms. It also considers the justices' voting patterns and which justices proved to be the "swing" votes, both generally and in particular fields. The second part focuses on the key cases of the Term. It addresses both what the Court decided and what it failed to decide. It critiques those decisions and considers their implications for future doctrinal developments. The Court Consensus offers some …


Defining Democracy: The Supreme Court's Campaign Finance Dilemma, Lori A. Ringhand Jan 2004

Defining Democracy: The Supreme Court's Campaign Finance Dilemma, Lori A. Ringhand

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On December 10, 2003 the United States Supreme Court issued its decision in McConnell v. FEC. In McConnell, the Court was asked to determine the constitutionality of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act ("BCRA"). A divided Court, in a deeply fractured decision in which six justices wrote individual opinions, upheld the major provisions of the legislation. Yet despite the almost 300 pages of reasoning provided by the Court, and a voluminous record developed by the district court, the Justices could not agree on what purportedly is the central issue in campaign finance law: whether the challenged regulations were necessary …


The Rehnquist Court, Structural Due Process, And Semisubstantive Constitutional Review, Dan T. Coenen Sep 2002

The Rehnquist Court, Structural Due Process, And Semisubstantive Constitutional Review, Dan T. Coenen

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Semisubstantive review, as I use that label, entails four key features. First, the subject matter of judicial inquiry is not the process applied in adjudicating a discrete dispute; rather, the matter at hand is the constitutionality of a statute or other generalized expression of legal policy. Second, some procedural omission by the lawmaker -- rather than an incurably substantive flaw in the end product of its work -- lays the groundwork for a judicial intervention that invalidates the challenged rule or negates how that rule otherwise would operate. It may be, for example, that a federal statute read as a …


There's Nothing Special About Sex: The Supreme Court Mainstreams Sexual Harassment, Rebecca White Apr 1999

There's Nothing Special About Sex: The Supreme Court Mainstreams Sexual Harassment, Rebecca White

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In this Essay, Professor White argues that the Supreme Court finally has merged analysis of sexual harassment law with other claims of intentional discrimination. Professor White contends that the Court's decision in Meritor Savings Bank, FSB v. Vinson created confusion over the proper analysis of sexual harassment claims by seemingly embracing quid pro quo and hostile work environment theories as distinct forms of discrimination and by suggesting that at least some sexual harassment claims may warrant a revised approach to employer liability. In the wake of Meritor, sexual harassment claims increasingly were evaluated differently from other claims of disparate treatment, …


Original Intent And Article Iii, Michael L. Wells, Edward J. Larson Nov 1995

Original Intent And Article Iii, Michael L. Wells, Edward J. Larson

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Article III of the United States Constitution sets limits on the ability of the legislature to expand or contract the jurisdiction of the federal courts. The Supreme Court has generally held that Article III's restraints on the power of the legislature to restrict the jurisdiction of the federal courts are few and extremely permissive. Many scholars, however, argue that Article III imposes some strong limitations on the legislature's ability to define federal jurisdiction. Strangely, both sides of the debate rely on originalist arguments. This Article argues that reliance on the Framers' intent to resolve issues of federal courts law is …