Law Commons^™

An Overview Of The October 2006 Supreme Court Term, Erwin Chemerinsky

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Statistical Look At The Supreme Court's 2009 Team, John M. Scheb Ii, Colin Glennon, Hemant Sharma

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

Whether a change in membership occurs or not, every Supreme Court term presents a unique set of controversies and decisions for legal scholars to examine. Herein, we offer a discussion of the Court's recently completed 2009-2010 term. Rather than analyzing specific opinions in detail (as many have already done), we generate a comprehensive statistical analysis of justice voting behavior for the term. In particular, we examine consensus and division on the Court, the ideological tenor of the term, voting alignments among the justices, the production of opinions, and the Court's overall ideological spectrum based on individual voting patterns. Ultimately, we …

Wage War: Backpay Under The Hoffman Decision, Shuaa Tajammul

University of Massachusetts Law Review

This Article discusses the effect of the Hoffman Plastic Compounds decision on backpay as a remedy for illegal immigrants who sue their employers for lost wages. When Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (“IRCA”), it believed it struck at the heart of illegal immigration: the search for employment in the United States. However, the IRCA did not accomplish its stated purpose. In 2002, the Supreme Court ruled that lost wages and backpay were not available as remedies to an employee who obtained a job through IRCA violation and later tried to sue his/her employer. The decision …

Does Testing = Race Discrimination?: Ricci, The Bar Exam, The Lsat, And The Challenge To Learning, Dan Subotnik

University of Massachusetts Law Review

Aptitude and achievement tests have been under heavy attack in the courts and in academic literature for at least forty years. Griggs v. Duke Power (1971) and Ricci v. DeStefano (2009) are the most important judicial battle sites. In those cases, the Supreme Court decided the circumstances under which test could be used by an employer to screen employees for promotion when the test had a negative racial impact on test takers. The related battles over testing for entry into the legal academy and from the academy into the legal profession have been no less fierce. The assault on testing …

Whistleblowing And Free Speech: Garcetti's Early Progeny And Shrinking Constitutional Rights Of Public Employees, J. Michael Mcguinness

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Absolute Immunity: General Principles And Recent Developments, Erwin Chemerinsky

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

“Government By A Few Conservative Men”: An Examination Of Louis Boudin’S Understanding Of The Abuse Of The Judicial Power And The Decline Of Judicial Restraint By The Supreme Court, Sarah A. Ballinger

Senior Theses and Projects

For the first 150 years of the existence of the judicial power, it was liberals who advocated for the limited role that the Supreme Court should play in America’s constitutional democracy. Since the 1960’s and the Civil Rights Movement, there has been an increase in liberal judicial activism. This thesis seeks to explore the progression of judicial restraint and activism over the history of the Supreme Court through the eyes of Louis Boudin, a constitutional expert writing in the 1930’s. Boudin, a radical liberal, asserts in Government By Judiciary that the judicial branch has been constantly expanding its own power …

Furman, After Four Decades, J. Thomas Sullivan

University of Massachusetts Law Review

Problems of racial discrimination in the imposition of capital sentences, disclosure of misconduct by prosecutors and police, inconsistency in the quality of defense afforded capital defendants, exoneration of death row inmates due to newly available DNA testing, and, most recently controversies surrounding the potential for cruelty in the execution process itself continue to complicate views about the morality, legality, and practicality of reliance on capital punishment to address even the most heinous of homicide offenses. Despite repeated efforts by the Supreme Court to craft a capital sentencing framework that ensures that death sentences be imposed fairly in light of the …

Social Networking And Student Safety: Balancing Student First Amendment Rights And Disciplining Threatening Speech, John L. Hughes Iii

University of Massachusetts Law Review

As the use of social media increases and becomes an integral part of nearly every student's life, problems arise when student expression on these sites turns into threats against the school or other students, implicating both student safety and the speaker's right to free speech. Facing a lack of Supreme Court precedent, school officials need guidance on whether and how to take action when a student makes threats on social network - how to prevent any danger at school while respecting the student's right to free speech. This note develops an approach that combines the Supreme Court's Watts "true threat" …

Conflicting Confrontation Clause Concerns: The Admissibility Of Hospital Records Versus A Defendant's Right To Confrontation, Susan Barlow

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Retirement Of Chief Justice Frank F. Drowota, Iii: A Tribute To A Legal Legend And All Around Nice Guy, Lisa Rippy, Marshall Davidson

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

Chief Justice Frank F. Drowota, III retires in the summer of 2006, ending a distinguished thirty-five year judicial career. His twenty-five year tenure on the Tennessee Supreme Court is the second-longest in state history.2 He will leave behind an excellent record of service to the judiciary and to the state. Indeed, retired Chief Justice William H.D. Fones recently described Chief Justice Drowota as one of the greatest chief justices in Tennessee history. This article will discuss Chief Justice Drowota's vast contributions to Tennessee's legal system and along the way, will attempt to provide some insight into his judicial philosophy, personality, …

Keep Your Eyes On Eyes In The Sky, Hillary B. Farber

Faculty Publications

To date, eight states have passed bills regulating domestic drone use by government and private individuals. This leaves us with a question: If a city of more than 60,000 residents and a global company with a customer base in the hundreds of millions are racing to the sky, how are we as a commonwealth of 6.6 million to truly launch ourselves into the debate and protect what little privacy we have left?

It's The Constitution, Stupid: Two Liberals Pay Tribute To Antonin Scalia's Legacy, Adam Lamparello, Charles Maclean

Adam Lamparello

Living constitutionalism may achieve “good” results, but with each Roe v. Wade, and Bush v. Gore, the Constitution’s vision takes more shallow breaths, and democracy fades into elitism’s shadow. The debate over constitutional interpretation is, in many ways, reducible to this question: if a particular outcome is desirable, and the Constitution’s text is silent or ambiguous, should the United States Supreme Court (or any court) disregard constitutional constraints to achieve that outcome? If the answer is yes, nine unelected judges have the power to choose outcomes that are desirable. If the answer is no, then the focus must be on …

Restoring Constitutional Equilibrium, Adam Lamparello

Adam Lamparello

In areas such as the Fourteenth Amendment, the Supreme Court's lack of institutional restraint has affected citizens of every political persuasion. In Bush v. Gore, the Florida Supreme Court’s recount order was blocked. ‘Liberals,’ lost. In Roe v. Wade, the Court required state legislatures to allow most abortions in the first trimester. ‘Conservatives’ lost. In Clinton v. City of New York and Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the coordinate branch’s attempt to ensure a more efficient and fairer government was thwarted. Average citizens lost. The problem is not a liberal or conservative one, whatever those words mean. It is …

The Separate But Unequal Constitution, Adam Lamparello, Charles E. Maclean

Adam Lamparello

The Constitution should not be a political chess match, and outcomes should not depend on the composition of the Supreme Court. The text’s written and unwritten mandates speak to a single value that should unite jurists of all interpretive persuasions: the people — not legislatures or courts — own the Constitution’s enumerated rights, and have a corresponding right to define those that are not enumerated. But those rights have not been fully realized because the Constitution has been applied in a separate — and unequal — manner.

The wealthy have increased access to the political process, the poor are disproportionately …

Citizenship At Work: How The Supreme Court Politically Marginalized Public Employees, Ruben J. Garcia

Scholarly Works

Collective bargaining by public sector employees has been the subject of recent heated debates in the state legislatures of Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana. The right of public sector employees to freedom of association, collective bargaining, and the right to participate in politics are among the “citizenship rights” of public employees. In many states, however, the citizenship rights of public employees are under threat both in state legislatures and in the courts. Paradoxically, the ability of public sector employees to change legislation has been hampered over the years by Supreme Court decisions, making it more difficult to organize politically by …

Keeping Up With New Legal Titles, Tina M. Brooks

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In this book review, Tina M. Brooks discusses The Puzzle of Unanimity: Consensus on the United States Supreme Court by Pamela C. Corley, Amy Steigerwalt, and Artemus Ward.

Second Thoughts About The First Amendment, Randy J. Kozel

Journal Articles

The U.S. Supreme Court has shown a notable willingness to reconsider — and depart from — its First Amendment precedents. In recent years the Court has marginalized its prior statements regarding the constitutional value of false speech. It has revamped its process for identifying categorical exceptions to First Amendment protection. It has rejected its past decisions on corporate electioneering and aggregate campaign contributions. And it has revised its earlier positions on union financing, abortion protesting, and commercial speech. Under the conventional view of constitutional adjudication, dubious precedents enjoy a presumption of validity through the doctrine of stare decisis. This Article …

Preliminary Injunctions Post-Mayo And Myriad, Jacob S. Sherkow

Articles & Chapters

The Supreme Court's recent interest in patentable subject matter has had several, unexpected downstream effects on preliminary injunctions in patent disputes.

The Supreme Court has recently expressed increased interest in patent eligibility, or patentable subject matter, the doctrine that limits the types of inventions eligible for patenting. Its two decisions, Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories, Inc., in 2012, and Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc., in 2013, represented the first broad restrictions on patentable subject matter in over thirty years. And later this term, the Court will decide yet another patent eligibility case: Alice Corp. v. CLS …