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Columbia Law School

Supreme Court of the United States

Capital case

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Full-Text Articles in Law

A Court Of Two Minds, Bert I. Huang Jan 2022

A Court Of Two Minds, Bert I. Huang

Faculty Scholarship

What do the Justices think they’re doing? They seem to act like appeals judges, who address questions of law as needed to reach a decision — and yet also like curators, who single out only certain questions as worthy of the Supreme Court’s attention. Most of the time, the Court’s “appellate mind” and its “curator mind” are aligned because the Justices choose to hear cases where a curated question of interest is also central to the outcome. But not always. In some cases, the Court discovers that it cannot reach — or no longer wishes to reach — the originally …


Of Laws And Men: An Essay On Justice Marshall's View Of Criminal Procedure, Daniel C. Richman, Bruce A. Green Jan 1994

Of Laws And Men: An Essay On Justice Marshall's View Of Criminal Procedure, Daniel C. Richman, Bruce A. Green

Faculty Scholarship

As a general rule, criminal defendants whose cases made it to the Supreme Court between 1967 and 1991 must have thought that, as long as Justice Thurgood Marshall occupied one of the nine seats, they had one vote for sure. And Justice Marshall rarely disappointed them – certainly not in cases of any broad constitutional significance. From his votes and opinions, particularly his dissents, many were quick to conclude that the Justice was another of those "bleeding heart liberals," hostile to the mission of law enforcement officers and ready to overlook the gravity of the crimes of which the defendants …