Law Commons^™

Lochner V. New York (1905) And Kennedy V. Louisiana (2008): Judicial Reliance On Adversary Argument, Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist called Lochner v. New York (1905) “one of the most ill-starred decisions that [the Supreme Court ever rendered.” The Justices’ deliberations preceding the 5-4 decision demonstrate the courts’ reliance on advocacy in the adversary system of civil and criminal justice. The stark imbalance between the state’s “incredibly sketchy” brief and Joseph Lochner’s sterling submission may have determined Lochner’s outcome, and thus may have changed the course of constitutional history, by leading two Justices to join the majority on the central question of whether New York’s maximum-hours law for bakery workers was a reasonable public health …

Supreme Court Of The United States, October Term 2011 Preview, Georgetown University Law Center, Supreme Court Institute

Supreme Court Overviews

No abstract provided.

Pliva V. Mensing And Its Implications, Brian Wolfman, Dena Feldman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The U.S. Supreme Court ruling in PLIVA Inc. v. Mensing will immunize generic drug manufacturers facing failure-to-warn claims from state-law liability, and may also have implications for preemption jurisprudence more generally, says attorney Brian Wolfman and co-author Dena Feldman in this BNA Insight. The authors analyze the ruling, and offer their views on the questions that PLIVA raises about the ongoing vitality of the presumption against preemption, the standard for determining ‘‘impossibility’’ preemption, and the propriety of deference to an agency’s views on preemption.

India And Pakistan: A Tale Of Judicial Appointments, Shubhankar Dam

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Recent judicial appointments in India and Pakistan have led to battles between their respective judicial and executive branches. In a moment of remarkable constitutional coincidence, two appointments were set aside in India and Pakistan last week. First, India's Supreme Court invalidated the appointment of P. J. Thomas to the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC). Days later, Pakistan's Supreme Court invalidated Deedar Shah's appointment to the National Accountability Bureau (NAB).

Electing Our Judges And Judicial Independence: The Supreme Court's "Triple Whammy", Martin Belsky

Akron Law Faculty Publications

In this article, Martin Belsky makes the case for judicial selection based on merit, as opposed to popular elections. Belsky cites Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Company and the recent defeat of three Iowa supreme court justices because of their opinion in a controversial gay marriage case for the proposition that judicial elections can, and do, yield unjust results. Belsky asserts the need for judicial independence, but concludes that this goal is not achievable through elections because of the "triple whammy" of constitutional limitations: (1) the First Amendment protection of the right of judges and judicial candidates to give specific, …

Supreme Court Institute Annual Report, 2010-2011, Georgetown University Law Center, Supreme Court Institute

SCI Papers & Reports

During the 2010-2011 academic year--corresponding to the U.S. Supreme Court’s October Term (OT) 2010--the Supreme Court Institute (SCI) provided moot courts for advocates in over 93% of the cases heard by the Court this Term; sponsored a range of programming related to the Supreme Court; and hosted delegations of lawyers and judges visiting from Britain, Rwanda, Kosovo, Korea, China, and Germany. A list of all SCI moot courts held in OT 2010, listed by sitting and date of moot and including the name and affiliation of each advocate and the number of student observers, follows the narrative portion of this …

Judicial Activism And The Interpretation Of The Voting Rights Act, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer

Articles by Maurer Faculty

From the moment the U.S. Supreme Court first confronted the difficult constitutional questions at the heart of the Voting Rights Act, its posture has been one of deference. This posture has continued to this day. In contrast, the Court has interpreted the language of the Act dynamically, often in total disregard to the text of the law or the intent of Congress. But as this Article explains, the Roberts Court appears poised to unsettle this longstanding narrative. The Act is in serious constitutional danger. One way to explain this move on the part of the Court is by invoking the …

Public Funding Of Judicial Campaigns: The North Carolina Experience And The Activism Of The Supreme Court, Paul D. Carrington

Faculty Scholarship

In recent years, the problem of selecting judges to sit on the highest state courts has become a national crisis. North Carolina remains among the states whose constitutions require competitive elections of all its judges. Presently, all candidates for its judicial offices must first compete for election in a non-partisan primary, a system motivated by the desire to maximize the power of the state’s citizen-voters to choose their judges and hold them accountable for their fidelity to the law. Some observers have continued to celebrate such judicial elections as an honorable democratic empowerment, while others have not. The disagreement has …

Roberts’ Rules: The Assertiveness Of Rules-Based Jurisprudence, Joseph Blocher

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Remarks By Dean William M. Treanor, William Michael Treanor

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Attorney General Levy produced a list of candidates for President Ford and it seems clear he particularly highlighted then-Judge Stevens. President Ford took the list, he read some of then-Judge Stevens’s opinions which he pronounced concise, persuasive, and legally sound. He slept on his decision and the following day he nominated Justice Stevens, who was confirmed within three weeks ninety-eight to nothing. So it was a very different world, but it’s also a testament to Justice Stevens and the respect that he held in the bench and the bar at that time.

Justice Stevens’s legacy on the Court accords with …