Law Commons^™

The Hundred-Years War: The Ongoing Battle Between Courts And Agencies Over The Right To Interpret Federal Law, Nancy M. Modesitt

All Faculty Scholarship

Since the Supreme Court’s 1984 Chevron decision, the primary responsibility for interpreting federal statutes has increasingly resided with federal agencies in the first instance rather than with the federal courts. In 2005, the Court reinforced this approach by deciding National Telecommunications Ass'n v. Brand X Internet Services, which legitimized the agency practice of interpreting federal statutes in a manner contrary to the federal courts' established interpretation, so long as the agency interpretation is entitled to deference under the well-established Chevron standard. In essence, agencies are free to disregard federal court precedent in these circumstances. This Article analyzes the question left …

Book Review: Reconstruction And Reunion, 1864-88, Part One, David S. Bogen

David S. Bogen

No abstract provided.

How The Dissent Becomes The Majority: Using Federalism To Transform Coalitions In The U.S. Supreme Court, Tonja Jacobi, Vanessa A. Baird

Faculty Articles

This Article proposes that dissenting Supreme Court Justices provide cues in their written opinions about how future litigants can reframe case facts and legal arguments in similar future cases to garner majority support. Questions of federal-state power cut across most other substantive legal issues, and this can provide a mechanism for splitting existing majorities in future cases. By signaling to future litigants when this potential exists, dissenting judges can transform a dissent into a majority in similar future cases.

We undertake an empirical investigation of dissenting opinions in which the dissenting Justice suggests that future cases ought to be framed …

Ideology And Exceptionalism In Intellectual Property: An Empirical Study, Matthew Sag, Tonja Jacobi, Maxim Sytch

Faculty Articles

In this Article, we examine the effect of judicial ideology on IP case outcomes before the Supreme Court from 1954 to 2006. We find that ideology is a significant determinant of IP cases: the more conservative a justice is, the more likely he or she is to vote in favor of recognizing and enforcing rights to intellectual property. We also find evidence that the relationship is more complex than a purely ideological account would suggest; our results suggest that law matters too. We find that a number of factors that are specific to IP are also consequential. Additionally, we show …

Ricci Glitch? The Unexpected Appearance Of Transferred Intent In Title Vii, Kerri Lynn Stone

Faculty Publications

In the case of Ricci v. DeStefano, the Supreme Court officially opened the door to what this Article identifies as a theory of “transferred intent” jurisprudence under Title VII. The principle of transferred intent, borrowed from tort and criminal law, has never before been seen as factoring into Title VII antidiscrimination jurisprudence. In Ricci, the Supreme Court assumed that a city’s refusal to promote firefighters qualifying for promotion based on exams that appeared to disproportionately screen out members of minority groups amounted to deliberate discrimination, irrespective of their individual races or whether their individual races were actually taken into account. …

Remaking The United States Supreme Court In The Courts' Of Appeals Image, Chris Guthrie, Tracey E. George

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

We argue that Congress should remake the United States Supreme Court in the U.S. courts' of appeals image by increasing the size of the Court's membership, authorizing panel decision making, and retaining an en banc procedure for select cases. In so doing, Congress would expand the Court's capacity to decide cases, facilitating enhanced clarity and consistency in the law as well as heightened monitoring of lower courts and the other branches. Remaking the Court in this way would not only expand the Court's decision making capacity but also improve the Court's composition, competence, and functioning.

Supreme Court Justices, Empathy, And Social Change: A Comment On Lani Guinier's Demosprudence Through Dissent, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

Justice Souter's imminent retirement from the U.S. Supreme Court provides President Obama with his first opportunity for a judicial nomination to the high court. President Obama's remarks about the relevance of life experience and of empathy are sparking discussion of relevant judicial qualifications. This Essay examines Professor Lani Guinier's recent argument that dissenting justices, particularly through the use of oral dissents, may spur ordinary people to action and that such dissents may expand the range of democratic action, as part of what she and Gerald Torres call "demosprudence." That controversial decisions by the United States Supreme Court can spur dissenting …

Social Movements And Judging: An Essay On Institutional Reform Litigation And Desegregation In Dallas, Texas, Darren L. Hutchinson

Faculty Articles

This Article discusses the political and legal barriers that have surfaced to undermine the ability of courts to fashion remedies that offer justice to aggrieved individuals and to render rights-based institutional reform liti­gation a judicial relic. Part II examines the historical development of in­stitutional reform litigation and examines the political factors that created the opportunity for dramatic changes in legal approaches to the issue of racial inequality. Part III examines litigation challenging segregation in Dallas public schools. It also discusses cases filed in the immediate post­-Brown era and contrasts those cases with Judge Sanders's rulings on the subject. In …

Setting The Size Of The Supreme Court, F. Andrew Hessick, Samuel P. Jordan

All Faculty Scholarship

As with any institutional feature, the size of the Supreme Court should be informed by a definition of functional goals. This article describes how the current size of the Supreme Court is largely untethered from any such definition, and it begins the process of understanding how size and Court performance might interact. To do so, it identifies a list of institutional goals for the Supreme Court and explores how changing the size of the Court promotes or obstructs the attainment of those goals. Given that the Court's institutional goals are numerous and occasionally in tension, there is no definitive answer …

Constitutional Limits On Punitive Damages Awards: An Analysis Of Supreme Court Precedent, Dorothy S. Lund

Faculty Scholarship

Over the last fifteen years, the Supreme Court has formulated new constitutional principles to constrain punitive damages awards imposed by state courts, invoking its authority under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This intervention has been controversial from the start, generating dissents from several Justices asserting that the actions of the Court are unwarranted and amount to unjustified judicial activism. Over the ensuing years lower courts and commentators have criticized the Court’s prescription of procedural and substantive limitations, finding them to be vague and unnecessarily restrictive of state common law prerogatives. Some observers with an economic orientation have …

Justice Ginsburg's Footnotes, Jay D. Wexler

Faculty Scholarship

In this short article written for the New England School of Law's March Symposium on Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, I report on what happened when I embarked on a project of trying to read every single footnote Justice Ginsburg has ever written as a justice on the Supreme Court. As the article relates, this project was impossible to complete because Justice Ginsburg, it turns out, has written a lot, lot, lot of footnotes. Instead, I ended up reading all of Justice Ginsburg's footnotes from three of her terms. In the article, I develop a nine-part taxonomy of Supreme Court footnotes …

A House Divided: Earl Caldwell, The New York Times, And The Quest For A Testimonial Privilege, Eric Easton

All Faculty Scholarship

In the 1972 case of Branzburg v. Hayes, the Supreme Court held that the First Amendment does not protect journalists who refuse to reveal their confidential sources or news gathering product in response to a federal grand jury subpoena. That decision has remained vital for 35 years and has reverberated through a number of recent high-profile cases. Despite some form of protection in nearly every state court, reporters haled before a federal judge may have no recourse save prison. Devastating as Branzburg has been for the so-called journalist's privilege, its negative impact has been far broader. Branzburg is one of …