Law Commons^™

Step Aside, Mr. Senator: A Request For Members Of The Senate Judiciary Committee To Give Up Their Mics, Paul E. Vaglicia

Indiana Law Journal

In 1995, a law professor at the University of Chicago Law School dubbed the Supreme Court confirmation hearings “vapid and hollow” and added that they, as implemented, “serve little educative function, except perhaps to reinforce lessons of cynicism that citizens often glean from government.” Ironically, this same law professor, Elena Kagan, later endured the confirmation hearings as a nominee and currently sits as the 112th Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. While she may be one of the few to ever reach a seat on the High Court, she is not alone in her assessment of the Supreme Court’s lackluster …

Building The Federal Judiciary (Literally And Legally): The Monuments Of Chief Justices Taft, Warren And Rehnquist, Judith Resnik

Indiana Law Journal

The “federal courts” took on their now familiar contours over the course of the twentieth century. Three chief justices—William Howard Taft, Earl Warren, and William Rehnquist—played pivotal roles in shaping the institutional, jurisprudential, and physical premises. Taft is well known for promoting a building to house the U.S. Supreme Court and for launching the administrative infrastructure that came to govern the federal courts. Earl Warren’s name has become the shorthand for a jurisprudential shift from state toward federal authority; the Warren Court offered an expansive understanding of the role federal courts could play in enabling access for a host of …

Standing Lessons: What We Can Learn When Conservative Plaintiffs Lose Under Article Iii Standing Doctrine, Heather Elliott

Indiana Law Journal

The Supreme Court’s Article III standing doctrine has plagued liberal groups for nearly forty years. Recently, however, the doctrine has blocked a number of conservative lawsuits opposing gay marriage, the 2010 health care law, and the expansion of federal funding for stem cell research.

What can we learn from these cases? Because contemporary criticisms of standing doctrine have usually come from the left and defenses from the right, it is commonplace to associate arguments for broad standing with left-wing political agendas.

But, as some scholars have shown, a version of narrow standing helped liberals protect New Deal legislation in the …

"Don't Ask, Don't Tell," The Supreme Court, And Lawrence The "Laggard", Audrey K. Hagedorn

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Why Twombly Is Good Law (But Poorly Drafted) And Iqbal Will Be Overturned, Luke Meier

Indiana Law Journal

The conventional wisdom with regard to the Supreme Court’s decisions in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly and Ashcroft v. Iqbal is that these two cases work together to usher in a new era of pleading. This reading of the cases, however, is wrong. In reality, Twombly was a valid application of the uncontroversial principle that a complaint must describe the real-world events on which the suit is based with some degree of factual specificity. The Iqbal opinion, unfortunately, mangled this concept by applying it to a complaint that described the real-world events on which the suit was based with sufficient …

Patents Fettering Reproductive Rights, Scott A. Allen

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Televising The Supreme Court: Why Legislation Fails, R. Patrick Thornberry

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.