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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Word Is "Humility": Why The Supreme Court Needed To Adopt A Code Of Judicial Ethics, Laurie L. Levenson
The Word Is "Humility": Why The Supreme Court Needed To Adopt A Code Of Judicial Ethics, Laurie L. Levenson
Pepperdine Law Review
The Supreme Court is one of our most precious institutions. However, for the last few years, American confidence in the Court has dropped to a new low. Less than 40% of Americans have confidence in the Court and its decisions. Recent revelations regarding luxury trips, gifts, and exclusive access for certain individuals to the Justices have raised questions about whether the Justices understand their basic ethical duties and can act in a fair and impartial manner. As commentators have noted, the Supreme Court stood as the only court in America that was not governed by an ethical code. The question …
Partisanship "All The Way Down" On The U.S. Supreme Court, Lee Epstein
Partisanship "All The Way Down" On The U.S. Supreme Court, Lee Epstein
Pepperdine Law Review
Just as the American public is politically polarized, so too is the U.S. Supreme Court. More than ever before, a clear alignment exists between the Justices’ partisanship and their ideological leanings (known as “partisan sorting”). Disapproval of opposing-party identifiers also appears to have intensified (“partisan antipathy”). This Article offers evidence of both forms of polarization. It shows that partisan sorting has resulted in wide gaps in voting between Republican and Democratic appointees; and it supplies data on “us-against-them” judging in the form of increasing antipathy toward opposite-partisan presidents. Taken collectively, the data point not to law “all the way down,” …
Court Expansion And The Restoration Of Democracy: The Case For Constitutional Hardball, Aaron Belkin
Court Expansion And The Restoration Of Democracy: The Case For Constitutional Hardball, Aaron Belkin
Pepperdine Law Review
Neither electoral politics, norms preservation, nor modest good government reform can restore the political system because they cannot mitigate the primary threat to the American democracy, Republican radicalism. Those who believe otherwise fail to appreciate how and why radicalism will continue to impede democratic restoration regardless of what happens at the ballot box, misdiagnose the underlying factors that produce and sustain GOP radicalism, and under-estimate the degree of democratic deterioration that has already taken place. Republicans do not need to prevail in every election to forestall the restoration of democracy or to prevent Democrats from governing. The only viable path …
A Call For America's Law Professors To Oppose Court-Packing, Bruce Ledewitz
A Call For America's Law Professors To Oppose Court-Packing, Bruce Ledewitz
Pepperdine Law Review
A Court-packing proposal is imminent. Mainstream Democratic Party Presidential Candidates are already supporting it. The number of Justices on the Supreme Court has been set at nine since 1869, but this is merely a statutory requirement. As soon as Democrats regain control of the Presidency and the Congress, Court-packing will be on the agenda, either expressly or under the guise of Court-reform. Now is the time for the American legal academy to join together to oppose this threat. Court-packing would threaten democracy, destroy the rule of law and undermine judicial independence. It is a pointless and unnecessary reaction born of …
Hearing The States, Anthony Johnstone
Hearing The States, Anthony Johnstone
Pepperdine Law Review
The 2016 Presidential and Senate elections raise the possibility that a conservative, life-tenured Supreme Court will preside for years over a politically dynamic majority. This threatens to weaken the public’s already fragile confidence in the Court. By lowering the political stakes of both national elections and its own decisions, federalism may enable the Court to defuse some of the most explosive controversies it hears. Federalism offers a second-best solution, even if neither conservatives nor liberals can impose a national political agenda. However, principled federalism arguments are tricky. They are structural, more prudential than legal or empirical. Regardless of ideology, a …
Eight Justices Are Enough: A Proposal To Improve The United States Supreme Court, Eric J. Segall
Eight Justices Are Enough: A Proposal To Improve The United States Supreme Court, Eric J. Segall
Pepperdine Law Review
Over the last twenty-five years, some of the most significant Supreme Court decisions involving issues of national significance like abortion, affirmative action, and voting rights were five-to-four decisions. In February 2016, the death of Justice Antonin Scalia turned the nine-Justice court into an eight-Justice court, comprised of four liberal and four conservative Justices, for the first time in our nation’s history. This article proposes that an evenly divided court consisting of eight Justices is the ideal Supreme Court composition. Although the other two branches of government have evolved over the years, the Supreme Court has undergone virtually no significant changes. …
Justice As Fair Division, Ian Bartrum, Kathryn Nyman, Peter Otto
Justice As Fair Division, Ian Bartrum, Kathryn Nyman, Peter Otto
Pepperdine Law Review
The current hyperpoliticization of the Court grows out of a feedback loop between politicized appointments and politicized decision-making. This Article suggests a change in the internal procedures by which the Court hears and decides particular cases. A three-Justice panel hears and decides each case. Appeal to an en banc sitting of the entire Court would require a unanimous vote of all non-recused Justices. This Article explores several possible approaches in selecting the three-Justice panel. This Article proposes that applying a fair division scheme to the Court’s decision-making process might act to reverse this loop and work to depoliticize the Court …
How The Prohibition On "Under-Ruling" Distorts The Judicial Function (And What To Do About It), A. Christopher Bryant, Kimberly Breedon
How The Prohibition On "Under-Ruling" Distorts The Judicial Function (And What To Do About It), A. Christopher Bryant, Kimberly Breedon
Pepperdine Law Review
Lower courts face a dilemma when forced to choose between older Supreme Court precedent that directly controls the present legal dispute and an intervening Supreme Court ruling that relies on rationale which erodes or undermines the rationale of the direct precedent. Nearly thirty years ago, the Supreme Court announced a rule requiring lower courts to follow the older precedent and disregard any inconsistency resulting from intervening rulings, effectively barring lower courts from “under-ruling” the older Supreme Court precedent. This prohibition on “under-ruling,” here referred to as the “Agostini Rule,” reflects a departure from the core rule-of-law values requiring similar cases …
What Are The Judiciary’S Politics?, Michael W. Mcconnell
What Are The Judiciary’S Politics?, Michael W. Mcconnell
Pepperdine Law Review
What are the politics of the federal judiciary, to the extent that the federal judiciary has politics? Whose interests do federal judges represent? This Essay puts forward five different kinds of politics that characterize the federal judiciary. First, the federal judiciary represents the educated elite. Second, the federal judiciary represents past political majorities. Third, the federal judiciary is more politically balanced than the legislative or executive branches. Fourth, the federal judiciary is organized by regions, and between those regions there is significant diversity. Fifth, to the extent that the judiciary leans one way or the other, it leans toward the …
Nothing New Under The Sun: The Law-Politics Dynamic In Supreme Court Decision Making, Stephen M. Feldman
Nothing New Under The Sun: The Law-Politics Dynamic In Supreme Court Decision Making, Stephen M. Feldman
Pepperdine Law Review
Recent events have seemed to inject politics into American judicial institutions. As a result, many observers worry that the Supreme Court, in particular, has become politicized. According to this view, the Justices should decide cases in accordance with the rule of law and be unmoved by political concerns. These worries arise from a mistaken assumption: that law and politics can be separate and independent in the process of judicial decision making. But at the Supreme Court (as well as in the lower courts, for that matter), decision making arises from a law-politics dynamic. Adjudication in accord with a pure rule …
Is The Chief Justice A Tax Lawyer?, Stephanie Hoffer, Christopher J. Walker
Is The Chief Justice A Tax Lawyer?, Stephanie Hoffer, Christopher J. Walker
Pepperdine Law Review
In our contribution to this symposium on King v. Burwell, we explore two aspects of the Chief Justice’s opinion where it is hard to ignore the fingerprints of a tax lawyer. First, in the Chief’s approach to statutory interpretation one sees a tax lawyer as interpreter with an approach that tracks tax law’s substance-over-form doctrine. Second, as to King’s sweeping administrative law holding, the Chief crafts a new major questions doctrine that could significantly cut back on federal agency lawmaking authority. Yet he seems to develop this doctrine against the backdrop of tax exceptionalism, and thus this development may have …
A Proposal For Improving Argument Before The United States Supreme Court, Louis J. Sirico Jr.
A Proposal For Improving Argument Before The United States Supreme Court, Louis J. Sirico Jr.
Pepperdine Law Review
This Article offers a simple solution for reducing the overload of questions at oral argument. Justices, individually or collectively, could pose written questions on facts and law to the litigants' counsel before oral argument and expect written responses. The submitted questions might inquire about the facts of the case, about the litigant's interpretation of the relevant law, about the response that the litigant would make to a hypothetical scenario, or about the precise holding that the litigant wishes the Court to propound. The responses should allow for more thought-out answers than oral argument can produce and might both reduce the …
Dedicatory Address: Act Well Your Part: Therein All Honor Lies , William H. Rehnquist
Dedicatory Address: Act Well Your Part: Therein All Honor Lies , William H. Rehnquist
Pepperdine Law Review
No abstract provided.
Foreword, Antonin Scalia
Milking The New Sacred Cow: The Supreme Court Limits The Peremptory Challenge On Racial Grounds In Powers V. Ohio And Edmonson V. Leesville Concrete Co., Bradley R. Kirk
Milking The New Sacred Cow: The Supreme Court Limits The Peremptory Challenge On Racial Grounds In Powers V. Ohio And Edmonson V. Leesville Concrete Co., Bradley R. Kirk
Pepperdine Law Review
No abstract provided.
Separation Of Powers Doctrine On The Modern Supreme Court And Four Doctrinal Approaches To Judicial Decision-Making, R. Randall Kelso
Separation Of Powers Doctrine On The Modern Supreme Court And Four Doctrinal Approaches To Judicial Decision-Making, R. Randall Kelso
Pepperdine Law Review
No abstract provided.
A Reluctant Apology For Plessy: A Response To Akhil Amar, Barry P. Mcdonald
A Reluctant Apology For Plessy: A Response To Akhil Amar, Barry P. Mcdonald
Pepperdine Law Review
A response to the article "Plessy v. Ferguson and the Anti-Canon," by Akhil Amar, published in the November 2011 issue of the "Pepperdine Law Review," is presented. Topics include an examination of Justice Henry Billings Brown's decision in the case, the constitutionality of segregating U.S. citizens by race, and the impact of public opinion on U.S. Supreme Court decisions.
Plessy V. Ferguson And The Anti-Canon, Akhil Reed Amar
Plessy V. Ferguson And The Anti-Canon, Akhil Reed Amar
Pepperdine Law Review
The article focuses on the U.S. Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson, which dealt with the constitutionality of racial segregation in the U.S. Topics include the application of precedent in controversial U.S. Supreme Court cases, when the U.S. Constitution can overrule a court decision, and dissenting judicial opinions.
The Inaugural William French Smith Memorial Lecture: A Look At Supreme Court Advocacy With Justice Samuel Alito, Samuel A. Alito Jr, Douglas W. Kmiec, Carter G. Phillips, Kenneth W. Starr
The Inaugural William French Smith Memorial Lecture: A Look At Supreme Court Advocacy With Justice Samuel Alito, Samuel A. Alito Jr, Douglas W. Kmiec, Carter G. Phillips, Kenneth W. Starr
Pepperdine Law Review
No abstract provided.