Supreme Court of the United States Commons^™

Statutory Misinterpretations: A Legal Autopsy, Eric Schnapper

Articles

If the Supreme Court is willing to learn from past mistakes, the Court would find it particularly instructive to re-examine the now quite numerous civil rights decisions which have failed to survive congressional scrutiny. The United States Reports are today littered with the corpses of short-lived opinions purporting to interpret federal anti-discrimination statutes; most were dead on arrival in the bound volumes. October Term 1988 was a veritable Pickett's Charge of conservative misinterpretation. Patterson v. McLean Credit Union briefly displaced and destroyed much of section 1981; Public Employees Retirement System v. Betts temporarily overran parts of the Age Discrimination in …

Peremptory Challenges: Free Strikes No More, H. Patrick Furman

Publications

No abstract provided.

Polarized Voting And The Political Process: The Transformation Of Voting Rights Jurisprudence, Samuel Issacharoff

Michigan Law Review

This article attempts to provide an analytic framework for the evolved voting rights law as it confronts the persistent effects of racial factionalism in the electoral arena. Insight into the corrosiveness of racially polarized voting and its frustration of minority electoral opportunity has organized and guided the new voting rights jurisprudence. This article will argue that the combination of process distortions from majority domination of electoral outcomes and substantive deprivation from minority exclusion defines this area of law and protects it against challenge from currently fashionable academic currents. The central insights gathered from the focus on polarized voting, I will …

Retroactive Application Of The Civil Rights Act Of 1991 To Pending Cases, Michele A. Estrin

Michigan Law Review

This Note addresses the applicability of the Civil Rights Act of 1991 to cases pending on the Act's date of enactment. Part I discusses current Supreme Court doctrine on the issue. This Part finds that the Court has endorsed two conflicting views on retroactively applying statutes to pending cases and that the lower federal courts consequently lack a principled framework for dealing with retroactivity issues in the 1991 Act. Part II describes the battle over the Civil Rights Acts of 1990 and 1991 and the subsequent confusion over the enacted statute's reach. This Part finds that Congress provided conflicting textual …

Legislative Inputs And Gender-Based Discrimination In The Burger Court, Earl M. Maltz

Michigan Law Review

In An Interpretive History of Modem Equal Protection, Michael Klarman poses a powerful challenge to the conventional wisdom regarding the structure of Burger Court jurisprudence. Most commentators have concluded that during the Burger era the Court lacked a coherent vision of constitutional law, and was given to a "rootless" activism or a "pragmatic" approach to constitutional analysis. Klarman argues that, at least in the area of equal protection analysis, the Burger Court's approach did reflect a unifying theme, which he describes as a focus on "legislative inputs." According to Klarman, this approach "directs judicial review towards purging legislative decision-making of …

Supreme Court Philosophy On Labor And Employment Issues, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Other Publications

It would not take a confirmed cynic to suggest that the title of this paper amounts to an oxymoron. That soft-hearted but tough-minded commentator, Florian Bartosic, and his collaborator, Gary Minda, came close to putting it in so many words: " [T]he Supreme Court lacks a consistent and coherent theory of labor law" (1982). My own view is somewhat different. First, lack of a consistent judicial philosophy is not all bad; at least it is better than a consistently wrong philosophy. Second, the vacillating theories of the Supreme Court tend to reflect the divergent attitudes of American society toward labor …

Civil Rights Act Of 1991, William L. Taylor

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Justice Brennan's Gender Jurisprudence, Rebecca Korzec

All Faculty Scholarship

During his thirty-four year tenure on the Supreme Court, Justice William Joseph Brennan, Jr. demonstrated unparalleled sensitivity to the protection of individual rights. Justice Brennan's landmark opinions included Baker v. Carr, Goldberg v. Kelly, and New York Times Co. v. Sullivan. before Brennan, Supreme Court jurisprudence exalted judicial passivity by employing techniques for avoiding constitutional issues, such as abstention, comity, exhaustion of remedies and the political question doctrine.

Against this background, Brennan became an active judicial voice in a series of innovative landmark cases, including decisions requiring federal officials to pay damages for violation of citizens' constitutional rights; authorizing federal …

Affirmative Action, Douglas Scherer, John Dunne

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Thurgood Marshall And The Administrative State, Jonathan Weinberg

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

The First Amendment, Burt Neuborne

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Comparison Of A Mentally Ill Individual's Right To Refuse Medication Under The United States And The New York State Constitutions, William M. Brooks

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Equal Protection

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Academic Freedom And The First Amendment In The Supreme Court Of The United States: An Unhurried Historical Review, William W. Van Alstyne

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Applying Section 2 Of The Voting Rights Act To Single-Member Offices, Edward J. Sebold

Michigan Law Review

This Note questions whether an exemption for single-member offices is justified. Part I provides a brief overview of the Voting Rights Act and the types of discrimination in the political process to which it applies., Part I then reviews the decisions on single-member offices, including the courts' attempts to define single-member offices. This Part concludes neither Congress nor the Supreme Court dictates an exemption for single-member offices. Instead, single-member offices should be open to challenge if they hamper the achievement of section 2's goals. Part II identifies the goals of section 2 by developing a number of theories to give …

Pure Politics, Girardeau A. Spann

Michigan Law Review

Part I of this article considers the impact that judicial discretion has on the traditional model of judicial review, and that model's reliance on the Supreme Court as the primary guardian of minority interests. Part II argues that the interests of racial minorities can be better advanced through the ordinary political process than through the process of Supreme Court adjudication. Part Ill emphasizes that minority participation in Supreme Court proceedings cannot ultimately be avoided and, accordingly, suggests a political model of the Court that minorities can use in an effort to neutralize the Court's distortion of the political process. Part …

Unrightable Wrongs: The Rehnquist Court, Civil Rights, And An Elegy For Dreams, D. Marvin Jones

Articles

No abstract provided.

A Plea For Help: Pleading Problems In Section 1983 Municipal Liability Claims, Evan S. Schwartz

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Determining A Standard For Housing Discrimination Under Title Viii, Richard C. Cahn

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Decoding Richmond: Affirmative Action And The Elusive Meaning Of Constitutional Equality, Michel Rosenfeld

Michigan Law Review

This Article first briefly considers the conceptual and constitutional framework out of which the controversy in Croson emerges. Next, the Article turns to Croson itself, and focuses on the Court's adoption of the strict scrutiny test, on the disagreement among the Justices concerning the test's meaning and implications, and on the Court's use of decontextualization to manipulate the key conceptual and factual issues at stake. Finally, drawing upon the principle of equality of opportunity, the Article endeavors to demonstrate how the adoption of particular principles of substantive equality can lead to a comprehensive and coherent constitutional resolution of the affirmative …

The Admission Of Criminal Histories At Trial, Department Of Justice Office Of Legal Policy

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

As part of a continuing series of studies on impediments to the search for truth in criminal investigation and adjudication, the Office of Legal Policy has carried out a review of the law governing the admission of the criminal records of defendants and other persons at trial. The results of this review are set out in this Report.

The Sixth Amendment Right To Counsel Under The Massiah Line Of Cases, Department Of Justice Office Of Legal Policy

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The sixth amendment guarantees to the accused in a criminal prosecution the right "to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence." In Massiah v. United States, the Supreme Court held this right was violated when there was used against the defendant at trial evidence of incriminating statements deliberately elicited from him by an informant after he had been indicted and in the absence of counsel. In effect, this decision and others that 'followed have created a new constitutional right not to be questioned about pending charges prior to trial except in the presence of an attorney.

One consequence …

The Plessy Case: A Legal-Historical Interpretation, David D. Meyer

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Plessy Case: A Legal-Historical Interpretation by Charles A. Lofgren

Legislative Inaction And The Patterson Case, Earl M. Maltz

Michigan Law Review

In its October 1988 issue,1 the Michigan Law Review published a symposium on Patterson v. McLean Credit Union, a case in which the Supreme Court has requested reargument on the question of whether Runyon v. McCrary should be overruled or modified. Each of the three distinguished contributors to the symposium concludes that the Court should not overrule Runyon. In reaching this conclusion, Professor William N. Eskridge and Professor Daniel A. Farber rely heavily on the view that because Congress has recognized the existence of the Runyon doctrine and has refused to overrule the decision, the doctrine of stare decisis …

Housing Discrimination, Richard F. Bellman ,Esq., Richard Cahn ,Esq.

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Employment Discrimination, Charles Stephen Ralston, Paul Kamenar, William Bradford Reynolds, Gail Wright-Sirmans

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Section 1983, Martin A. Schwartz, Honorable George C. Pratt, Leon Friedman

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Scholars' Reply To Professor Fried, Yale Kamisar, Lee C. Bollinger, Judith C. Areen, Barbara A. Black

Articles

As Solicitor General of the United States, Charles Fried, like any good advocate, was often in the position of attempting to generate broad holdings from relatively narrow and particularistic Supreme Court decisions. This was especially true in affirmative action cases. There, the Department of Justice argued that cautious precedents actually stood for the broad proposition that measures designed to put members of disadvantaged groups on a plane of equality should, for constitutional purposes, be treated the same as measures intended to stigmatize or subordinate them. The Supreme Court, however, has consistently rejected this reading of its precedents and the broad …

Affirmative Action After Reagan, Neal Devins

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Statutory Interpretation, Legislative Inaction, And Civil Rights, Daniel A. Farber

Michigan Law Review

This month the Supreme Court will hear reargument in Patterson v. McLean Credit Union on the question of whether section 1981 prohibits discrimination by private parties. Professor Farber identifies three issues which lie at the heart of Patterson: Must statutes be construed to conform to the intent of the drafters? Does legislative inaction provide reliable guidance to interpreters of statutes? And should the nature of the claim at issue - here a claim of civil rights - influence the interpreters? On this last point, Professor Farber argues that public values must be relevant to statutory interpretation and that judges …