Supreme Court of the United States Commons^™

Justice Sonia Sotomayor: The Court’S Premier Defender Of The Fourth Amendment, David L. Hudson Jr.

Seattle University Law Review

This essay posits that Justice Sotomayor is the Court’s chief defender of the Fourth Amendment and the cherished values it protects. She has consistently defended Fourth Amendment freedoms—in majority, concurring, and especially in dissenting opinions. Part I recounts a few of her majority opinions in Fourth Amendment cases. Part II examines her concurring opinion in United States v. Jones. Part III examines several of her dissenting opinions in Fourth Amendment cases. A review of these opinions demonstrates what should be clear to any observer of the Supreme Court: Justice Sotomayor consistently defends Fourth Amendment principles and values.

Enough Is As Good As A Feast, Noah C. Chauvin

Seattle University Law Review

Ipse Dixit, the podcast on legal scholarship, provides a valuable service to the legal community and particularly to the legal academy. The podcast’s hosts skillfully interview guests about their legal and law-related scholarship, helping those guests communicate their ideas clearly and concisely. In this review essay, I argue that Ipse Dixit has made a major contribution to legal scholarship by demonstrating in its interview episodes that law review articles are neither the only nor the best way of communicating scholarly ideas. This contribution should be considered “scholarship,” because one of the primary goals of scholarship is to communicate new ideas.

Defending Bridgegate, George D. Brown

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

The Supreme Court’s decision in the “Bridgegate” controversy has been the subject of intense debate. It has received strong support. However, some critics assail the decision as representative of a pattern of recent cases in which the Court has shown itself as indifferent to political corruption, if not supportive of it. Somewhat lost in the discussion is the decision’s potential to be the foundation for a seismic re-alignment of anti-corruption enforcement in the United States. The current model—with federal prosecution as the norm—is not cast in stone.

A 6-3 Supreme Court Could Allow The Government To Openly Discriminate In Its Policies, Katherine A. Shaw, Leah Litman

Online Publications

Over the past few days, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear challenges to hot-button Trump administration policies involving the border wall, an attempt to exclude noncitizens from the census breakdown used for allocating seats in Congress and limits on who can apply for asylum from Mexico.

Practical Truth: The Value Of Apparent Honesty In Supreme Court Opinions, Timothy C. Macdonnell

Catholic University Law Review

The focus of this Essay is on the importance that apparent honesty has on the persuasive force of Supreme Court opinions. Legal scholars and Supreme Court Justices have observed the connection between the Court’s legitimacy and the persuasive force of its opinions. Because the Court’s opinions are both an exercise of the Court’s power and the justification for that power, the Justices’ opinions must be persuasive.

The study of rhetoric has long recognized three methods of persuading an audience of the correctness of a particular view. Those methods are appeals to logic, credibility, and emotion. Of theses three methods, I …

Argument Analysis: Justices Spar Over Stare Decisis, Originalism, Text And What Counts As A Fourth Amendment “Seizure”, Jeffrey Bellin

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Case Preview: When Is A Fleeing Suspect “Seized”?, Jeffrey Bellin

Popular Media

The Fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable “searches” and “seizures.” On Wednesday, the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral argument in Torres v. Madrid, a case that will provide important guidance on what constitutes a Fourth Amendment seizure. Here’s a rundown of the case starting with the relevant facts and procedural history, followed by a discussion of the legal issues and finally a couple of things to watch for at the argument.

Hands-Off Religion In The Early Months Of Covid-19, Samuel J. Levine

Scholarly Works

For decades, scholars have documented the United States Supreme Court’s “hands-off approach” to questions of religious practice and belief, pursuant to which the Court has repeatedly declared that judges are precluded from making decisions that require evaluating and determining the substance of religious doctrine. At the same time, many scholars have criticized this approach, for a variety of reasons. The early months of the COVID-19 outbreak brought these issues to the forefront, both directly, in disputes over limitations on religious gatherings due to the virus, and indirectly, as the Supreme Court decided important cases turning on religious doctrine. Taken together, …

Democracy And The Fourth Seat: Kagan’S Jurisprudence,Stevens’S Legacy, Lauren Dimartino

University of Colorado Law Review Forum

No abstract provided.

The Sacred Fourth Amendment Text, Christopher Slobogin

Michigan Law Review Online

The Supreme Court’s jurisprudence governing the Fourth Amendment’s “threshold”—a word meant to refer to the types of police actions that trigger the amendment’s warrant and reasonableness requirements—has confounded scholars and students alike since Katz v. United States. Before that 1967 decision, the Court’s decisions on the topic were fairly straightforward, based primarily on whether the police trespassed on the target’s property or property over which the target had control. After that decision—which has come to stand for the proposition that a Fourth Amendment search occurs if police infringe an expectation of privacy that society is prepared to recognize as …

How Definitive Is Fourth Amendment Textualism?, Evan H. Caminker

Michigan Law Review Online

Professor Jeffrey Bellin’s excellent article advances a comprehensive and straightforward textual approach to determining what policing activities constitute “searches” triggering the protections of the Fourth Amendment. Bellin’s thesis is that a text-based approach to interpreting the Amendment is superior to the Supreme Court’s current approach, which ever since Katz v. United States has defined “search” primarily by reference to a non-textual “reasonable expectation of privacy” standard. After soundly criticizing the ungrounded and highly subjective nature of the Katz test, Bellin declares that the Court should instead simply follow where the text leads: the Amendment protects people from a search, meaning …

The Sources And Consequences Of Political Rhetoric: Issue Importance, Collegial Bargaining, And Disagreeable Rhetoric In Supreme Court Opinions, Michael A. Zilis, Justin Wedeking

Political Science Faculty Publications

How do political actors use rhetoric after an initial policy battle? We explore factors that lead Supreme Court justices to integrate disagreeable rhetoric into opinions. Although disagreeable language has negative consequences, we posit that justices pay this cost for issues with high personal significance. At the same time, we argue that integrating disagreeable rhetoric has a deleterious effect on the institution by reducing majority coalition size. Examining opinions from 1946 to 2011 using text-based measures of disagreeable rhetoric, we model the language of opinion writing as well as explore the consequences for coalition size. Our findings suggest serious implications for …

In Defense Of (Circuit) Court-Packing, Xiao Wang

Michigan Law Review Online

Proposals to pack the Supreme Court have gained steam recently. Presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg endorsed a court-packing plan at the start of his campaign, and several other candidates also indicated a willingness to consider such a plan, including Senators Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar. Legal scholars have similarly called upon Congress to increase the size of the Supreme Court, particularly following the heated confirmations of Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. These suggestions for Court reform have only gotten more pronounced with the recent passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the subsequent nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett, and the …

Equitable Defenses In Patent Law, Christa J. Laser

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

In patent law, “unenforceability” can have immense consequences. At least five equitable doctrines make up the defense of “unenforceability” as it was codified into the Patent Act in 1952: laches; estoppel; unclean hands; patent misuse; and according to some, inequitable conduct. Yet in the seventy years since incorporation of equitable defenses into the patent statute, the Supreme Court has not clarified their reach. Indeed, twice in the last four years, the Supreme Court avoided giving complete guidance on the crucial questions of whether, and when, such equitable defenses are available to bar damages in cases brought at law.

Several interpretive …

The Fourth Amendment At Home, Thomas P. Crocker

Indiana Law Journal

A refuge, a domain of personal privacy, and the seat of familial life, the home holds a special place in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. Supreme Court opinions are replete with statements affirming the special status of the home. Fourth Amendment text places special emphasis on securing protections for the home in addition to persons, papers, and effects against unwarranted government intrusion. Beyond the Fourth Amendment, the home has a unique place within constitutional structure. The home receives privacy protections in addition to sheltering other constitutional values protected by the Due Process Clause and the First Amendment. For example, under the Due …

Certiorari In Patent Cases, Christa J. Laser

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

In the decade from 2010 to 2019, the Supreme Court has decided more patent law cases than in the prior three decades combined. A higher percentage of its docket has been patent cases--5.45%--than in any decade in the last century. A number of scholars have advanced theories of why this rate of review of patent cases has increased and provided quantitative analyses. Yet no scholarship to date has used qualitative data to investigate why the Supreme Court’s patent docket is increasing and what factors the Supreme Court considers in its review of patent cases. This paper shares statistics of the …

Rethinking Standards Of Appellate Review, Adam Steinman

Indiana Law Journal

Every appellate decision typically begins with the standard of appellate review. The Supreme Court has shown considerable interest in selecting the standard of appellate review for particular issues, frequently granting certiorari in order to decide whether de novo or deferential review governs certain trial court rulings. This Article critiques the Court's framework for making this choice and questions the desirability of assigning distinct standards of appellate review on an issue-by-issue basis. Rather, the core functions of appellate courts are better served by a single template for review that dispenses with the recurring uncertainty over which standard governs which trial court …

Protections Against Tyranny: How Article V Should Guide Constitutional Interpretation, Mary Strong

Indiana Law Journal

This Note seeks to explain what Article V means for the methods of constitutional change outside of the traditional Article V amendment process. Specifically, I argue that Article V was meant to limit the federal government from usurping power without first attaining the consent of the people. Because the Supreme Court is part of the federal government and is often considered a counter-majoritarian institution, the Court cannot extend the powers of the federal government through constitutional interpretation beyond the bounds allowed in the Constitution. Therefore, the only means to change the power structure of the federal government (the balance of …

A False Sense Of Security: How Congress And The Sec Are Dropping The Ball On Cryptocurrency, Tessa E. Shurr

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Today, companies use blockchain technology and digital assets for a variety of purposes. This Comment analyzes the digital token. If the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) views a digital token as a security, then the issuer of the digital token must comply with the registration and extensive disclosure requirements of federal securities laws.

To determine whether a digital asset is a security, the SEC relies on the test that the Supreme Court established in SEC v. W.J. Howey Co. Rather than enforcing a statute or agency rule, the SEC enforces securities laws by applying the Howey test on a fact-intensive …

Antitrust Changeup: How A Single Antitrust Reform Could Be A Home Run For Minor League Baseball Players, Jeremy Ulm

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

In 1890, Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Act to protect competition in the marketplace. Federal antitrust law has developed to prevent businesses from exerting unfair power on their employees and customers. Specifically, the Sherman Act prevents competitors from reaching unreasonable agreements amongst themselves and from monopolizing markets. However, not all industries have these protections.

Historically, federal antitrust law has not governed the “Business of Baseball.” The Supreme Court had the opportunity to apply antitrust law to baseball in Federal Baseball Club, Incorporated v. National League of Professional Baseball Clubs; however, the Court held that the Business of Baseball was not …

Janus-Faced Judging: How The Supreme Court Is Radically Weakening Stare Decisis, Michael Gentithes

William & Mary Law Review

Drastic changes in Supreme Court doctrine require citizens to reorder their affairs rapidly, undermining their trust in the judiciary. Stare decisis has traditionally limited the pace of such change on the Court. It is a bulwark against wholesale jurisprudential reversals. But, in recent years, the stare decisis doctrine has come under threat.

With little public or scholarly notice, the Supreme Court has radically weakened stare decisis in two ways. First, the Court has reversed its long-standing view that a precedent, regardless of the quality of its reasoning, should stand unless there is some special, practical justification to overrule it. Recent …

Courts, Culture, And The Lethal Injection Stalemate, Eric Berger

William & Mary Law Review

The Supreme Court’s 2019 decision in Bucklew v. Precythe reiterated the Court’s great deference to states in Eighth Amendment lethal injection cases. The takeaway is that when it comes to execution protocols, states can do what they want. Events on the ground tell a very different story. Notwithstanding courts’ deference, executions have ground to a halt in numerous states, often due to lethal injection problems. State officials and the Court’s conservative Justices have blamed this development on “anti-death penalty activists” waging “guerilla war” on capital punishment. In reality, though, a variety of mostly uncoordinated actors motivated by a range of …

Chiarella V. United States And Its Indelible Impact On Insider Trading Law, Donna M. Nagy

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Insider trading cases, which are typically prosecuted as securities fraud, carry a mystique rarely present in securities litigation. As a former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York once observed, the cases involve "'basically cops and robbers. . . .[d]id you get the information and did you trade on it?" It is no wonder that each insider trading case featured in this symposium presents a captivating story. But for two distinct reasons, Chiarella v. United States occupies a special place in history. It was the first prosecution under the federal securities laws for the crime of insider trading. …

Textualism’S Gaze, Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article attempts to address why textualism distorts the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence in Indian law. I start with describing textualism in federal public law. I focus on textualism as described by Justice Scalia, as well as Scalia’s justification for textualism and discussion about the role of the judiciary in interpreting texts. The Court is often subject to challenges to its legitimacy rooted in its role as legal interpreter that textualism is designed to combat.

Senators Treat Female Supreme Court Nominees Differently. Here’S The Evidence., Lori A. Ringhand, Christina L. Boyd, Paul M. Collins, Jr.

Popular Media

Over the weekend, President Trump nominated Judge Amy Coney Barrett to fill the Supreme Court seat left empty by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has promised to move the nomination swiftly through to confirmation. As a result, the nation’s attention will soon turn to Barrett’s confirmation hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Based on our empirical examinations of every question asked and every answer given at the hearings since the first in 1939, here is what to expect.

Foreseeably Uncertain: The (In)Ability Of School Officials To Reasonably Foresee Substantial Disruption To The School Environment, Maggie Geren

Arkansas Law Review

“Ms. Sarah Phelps is the worst teacher I’ve ever met.” While the name of this Facebook page is perhaps a bit harsh, most would hardly view it as grounds for school suspension. The very heart of the First Amendment, and indeed the notion for which our Framers drafted it, is the right of citizens to “think, speak, write and worship as they wish, not as the Government commands.” Without this fundamental freedom—one that has persevered despite countless efforts to narrow its reach—the American people would live in constant fear of backlash and suppression for merely voicing their opinions.

Burying Mcculloch?, David S. Schwartz

Arkansas Law Review

Kurt Lash is a superb constitutional historian trapped inside the body of an originalist. He is one of the few originalists bold enough to acknowledge that McCulloch v. Maryland needs to be ejected from the (conservative) originalist canon of great constitutional cases. While he attributes to me an intention “not to praise the mythological McCulloch, but to bury it,” it is Lash who seeks to bury McCulloch, which he views as a fraudulent “story of our constitutional origins.”

Mcculloch V. Madison: John Marshall's Effort To Bury Madisonian Federalism, Kurt Lash

Arkansas Law Review

In his engaging and provocative new book, The Spirit of the Constitution: John Marshall and the 200-Year Odyssey of McCulloch v. Maryland, David S. Schwartz challenges McCulloch’s canonical status as a foundation stone in the building of American constitutional law. According to Schwartz, the fortunes of McCulloch ebbed and flowed depending on the politics of the day and the ideological commitments of Supreme Court justices. Judicial reliance on the case might disappear for a generation only to suddenly reappear in the next. If McCulloch v. Maryland enjoys pride of place in contemporary courses on constitutional law, Schwartz argues, then this …

What Is "Appropriate" Legislation?: Mcculloch V. Maryland And The Redundancy Of The Reconstruction Amendments, Franita Tolson

Arkansas Law Review

I am thankful for the opportunity to review Professor David Schwartz’s really thoughtful and incisive critique of McCulloch v. Maryland. The book is a creative and masterful reinterpretation of a decision that I thought I knew well, but I learned a lot of new and interesting facts about McCulloch and the (sometimes frosty) reception that the decision has received over the course of the last two centuries. Professor Schwartz persuasively argues that modern views of McCulloch as a straightforward nationalist decision that has always had a storied place in the American constitutional tradition are flat-out wrong. The Spirit of the …

Mcculloch And The American Regime, Mark A. Graber

Arkansas Law Review

Professor David S. Schwartz’s magnificent The Spirit of the Constitution: John Marshall and the 200-Year Odyssey of McCulloch v. Maryland explicitly challenges how we teach government powers in first weeks or semester of constitutional law and implicitly challenges how we teach civil rights and liberties in later weeks or second semester of constitutional law. Contrary to the impression given in many classes on the constitutional law of national powers, no straight line exists from the Marshall opinion in McCulloch v. Maryland to the New Deal and beyond. Schwartz meticulously details how, for two-hundred years, different aspects of McCulloch have been …