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Brief Of Religious Liberty Scholars And Employment Law Scholars As Amici Curiae In Support Of Petitioner, Douglas Laycock, John A. Meiser, Richard W. Garnett

Court Briefs

No. 22-174
Gerald E. Groff v. Louis DeJoy

On Petition for a Writ of Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit

From the Summary of Argument

This case is an ideal vehicle for correcting an error that has undermined protection for religious workers across the country, in defiance of clear statutory text and underlying principles of religious liberty.

A Reflection Of Canadian Society? An Analysis Of Federal Appointments To Provincial Superior Courts By The Liberal Government Of Justin Trudeau, Erin Crandall

Dalhousie Law Journal

Recent reforms to Canada’s system of federal judicial appointments have sought to make the process more transparent and better able to produce a bench reflective of the society it serves. This paper reviews these reforms and using judicial appointment data (2016–2020), considers whether the Liberal government has met these objectives. The relationship between official bilingualism and representation on the bench is also considered. The paper finds that “diversity” on Canada’s federally appointed provincial courts remains unbalanced. While women have made up the majority of appointments since the Trudeau Liberals formed government in 2015, other equity-deserving groups, like people of colour …

Chisholm V. Georgia (1793): Laying The Foundation For Supreme Court Precedent, Abigail Stanger

The Cardinal Edge

No abstract provided.

Brief Of Amicus Curiae Notre Dame Law School Religious Liberty Clinic In Support Of Plaintiffs-Appellants, John A. Meiser, Francesca Genova Matozzo

Court Briefs

No. 22-11674
Thai Meditation Association of Alabama, Inc. v. City of Mobile, Alabama

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Alabama No. 1:16-cv-00395

From the Summary of the Argument

This Court already corrected the district court’s errant understanding of RLUIPA’s substantial-burden analysis once in this case. Unfortunately, a second correction is needed now.

In Thai Meditation Association’s first appeal, this Court explained that “the district court misread our opinion in Midrash” and, as a consequence, had erroneously required the Association to show that the government “completely prevent[ed]” its religious exercise in order to demonstrate …

Brief Amicus Curiae Of The National Congress Of American Indians, A Tribal Elder, The International Council Of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers, And The Mica Group Supporting Plaintiff-Appellant And En Banc Rehearing, Stephanie Hall Barclay, Francesca Matozzo

Court Briefs

No. 21-15295
Apache Stronghold v. United States of America

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Arizona, Honorable Steven P. Logan (2:21-cv-00050-PHX-SPL)

From the Summary of the Argument

Meaningful access to sacred sites such as Oak Flat is an indispensable part of many Indigenous tribes’ religious exercise. Nonetheless, the government has repeatedly denied necessary access and even destroyed such sites, thus thwarting the ability of tribal members to exercise core aspects of their spiritual practices. The tribal members in this case face the same fate.

Defining “Different”–How Distinctive Methods Of Textual Interpretation Led To The Abduction Enhancement Circuit Split, Adam Manaa

Pepperdine Law Review

This note examines the federal circuit courts’ differing approaches to interpreting the robbery abduction enhancement in the United States Sentencing Guidelines. Specifically, this note sets forth how the Sixth Circuit’s strict method of textual interpretation in United States v. Hill led to the erroneous holding that the term “different location” refers to “a place different from the store that is being robbed.” This note argues the court should have taken a more holistic interpretative approach, taking the underlying purpose of the Guidelines into account.

Living In A Legal Limbo: Mechanisms To “Fix” The Legal And Social Positions Of Unregistered Children In Indonesia, Hoko Horii, Theresia Dyah Wirastri

The Indonesian Journal of Socio-Legal Studies

This paper examines the reasons and consequences of a lacking birth-registration in Indonesia, as well as the mechanisms to ‘fix’ it. In order to avoid the legal and social consequences of the lack of registration, creative and ad-hoc solutions are crafted – not only by the individual families who face the problem, but also by their community, including local and state actors who are involved in the mechanisms and paperwork. These mechanisms exist also because of state’s reluctance to enforce regulation related to unregistered marriage and children born into unregistered marriage as these matters are religiously and culturally delicate. We …

Holmes V. Walton And Its Enduring Lessons For Originalism, Justin W. Aimonetti

Marquette Law Review

Originalism is nothing new. And the New Jersey Supreme Court’s 1780 decision in Holmes v. Walton shows it. In that case, the New Jersey Supreme Court disallowed a state law as repugnant to the state constitution because the law permitted a jury of only six to render a judgment. To reach that result, the court looked to the fixed, original meaning of the jury trial guarantee embedded in the state constitution, and it then constrained its interpretive latitude in conformity with that fixed meaning. Holmes thus cuts against the common misconception that originalism as an interpretive methodology is a modern …

Regulation Weakness And Lack Of Public Awareness Has Impeded The Implementation Of Environmental Policies In Saudi Arabia, Nada Gurmalla Algamdy

Dissertations & Theses

This research aimed to substantially illustrate that the weakness of environmental regulations and lack of public participation in urban planning alongside poor public awareness in Saudi Arabia has inhibited the implementation of environmental policies across this region. To study these issues, this research compared the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (“KSA”) to the United States (“US”) building on numerous studies to illustrate how the identified weaknesses correlate with weak or ineffective environmental policies. It is well known that it would be better to use a European country “because it's known that the EU has tough environmental measures" as a model for …

Public Access To Online Hearings, Jérémy Boulanger-Bonnelly

Dalhousie Law Journal

The open court principle faced a significant challenge when courthouses closed their doors to limit the spread of COVID-19. The shift to online hearings in many jurisdictions generated new avenues for public access but also raised concerns for the privacy and security of individuals, and for the administration of justice. Building on existing principles and a review of the measures adopted by courts in Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Australia during the pandemic, this paper seeks to identify best practices to preserve an appropriate balance between openness and competing interests in the online environment. It concludes that …

If I Had More Time, Would I Have Written A Shorter And Faster Decision? An Empirical Examination Of The Evolution Of Trial Court Decisions, Jon Khan

Dalhousie Law Journal

This article draws from my 2019 LLM thesis on Canadian judicial decisions, where I sought to understand two things: how current approaches to judicial decision-writing may impact access to justice and how might we make decisions a better source of data while also making them more timely, concise, accessible, and consistent. It presents the results and analysis of an original empirical study of the evolution of British Columbia trial decisions over 40 years (1980–2018). It argues that the current process for writing Canadian judicial decisions likely does not further the goals of access to justice and may even hinder them. …

An Analytical Study On Legal Validity Of Online Dispute Resolution (Odr) System In India And Indonesia, Dr Rahul Nikam, Bangkim Singh Nongthombam

Indonesia Law Review

Advancement in technology brought many inevitable changes with more efficiency, making human life easier. Benefit of technology shall be incorporated for effective and efficient justice delivery in dispute resolution mechanism. New development in this area is online arbitration dispute resolutions (ODR) which have been without doubt adopted and practices by justice delivery system across the globe. But the question remains the same as whether justice delivery system is equipped to cope up in the same pace with the changes taking place in the society and technology. Are the existing laws being enough to conduct online system as an effective mechanism …

How Biden Could Keep Filling The Federal Circuit Court Vacancies, Carl Tobias

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

In October 2020, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden speculated that the fifty-four talented, extremely conservative, and exceptionally young, appellate court judges whom then-President Donald Trump and two relatively similar Grand Old Party (GOP) Senate majorities appointed had left the federal appeals courts “out of whack.” Problematic were the many deleterious ways in which Trump and both of the upper chamber majorities in the 115th and 116th Senate undermined the courts of appeals, which are the courts of last resort for practically all lawsuits, because the United States Supreme Court hears so few appeals. The nomination and confirmation processes which Trump …

Developments In Contract Law: The 2020-2021 Term – Appeals To Fairness, Marcus Moore

All Faculty Publications

This article analyzes important developments in Contract Law stemming from consideration by the Supreme Court of Canada in 2020-2021. Due to the large number of Contracts cases during this period, the article focuses on prominent appeals occupied with issues of fairness in Canadian Contract Law. Fairness in contracts emerges as an important concern of the SCC at this juncture. This appropriately reflects the constellation of some long-unsolved problems (e.g., control of unfair terms in standard form contracts), confusion around key concepts associated with protection of contractual fairness (e.g., unconscionability and good faith), and judicial disagreement over the merits of general …

International Courts & Judicial Affairs, Sara Ochs, Paula Henin, Haydee Dijkstal, Kabir Duggal, Katelyn Horne, Michael Rodriguez, Katherine Maddox Davis

The Year in Review

No abstract provided.

Science-Intensive Dispute Mechanism For Protection Of Atmosphere: Icj, Wto And Pca, Chhaya Bhardwaj, Anmol Agarwal

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

The authors argue that protection of atmosphere related science intensive disputes should be submitted to the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) because it has a better approach in comparison to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), and World Trade Organization (WTO). This comparative analysis highlights different approaches by the three dispute settlement institutions. The approach by the ICJ and WTO are discretionary and follow a case-by-case method to evaluate scientific evidence. The PCA has standardized its dispute settlement process under its codified protocols for science-intensive disputes. There is an increase in science-intensity of legal issues in the twenty-first century and …

Measuring Judicial Collegiality Through Dissent, Jonathan Remy Nash

Buffalo Law Review

While scholars frequently offer ideology as a primary explanation for judicial behavior, judges, and some scholars, emphasize the importance of collegiality on multimember courts. But there is disagreement over how to determine when collegiality is at work, and what type of multimember court is more likely to exhibit collegiality among its judges. Resolving these competing claims calls for a valid measure of collegiality.

This Article develops novel measures of collegiality based on dissenting judges’ expressions of collegiality towards judges in the majority. It uses judge-level and court-level databases to validate these measures by showing that the novel measures correlate with …

Drug Court Discrimination: Discretionary Eligibility Criteria Impedes The Legislative Goal To Provide Equal And Effective Access To Treatment Assistance, Kalyn Heyen

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Criminal Court System Failures During Covid-19: An Empirical Study, Cynthia Alkon

Faculty Scholarship

How did the criminal legal system respond to the early months of pandemic in 2020? This article reports the results of a unique national survey of judges, defense lawyers, and prosecutors that gives a snapshot of how the criminal legal system responded to the COVID-19 in the first five chaotic months. Criminal courts in the United States rely on in-person proceedings and formal and informal in-person communications to manage caseloads. The survey results detail, in ways not previously fully understood, how crucial these in-person communications are and how ill-prepared the criminal courts and legal professionals were to deal with the …

The Unchosen: Procedural Fairness In Criminal Specialty Court Selection, Shanda K. Sibley

Cardozo Law Review

Specialized criminal courts were created in an effort to offer nonpunitive responses to the commission of crime. The promise of these courts was that they would remove select populations from the traditional legal system and offer them something different, and perhaps better, than mere punishment and incapacitation.

However, the current selection processes for specialized courts—in which judges and prosecutors have almost completely unfettered discretion to decide both the criteria by which potential participants will be allowed to participate and whether any individual defendant meets such criteria—perverts the notion of providing specialized services to specific populations. Instead of selecting defendants based …