Courts Commons^™

The Judicial Power And The Inferior Federal Courts: Exploring The Constitutional Vesting Thesis, A. Benjamin Spencer

Faculty Publications

Although the Constitution vests the "Judicial Power" of the United States in the Supreme Court and in any inferior courts that Congress establishes, both Congress and the Court have long propounded the traditional view that the inferior courts may be deprived cognizance of some of the cases and controversies that fall within that power. Is this view fully consonant with the history and text of Article III? One possible reading of those sources suggests that the Constitution vests the full Judicial Power of the United States in the inferior federal courts, directly extending to them jurisdiction over matters that Congress …

Wrongful Convictions And Punitiveness: Measuring Student's Attitudes On Erroneous Felony Convictions, Shayna Lancaster

Sociology & Criminal Justice Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to better understand the attitudes towards wrongful convictions and levels of punitiveness among college students who may work in the criminal justice field in the future. It attempts to replicate Robert Ramsey and James Frank's 2007 study "Wrongful Conviction - Perceptions of Criminal Justice Professionals Regarding the Frequency of Wrongful Conviction and the Extent of System Errors." Instead of surveying criminal justice professionals, this study's sample is on-campus undergraduate classes in criminal justice and political science for the spring 2010 semester at Old Dominion University using a survey that operationalizes punitiveness with a series …

Supreme Court Of The United States, October Term 2011 Preview, Georgetown University Law Center, Supreme Court Institute

Supreme Court Overviews

No abstract provided.

Carter's Groundbreaking Appointment Of Women To The Federal Bench: His Other "Human Rights" Record, Mary L. Clark

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Pliva V. Mensing And Its Implications, Brian Wolfman, Dena Feldman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The U.S. Supreme Court ruling in PLIVA Inc. v. Mensing will immunize generic drug manufacturers facing failure-to-warn claims from state-law liability, and may also have implications for preemption jurisprudence more generally, says attorney Brian Wolfman and co-author Dena Feldman in this BNA Insight. The authors analyze the ruling, and offer their views on the questions that PLIVA raises about the ongoing vitality of the presumption against preemption, the standard for determining ‘‘impossibility’’ preemption, and the propriety of deference to an agency’s views on preemption.

Samantar V. Yousuf: Recent Developments In The Laws Governing Civil Torture Claims In U.S. Courts, Solomon B. Shinerock

Buffalo Human Rights Law Review

No abstract provided.

Statistical Criticism Of Jury Selection Methods In The Western District Of Oklahoma, R. Darcy, Brett M. Stingley

Buffalo Public Interest Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Collateral Review Of Career Offender Sentences: The Case For Coram Nobis, Douglas J. Bench Jr.

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Occasionally, criminals correctly interpret the law while courts err. Litigation pursuant to the federal Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA) includes numerous examples. The ACCA imposes harsher sentences upon felons in possession of firearms with prior "violent felony" convictions. Over time, courts defined "violent" so contrary to its common meaning that it eventually came to encompass driving under the influence, unwanted touching, and the failure to report to correctional facilities. However, in a series of recent decisions, the Supreme Court has attempted to clarify the meaning of violent in the context of the ACCA and, in the process, excluded such offenses. …

Preventing Divisiveness: The Ninth Circuit Upholds The 1954 Pledge Amendment In Newdow V. Rio Linda Union School District, Devin Snow

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Civil Procedure’S Five Big Ideas, Kevin M. Clermont

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

Civil procedure, more than any other of the basic law-school courses, conveys to students an understanding of the whole legal system. I propose that this purpose should become more openly the organizing theme of the course. The focus should remain, of course, on the mechanics of the judicial branch. What I am championing is giving some conscious attention, albeit mainly in the background and at an introductory level, to the big ideas of the constitutional structure within which the law formulates civil procedure. Such attention would unify the doctrinal study, while enriching it for the students and revealing its true …

The Antislavery Judge Reconsidered, Jeffrey M. Schmitt

School of Law Faculty Publications

It is conventionally believed that neutral legal principles required antislavery judges to uphold proslavery legislation in spite of their moral convictions against slavery. Under this view, an antislavery judge who ruled on proslavery legislation was forced to choose, not between liberty and slavery, but rather between liberty and fidelity to his conception of the judicial role in a system of limited government. Focusing on the proslavery Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, this article challenges the conventional view by arguing that the constitutionality of the fugitive act was ambiguous; meaning that neutral legal principles supported a ruling against the fugitive act …

Chinese Judicial Culture: From Tradition To Modernity, Shen Deyong

Brigham Young University Journal of Public Law

Text of an address by the Hon. Justice Shen Deyong at the Brigham Young University Law School, October 21, 2009.

Self-Conscious Dicta: The Origins Of Roe V. Wade’S Trimester Framework, Randy Beck

Scholarly Works

One of the controversies arising from Roe v. Wade (1973), has concerned whether the conclusions undergirding the opinion's “trimester framework” should be considered part of the holding of the case, or instead classified as dicta. Different Supreme Court opinions have spoken to this question in different ways. This article reviews materials from the files of Justices who participated in Roe, seeking insight as to what the Court thought about the issue at the time. The article concludes that Justices in the Roe majority understood the opinion’s trimester framework to consist largely of dicta, unnecessary to a ruling on the constitutionality …

Vonnegut: Lessons For Law & Policy, Daniel E. Lazaroff

Cardozo Public Law, Policy & Ethics Journal

The article explores the profound influence of Kurt Vonnegut's literary work on legal thought and discourse, particularly in areas such as First Amendment rights, intellectual property, and the ethical implications of technology. Vonnegut's themes of equality, corporate power, and the horrors of war have not only shaped legal scholarship but also informed judicial decisions and public policy. His work continues to resonate in contemporary legal debates, offering timeless insights into pressing societal issues.

Islam In The Secular Nomos Of The European Court Of Human Rights, Peter G. Danchin

Michigan Journal of International Law

If, with the benefit of hindsight, Mr. Choudhury's case was a harbinger of the emergence of various problems associated with Islam and the rights of Muslim minorities in European nation-states, then the events of September 11, 2001 have propelled these issues to the forefront of law and politics in a way unimaginable even a decade earlier. In Denmark, cartoons depicting the Islamic prophet Muhammad as a suicide bomber have been published leading to protests and violence across Europe and the Islamic world; a law prohibiting students in public schools from wearing symbols or attire through which they conspicuously exhibit a …

Not The Crime But The Cover-Up: A Deterrence-Based Rationale For The Premeditation-Deliberation Formula, Michael J. Zydney Mannheimer

Indiana Law Journal

Beginning with Pennsylvania in 1794, most American jurisdictions have, at one time or another, separated the crime of murder into two degrees based on the presence or absence of premeditation and deliberation. An intentional, premeditated, and deliberate murder is murder of the first degree, while second-degree murder is committed intentionally but without premeditation or deliberation. The distinction was created in order to limit the use of the death penalty, which generally has been imposed only for first-degree murder.

Critics have attacked the premeditation-deliberation formula on two fronts. First, they have charged that the formula is imprecise as a measure of …

The Kiyemba Paradox: Creating A Judicial Framework To Eradicate Indefinite, Unlawful Executive Detentions, Samuel Chow

Cardozo Journal of International and Comparative Law

The article examines the Supreme Court's evolving role in reviewing detentions related to national security, particularly focusing on the writ of habeas corpus. It argues that while the Court has expanded habeas protections, significant limitations remain, especially in ordering release into the United States. The author contends that for habeas to be meaningful, courts must have the authority to grant "functional release," balancing individual liberty against executive powers. The analysis highlights key cases like Boumediene v. Bush, Munaf v. Geren, and Kiyemba v. Obama, which reveal the challenges in preventing indefinite detentions and the need for clearer …

The Judiciary In Political Transitions: The Critical Role Of U.S. Constitutionalism In Latin America, Nuno Garoupa, Maria A. Maldonado

Cardozo Journal of International and Comparative Law

This paper proposes a theory that explains how political transitions deal with incumbent judiciaries. We argue that a new political regime compares the benefit of reshaping the judiciary with loyal appointees against the political and economic costs of directly interfering, including the cost of international reputation. There are several forms of interventionism including court packing, court purging, and violence against the judiciary. We discuss political transitions in Europe and Latin American civil law jurisdictions through the lens of our theory. We argue that American constitutional influence plays a critical role. In addition, we provide a detailed analysis of the recent …

Health Care: Why Jurisdiction Matters, Kevin C. Walsh

Law Faculty Publications

Congress’s enactment of comprehensive healthcare reform legislation last year was the culmination of one round of an intense debate that continues today. The second round began the same day that the first round ended, when President Obama signed the legislation. In this second round, the locus of debate has shifted from Congress to the courts, which are processing a slew of lawsuits filed immediately after enactment.

One of the most prominent is Virginia v. Sebelius. The lawsuit presents on its face a prominent and critically important question of federalism: Did Congress exceed the limits of its enumerated legislative powers by …

Changes To The Culture Of Adversarialness: Endorsing Candor, Cooperation And Civility In Relationships Between Prosecutors And Defense Counsel, Stacy Caplow, Lisa Griffin

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.