Judicial opinion

About: Judicial opinion is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 5300 publications have been published within this topic receiving 64803 citations.

Uncertain Precedent Circuit Court Responses to Supreme Court Plurality Opinions

Abstract: To what extent do lower court judges follow Supreme Court plurality opinions? By examining treatments of Supreme Court cases from the 1976-1986 terms by the Circuit Courts of Appeals from 1976 to 2...

The History of the Countermajoritarian Difficulty, Part Three: The Lesson of Lochner

Abstract: This project continues the history of the countermajoritarian difficulty, explaining that the long dominant "conventional" story about judicial review was born out of fights that took place at the turn of the century. For most of this century the lesson of the Lochner era has been clear: judges should refrain from imposing their own values on the meaning of the Constitution. From that era come all the conventional lessons about judicial restraint and the countermajoritarian difficulty. Now, convention is challenged by a large (and growing) body of revisionist scholarship. Lochner revisionists argue that the Lochner era decisions can be justified as consistent with doctrinal strains existing at the time. Some revisionists go so far as to argue that the conventional story is "winner's history" concocted by Progressive scholars after the battle over judicial review was won. This article challenges the revisionist project. Experience during the first third of the twentieth century shows that judges will be attacked and judicial review threatened so long as the public views judicial decisions as failing to meet social needs, regardless of whether there is doctrinal support for the challenged decisions. Thus, the conventional story is not "winner's history" but an accurate accounting of what happened at the time. And, for this reason even if the revisionists are correct that there was doctrinal support for Lochner era decisions, this only makes matters worse, for judges were attacked vociferously nonetheless. If there is a lesson to be learned from the Lochner era, it is from the attacks that were in fact leveled at judges at the time, rather than any doctrinal strains that might have supported those decisions. The legitimacy of judicial review inevitably rests in part on public reaction to judicial decisions.

The Partisan Price of Justice: An Empirical Analysis of Campaign Contributions and Judicial Decisions

Abstract: Do campaign contributions affect judicial decisions by elected judges in favor of their contributors’ interests? Although the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co. relies on this intuition for its logic, it has been until now largely a proposition that has gone empirically untested. No longer. Using a dataset of every state supreme court case in all fifty states over a four-year period, we find that elected judges are more likely to decide in favor of business interests as the amount of campaign contributions that they have received from those interests increases. In other words, every dollar of direct contributions from business groups is associated with an increase in the probability that the judges will vote for business litigants. However, we find surprisingly a statistically significant relationship between campaign contributions and judicial decisions in favor of contributors’ interests only for judges elected in partisan elections, not nonpartisan ones. Our findings suggest an important role of political parties in connecting campaign contributions to judicial decisions under partisan elections. In the flurry of reform activity responding to Caperton, our findings support judicial reforms that propose the replacement of partisan elections with nonpartisan methods of judicial selection and retention.

Legal Principles Under Criminal Law in Indonesia Dan Thailand

Abstract: The principle of legality is known in modern criminal law emerge from the scope of sociological Enlightenment doctrine that exalts the protection of people from abuse of power. Before coming Age of Enlightenment, the power to punish even without any regulations first. At that time, tastes kekuasaanlah most right to determine whether an act to be punished or not. To combat that, exists the principle of legality which is an important instrument of the protection of individual liberties in the face of the country. Thus, what is called the action that can be put into a regulatory authority, not power. According to legal experts, the roots of the idea of the principle of legality is derived from the provisions of Article 39 of the Magna Carta (1215) in the United Kingdom which ensure the protection of people from arrest, detention, seizure, disposal, and release of a person from the protection of the law / legislation, unless there is a judicial decision legitimate. This provision is followed Habeas Corpus Act (1679) in the UK that requires someone who is arrested is checked in a short time. This idea inspired the emergence of one of the provisions in the Declaration of Independence (1776) in the United States that says, no one should be prosecuted or arrested in addition to, and because of the actions set out in, legislation. Keywords: Principle of Legality; Criminal law; Indonesia; Thailand.