Showing papers on "Majority opinion published in 1972"

Toward a Political Supreme Court

Abstract: Obviously the Supreme Court is more than the nine individuals gowned in black and ensconced in the marble palace in Washington. Like the Presidency and the Congress, the Court must be viewed as an institution separate and apart from those who temporarily occupy the offices. It is important to examine the Court's actions and to evaluate its use of power not just for today. Like Mlaitland, one must take a deep account of yesterday in order that today not paralyze tomorrow. The ardent advocates of enhancement of presidential power when John F. Kennedy occupied the White House seem to have lost most of their ardor during the more recent tenures of Presidents Johnson and Nixon. Those prepared to have the congressional role in foreign affairs and the Senate's power to review treaty commitments bypassed for more efficient methods have begun to recognize the values inherent in such checks on the executive will, as the Viet Nam tragedy becomes ever more tragic. And, now, with a radical change of personnel on the Supreme Court already begun, there must be at least some advocates of judicial power prepared to think in more institutional terms. For, just as the power flowing to the national government from the states became irreversible at some point in our history; just as the accretion of executive authority and the reduction of legislative authority has become intractable; so, too, the authority that the Court might assert-and the manner of its assertion-could become fixed for use by Justices who succeed those who first utilize it. I do not mean that these trends cannot be reversed. Certainly they can, but only at the cost of weathering a constitutional crisis with all its correlative consequences and dangers. The proper question about the Court today-before the crisis is upon us-is not whether we should reverse the flow of authority, but whether it should be slowed or speeded. The question is whether the essential

The United States Supreme Court: Definitions of Obscenity

Abstract: This article summarizes the activity of the United States Supreme Court in formulating and applying definitions of what constitutes obscenity. For almost ninety years, American courts applied a test of obscenity established by a British court in 1868. In 1957, after lower courts in the United States had expanded the British definition, the Supreme Court, in Roth v. United States, defined as obscene such material which, "to the average person, apply ing contemporary community standards," appealed to prurient interests and lacked redeeming social value. Between 1957 and 1966, the Court added several dimensions to its definition of obscenity. The current test of obscenity was framed in 1966 in Memoirs v. Massachusetts, which reworded the Roth definition and included a third standard—namely, that the material must also be "patently offensive." This article examines not only the Supreme Court's actual definitions of obscenity but also the trends in these definitions and the Court's continual efforts to define ...

The International Court of Justice

Abstract: Prior to the commencement of the oral proceedings on Tuesday 8 March 2016, the Government of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, which had duly taken part in the written proceedings, informed the Court that it would not participate in the hearings, because, in particular, it “[did] not feel that [such] participation [would] add anything to what ha[d] already been submitted through its Counter-Memorial”.