Showing papers on "Majority opinion published in 1974"

Formal Judicial Recruitment and State Supreme Court Decisions

Abstract: a system of selection within the state legislature, while still others utilize either a partisan or nonpartisan election. Finally, a movement has emerged in the past few decades which blends aspects of the election and appointment systems. Under the Missouri Plan, named for the state in which it was first adopted, the governor selects supreme court judges from a list of nominees compiled by a committee of legal and nonlegal community leaders. These appointed judges must subsequently run for reelection on their record at some specified time in the future and must continue to do so for the remainder of their

The International Court of Justice

Abstract: Second, in the light of the determinations concerning title requested above, the Court is asked further to determine the course of the single maritime boundary between the areas of continental shelf and exclusive economic zone appertaining respectively to Nicaragua and Colombia, in accordance with equitable principles and relevant circumstances recognized by general international law as applicable to such a delimitation of a single maritime boundary.”

Policy Goals, Strategic Choice, and Majority Opinion Assignments in the U.S. Supreme Court: A Replication

Abstract: This research note is a replication of David W. Rohde's study entitled "Policy Goals, Strategic Choice and Majority Opinion Assignments in the U.S. Supreme Court." In the original, Rohde offered a theory of the assignment of majority opinions, the primary hypothesis of which held that the opinion assigner will assign the majority opinion to himself or to the Justice whose position is closest to his own on the issue in question. Using all civil liberties cases decided by the Warren Court as the data set, Rohde found the hypothesis to be supported in the aggregate,, across issue areas and across individual assignees. This replication is undertaken to determine whether Rohde's primary hypothesis is supported when tested in a different empirical universe. The data used to test the primary hypothesis in this report are all economics cases decided by the Warren Court from 1959 to 1969. In this study, unlike the original, the primary hypothesis is found not to be supported. This result is consistent whether following Rohde's replication precisely or using a methodological variation described in the text.

Juridical Cripples: Plurality Opinions in the Supreme Court

Abstract: The Supreme Court's growing tendency to resort to "plurality opinions" has produced substantial uncertainty among the bench and bar as to the precedential value of cases so decided. In this Article, Professors Davis and Reynolds demonstrate that the ambivalent nature of the plurality opinion adversely affects the Court's extra-legal leadership functions and its own internal process of developing the law, as well as the precedential value of the increasing number of decisions announced in that format. After examining various factors which tend to generate plurality decisions, the authors suggest that the refinement of two existing methods of decision-formulation could possibly alleviate the problems created by the plurality opinion.

The Impact of Recent Supreme Court Decisions on Religion in the United States

Abstract: It would probably be too much to say that the religion clauses of the First Amendment "ain't nothing" until the United States Supreme Court "calls" them. Yet they are to a large extent a form to which the Court must supply the content, a skeleton on which the Court must put the flesh and blood. The Court has added most of the flesh and blood only since it decided in the 1940s that the free exercise of religion and the establishment of religion clauses apply to the states as well as to the federal government.1 American constitutional law on the relations be tween government and religion is largely a creature of the Court's fashioning in the last one-third of a century. The purpose of this paper is not to undertake a thorough review and analysis of the Court's jurisprudence on this subject, but only to summarize it briefly in order to assess its impact on religion in the United States. For reasons that will presently appear, some opinions of the Court other than those interpreting the religion clauses will be cited. The products of the Court's activity that appear to have the most significance for religion in America are the following. The Court has all but closed the door to substantial public aid to church-related schools at the elementary and secondary levels. At the same time it has insisted on the secularization of the

U.S. Supreme Court's Decision on Non-Citizenship.

Abstract: On November 19, 1973 the United States Supreme Court ruled that a rejection of an application for employment by a private employer because the applicant is an alien is not a violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Espinoza v. Farah Manufacturing Company, Inc.. Section 703 of Title 7 of the Civil Rights Act makes it unlawful for an employer to refuse to hire an individual because of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. The facts of the case are essentially uncomplicated. The wife was a permanent resident alien residing in the State of Texas married to a United States citizen. She applied for a job as a seamstress with the Farah Manufacturing Company and her application was rejected on the basis of a company policy prohibiting the employment of non-U.S. citizens. She contended in Court that the Farah Manufacturing Company had discriminated against her because of \"national origin\" in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, under the above-cited definition. The District Court, agreeing with her argument, held that refusal to hire her because of lack of U.S. citizenship constituted discrimination on the basis of national origin. The Court of Appeals reversed. The United States Supreme Court granted the writ of certiorari and affirmed the ruling of the Court of Appeals, with Mr. Justice Marshall speaking for the majority. Essentially, the case was decided on the narrow ground of statutory construction-that is, an interpretation of the terminology \"national origin\". The majority pointed out \"the term national origin on its face referred to the country where a person was born, or, more broadly, the country from which his or her ancestors came.\" The Court went on to find that the term \"national origin\" was different than citizenship and, therefore, discrimination on the basis of citizenship was not discrimination on the basis of national origin, and the statute does not prohibit discrimination on the basis of citizenship. In further elucidation of its reasoning, the Court pointed out that had the policy of Farah been to deny employment to persons who were Mexicans because of national origin, in spite of their U.S. citizenship, this would have been a violation of the Civil Rights Act. But, since the discrimination was based upon citizenship which is not included in the Act, no violation occurred.