Showing papers on "Majority opinion published in 1978"

The Impact of Judicial Activism on Public Opinion

Abstract: This research note explores the impact of judicial activism on public opinion by examining citizen evaluations of a state court system deeply involved in a highly political controversy. Data are derived from four surveys of New Jersey citizens conducted at different stages of the controversy. The note first appraises the prominence of the state supreme court and gauges the degree of public approval, and then it identifies and analyzes the correlates of the affective attitudes. The study is guided by familiar hypotheses from the empirical analysis of public support for the United States Supreme Court.

Media agendas and human rights: the Supreme Court decision on abortion.

Abstract: b Most studies of media agenda-setting focus on political events of obvious visibility and interest: campaigns and elections. Efforts are made to catalogue agenda emphases or items selected by the media for public display, and public opinion materials are explored to determine how well media agendas interact with or “fit” public perceptions of salient political issues.’ This research is important, but recent reviews of the literature on political communications suggest a broadening of our topical base, asking scholars to examine all “formal and informal techniques and processes by which officials exert influence on the news media-legislation, licensing, regulation, judicial rulings, the issuing or withholding of information, or officials’ threats and pressures.”2 In addition to advice on “tilting a t new intellectual windmills,”3 researchers are asked to consider a focus on “critical events,” an analysis which “seeks to identify those events which will produce the most useful explanations and piediction of social change.”4 This study is a n initial effort to address new topical concerns, focusing on a little researched aspect of government and media agenda-setting, a high court

Constitutional Language: An Interpretation of Judicial Decision

Abstract: This book examines theories of language for their contribution to understanding the interpretation of constitutional law by the Supreme Court.

The Constitutional Case Law of Japan: Selected Supreme Court Decisions, 1961-70

Abstract: Preface Abbreviations and Legends Introduction Relationships between Forms, Levels, and Types of Law The Diet, the Cabinet, and the Courts Local Autonomy Taxation under the Constitution Equality of Rights under the Law The Economic Freedoms of Citizens Rights Related to the Quality of Socioeconomic Life the Right to Participate in Election Politics Procedural Questions Intellectual Rights and Freedoms Appendix 1. Supreme Court Justices of Japan, 1961-1970 Appendix 2. Organization Chart of Japan's Judicial System, and Map of Court Jurisdictions in Japan Appendix 3. The Constitution of Japan Selected Bibliography Index

Relationship Between Public Opinion and Supreme Court Decisions Was Mr. Dooley Right

Abstract: The role and function of public sentiment and sanction in democratic theory assumes that there is a relationship between the law as expressed in Supreme Court decisions and public opinion. Aspects for support for this hypothesis are: (1) when fewer than four in ten members of the public approved of a broad guarantee of free speech the court restricted the First Amendment; (2) when fewer than four in ten members of the public supported the First Amendment. the court's decisions were much more likely to be close ones in either direction but especially when rulings were adverse to free speech; and (3) when a low level of public favor for free speech rights of extremists was rising, the Court was more likely to render decisions upholding the First Amendment even though less than 50% of the public supported free speech for political extremists.

The Supreme Court and Recent School Desegregation Cases: The Role of Social Science in a Period of Judicial Retrenchment

Abstract: In nearly a quarter of a century of Supreme Court decisionmaking on public school desegregation there have been ebbs and flows. While the Court has not deviated from the principle announced in Brown v. Board of Education1 that deliberate segregation of public schools violates the Constitution, its actions since 1954 have alternately sped and slowed the achievement of a remedy. Perhaps the key to the Court's posture toward desegregation at any time lies in public opinion and the attitudes of the Congress and the President. Interestingly, however, the Court often appears to be slightly out of sync with shifts in the more political branches of government. After a long period of relative inactivity following the second Brown decision2 the Court responded affirmatively to the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the vigorous enforcement actions of the Johnson administration. In 1968, in Green v. School Board of New Kent County,3 the Court declared that the test of any remedy was its effectiveness in "disestablishing stateimposed segregation,"4 and in 1971, in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education,5 the Court validated the use of busing for school desegregation, thus helping to bring sweeping changes to the South. Two years later in Keyes

The Supreme Court, Abortion Policy, and State Response: A Preliminary Analysis

Abstract: Abortion controversy marks a newly emerging field of civil rights in the American federal system. In the history of abortion cases, of civil rights cases generally, and of federalism, the Supreme Court's decisions of summer 1977 convey a clear-and perhaps unusualsignal for the federal system: by shifting from the moral and legal questions of abortion to its financing and by, in effect, placing part of the burden of decision-making on the states, the Court has narrowed the scope of abortion funding and significantly broadened the scope of state action.

Litigation and Education of Blacks: Another Look at the U.S. Supreme Court.

Abstract: The issue of segregation versus desegregation is strongly rooted in history as a continuing struggle for dominance of one over the other. The Supreme Court has played a very crucial role in dealing with the issue throughout the years, as evidenced in the historic Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) decision through Brown v. Board of Education (1954) to Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenberg Board of Education (1971) decisions.1The purpose of this paper is to trace the Court's role in the segregation/desegregation struggle.

Liability of therapists to non‐patients

Abstract: The California Supreme Court recently announced a decision especially relevant to psychologists. This decision, Tarasoff v. The University of California involved a suit initiated by the parents of a woman who was murdered by an individual who had been involved in therapy a few months before the murder. In this opinion the court announced a novel duty of therapists in certain situations to take affirmative action to protect a potential victim of a patient if, during a therapy session, the therapist learns information which suggests that the patient presents a serious danger of violence to another. Although this decision currently only reflects California law, since the California Supreme Court is frequently the harbinger of changes in American legal doctrine practitioners in other states would be well advised to familiarize themselves with the guidelines established in Tarasoff. In this paper the majority and minority opinions in this case will first be summarized, and then the practical effect of...

The New York Court of Appeals and the United States Supreme Court, 1960–76

Abstract: Recent years have seen a growth of interest on the part of political scientists and lawyers in the functioning of the state judiciaries, especially of their high courts. Between 1954 and 1970 the few writers who paid attention to state courts focused largely upon their braking the liberal race-integration and criminal procedure decisions of the Warren Court. For example, Walter Murphy and Herman Pritchett in 1%1 described the successful efforts of the Florida Supreme Court to nullify a U.S. Supreme Court order that Mr. Virgil Hawkins, a Black, be admitted to the University of Florida Law School.' In 1970 Stephen Wasby accurately said that ". . . very clearly state court judges do not follow the U.S. Supreme Court's rulings automatically, regardless of the existence of the supremacy clause."' His example involved the aftermath of a Supreme Court case invalidating as racially biased Georgia's system for electing jurors for the defendant's trial. The defendant, one Williams, was condemned to death and then appealed to the Supreme Court. Wasby indicated what happened then.

The supreme court on aid to private schools

Abstract: Donald A. Erickson University of San Francisco San Francisco, California Despite principles of constitutional law that ostensibly have been settled, relationships between government and private education in the United States are marked by controversy and confusion. In 1977, the Supreme Court reasserted a three-part test that had been used again and again to deny direct and indirect tax assistance to church-related schools.1 Yet some people believe the Court would be glad for a chance to extricate itself from current guidelines in this particular, since its decisions manifest '"confusion verging on scandal."2 More than half a century earlier, the Court formulated what has often been described as the "Magna Carta of private education," declaring that parents were free under the U.S. Constitution to choose between the public and private modes of schooling.3 Yet government is now accused of wreaking fiscal ruin on private education, with the Supreme Court's at-least-tacit acquiescence.4 In some states, furthermore, public officers are demanding, not merely that all children be provided with the understandings and skills purportedly essential to good citizenship, but that all children be educated in the manner these officials think best: some private school sponsors and patrons insist that the Court's "Magna Carta" means little or nothing under these circumstances, since private schools that are forced to be just like public schools no longer provide parents with a significant choice.5 The present article examines some disturbing developments with respect to the first of these two sets of constitutional issues issues of government aid to private schools.

Selected recent court decisions.

Abstract: Affiliated Provider Contracts: Enforceability of Liquidated Damages Provisions — Humana Medical Plan, Inc. v. Jacobson l — The Florida Court of Appeal held that a liquidated damages clause in an affiliated provider agreement between a health maintenance organization (HMO) and a physician was unenforceable against the physician as a matter of public policy and contract law. The court concluded that the importance of an existing \"doctor/patient relationship\" outweighs the financial interest of an HMO in maintaining its business relationship with an affiliated physician. This decision is significant for the health care industry because the court's rationale also calls into question other standard provisions of affiliated provider agreements, such as covenants not to compete, which are designed to restrict a physician's freedom to contract with non-member patients and other HMOs.