Majority opinion

About: Majority opinion is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 4107 publications have been published within this topic receiving 54845 citations. The topic is also known as: opinion of the court.

Status of Court Management in Switzerland

Abstract: At an international level, and in particular in the Anglo-American region, there is a long tradition of scientific study of court management. Thus in Australia there has for quite some time been the Australasian Institution of Judicial Administration (AIJA), which concerns itself with every aspect of court administration. In the USA too, research and education in the field of court management has been institutionalized for a long time, in particular by the National Center for State Courts (NCSC) and the related Institute for Court Management (ICM). In Europe, a working group known as the European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice (CEPEJ) deals with issues of court management as part of the activities of the Council of Europe. The fact that court management is also increasingly becoming an important topic in the European area was demonstrated by the establishment, in 2008, of a new professional journal that focuses on court management, the International Journal for Court Administration (IJCA). In Switzerland, the issue of court management was discussed for the first time in the course of the New Public Management (NPM) projects in the cantons, but was often limited to the question of whether to include the courts in the relevant cantonal NPM model. Generally speaking, court management was a matter that was only sporadically raised, such as at a symposium of the Swiss Society of Administrative Sciences (SSAS) in 2003 or more recently in an article in which theses on good court management are formulated. In Switzerland even today there is a general dearth of empirical and other theoretical findings on the mode of operation of the justice system and its interaction with society, or with specific social target groups. For example, it was only in 2009 that the first indications were obtained of how cases in various categories were handled by the highest administrative and social insurance courts in Switzerland. In the fields of criminal and civil justice, no such information is available at all. There is also a lack of empirical principles related to the "self-image of judges", i.e. how judges in Switzerland see themselves. Empirical research into the activities of lay judges also remains in its infancy in Switzerland, whereas in other countries, the relevant principles are available. It has, however, been possible to obtain initial findings on the functioning of the federal courts while evaluating the effectiveness of the new federal justice system.

FantasySCOTUS: Crowdsourcing a Prediction Market for the Supreme Court

Abstract: Every year the Supreme Court of the United States captivates the minds and curiosity of millions of Americans - yet the inner-workings of the Court are not fully transparent. The Court, without explanation, decides only the cases it wishes. They deliberate and assign authorship in private. The Justices hear oral arguments, and without notice, issue an opinion months later. They sometimes offer enigmatic clues during oral arguments through their questions. Between arguments and the day the Court issues an opinion, the outcome of a case is essentially a mystery. Sometimes the outcome falls along predictable lines; other times the outcome is a complete surprise. Court watchers frequently make predictions about the cases in articles, on blogs, and elsewhere. Individually, some may be right, some may be wrong. Until recently, there was not a way to pool together this collective wisdom, and aggregate ex ante predictions for all cases pending before the United States Supreme Court. Now there is such a tool. FantasySCOTUS.net from the Harlan Institute is the Internet’s premier Supreme Court Fantasy League, and the first crowdsourced prediction market for jurisprudential speculation. During the October 2009 Supreme Court Term, over 5,000 members made more than 11,000 predictions for all eighty-one cases decided. Based on these data, FantasySCOTUS correctly predicted the outcome in more than fifty percent of the cases decided, and the top-ranked predictors forecasted seventy-five percent of the cases correctly. This essay explores the wisdom of the crowds in this prediction market and assesses the accuracy of FantasySCOTUS. FantasySCOTUS is only two years old, but the implications and applications of this information market are intriguing. This article considers the possible future of FantasySCOTUS. First, from a jurisprudential perspective, FantasySCOTUS illuminates public perceptions of how the Supreme Court works as an institution. Specifically, it serves as a comprehensive polling device to provide an honest, albeit unscientific, survey that reflects how a large sample size of Court watchers view the Justices and their legal realist ideological proclivities, particularly in 5–4 decisions. If FantasySCOTUS can accurately reduce each of the Justices to nothing more than a conservative, or liberal vote, that may have broader implications to the rule of law, and objective, detached standards of judging. From a practical perspective, with more accurate future versions of FantasySCOTUS, attorneys will be able to rely on this program to assist them with litigation decisions involving cases pending before the Supreme Court. As our understanding of judicial behavior improves - perhaps through scanning all filings in PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) - and the program can shift from a pure crowdsourcing technique to a commoditized super cruncher information service, a prediction engine can be created for lower courts. An interactive litigation assistant - think of the iPhone’s Siri application - could allow attorneys and laymen alike to instantly understand and grasp the law in any given area by simply asking questions. Such technology would be of great value for practicing attorneys, and provide access to justice to people who cannot afford lawyers. This is the promise of law’s information revolution, of which we hope FantasySCOTUS is but a first step to the future.

Opinion formation in the social web: agent-based simulations of opinion convergence and divergence

Abstract: Recent research on opinion formation in the social web --- particularly blogs, comments, and reviews --- investigates opinion dynamics but reaches opposite conclusions whether consensus formation occurs or not. To address this issue, a model of consensus formation is described that takes into account not only factors leading to convergence of opinions, but also those that strengthen their divergence. Nonlinear interplay between these tendencies might lead to interesting results, and decoupling the technical basis of the interactions (e.g. network dynamics) from the human perspective of opinions and sympathies (e.g. social dynamics) is at the core of such an approach. The model presented here combines the features of epidemic diffusion and cascading models of opinions with simulations including presence of large part of society which remains neutral with respect to the issue at question. The presence of such neutral community changes significantly the topology of resulting social network and dynamics of majority opinion acceptance.

Liberty Under Law: The Supreme Court in American Life

Abstract: The two-hundredth anniversary of the U.S. Constitution and the intense debates surrounding the recent nominees to the Supreme Court have refocused attention on one of the most fundamental documents in U.S. history -- and on the judges who settle disputes over its interpretation. Liberty under Law is a concise and readable history of the U.S. Supreme Court, from its antecedents in colonial and British legal tradition to the present. William M. Wiecek surveys the impact of the Court's power of judicial review on important aspects of the nation's political, economic, and social life. The author highlights important decisions on issues that range from the scope and legitimacy of judicial review itself to civil rights, censorship, the rights of privacy, separation of church and state, and the powers of the President and Congress to conduct foreign affairs. Wiecek's own beliefs about the Court and the Constitution are unabashed and clearly stated. He expresses admiration for John Marshall while critically reviewing the mixed achievements of Marshall's successor, Roger Taney, author of the infamous Dred Scott opinion, which upheld the legitimacy of slavery. And he offers sharp criticism of the Court's "formalist" era in the early twentieth century, when judicial obstructionists "sought to shield a minority of wealth from the effects of democratic politics." Throughout, Wiecek underscores the importance of disagreements over just what law is, and over the Court's role in interpreting that law. In so doing, he broadens the context for current debates about the Constitution and efforts to establish what some have called a "jurisprudence of original intention." The mirror of history, heshows, reveals the limitations of such a narrow scope of interpretation.

One hundred years of citation of authority on the supreme court of new south wales

Abstract: Most judgments in common law countries contain citations to authority. At first blush, such citations may appear to depend largely on the specific issues in the case. However, on closer inspection, such citations form an interrelated pattern that position the reasoning in a case in the context of the existing body of common law through the doctrine of precedent. Citation to authority not only links the decision in a specific case to the existing law, but also speaks to the future. This occurs because citation to an existing case establishes its precedent value and, hence, its influence on the future evolution of the common law. At the same time, citation of a secondary authority, such as a journal article or learned text, enhances its persuasiveness and increases the likelihood that it will find future favour with the courts. Utilisation of a novel source of authority may legitimise its use in future judgments and appellate briefs. Since John H Merryman's seminal study of what the Supreme Court of California cited in 1950, several studies have examined the citation practices of courts in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States. Among the published studies for Australian courts, the citation practices of the Supreme Court of Victoria and Supreme Court of Western Australia have been examined. There is also one comparative study of the citation practice of the six State Supreme Courts based on the 50 most recent reported cases as of June 1999. This study adds to the existing literature on the citation practice of State Supreme Courts in Australia through an examination of citation practice in reported decisions of the Supreme Court of New South Wales.