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.

Opinion Leaders: Is Anyone Following?

Abstract: ARE there opinion leaders in the sense that some individuals within the general public change their opinions earlier than others? Are there followers in the sense of a lagging public, or are "opinion leaders" the only people discussing and making up their minds on the major issues of the day? The General Electric Company has been conducting interviews with national samples of adults by telephone every quarter since 1964. One purpose of these studies is to alert management to changes in public opinion, providing an early indication of new influences that may affect the company. Beginning in 1972 questions were included to identify respondents whose opinions might be expected to change earlier than the total sample. The Katz/Lazarsfeld opinion leadership questions reported in Personal Influence (1955) were adapted to this purpose. Two basic assumptions about how opinions are formed were implicit in this attempt. First, it was assumed that the process of opinion formation is social. When faced with an unclear situation which requires some

Foreword: The Supreme Court's Shadow Docket

Abstract: The 2013 Supreme Court Term provides an occasion to look beyond the Court’s merits cases to the Court’s shadow docket — a range of orders and summary decisions that defy its normal procedural regularity. I make two claims: First, many of the orders lack the transparency that we have come to appreciate in its merits cases. Some of those orders merit more explanation, and should make us skeptical of proposals to depersonalize the Court. Second, I address summary reversal orders in particular. As a general matter, the summary reversal has become a regular part of the Supreme Court’s practice. But the selection of cases for summary reversal remains a mystery. This mystery makes it difficult to tell whether the Court's selections are fair. I catalogue the Roberts Court’s summary reversals and suggest that they can be grouped into two main categories — a majority that are designed to enforce the Court’s supremacy over recalcitrant lower courts, and a minority that are more akin to ad hoc exercises of prerogative, or “lightning bolts.” The majority, the supremacy-enforcing ones, could be rendered fairer through identification of areas where lower-court willfulness currently goes unaddressed. We may simply be stuck with the lightning bolts.

The Most Activist Supreme Court in History: The Road to Modern Judicial Conservatism

Abstract: The Most Activist Supreme Court in History: The Road to Modern Judicial Conservatism. By Thomas M. Keck. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. 370p. $65.00 cloth, $24.00 paper. The title of this work presents its thesis at the macrolevel, but it is with limited support that the author claims that the current Supreme Court is the “most activist.” The core argument of the book is actually presented in the last chapter in clear fashion. There, the author explicitly refers to the Court as the O'Connor Court since he determines that it is largely the blend of political conservatism and judicial moderation, long displayed by Sandra Day O'Connor, that encapsulates the modern Court. So the thesis is no more than stated as something of a straw man at the outset. Thomas Keck “reveals” that the political ideology (liberal/conservative) dimension of justices is not identical to the judicial activism/restraint dimension of their judicial perspectives. These are and always have been two separate dimensions, even if they may not be orthogonal. It is not clear why this is the first major point of the discussion.

Revisiting Injunctive Relief: Interpreting eBay in High-Tech Industries with Non-Practicing Patent Holders

Abstract: The Supreme Court's 2006 eBay ruling marked a turning point in injunctive relief policy. Unfortunately, there seems to be considerable confusion about the implications of the decision. Some authors, concerned over patent holdup and excessive royalty rates, interpret the eBay decision as giving a green light to district courts to deny injunctive relief to non-manufacturing patent owners. Using an error cost framework, we examine the theory and evidence behind patent holdup concerns as they relate to injunctive relief policy. We find that the holdup theory justifying categorical limitations on injunctive relief rests upon overly narrow assumptions. As a result, categorical limitations are likely to result in substantial false positives, where patent holders with no designs of patent holdup are nonetheless denied injunctive relief. Instead of advocating categories of denial, we argue that the majority opinion in eBay can and should be read as a return to a balancing test, where costs and benefits are weighed carefully before granting or denying a patent injunction.