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.

Statutory interpretations of the supreme court

Abstract: Studies of the Supreme Court-Congressional relationship have concentrated on the interaction that occurs between the two institutions in constitutional policy areas while ignoring the presumably more routine aspects of the relationship involving statutory issues. This article focuses on the less visible side of Court-Congressional interaction by examining Congress' response to the Court's interpretations of labor and antitrust statutes. Patterns of reaction are delineated, and several hypotheses linking Congressional response to characteristics of the Court's decision are tested. Factors such as the unanimity and direction of the Court's decision, which are often thought to have some bearing on the response of other political actors to the Court, do not, however, provide clear-cut explanations for Congressional reaction to the Court's statutory decisions. Striking differences are found between the labor and antitrust policy areas, suggesting that those who study judicial impact need to be careful in gener...

Court of first instance? Towards a pro-poor jurisdiction for the South African Constitutional Court

Abstract: Despite being premised on a transformative constitution, the South African Constitutional Court has not always functioned as an institutional voice for the poor. This is apparent in the relatively low number of cases brought by poor people, as a percentage of the total number of cases in which decisions are handed down by the Court. This article examines the extent to which the Court can in fact be said to have a pro-poor jurisdiction. In particular, it considers whether the Court's practice regarding direct access applications adequately facilitates the uptake of issues affecting the fundamental rights of poor people. The Court's record indicates that it has failed to utilise the direct access mechanism to allow constitutional matters to be brought directly to it by poor people who have been unable to secure legal representation. In so doing, the Court has failed to live up to its transformative promise. Two recent decisions of the Court - Mnguni v Minister of Correctional Services and De Kock v Minister of Water Affairs and Forestryl/ig - are used to indicate how the Court might pursue a different modus operandi to develop a pro-poor jurisdiction.

Separate and Unequal: Homer Plessy and the Supreme Court Decision that Legalized Racism

Abstract: On June 7, 1892, Homer A Plessy, a New Orleans shoemaker, white in appearance but Negro according to the "one drop" rule that discriminated against anyone with even a small fraction of African blood by that injurious label, boarded a "Whites Only" railroad coach He then volunteered his lineage to the conductor, who ordered that he move to a car set aside by state law for Negroesand so began the legal crusade that culminated in one of the most tragic and dishonorable decisions in Supreme Court history Here, acclaimed historian Professor Harvey Fireside presents a powerful account of Plessy v Ferguson, the famously unlawful ruling that institutionalized racism and helped inspire the civil rights movement Separate and Unequal combines judicial records and historic photographs with a richly evocative portrait of Jim Crowera Louisiana and a tale of the personal heroism of Homer Plessy; lawyer Albion Tourge, who argued his case pro bono; and Justice John Marshall Harlan, the decision's sole dissenter, who argued fervently against the Court majority opinion that "separate but equal" accommodations were not unjust and demeaning With sophistication and passion, Fireside shares a history less renowned but every bit as explosively influential as that of Rosa Parks

The Central American Court of Justice

Abstract: Federation in Central America. The organization of an international court in Central America was greatly facilitated by the fact that since their independence began the five Central American states have had a tradition of solidarity. This tradition has persisted in spite of frequent dissensions, and it has been expressed in numerous attempts at federation. Under the Spanish régime, the Vice-royalty of Guatemala included in its five provinces the territory of what is now the five states. It was this dependency which declared its independence in 1821. Two years later the Republic of the United States of Central America was formed, and it continued for some years. Later attempts at union were made in 1835, 1842, 1847, 1852, 1889, and 1895, all of them more or less abortive, as was the latest attempt in 1921. Unanimous agreement of the five states was always difficult to achieve; distances were great and communications difficult; and no pressing need made union imperative. Yet the attempts at federation were renewed from time to time, over a period of a century. They had the effect of encouraging cooperation in many fields, and led to the efforts in 1902, 1907 and 1921 to create a judicial agency for the handling of disputes between the five states.

Gay Rights Versus Queer Theory: What is Left of Sodomy after Lawrence V. Texas?

Abstract: In 1986, the United States Supreme Court affirmed the constitutionality of a Georgia statute under which Michael Hardwick had been charged with committing sodomy in his home with another male. The majority opinion in Bowers v. Hardwick formulated its task in the following blunt terms: to determine whether the Federal Constitution confers a fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in sodomy. The answer to that question could of course only be negative. Less than twenty years later, in Lawrence v. Texas the Court endorsed passionately homosexual intimacies and overruled Hardwick. What made this stunning judicial volte-face possible? It is a commonplace of legal advocacy that the framing of a question always already anticipates its answer. In Lawrence, the court effectively changed the question in its framing of the issue: The question before the Court is the validity of a Texas statute making it a crime for two persons of the same sex to engage in certain intimate sexual conduct. That is, the question was not one of sodomy but of intimacy - of certain intimate sexual conduct which the Court did not even specify for the purposes of stating the constitutional issue. This essay argues that Hardwick nevertheless got the constitutional question right (with some qualifications), even though the Court's answer to the question was obviously disastrously wrong. Admittedly, having been labeled as sodomites under the constitutional regime crowned by Hardwick, it is difficult to resist the Lawrence Court's interpellation of homosexuals as law-abiding subjects who are capable of intimacy and are entitled to respect for their private lives in the name of their dignity as free persons. But the respect and dignity offered by the Court will likely not come free. They will have to be earned, by leading respectable sex lives. The essay first examines the rhetorical and political conditions attached to Lawrence's offer of gay respectability and then turns to Bowers v. Hardwick and the possibility of redeeming its focus on sodomy. In a larger evaluation of the post-Hardwick landscape, it asks whether we have been liberated by the fall of anti-sodomy legislation. And if so, to what? From the perspective of queer theory, how should we view this victory for gay rights?