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.

The Case for Managed Judges: Learning from Japan after the Political Upheaval of 1993

Abstract: Although the executive branch appoints Japanese Supreme Court justices as it does in the United States, a personnel office under the control of the Supreme Court rotates lower court Japanese judges through a variety of posts. This creates the possibility that politicians might indirectly use the postings to reward or punish judges. For forty years, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) controlled the legislature and appointed the Supreme Court justices who in turn controlled the careers of these lower-court judges. In 1993, it temporarily lost control. We use regression analysis to examine whether the end of the LDP's electoral lock changed the court's promotion system, and find surprisingly little change. Whether before or after 1993, the Supreme Court used the personnel office to 'manage' the careers of lower court judges. The result: uniform and predictable judgments that economize on litigation costs by facilitating out-of-court settlements.

Judicial Review of European Anti‐Terrorism Measures—The Yusuf and Kadi Judgments of the Court of First Instance

Abstract: In the Yusuf and Kadi judgments of 21 September 2005, the Court of First Instance endorsed the Community practice of sanctioning individuals blacklisted by the United Nations (UN). It accepted that the Community uses its competence to adopt state sanctions in combination with Article 308 EC to freeze the assets of civil persons, including European citizens. The court also reduced its jurisdiction to a basic scrutiny of whether jus cogens was violated. The Court of First Instance's decisions can be criticised on various grounds. First, the application of these Articles is contrary to the wording of the Treaty and the case‐law of the European Court of Justice (ECJ). Further, as a consequence of the Court of First Instance's judgments, decisions of the UN Sanctions Committee become the supreme law within the EU, provided they meet the requirements of jus cogens as defined by the Court of First Instance. In addition, the individual is deprived of all fundamental rights guaranteed under European law.

Why is the Japanese Supreme Court so Conservative

Abstract: The Constitution of Japan, enacted on November 3, 1946, and effective as of May 3, 1947, gave the judicial power to the Supreme Court and the inferior courts established by the Diet, the national legislature, and gave the power of judicial review to the judiciaryEquipped with the power of judicial review, the Japanese Supreme Court was expected to perform a very significant political role in safeguarding the Constitution, especially its Bill of Rights, against infringement by the government Yet, it has developed a very conservative constitutional jurisprudence ever since its establishmentThis article examines why the Japanese Supreme Court has developed such a conservative constitutional jurisprudence First, the power of judicial review and the system of judicial review in Japan in examined Second, it points out how the Japanese Supreme Court is reluctant to entertain constitutional litigation and how the Japanese Supreme Court is unwilling to apply close scrutiny or strike-down statutes Finally, the historical, organizational, institutional, and strategic reasons for the conservative constitutional jurisprudence is explored In conclusion, the author argues that the most fundamental reason lies in the reluctance of Japanese judges to view the Constitution as a source of positive law to be enforced by the judiciary

Do Policy Messengers Matter? Majority Opinion Writers as Policy Cues in Public Agreement with Supreme Court Decisions

Abstract: Does the identity of a majority opinion writer affect the level of agreement a Supreme Court decision receives from the public? Using a survey experiment, we manipulate majority opinion authors to investigate whether individuals are willing to agree with Supreme Court opinions authored by ideologically similar justices even though the decisions cut against their self-identified ideological policy preferences. Our study provides insight into the extent to which policy cues—represented by a political institution’s policy messenger—affect agreement with a given policy. We find that a messenger effect indeed augments the level of agreement a given Supreme Court case receives.

Judicial Attitudes and Voting Behavior: The 1961 Term of the United States Supreme Court

Abstract: Lawyers, political scientists, and other social scientists share an interest in seeking to understand how complex social relationships and patterns of human interaction can be studied so as to increase our stockpile of social knowledge about law and the policy-making processes through which it is formulated. They are not agreed, however, as to how this goal best may be realized. Recollection of the major emphases of legal realism may be instructive in providing perspective for dispassionate appraisal of contemporary proposals on behalf of a science of judicial behavior. For Holmes, realism was a temper, the mood of pragmatism;' while for Llewellyn, realism was only a method, and the \"method\" was to get at the real facts and issues that underlie legal controversies and the procedures employed to resolve them.2 For Cardozo, realism meant to understand the values of the judge, since the judge's personality was the only funnel through which policy norms could enter into judicial decisionsY Frank, who was more influenced by Freudian psychology, shifted the focus to the sets of unique life experiences of judges which shaped their individual value-patterns;4 Felix Cohen offered the complementary view that the decisions of individual judges, whatever might be the forces that shaped their individual value-patterns, acquired social significance only when evaluated in the context of complex antecedent and consequent processes involving the interaction of many humans besides the judge. There were, of course, other well-known legal realists; but our present sample exemplifies the major emphases which realism brought to the study of American law: