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Supreme Court Decisions

About: Supreme Court Decisions is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1804 publications have been published within this topic receiving 17066 citations.


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TL;DR: It is clear that the Court erred in Washington v. Glucksberg and the right of a terminally ill person to end his or her life is an essential aspect of autonomy, comparable to aspects of autonomy that the Supreme Court has protected in decisions concerning family autonomy, reproductive autonomy, and autonomy to engage in sexual activity.
Abstract: Properly focused, there were two questions before the Supreme Court in Washington v Glucksberg First, in light of all of the other non-textual rights protected by the Supreme Court under the "liberty" of the Due Process Clause, is the right to assisted death a fundamental right? Second, if so, is the prohibition of assisted death necessary to achieve a compelling interest? Presented in this way, it is clear that the Court erred in Washington v Glucksberg The right of a terminally ill person to end his or her life is an essential aspect of autonomy, comparable to aspects of autonomy that the Court has protected in decisions concerning family autonomy, reproductive autonomy, and autonomy to engage in sexual activity Moreover, the government's general interest in protecting life and preventing suicide has far less force when applied to a terminally ill patient The tragedy of Washington v Glucksberg is that every day across the country, terminally ill patients are being forced to suffer longer and being denied an essential aspect of their autonomy and personhood

5 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors make a connection between freedom of commercial speech and political and personal autonomy, and make compelling arguments for taking the right to commercial communication seriously by according it full First Amendment protection and by restricting it only when competing and over-riding rights claims can be adduced.
Abstract: Recent Supreme Court decisions have established second tier protection for commercial speech under the First Amendment by according it some, but not all, of the protections accorded ideological speech. The Court's arguments closely parallel John Staurt Mill's utilitarian arguments about liberty, liberty-limiting principles and trade in his classic essay,On Liberty, and hence are subject to the same defects as any utilitarian analysis and justification of a right. Recent philosophical apologies for the Court's bifurcated approach to free speech are unpersuasive. Commercial speech protects fundamental interests. There are important connections between freedom of commercial speech and political and personal autonomy. It is possible to extend full protection to commercial speech, while simultaneously minimizing its potential for abuse. Such considerations provide compelling arguments for taking the right to freedom of commercial communication seriously by according it full First Amendment protection and by restricting it only when competing and over-riding rights claims, or weightier considerations of justice, can be adduced.

5 citations

Journal Article
TL;DR: The Tinker case is the mother of school law as mentioned in this paper and has been widely cited as the seminal decision in modern education litigation, leading to a new era of legal rights and responsibilities for students and teachers.
Abstract: To mark the 30th anniversary of the Supreme Court's Tinker decision, Mr. Zirkel interviews the lead attorney for the plaintiff students and a supporting attorney for the defendant school district. DECIDED 30 years ago, the Tinker case is the mother of school law.1 Other Supreme Court decisions followed in its footsteps, blazing the path of legal rights and responsibilities for students, teachers, and schools.2 In considering the suspension of a small group of public school students in Des Moines, Iowa, for wearing armbands to protest the war in Vietnam, the Supreme Court held (in a 7-2 decision) that public school officials' prohibition of student expression violates the First Amendment in the absence of a reasonable forecast or the actual occurrence of "substantial disruption of or material interference with school activities." In addition, the majority opinion, written by Justice Abraham Fortas, contained what is probably the most often quoted dictum in modern education litigation: First Amendment rights, applied in light of the special characteristics of the school environment, are available to teachers and students. It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights . . . at the schoolhouse gate.3 One dissenting opinion, written by Justice Hugo Black, characterized the majority holding as ushering in "an entirely new era" in the student/school relationship specifically, one of "revolutionary . . . permissiveness . . . fostered by the judiciary." Black predicted that, as a result of the majority's decision, "some students in Iowa schools and indeed in all schools will be ready, able, and willing to defy their teachers on practically all orders" a particularly troublesome prospect "since groups of students all over the land are running loose, conducting break-ins, sit-ins, lie-ins, and smash-ins." The other dissent, by Justice John Marshall Harlan, took a more intermediate position, advocating a rule that would put the burden on the plaintiff students to prove that "a particular school measure was motivated by other than legitimate school concerns for example, a desire to prohibit the expression of an unpopular view, while permitting expression of the dominant opinion." To mark this 30th anniversary of the Supreme Court's Tinker decision, the Kappan presents this interview, conducted on 17 June 1999 by Courtside columnist and Lehigh University professor Perry Zirkel, with the lead attorney for the plaintiff students, Dan Johnston, and a supporting attorney for the defendant school district, Edgar Bittle.4 In the aftermath of the events at Columbine High School, this reflection on Tinker is acutely timely. Dan Johnston is now a solo practitioner of law in New York City, and Edgar Bittle is a partner in Ahlers, Cooney, Dorweiler, Haynie, Smith and Allbee, a law firm in Des Moines. Zirkel: What were your roles in the actual Tinker litigation? Bittle: I was a law clerk for Allan Herrick at the time that the case was tried, and then I was an associate in his law firm when Tinker was argued before the Supreme Court. Today, I'm probably the only living attorney from the defense side. Johnston: I was the lawyer for the children who were the plaintiffs at the trial level, in the Court of Appeals, and then before the Supreme Court. The Context Zirkel: It has been 30 years since the Supreme Court's decision. Can you describe the tenor of the times in Des Moines and in the country 30 years ago? Johnston: Well, there was a lot of division in Des Moines about the war and about protest in general. And this case involved the whole issue of protest, probably as much as the substantive issue of the war itself. People were burning draft cards, people were being arrested and prosecuted for activities in the antiwar movement, and certainly parents, at least most parents, didn't want their children to get involved in that and suffer the hardships that might result. …

5 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The Commerce Clause one of the most important sources of congressional legislative powers in the U.S. Constitution is the subject of this installment of Law and the Public's Health.
Abstract: The Commerce Clause one of the most important sources of congressional legislative powers in the U.S. Constitution is the subject of this installment of Law and the Public's Health. Commerce Clause jurisprudence, and its evolution through key Supreme Court decisions governing its application to major population health challenges, constitutes a basic building block of public health policy and practice.

5 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This article argued that America's "nullification" of Brown represents the norm, not the exception, to the pattern of American history with respect to race, and that the so-called Southern strategy is not a mere byproduct of "white backlash" to the civil rights movement.
Abstract: Six decades have passed since the Supreme Court's holding in Brown v. Board of Education declared “separate educational facilities for the races are inherently unequal.” Yet, the educational landscape for still far too many Black and Latino school children more resembles Plessy v. Ferguson. Years of resistance to the letter and spirit of Brown in various forms culminated with a series of Supreme Court decisions in the 1990s that released scores of local school districts from court-mandated desegregation orders. These political and legal battles over desegregation and busing are often understood as part of the “Southern strategy” utilized by Republicans to appeal to the racial resentments of white voters who traditionally voted Democratic. This essay, by drawing parallels to the Nullification Crisis of 1832–1833, argues that the so-called Southern strategy is not a mere by-product of “white backlash” to the civil rights movement. Rather, the Nullification Crisis is the crucible for a uniquely American reactionary political tradition that opposes the ideal of multiracial democracy. Thus, America's “nullification” of Brown represents the norm, not the exception, to the pattern of American history with respect to race.

5 citations


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Performance
Metrics
No. of papers in the topic in previous years
YearPapers
202311
202221
202118
202026
201938
201832