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.

The Supreme Court’s Surprising and Strategic Response to the Civil Rights Act of 1991

Abstract: This essay, which was prepared for a symposium issue in recognition of the twentieth anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1991, explores the Supreme Court’s response to the Congressional repudiation of its cases reflected in the 1991 Act. Relying on a positive political theory framework, I demonstrate that the Court appears to have responded in a strategically sophisticated manner designed to insulate their decisions from Congressional reversal. The 1991 Act reversed or modified eight Supreme Court decisions, and reflected concern regarding the conservative turn the Court had taken in discrimination cases. After the passage of the Act, plaintiffs have fared substantially better in the Supreme Court - prevailing on nearly seventy (70%) of the non-disability employment discrimination cases, with nearly two thirds of the victories rendered by unanimous decisions. Yet, in the most significant cases - the cases the conservative members of the Supreme Court likely have the strongest preference - defendants continue to prevail, often by a 5-4 margin.

Obergefell’s Ambiguous Impact on Legal Parentage

Abstract: The Supreme Court decisions in Windsor and Obergefell have the potential to affect the law of parent-child relations, particularly the law that determines who is a legal parent. However, how the cases will affect this area of the law is at best ambiguous. The central question of the law of parentage is when and to what extent determinations of legal parenthood should be based on biological relationship, marriage to a child’s biological parent, or functioning as or intending to be a parent. In Windsor and Obergefell the Court endorsed the claim that children whose parents are married are better off socially and legally than non-marital children; the language in both opinions could easily be taken to support legal rules that encourage or prefer childrearing within marriage. On the other hand, the Court assumed that both members of a same-sex couple are in fact parents of the children, even though it is highly likely that only one adult is biologically related to the child. The unspoken premise is that both are parents because both function as parents (and often, but not always, both participated in the decision-making process that led to the child’s conception and birth). This article examines how the law in the various states balances claims to base legal parentage on biology, function, and marriage, and how the Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage decisions are affecting that balance. The analysis focuses on recent decisions with mixed results from Oklahoma, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, and Wyoming. The article concludes that the Supreme Court decisions are having some impact in the lower courts, particularly by supporting recognition of the parental claims of adults who are not biologically related to children whom they have raised with their same-sex partners. However, these decisions are limited and cannot protect children and their functional parents adequately in all situations. Therefore, legislative solutions are still needed.

Choice of law in the American Courts in 2011: Twenty-Fifth annual survey

Abstract: This is the 25th Annual Survey of American Choice-of-Law Cases. It is intended as a service to fellow teachers and students of conflicts law, both within and outside the United States. The Survey covers cases decided by American state and federal appellate courts in 2011. The following are some of the cases discussed:• Three Supreme Court decisions, one on general jurisdiction, one on specific jurisdiction, and one holding that the Federal Arbitration Act preempts state court rulings that protected consumers by refusing to enforce certain class-arbitration waivers.• Two state supreme court cases refusing to enforce arbitration clauses that waive tort claims arising from gross negligence and criticizing the Supreme Court for 'tendentious reasoning' and for creating new doctrines 'from whole cloth.'• A New York case struggling with the Neumeier rules in a case involving the same pattern as Schultz, and a California case worthy of Traynor’s legacy in delineating the extraterritorial reach of California statutes.• A Delaware case holding that Delaware has an interest in 'regulating the conduct of its licensed drivers,' even when they drive in states with lower standards; a conflict between a dram shop act and an anti-dram shop act; and a product liability case in which a driver who crushed his car after taking a sleeping pill prevailed on the choice-of-law question.• A case enforcing a foreign arbitration and choice-of-law clause prospectively waiving a seaman’s federal statutory rights, even though there was little possibility for a subsequent review of the arbitration award.• Several cases illustrating the operation of four competing approaches to statutes of limitation conflicts.• A case rejecting a claim that a Sudanese cultural marriage was invalid because the groom had paid only 35 of the 50 cows he promised as dowry to the bride's father.• Two cases recognizing Canadian same-sex marriages. • A case holding that the court had jurisdiction to terminate a father’s parental rights without in personam jurisdiction over him, as long as the children were domiciled in the forum state.• A case holding that a state's refusal to issue a revised birth certificate listing two unmarried same-sex partners as the child's parents after an adoption in another state did not violate the Full Faith and Credit clause.• A case characterizing as penal and refusing to recognize a sister-state judgment imposing a fine for a violation of zoning restrictions.• Several cases involving sex offenders required by sister-state judgments to register their place or residence, or terminating the obligation to register.• Four federal appellate decisions holding that corporate defendants can be sued under the Alien Tort Statute for aiding and abetting in the commission of international law violations.

The Legal Entrenchment of Illegality

Abstract: This paper concerns systematic practices by public officials that are clearly unlawful, not hidden from view, and tolerated for many years. Such a “legal entrenchment of illegality” characterized America’s Jim Crow period, from the 1890s to the 1960s, especially in the former slave states, where the rape, assault and murder of African Americans, police brutality, procedural bias, and anti-black pogroms were tolerated or engaged in by officials. The related cynicism of officials is illustrated by a review of Supreme Court decisions that undermined the legal framework for the post-Civil War “reconstruction” of the former slave states. This paper also shows how the legal entrenchment of illegality required officials to embrace an incoherent and unstable set of attitudes towards law, which was incompatible with Hart’s legal theory as originally presented, but was compatible with its final form.

Glucksberg, the putative right to adequate pain relief, and death with dignity.

Abstract: This Article focuses on the legality of the aggressive use of analgesics and deep sedation for terminally ill patients. The author analyzes the 1997 Supreme Court decisions on physician-assisted suicide, examines the tension between controversial palliative care practices and the traditional legal framework, and explores the contours of an emerging constitutional right to avoid suffering at the end of life. In addition, the author argues that deep sedation together with withholding of artificial nutrition and hydration should be an option for dying patients suffering from severe physical or emotional pain.