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.

Death penalty support for special offender populations of legally convicted murderers: juveniles, the mentally retarded, and the mentally incompetent

Abstract: The U.S. Supreme Court recently re-examined the constitutionality of the death penalty in the context of two of three special offender populations of murderers (juveniles, mentally retarded, and mentally incompetent). The Court reaffirmed the imposition of the death penalty for juveniles 16 and 17, while reversing itself on the mentally retarded. In reaching its decision, the Court relied on society's "evolving standards of decency." Using Likert-type items, this study is the first to have prospective jurors assess support for the death penalty for these specific offender groups. The public's support for the execution of each of the groups is then compared with existing case law. Descriptive statistics and regression analyses indicate that, as expected, the levels of support for the applicability of capital punishment to the various special offender populations are much lower than that for the general adult offender. Moreover, these findings are congruent with the holdings of the Court with one notable exception: a slight majority of respondents supported executing the mentally incompetent. Reasons for the public's apparent departure from the Supreme Court holding prohibiting the execution of mentally incompetent convicted murderers are discussed. The Court's continued role in protecting marginalized populations from "cruel and unusual punishment" is explored in the context of strong public sentiment demanding justice and finality despite changes in offenders' mental capacity.

The Strange, Ironic Career of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, 1965-2007

Abstract: Strange events and ironic conjunctions pervade the narrative of the renewal of provisions of the Voting Rights Act 2005-2006. Never has the radical, still-controversial Act been treated in such hushed, reverential tones, and never has its discussion been so blatantly manipulated for immediate partisan advantage. Never have there been so many proposals for comprehensive changes when the temporary parts of the Act have come up for renewal, and never has there been less serious debate about the Act in committees and on the floor of Congress. Never has support for the Act in Congress and the country seemed so universal, and never has its constitutional future before the Supreme Court seemed so tenuous. This Article shows that the strange, ironic nature of the recent consideration of the Voting Rights Act is not unusual, but rather that it is typical of the history of the most controversial provision of the Act, Section 5, which requires that all changes in election laws in "covered jurisdictions," chiefly in the Deep South, be submitted to the Justice Department or the District of Columbia District Court for "preclearance" before they are allowed to go into effect. In its early years, Section 5 was largely ignored by state and local governments, and the Justice Department was too disorganized to police it, anyway. After receiving a judicial blessing from the Supreme Court, Section 5 was for the first time vigorously enforced by the Nixon Administration, which had opposed its effective continuation, and the Carter Administration, the first administration headed by a president from the Deep South since before the Civil War. Two Supreme Court decisions in 1976 and 1980 that threatened to sap the Act's vigor instead stimulated civil rights activists to mount a campaign for amendments that overwhelmed the Reagan Administration and led to the largest increase in minority elected officials since the first years of the post-Civil War Reconstruction. But no sooner had the promise of the Act finally been fulfilled than the Supreme Court-through strained interpretations of the Act's intentions and, even more ironically, through the use of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to hamper, instead of to protect, minority political rights-stripped the Act of much of its power. By 2006, the Act's iconic status insured its persistence, but the fears of its staunchest proponents and the barely hidden antipathy of many members of the dominant political party prevented amendments that might have increased its chances to pass muster with the Roberts Court. Eight days after President George W. Bush signed the law, Gregory Coleman, a Texas lawyer with strong ties to the Republican Party, filed a serious challenge to the constitutionality of Section 5. The strange career continues. Analyzing the complete history of Section 5 and emphasizing the story's ironic elements and shifting course yield lessons that may be useful in the continuing struggle to protect the political rights of minorities. I. The Tangled History of the Voting Rights Act A. Latest Twists On July 20, 2006, only one day after the Senate Judiciary Committee reported a bill reauthorizing key provisions of what conservative columnist George Will called "the 20th century's noblest and most transformative law,"1 the U.S. Senate briefly debated and unanimously passed the Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act (VRARA).2 The apparent impetus for the unusual haste3 by "the world's greatest deliberative body,"4 was the fact that President George W. Bush wished to cite the imminent passage of the Act as evidence of racial progress under his Administration in a speech, arranged at the last minute,5 marking his first appearance as president before a convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).6 But the curtailment of even the appearance of deliberation7 in order to serve the most immediate of political purposes was not the only odd aspect of the 2005-2006 renewal saga. …

Prison Overcrowding and the Law

Abstract: This article traces and analyzes the history of prison- and jail-crowding litigation in the federal courts since the 1960s. While prisoners and pretrial detainees have won many victories, the doctrinal basis for a constitutional right to uncrowded incarceration facilities remains unclear and is still evolving. Despite several recent Supreme Court decisions unfavorable to inmates, there has been no rejection of the principles (1) that the totality of conditions in prison—including crowding—must not amount to cruel and unusual punishment and (2) that jail crowding cannot be permitted to impose genuine privations over an extended period of time. In order to enforce the decrees outlawing overcrowding, judges have had to search for creative enforcement techniques. Many of these techniques are controversial and their effectiveness is disputed. The courts have forced the other branches of government to face up to crowded prisons and jails, and they have helped to ameliorate the suffering and deprivations that th...

The Best for Last: The Timing of U.S. Supreme Court Decisions

Abstract: This Article investigates the hypothesis that the most important and, often, controversial and divisive cases—so called “big” cases— are disproportionately decided at the end of June. We define a “big case” in one of four ways: front-page coverage in the New York Times; front-page and other coverage in four national newspapers (the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and Chicago Tribune); the number of amicus curiae briefs filed in a case; and the number of subsequent citations by the Supreme Court to its decision in a case. We find a statistically significant association between each measure of a big case and end-of-term decisions even after controlling for the month of oral argument (cases argued later in the term are more likely to be decided near the end of the term) and Copyright © 2015 Lee Epstein, William M. Landes, and Richard A. Posner. † Ethan A.H. Shepley Distinguished University Professor, Washington University in St. Louis. †† Clifton R. Musser Professor Emeritus of Law and Economics and senior lecturer, University of Chicago Law School. ††† Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School. Professor Epstein thanks the National Science Foundation and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, and Professor Landes and Judge Posner thank the law and economics program at the University of Chicago, for research support. All data used in this article are available at http://epstein.wustl.edu/research/SupCtTiming.html. We are grateful to Todd Collins, Christopher Cooper, Ryan Black, Maron W. Sorenson, and Tim Johnson for providing some of the data we used in this paper; and to Mitu Gulati, Adam Liptak, and Andrew Puzder for insights on which we’ve drawn. PEL IN PRINTER FINAL (DO NOT DELETE) 3/6/2015 3:19 PM 992 DUKE LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 64:991 case attributes (e.g., dissents and concurrences) that increase the time it takes to decide a case. We also speculate on why big cases cluster at the end of the term. One possibility is legacy and reputational concerns: when writing what they think will be a major decision, the Justices and their law clerks take more time polishing until the last minute with the hope of promoting their reputations. Another is that the end-of-term clustering of the most important cases may tend to diffuse media coverage of and other commentary regarding any particular case, and thus spare the Justices unwanted criticism just before they leave Washington for their summer recess.

Critical Thinking: Consider the Verdict

Abstract: Critical Thinking: Consider the Verdict shows students how to take critical thinking skills from the jury room and apply them in the voting booth and the citizens' forum, and from the shopping mall to the boardroom. This new Third Edition of Critical Thinking: Consider the Verdict has been enlivened and updated with a wealth of fascinating new exercises from recent trials and Supreme Court decisions, from political campaigns and social debates. In addition, there is a new section on distinguishing legitimate from fallacious appeals to authority, expanded discussion of the proper role and function of the jury, and extensive new exercises on arguments from analogy.