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.

Property and Freedom: The Constitution, the Courts, and Land-Use Regulation

Abstract: Over the past few years, a series of Supreme Court decisions has strengthened the legal protection of private property in the United States by limiting the power of state and local governments to impose zoning ordinances and land-use regulations on property owners. Bernard H. Siegan explores this new direction of the Supreme Court in Property and Freedom: The Constitution, the Courts, and Land-Use Regulation, arguing that this recent jurisprudence implements the objectives of the framers of the original Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Fourteenth Amendment. Discussing several key land-use cases, Siegan describes the emergence of a new standard of review for land-use regulations--a standard under which a regulation will be held to be constitutional only when it substantially advances state interests and does not deny an owner economically viable use of his land. This new standard is less demanding than the strict scrutiny test applied to laws limiting freedom of speech or of the press, but considerably more demanding than the standard previously applied in these cases. In elevating the protection of property rights, Siegan contends, the Supreme Court has implemented a fundamental rule of fairness: governments should not force individual property owners to bear the costs of regulations which are supposed to benefit the public. Siegan believes that the new standard of review for land-use regulations accords with the widely held view that the protection of property rights is essential to the viability of the state and the well-being of the people. He cites studies showing that economic regulations seriously limit a nation's productivity and standard of living, and that zoning and no-growth measures reduce housing opportunities and raise the price of housing. Understandably, Siegan notes, people with low and moderate incomes tend to vote against zoning regulations in local elections.

Hypotheticals, Psychiatric Testimony, and the Death Sentence

Abstract: There are a number of noteworthy aspects of this excerpt from a Texas capital sentencing hearing, at which the defendant was condemned to die. Although the responses of the psychiatrist to the district attorney's questions evoke concern about the ability of psychiatrists to predict long-term future dangerousness, Z the relevance of environmental factors to predictions of future behavior,J and the degree of certainty with which psychiatric conclusions can be expressed, the most remarkable aspect of all is the fact that the psychiatrist had, at the time of his testimony, never examined the defendant about whom he spoke. Indeed, his ac­ quaintance with the defendant was based on no information - not a review of past records, not interviews with family and friends, not even courtroom obser­ vations during the trial itself - other than a hypothetical question that had just been put to him on the witness stand by the prosecuting attorney. How such a situation came about and the legitimacy of psychiatric testimony in these circum­ stances are the subjects this article addresses. Psychiatric Testimony The history of psychiatric participation in death sentencing proceedings is intimately bound up with the peculiar course of U.S. Supreme Court decisions about the death penalty. The Court's initial decision in Furman v. Georgia in 1972 rejected the constitutionality of existing statutes that failed to provide guidance to decision makers as to which defendants, among all those convicted of capital offenses, ought to receive the ultimate penalty.4 Apparently disturbed by the dis­ proportionate number of death sentences meted out to black defendants, the Court rejected this "arbitrary and capricious" decision-making process. A number of states took the Court's opinion as an invitation to impose manda

Biotech patents: looking backward while moving forward.

Abstract: Laboratory Corporation v. Metabolite Laboratories may signal renewed interest on the part of the US Supreme Court in what is, and what is not, patentable in biology.

Dissenting Blocs on the Warren Court: A Study in Judicial Role Behavior

Abstract: IT IS IMPOSSIBLE to understand fully the work of the Supreme Court and similar appellate bodies without focusing on the crucial role of the individual justice. Supreme Court decisions are the products of the constant and forceful interaction of judicial minds and personalities, of precedents and traditions of the past and perceptions of the future, and of the conflicts and reinforcements which develop in its relationship to other political institutions. Justices are products of their environment, past and present, and it is a large part of their task to apply the values derived from these experiences to resolving cases before them. Contemporary students of the Court have articulated a number of techniques for studying the decision-making process. All are based on the assumption that the values and attitudes of individual justices are crucial determinants of decisional behavior, but each differs in its particular emphasis on the precise role which attitudes, values, or the backgrounds of the justices play in arriving at both individual and collegial determinations." In fact, the major disagreements among contemporary scholars seem to be over the relative importance of one or another component, rather than on the existence-or lackof these components.2

Risk Classification and Sex Discrimination in Pension Plans

Abstract: Two Supreme Court decisions concerning the legal definition of discrimination in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibit as discriminatory the use of separate mortality tables for men and women in pension benefit calculations. We analyze discriminatory aspects of risk classification and find that the Civil Rights Act has increased discrimination in pension compensation. This article demonstrates both theoretically and by simulation that sex-based risk classification results in less sex discrimination and less individual discrimination than a unisex approach. This result holds for various sex-based classification policies, as well as for various definitions of discrimination and statistics used to quantify those definitions. Of six pension classification policies, the Supreme Court's policy of unisex classification is the most discriminatory.