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.

Words Are Enough: The Troublesome Use of Photographs, Maps, and Other Images in Supreme Court Opinions

Abstract: In this Commentary, Mr. Dellinger defines and analyses a heretofore unrecognized class of United States Supreme Court decisions: those in which a photograph, map, replica, or reproduction is attached to a Justice's opinion. Such attachments, all relying on visual or sight-based attributes that uniquely differentiate them from words, have appeared in a number of seminal decisions. Mr. Dellinger argues that the use of such attachments poses special dangers: because their neutrality and accuracy are so readily assumed, such attachments often elude the skepticism with which the written positions of Court opinions are generally reviewed. yet their inherent distortions and vulnerability to manipulation make the Justices' reliance on them problematic. Mr. Dellinger then argues that the Court should forgo any future reliance on attachments. In the alternative, the Justices, the companies that reproduce Court opinions, and readers must improve significantly the ways in which they respectively use, publish, and review these attachments.

The impact of anti-abortion activities on state abortion rates

Abstract: This paper examines the impact anti-abortion activities have on state abortion rates. Using 1992 data from the 50 U.S. states, the empirical results find that anti-abortion harassment activities (picketing, picketing with contact, vandalism, bomb threats, and stalking) did not significantly reduce the demand for abortion within a state nor did they cause a change in the location of the abortion procedure. However, three of the anti-abortion harassment activities (picketing with contact, vandalism, stalking) are found to significantly reduce the supply of abortions performed within a state. These results take on particular significance because of recent Supreme Court decisions which consider the threat to a woman’ privacy (the demand side) as the primary reason for curbing anti-abortion protest activities.

Life after Myriad: The Uncertain Future of Patenting Biomedical Innovation & Personalized Medicine in an International Context

Abstract: In a unanimous judgment the US Supreme Court held in the 2013 Myriad gene patent case that patent claims directed to isolated genomic DNA are identical to the naturally occurring sequence and thus not patent eligible "products of nature". It appears therefore that for a new biological composition of matter to be patent eligible, it must not be identical to the naturally occurring biological composition. This decision affects all isolated "products of nature", including genes, gene fragments, and other naturally occurring nucleotide sequences, as well as naturally occurring amino acid sequences, including peptides, ligands, and proteins. Consequently, Myriad has a severe impact on many patent portfolios. Although Myriad does not directly affect the patentability of cDNA or sufficiently modified compounds, and the most recent USPTO guidance provides some hints on how the new eligibility standard can be met, it is still not entirely clear how much modification is required to render a molecule sufficiently distinct from naturally occurring counterparts. Moreover, when combined with the US Supreme Court decisions in Prometheus and Alice, Myriad may affect method claims which depend upon unmodified biological materials. The USPTO guidance, however, still leaves much uncertainty over the patentability of such methods and diagnostics. The substantial impact of these decisions on the biomedical sector and personalized medicine, as recently demonstrated by the 2015 CAFC decision in Ariosa, as well the methodology used by the generalist Supreme Court in reversing a specialized CAFC judgment is particularly interesting from a comparative perspective. This paper analyses and discusses these U.S. developments, and compares them with the situation in Australia and in the EU.