Showing papers on "Supreme court published in 1986"

Neither the Purse Nor the Sword: Dynamics of Public Confidence in the Supreme Court

Abstract: Systematic study of changes in support for the U.S. Supreme Court across time has not been undertaken. Armed with a time series of observations from 1966 through 1984, I provide a description of the ebb and flow of public esteem for the Court. Then I outline and test several plausible propositions about the dynamics of support. Statistical analyses compel the conclusion that apart from a relatively constant core of support, increases in judicial activism, inflation, and solicitude for the rights of the accused decreased confidence in the Court; the events surrounding Watergate and increases in presidential popularity and the public salience of the Court brought about increased popular esteem for the high bench. Previous scholars, based on cross-sections of individuals, have emphasized the public's ignorance of and disinterest in the Supreme Court and judicial policy making. The responsiveness of public support for the Court in the aggregate to political events and shifts in the behavior of the justices stands in stark contrast to the conventional image of United States citizenry as singularly out of touch with and unmoved by the Supreme Court.

Storm Center: The Supreme Court in American Politics

Abstract: Based on interviews with justices and an examination of cases and private presidential papers, this study of the American Supreme Court explores its historic cases, its practices, and its recent controversial judgements in relation to social and legal reforms.

The Establishment Clause: Religion and the First Amendment

Abstract: Leonard Levy's classic work examines the circumstances that led to the writing of the establishment clause of the First Amendment: 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion...' He argues that, contrary to popular belief, the framers of the Constitution intended to prohibit government aid to religion even on an impartial basis. He thus refutes the view of 'nonpreferentialists,' who interpret the clause as allowing such aid provided that the assistance is not restricted to a preferred church. For this new edition, Levy has added to his original arguments and incorporated much new material, including an analysis of Jefferson's ideas on the relationship between church and state and a discussion of the establishment clause cases brought before the Supreme Court since the book was originally published in 1986.

Supreme Court Justices as Human Decision Makers: An Individual-Level Analysis of the Search and Seizure Cases

Abstract: This paper applies a fact model of decision making to the justices of the United States Supreme Court. The theoretical model assumes that the justices, as human decision makers, are incapable of considering the hundreds of facts that can affect a particular case. Rather, they rely upon a relative handful of cues to guide their decisions. The model is tested using the votes on search and seizure cases by the justices at the center of the Burger Court: White, Stewart, Powell and Stevens. The results show that a significant proportion of the variation in each justice's decisions can be explained by a small number of facts. Finally, it is shown that for these justices and these cases, there is no evidence that judges become more conservative with age.

Public School Desegregation in the United States, 1968-1980

Abstract: Author(s): Orfield, Gary | Abstract: It is now more that fourteen years since the Supreme Court rejected gradual and voluntary transfers between black and white schools and called for root-and-branch desegregation. Almost a decade has passed since the first Supreme Court decision requiring citywide bussing outside the South. But the national debate over school desegregation continues to be intense. We are experiencing another national attack on court-ordered desegregation by national leaders, including the president and attorney general. The federal grant program supporting desegregation was repealed in 1981 and there are numerous proposals in Congress to limit the use of bussing for desegregation. At the same time, in courtrooms across the country, civil rights groups continue to wage protracted legal battles against segregation.Also avaialble at: http://civilrightsproject.ucla.edu

The First Freedoms: Church and State in America to the Passage of the First Amendment

Abstract: Is government forbidden to assist all religions equally, as the Supreme Court has held? Or does the First Amendment merely ban exclusive aid to one religion, as critics of the Court assert? After years of debate the controversy still rages on, with both positions now more solidified but neither side victorious. The First Freedoms studies the Church-State context of colonial and revolutionary America to provide a bold new reading of the historical meaning of the religion clauses of the First Amendment. Synthesizing and interpreting a wealth of evidence from the founding of Virginia to the passage of the Bill of Rights, including everything published in America before 1791, Thomas Curry traces America's developing ideas on religious liberty and offers the most extensive investigation ever of the historical origins and background of the First Amendment religion clauses. While recognizing that history cannot resolve all modern Church-State issues, Thomas Curry does show that historians can make some definitive statements about what early Americans understood by establishment and the free exercise of religion. This pathbreaking study has been adopted by the History Book Club.

Women in American Society: An Introduction to Women's Studies

Abstract: Introducing women's studies, this book offers information on women in employment, the significance of sex/gender systems, childbirth, childcare, sexuality and the state's view of marriage and property The author also provides coverage of the issue of abortion and recent Supreme Court rulings

American Constitutional Interpretation

Abstract: This undergaduate text uses original essays, cases, and materials to study the very enterprise by which a constitution is interpreted and a constitutional government created. It explores the American polity as both a constitutional and democratic entity. This volume is organized around a set of basic interrogatives: What is the constitution that is to be interpreted? Who are its authoritative interpreters? How do they go about their interpretive tasks? The new edition has been updated to include important new cases decided through the 2012-13 Supreme Court term.

The logical case for "wrongful life".

Abstract: Suits that claim that a child would be better off never having been born often founder on conceptual and logical dilemmas. However, the correct interpretation of "wrongful life" does not require a comparison between existence and nonexistence. The New Jersey Supreme Court's decision in the Procanik case to limit damages to extraordinary medical expenses, barring recovery for pain and suffering, is a reasonable resolution.

The long shadow of Little Rock

Abstract: At an event honoring Daisy Bates as 1990's Distinguished Citizen then-governor Bill Clinton called her "the most distinguished Arkansas citizen of all time." Her classic account of the 1957 Little Rock School Crisis, "The Long Shadow of Little Rock", couldn't be found on most bookstore shelves in 1962 and was banned throughout the South. In 1988, after the University of Arkansas Press reprinted it, it won an American Book Award. On September 3, 1957, Gov. Orval Faubus called out the National Guard to surround all-white Central High School and prevent the entry of nine black students, challenging the Supreme Court's 1954 order to integrate all public schools. On September 25, Daisy Bates, an official of the NAACP in Arkansas, led the nine children into the school with the help of federal troops sent by President Eisenhower - the first time in eighty-one years that a president had dispatched troops to the South to protect the constitutional rights of black Americans. This new edition of Bates' own story about these historic events is being issued to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the Little Rock School crisis in 2007.

How technology is reframing the abortion debate.

Abstract: Since the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, medical and scientific developments have focused greater public and professional attention on the status of the fetus. Their cumulative effect may influence legal, social, and moral thought and set the stage for a change in public opinion and a challenge to legalized abortion. There is as yet no inexorable convergence of medical data and legal opinion that would undermine the rational of Roe v. Wade. But the prochoice movement must find room for an open airing of the moral questions if abortion is to remain what it should be--a legally acceptable act.

The Supreme Court and the decline of constitutional aspiration

Abstract: How should the U.S. Constitution be interpreted, and upon what philosophical basis? What were the intentions of its framers concerning judicial interpretation? the doctrine of natural rights? the finality of Supreme Court decisions? To what extent are these intentions relevant to modern politics and jurisprudence? These and other issues are given a balanced and fresh treatment in Professor Jacobsohn's timely study.

Self-Esteem Research

Abstract: The question of whether prejudice and discrimination have damaged the self-esteem of blacks has engaged theorists and researchers for over a generation (e.g., Clark and Clark, 1952; Lewin, 1948), and has served as the subject of literally hundreds of publications (for literature reviews, see Baldwin, 1979; Cross, 1978, 1985; Epps, 1981; Gordon, 1977; Miller, 1981, 1983; Porter and Washington, 1979; Wylie, 1979). One of the most tantalizing features of this literature has been the fact that persuasive theory has supported one conclusion whereas compelling methodology has supported the other. Prior to the sixties virtually all of the research on the subject was based on studies of dolls, pictures, or puppets (Gordon, 1977). In this body of research—of which the Clark and Clark study was the prototype and chief exemplar—young black children were usually presented with black and white dolls, pictures, or puppets and were asked such questions as which is the nice doll, which is the pretty doll, which doll would you like to play with, which doll looks like you, etc. Many black children, it turned out, showed a preference for the white doll or said the white doll looked like them, a finding widely interpreted as reflecting low self-esteem among black children. These findings were consequential for the fate of desegregation, for they were entered as evidence in the plaintiff’s brief in Brown vs. the Board of Education and were used as support for the Supreme Court’s conclusion that segregated education was damaging to the black child’s self-esteem.

Law, sex, cruelty, and divorce in Victorian America, 1840-1900.

Abstract: IN 1874, JUSTICE JOHN M. SCOTT OF THE ILLINOIS SUPREME COURT DESCRIBED THE damage a husband inflicted upon his wife by his false allegations of infidelity: "Cruel treatment does not always consist of actual violence. There are words of false accusation that inflict deeper anguish than physical injuries to the personmore enduring and lacerating to the wounded spirit of a gentle woman, than actual violence to the person, though severe."' Sometime later the Oregon Supreme Court addressed the same issue and underscored the dire impact such accusations had on innocent wives: "To charge a woman, in the presence and hearing of others, with the commission of the crime of adultery, is to render her subject to the gross insults of lustful men who may hear and believe the rumor, which, whether true or false, tends to rob her of her good name, alienate her friends and acquaintances, and deprive her of their society and companionship."2 Both justices then proceeded in each case to sunder the bonds of matrimony, the very foundation of Victorian social order. Their decisions, while restrained and wedded to precedent, nevertheless directly or obliquely reflected contemporary debates over family stability, marital cruelty, conceptions of manhood, woman's place in nineteenth-century society, and Victorian attitudes about sexuality. The two judges were no more immune to these issues than anyone else and probably less so, for they held the responsibility of reconciling middle-class hopes for family cohesion with changing sex roles, marital expectations, and legal definitions of domestic cruelty.3 These two appellate decisions, supplemented by about one hundred others dealing with sexual cruelty, thus provide a way to investigate the complicated connections among Victorian ideology, sexual behavior, and acceptable marital conduct. If the judges were not always consistent, if they sometimes favored marital indissolubility over freedom from objectionable marriage bonds and at other times preferred the reverse, their ambivalence or inconsistency surely reflected wider confusion over the competing claims of family life and personal autonomy.4 Despite this ambivalence, judges during the nineteenth century nevertheless

Are Social Background Models Time-Bound?

Abstract: In this research note I seek to determine whether a significantly predicting social background model for analyzing the votes of Supreme Court justices is time-bound. I argue that an affirmative result poses serious questions for past uses of such models, none of which has controlled for the possibility that time is a confounding variable. A model that significantly predicted the votes of the justices in the Court's 1903-1968 terms was constructed. Analysis with this model for two periodsfrom 1903 to 1935, and from 1936 to 1968-established that the model was not timeneutral. Appropriate theoretical implications are drawn.

Vermont adopts Tarasoff: a real barn-burner.

Abstract: A recent Vermont Supreme Court decision adopts and extends the Tarasoff precedent. This paper emphasizes three aspects of the new precedent that are of possible consequence to providers of mental health care. First, the decision imposes the Tarasoff duty on all "mental health professionals". Second, it demonstrates a legal scenario that in effect permits a single standard of care to be applied to all mental health professionals. Third, it creates liability for property damage as well as for personal injury. Language: en

The AIDS epidemic and gay bathhouses: a constitutional analysis.

Abstract: Some legal scholars propose that the right of privacy articulated by the United States Supreme Court should be extended to protect homosexual activity. In light of the advent of AIDS, should that extension include constitutional protection for homosexual men who frequent gay bathhouses? The author argues that although the government has the power to close the baths in the name of public health, it should not do so without careful and conscious balancing against the privacy rights infringed upon by its actions. Balancing the tension between public health policy and individual rights applies not only to the specific situation of the baths, but also to insurance companies' aim to test all single, young, male life and health policy applicants for exposure to the putative AIDS virus; to potential health department releases of names of those testing antibody-positive for HTLV-III; to the military's rumored plans to discharge all personnel suspected of having AIDS; and to school districts seeking to exclude children with AIDS.

Criminal Procedure: An Analysis of Cases and Concepts

Abstract: Whitebread & Slobogin's Criminal Procedure: An Analysis of Cases and Concepts (6th ed. 2014) is a sophisticated, readable treatment of virtually all the Supreme Court's criminal procedure decisions, as well as of selected federal and state statutes and rules and lower court decisions. It not only describes the relevant law and provides helpful summaries of it at the end of each chapter, but traces the law's historical development, provides the facts of the most important cases so students can understand the context of the decision, and organizes each chapter in a flow-chart fashion that provides students with a roadmap for analyzing the material. Each chapter ends with an up-to-date bibliography.

The Case of Claire Conroy: Will Administrative Review Safeguard Incompetent Patients?

Abstract: The emotional issue of withdrawing feeding tubes from incompetent patients was reviewed recently by the New Jersey Supreme Court in the case of Claire Conroy. The court ruled that artificial feedings do not differ from other life-sustaining treatments and may be withdrawn or withheld if they are against the patient's wishes or best interests. The ruling rejected the tradition of shared decision making by physicians and families of incompetent patients. Instead, the court required the State Ombudsman to investigate cases like that of Claire Conroy as possible cases of elder abuse. Although such review was intended to safeguard vulnerable patients, it may have detrimental effects and impede humane decisions to withhold care. To minimize cumbersome decision-making procedures, physicians should discuss life-sustaining treatment in advance with patients who are still competent. Such discussions should be more specific than is now customary.

The Dictionary of Criminal Justice

Abstract: PART I The Dictonary of Criminal Justice, Sixth Edition Preface to the Dictionary of Criminal Justice An A-through-Z listing of hard-to-find definitions of terms particularly useful to students and practitioners in the broad, interdisciplinary field of criminal justice PART II Summaries of Supreme Court Cases Affecting Criminal Justice Succinct summaries of nearly 1,000 important Supreme Court cases that have affected the study and practice of criminal justice Preface to the Summaries of Supreme Court Cases I First Amendment Issues A. Freedom of Speech B. Freedom of the Press C. Obscenity and Related Issues D. Freedom of Religion II Fourth Amendment Issues A. Aerial Surveillance B. Arrest and Booking C. Border Searches D. Car and Other Vehicle Searches E. Closed Containers F. Consent Searches G. Plain View and Open Fields Doctrines H. Stop-and-Frisk I. Warrants J. Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance K. Other Fourth Amendment Issues 1. Use of Force 2. Drug Testing 3. Trash Searches 4. Sobriety Tests 5. Knock and Announce 6. Other Issues III Identification Procedures IV Fifth Amendment Issues A. Self-Incrimination 1. Confessions 2. Other Self-Incrimination Issues B. Double Jeopardy C. Indictment V Sixth Amendment Issues A. Right to Counsel B. Grand and Petit Juries 1. Trial Juries 2. Grand Juries C. Trial 1. Public Access to Trial 2. Publicity 3. Plea Bargaining 4. Filing Additional Charges and Imposing Greater Sentences 5. Speedy Trial 6. Confrontation and Cross-Examination 7. Prosecutor's Misconduct 8. Role of Judge and Jury 9. Other Issues a. Insanity and Competency to Stand Trial b. Immunity c. Security in the Classroom VI Eighth Amendment Issues A. Death Penalty B. Other Eighth Amendment Issues VII Due Process Issues A. General Standard B. Parole and Probation C. Detention D. Standard of Proof E. Vagueness F. Discovery G. Presumptions H. Insanity and Competence to Stand Trial I. Forfeiture Proceedings J. Sexually Violent Predators K. Intoxication Defense L. Other Issues VIII Equal Protection Issues IX Rights of the Incarcerated X Juvenile Court Proceedings XI Use of Illegally Obtained Evidence A. Exclusionary Rule B. Fruit of the Poisonous Tree and Related Doctrines C. Standing XII Civil Rights Act and Constitutional Torts XIII Habeas Corpus in Federal Courts to Remedy Constitutional Wrongs XIV Other Constitutional Issues A. Ex Post Facto Laws B. Jurisdiction over the Military C. Other Issues Index of Cases Appendices Appendix A Doctoral Programs in Criminal Justice Appendix B Forensic Agencies and Organizations Appendix C Criminal Justice Web Sites Appendix D Juried/Refereed Journals

State High Courts, State Constitutions, and Individual Rights Litigation Since 1980: A Judicial Survey

Abstract: In 1985, state courts of last resort issued more decisions than in any year since 1950 in which they extended rights protections to individuals beyond those recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court by basing rights protections solely or independently upon state constitutional grounds. A survey of state high court judges and justices reported here indicates that there has been a nationwide increase in the number of individual rights cases litigated under state constitutions since 1980. Significant-to-moderate increases, however, were more likely to be reported by justices from the Northeast and West, from states having a moralistic political culture, andfrom courts whose members are appointed by the governor and/or legislature. State constitutional rights claims are more likely to be raised in criminal than noncriminal cases, though in both types of cases and in most states, state constitutional rights claims are raised less frequently than federal constitutional rights claims. Majorities of judges and justices favor the ideas of teaching state constitutional law in law schools and of testing for knowledge of state constitutional law on bar examinations.

Legal Positivism, Abolitionist Litigation, and the New Jersey Slave Case of 1845

Abstract: At 10:00 A.M. on May 21, 1845, ‘the tall, straight figure and pale, grave face of the slave's friend, Alvan Stewart’, turned toward the justices of the New Jersey Supreme Court as he commenced his opening argument in the companion cases, State v. Post and State v. Van Beuren. In the ensuing hours, Stewart argued for the immediate abolition of slavery and black apprenticeship in New Jersey. Although Stewart relied upon many authorities, the justices and the attorneys for the defendants believed that his most promising argument was based upon the state constitution of 1844, the first of the state's fundamental laws to declare that ‘all men are by nature free and independent’. On the following day, the defense counsel—A.O. Zabriskie, a Hackensack attorney, and Joseph P. Bradley, the future U.S. Supreme Court Justice—spoke with ‘much energy and ingenuity’ until five o'clock. The reply of the ‘Abolition Ajax’ lasted until 10:30 and closed with an impassioned appeal to the justices. ‘Such was the impressiveness with which the closing appeal of the advocate for freedom was delivered’, a newspaperman reported, that none of the large audience wished to ‘break the spell his eloquence had cast upon the assembly’. At length, the bench arose, and Chief Justice Joseph Hornblower adjourned the court.

Substantive Equality and Equal Opportunity: A Jurisprudential Appraisal

Abstract: The belief in equality of opportunity ranks among the most deeply entrenched tenets of American political ideology.1 Equality of opportunity has been recognized in numerous Supreme Court equal protection decisions2 and is mandated by significant legislation.3 Upon examination, however, the concept of equality of opportunity proves to be elusive and paradoxical. In his recent and thoughtful article, Peter Westen proposed to resolve the mystery of equal opportunity by breaking it down into its constituent elements.4 According to Professor Westen, the mystery vanishes once we understand that the concept of opportunity denotes a formal relationship rather than a particular state of affairs,5 and that "equal" in the context of equal opportunity is purely derivative.6 Professor Westen defines an opportunity as an agent's chance to attain a goal in the absence of a specified obstacle or set of obstacles.7 "Equal opportunity," then, means no more than a class of agents having the chance to attain the same goal in the absence of the same specified obstacle or set of obstacles.8

The Supreme Court of Canada and Section One of the Charter

Abstract: The Supreme Court's early analysis of the opening section of the Charter seemed to come from nowhere It stood in stark contrast to the interpretation suggested by commentators and adopted in decisions of the lower courts, in which limits on rights were the end product of a balancing of individual versus communal interests on a fulcrum of "reasonableness," often weighted by foreign example Court watchers expressed perplexity, and even exasperation, at the Supreme Court's failure to follow along this well-worn path Then, as the Court began to evolve its view of section 1, they criticized it for imposing too stringent or too unrealistic a standard Despite the appearance of intense interest in this aspect of the Supreme Court's Charter jurisprudence, the judges' struggle to come to terms with section 1 justification has received little attention That struggle, culminating in R v Oakes in February of 1986, is the subject of this paper My analysis of the Supreme Court's treatment of section 1 is divided into three parts The initial discussion isolates the Court's view of the form that limits must take, namely, that limits must be "prescribed by law," so as to reveal the doctrine of separation of powers implied in these words The focus in the second part of the paper is upon the substantive component of justification of limits on rights The Court has relied upon a distinction between "denials" and "limits" to explain why it rejects certain considerations-deemed suitable to denial of rights in the legislative forum, either by override or constitutional amendment-as inappropriate to judicial justification of limits on rights The judges then carried this distinction forward into their positive formulation of the values that inhere in section 1 justification with the effect that justification of limits on rights engages the very values inherent in the rights The Charter's purpose-that Canadian society be free and democratic-is achieved by recognizing that the concept of a free and democratic society, is the genesis of the enumerated rights and freedoms as well as the standard against which limits of those rights and freedoms are justified In the concluding portion of this paper I outline the vision of society underlying the Supreme Court's paradigm of rights protection and sketch how this approach has fared in more recent Supreme Court cases