Showing papers on "Supreme court published in 2004"

The Black-White Test Score Gap:

Abstract: The Supreme Court's 2003 decision to uphold affirmative action in college admissions suggests that special treatment may be unnecessary in 25 years. But achieving equality without affirmative actio...

Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform

Abstract: When the landmark Supreme Court case of Brown vs Board of Education was handed down in 1954, many civil rights advocates believed that the decision finding public school segregation unconstitutional could become the Holy Grail of racial justice Fifty years later, despite its legal irrelevance and the racially separate and educationally ineffective state of public schooling for most black children, Brown is still viewed by many as the perfect precedent Derrick Bell here shatters this shining image of one of the Court's most celebrated rulings He notes that, despite the onerous burdens of segregation, many black schools functioned well and racial bigotry had not rendered blacks a damaged race Brown's recognition of racial injustice, without more, left racial barriers intact Given what we now know about the pervasive nature of racism, the Court should have determined-for the first time-to rigorously enforce the "equal" component of the "separate but equal" standard By striking it down, the Court intended both to improve the Nation's international image during the Cold War and offer blacks recognition that segregation was wrong Instead, the Brown decision actually enraged and energized its opponents It stirred confusion and conflict into the always vexing question of race in a society that, despite denials and a frustratingly flexible amnesia, owes much of its growth, development, and success, to the ability of those who dominate the society to use race to both control and exploit most people, black and white Racial policy, Bell maintains, is made through silent covenants-unspoken convergences of interest and involuntary sacrifices of rights-that ensure that policies conform to priorities set by policy-makers Blacks and whites are the fortuitous winners or losers in these unspoken agreements The experience with Brown, Bell urges, should teach us that meaningful progress in the quest for racial justice requires more than the assertion of harms Strategies must recognize and utilize the interest-convergence factors that strongly influence racial policy decisions In Silent Covenants, Bell condenses more than four decades of thought and action into a powerful and eye-opening book

From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality

Abstract: Do Supreme Court decisions matter? In 1896 the United States Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that railroad segregation laws were permissible under the Fourteenth Amendment. In 1954 the Court's decision in Brown v. the Board of Education held that the same constitutional provision invalidated statutes segregating public schools How great an impact did judicial rulings such as Plessy and Brown have? How much did such Court decisions influence the larger world of race relations? In From Jim Crow to Civil Rights, Michael J. Klarman examines the social and political impact of the Supreme Court's decisions involving race relations from Plessy, the Progressive Era, and the Interwar Period to World Wars I and II, Brown and the Civil Rights Movement. He explores the wide variety of consequences that Brown may have had--raising the salience of race issues, educating opinion, mobilizing supporters, energizing opponents of racial change. He concludes that Brown was ultimately more important for mobilizing southern white opposition to racial change than for encouraging direct-action protest. The decision created concrete occasions for violent confrontation--court ordered school desegregation and radicalized southern politics, leading to the election of politicians who calculated that violent suppression of civil rights demonstrations would win votes. It was such violence--vividly captured on television--that ultimately transformed northern opinion on race, leading to the enactment of landmark civil rights legislation in the mid 1960s. A fascinating investigation of the Supreme Court's rulings on race, From Jim Crow to Civil Rights, spells out in exhaustive detail the political and social context against which the Supreme Court Justices operate and the consequences of those decisions on the civil rights movement and beyond.

Desegregation and Black Dropout Rates

Abstract: In 1954 the United States Supreme Court ruled that separate schools for black and white children were "inherently unequal." This paper studies whether the desegregation plans of the next 30 years benefited black and white students in desegregated school districts. Data from the 1970 and 1980 censuses suggest desegregation plans of the 1970's reduced high school dropout rates of blacks by two to three percentage points during this decade. No significant change is observed among whites. The results are robust to controls for family income, parental education, and state- and region-specific trends, as well as to tests for selective migration.

From Racial Liberalism to Racial Literacy: Brown v. Board of Education and the Interest-Divergence Dilemma

Abstract: On its fiftieth anniversary, Brown v. Board ofEducation no longer enjoys the unbridled admiration it once earned from academic commentators. Early on, the conventional wisdom was that the courageous social engineers from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Legal Defense and Educational Fund (NAACP LDEF), whose inventive lawyering brought the case to fruition, had caused a social revolution. Legal academics and lawyers still widely acclaim the Brown decision as one of the most important Supreme Court cases in the twentieth century, if not since the founding of our constitutional republic. Brown's exalted status in the constitutional canon is unimpeachable, yet over time its legacy has become complicated and ambiguous.1 The fact is that fifty years later, many of the social, political, and economic problems that the legally trained social engineers thought the Court had addressed through Brown are still deeply embedded in our society. Blacks lag behind whites in multiple measures of educational achievement, and within the black community, boys are falling further behind than girls. In addition, the will to support public education from kindergarten through twelfth grade appears to be eroding despite grow-

The Least Dangerous Branch Revisited: New Evidence on Supreme Court Responsiveness to Public Preferences

Abstract: With competing assumptions and alternative empirical models, scholars have come to rather different conclusions about the impact of public preferences on the decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court. Some have found the justices to be attentive to mass opinion, while others have judged it to be irrelevant. Across this divide, however, one assumption is widely shared; that is, political scientists generally agree upon how best to measure the Court's outputs. In this analysis, we employ an alternative estimate of the justices’ liberalism, one which we think better reflects the underlying ideological tenor of their policies. With data from 1953 to 1996, we compare time-series models using different indicators of the Supreme Court's aggregate liberalism. Our results suggest that, in addition to being motivated by their own preferences, the justices are highly responsive to public mood, as well.

Brown Plus 50 Counter-Storytelling: A Critical Race Theory Analysis of the “Majoritarian Achievement Gap” Story

Abstract: This essay provides a Critical Race Theory (CRT) analysis of current discussions of the “achievement gap” as the latest incarnation of the “white intellectual superiority/African American intellectual inferiority” notion that is a mainstay of “majoritarian storytelling” in U.S. culture. A critical race counter-story chronicles both the historical development and maintenance of the “achievement gap,” along with efforts of African Americans to secure access to education. The process by which the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision was subverted as a historical intervener in systemic access to equity in educational opportunity for African Americans is discussed. This essay concludes with principles to promote successful academic achievement of African American children.

Store Wars: The Enactment and Repeal of Anti‐Chain‐Store Legislation in America1

Abstract: Competition between organizational forms manifests itself in political contention over the law. The authors analyze the political strength and organization of the groups that supported and opposed state anti‐chain‐store laws. The enactment of these laws depended on intrastate political activity and the interstate diffusion of anti‐chain‐store legislation. The repeal process relied on suprastate activity, as nationally organized pro‐chain‐store forces shifted the arena of contention to the Supreme Court and forged national alliances with labor unions and agricultural cooperatives. In both enactment and repeal, the political resources and strategies of organziational forms interacted with existing institutions to determine the trajectory of institutional change.

Minimalism at War

Abstract: When national security conflicts with individual liberty, reviewing courts might adopt one of three general orientations: National Security Maximalism, Liberty Maximalism, and minimalism. National Security Maximalism calls for a great deal of deference to the President, above all because of his authority as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. Liberty Maximalism asks courts to assume the same liberty-protecting posture in times of war as in times of peace. Minimalism asks courts to follow three precepts: the President needs clear congressional authorization for intruding on interests having a strong claim to constitutional protection; fair hearings should generally be provided to those who have been deprived of their freedom; and courts should discipline their own authority through narrow, incompletely theorized rulings. Of the three positions, Liberty Maximalism is the easiest to dismiss; courts will not and should not adopt it. National Security Maximalism is far more plausible, but it is in grave tension with the constitutional structure, and it is built on excessive optimism about the incentives of the President. The most appealing approach is minimalism, which does remarkably well in capturing prominent decisions of the Supreme Court in World War I, World War II, the Cold War, and the war on terrorism.

Law and Firms' Access to Finance

Abstract: Why does a country's legal origin influence its firms'access to finance? Using data from over 4,000 firms in 38 countries, the authors show that firms in countries with French legal origin face significantly higher obstacles in accessing external finance than firms in common law countries Next, their results indicate that French legal origin countries tend to have (1) less adaptable legal systems, as defined by the degree to which case law and principles of equity rather than simply statutory law are accepted foundations of legal decisions, and (2) less politically independent judiciaries, as defined by the degree of tenure of supreme court judges and their jurisdiction over cases involving the government Finally, the authors find that the adaptability of a country's legal system is more important for explaining the obstacles that firms face in contracting for external finance than the political independence of the judiciary So, they distinguish among competing explanations of why law matters for financial development by empirically documenting the links running from international differences in legal origin to the operation of the financial system at the firm level

The Pursuit of Fairness: A History of Affirmative Action

Abstract: Affirmative action strikes at the heart of deeply held beliefs about employment and education, about the concepts of justice and fairness, and about the troubled history of race relations in America. Published on the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, this is the only book available that gives readers a balanced, non-polemical, and lucid account of this highly contentious issue. Beginning with the roots of affirmative action, Anderson describes African-American demands for employment in the defense industry - spearheaded by A. Philip Randolph's threatened March on Washington in July 1941 - and the desegregation of the armed forces after World War II. He investigates President Kennedy's historic 1961 executive order that introduced the term "affirmative action" during the early years of the civil rights movement and he examines President Johnson's attempts to gain equal opportunities for African Americans. He describes President Nixon's expansion of affirmative action with the Philadelphia Plan - which the Supreme Court upheld - along with President Carter's introduction of "set asides" for minority businesses and the Bakke ruling which allowed the use of race as one factor in college admissions. By the early 1980s many citizens were becoming alarmed by affirmative action, and that feeling was exemplified by the Reagan administration's backlash, which resulted in the demise and revision of affirmative action during the Clinton years. He concludes with a look at the University of Michigan cases of 2003, the current status of the policy, and its impact. Throughout, the author weighs each side of every issue - often finding merit in both arguments - resulting in an eminently fair account of one of America's most heated debates. A colorful history that brings to life the politicians, legal minds, and ordinary people who have fought for or against affirmative action, "The Pursuit of Fairness" helps clear the air and calm the emotions, as it illuminates a difficult and critically important issue.

The Failures Of Integration: How Race and Class Are Undermining the American Dream

Abstract: Published for the fiftieth anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education: If "separate, but equal" has been illegal for fifty years, why is America more segregated than ever?. On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court unanimously declared that separate educational facilities for blacks and whites are inherently "unequal" and, as such, violate the 14th Amendment. The landmark decision, Brown v. Board of Education , sounded the death knell for legal segregation, but fifty years later, de facto segregation in America thrives. And Sheryll Cashin believes that it is getting worse. The Failures of Integration is a provocative look at how segregation by race and class is ruining American democracy. Only a small minority of the affluent are truly living the American Dream, complete with attractive, job-rich suburbs, reasonably low taxes, good public schools, and little violent crime. For the remaining majority of Americans, segregation comes with stratospheric costs. In a society that sets up "winner" and "loser" communities and schools defined by race and class, racial minorities in particular are locked out of the "winner" column. African-Americans bear the heaviest burden. Cashin argues that we n

Friends of the Court: Examining the Influence of Amicus Curiae Participation in U.S. Supreme Court Litigation

Abstract: Amicus curiae participation is a staple of interest group activity in the U.S. Supreme Court. While a reasonably large body of scholarship has accumulated regarding the effectiveness of this method of participation, little attention has been paid to examining the reasons why amicus participation might increase litigation success. In this article, I test two separate, but not mutually exclusive, theories as to why amicus briefs may be effective. The first, the affected groups hypothesis, suggests amicus briefs are influential because they signal to the Court how many groups and individuals will be potentially affected by the decision. The second, the information hypothesis, proposes that amicus briefs are effective because they provide the Court with added information that buttresses the arguments of the direct parties. When subjected to empirical verification, the results indicate that not only does amicus participation increase litigation success, but also that this influence may be best explained by the information hypothesis. Interest groups pursue their goals in a wide array of venues, including the courts. Indeed, solely within the realm of the U.S. Supreme Court, groups have numerous methods for participation, from setting up test cases to sponsoring cases that others bring to testifying at judicial confirmation hearings; some groups even hold vigils outside the marble pillars awaiting the Court’s final decisions on cases touching on group interests. However, the most common method of interest group involvement in the Supreme Court is the amicus curiae brief (Caldeira & Wright 1988; Epstein 1991). In fact, amicus briefs are filed in almost every case the Court accepts

Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime - From the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism

Abstract: Geoffrey Stone's Perilous Times incisively investigates how the First Amendment and other civil liberties have been compromised in America during wartime Stone delineates the consistent suppression of free speech in six historical periods from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the Vietnam War, and ends with a coda that examines the state of civil liberties in the Bush era Full of fresh legal and historical insight, Perilous Times magisterially presents a dramatic cast of characters who influenced the course of history over a two-hundred-year period: from the presidents-Adams, Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, and Nixon-to the Supreme Court justices-Taney, Holmes, Brandeis, Black, and Warren-to the resisters-Clement Vallandingham, Emma Goldman, Fred Korematsu, and David Dellinger Filled with dozens of rare photographs, posters, and historical illustrations, Perilous Times is resonant in its call for a new approach in our response to grave crises

Comparing Attitudinal and Strategic Accounts of Dissenting Behavior on the U.S. Courts of Appeals

Abstract: Students of judicial behavior have increasingly turned to strategic accounts to understand judicial decision making. Scholarship on the Supreme Court and state high courts suggests that the decision to dissent is better understood in light of strategic considerations rather than simply reflecting ideological disagreement. We investigate whether these findings comport with behavior by judges on the U.S. Courts of Appeals. We develop a spatial model of the decision to dissent that incorporates both attitudinal and strategic elements and subject this model to empirical analysis. We find that ideological disagreement between a judge and the majority opinion writer is a more persuasive explanation of the decision to dissent than a strategic account in which a judge conditions a dissent on whether circuit intervention would obtain the judge's preferred outcome. Though we do not discount the existence of other types of strategic behavior on the Courts of Appeals, our research suggests that strategic accounts of dissenting behavior are not generalizable to all courts.

The Supreme Court Forecasting Project: Legal and Political Science Approaches to Predicting Supreme Court Decisionmaking

Abstract: This Essay reports the results of an interdisciplinary project comparing political science and legal approaches to forecasting Supreme Court decisions. For every argued case during the 2002 Term, we obtained predictions of the outcome prior to oral argument using two methods—one a statistical model that relies on general case characteristics, and the other a set of independent predictions by legal specialists. The basic result is that the statistical model did better than the legal experts in forecasting the outcomes of the Term’s cases: The model predicted 75% of the Court’s affirm/reverse results correctly, while the experts collectively got 59.1% right. These results are notable, given that the statistical model disregards information about the specific law or facts of the cases. The model’s relative success was due in large part to its ability to predict more accurately the important votes of the moderate Justices (Kennedy and O’Connor) at the center of the current Court. The legal experts, by contrast, did best at predicting the votes of the more ideologically extreme Justices, but had difficulty predicting the centrist Justices. The relative success of the two methods also varied by issue area, with the statistical model doing particularly well in forecasting “economic activity” cases, while the experts did comparatively better in the “judicial power” cases. In addition to reporting the results in detail, the Essay explains the differing methods

The Displacement of Black Educators Post-Brown: An Overview and Analysis

Abstract: In 1951 three brief commentaries in the Journal of Negro Education drew public attention to the potentially tenuous job security of African-American educators in the South, Black professionals whose employment status was being called into question as southern educational institutions faced the prospect of desegregation. The specific incident which occasioned these commentaries was a December 1950 vote by the Board of Trustees of the University of Louisville to close the segregated, all-Black Louisville Municipal College, which it had administered since that college was founded in 1931, and to integrate the two institutions' student bodies. Fourteen African-American faculty and staff at Louisville Municipal College were informed that, despite tenure or contract status, they would be given two months' severance pay and summarily dismissed. With United States Supreme Court legal precedents from the 1938 Gaines case through the 1950 Sweatt and McLauren decisions already dramatically affecting the policy context of southern higher education, and with what would become known as the “Brown Decision” looming on the horizon, what might be the consequences for all Black educators throughout the South—if the high court overturned the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision as National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) lawyers urged?

'You Are Entering a Gay- and Lesbian-Free Zone': On the Radical Dissents of Justice Scalia and Other (Post-) Queers

Abstract: The most renowned substantive criminal law decision of the October 2002 Term, Lawrence v. Texas, will go down in history as a critical turning point in criminal law debates over the proper scope of the penal sanction. For the first time in the history of American criminal law, the United States Supreme Court has declared that a supermajoritarian moral belief does not necessarily provide a rational basis for criminalizing conventionally deviant conduct. The court's ruling is the coup de grace to legal moralism administered after a prolonged, brutish, tedious, and debilitating struggle against liberal legalism in its various criminal law representations. As a matter of federal due process, courts reviewing penal legislation must now deploy some other principle to distinguish between permissible and impermissible majoritarian moral opprobrium. What that other principle will consist of is not clear. Justice Anthony Kennedy's opinion for the majority in Lawrence offers a dizzying array of possibilities - a rhetorical smorgasbord of legal authority. Justice Kennedy's pastiche is, at a legal theoretical level, incoherent and under normal circumstances - in many other cases - would be internally contradictory. The theoretical incoherence and rhetorical overkill of Justice Kennedy's opinion lends credence to Justice Antonin Scalia's incendiary dissent in Lawrence, specifically to the idea that the majority's holding is no technical knock-out victory for liberal legalism, but rather a politically or culturally partisan decision. What is missing from Justice Scalia's dissent, though, are the important nuances and subtleties that shape the contemporary sex wars, that make them so fascinating and so unpredictable, and that both resignify and ambiguate the purported gay victory in Lawrence. This Foreword probes the fragmentation of sexual projects in the West and its implications for the sex wars and the penal law. It is intended as a guide or manual for the interpretation of the result in Lawrence and future sex battles. Part I focuses on the fracturing of sexual projects and demonstrates that it is, today, far too simplistic - in fact profoundly counterproductive - to describe the culture wars as a two-party conflict or to talk about a "homosexual agenda." In the Lawrence litigation, this point was brought home in the surprising coalition opposing the Texas statute. The question this raises is: what kinds of fissures split the gay community? What would it sound like to argue from a gay-friendly perspective against the ruling in Lawrence? Part II explores this question and develops, through a pastiche of radical statements, a politics that embraces the marginal, even criminal desire to transgress for the sake of transgression, that thrives on rebellion against hegemonic legal regimes. With this in place, Part III reconstructs Scalia's radical dissent and sharpens it to produce a keener interpretive framework to understand the result in Lawrence and future sex wars. Scalia is right that there is a culture war and that the courts are inextricably involved in those wars. He is also right that the court is shaped by the legal profession and that their decisions are largely shaped by the law profession culture. This culture and the legal academy that reproduces it are by and large more tolerant of homosexuality than many other sectors of society. The decision in Lawrence is the product of this law profession culture, and, at least on the surface, is gay-friendly - it favors the interests of liberal pro-gay-rights advocates. But it does not necessarily promote the interests of all gay-friendly. It is here that the Foreword probes the Lawrence decision - dark side and all.

Presidential Capital and the Supreme Court Confirmation Process

Abstract: The Supreme Court nomination and confirmation process has become one of the most contentious aspects of American politics in recent years, representing a seismic struggle between the president and the U.S. Senate over the ideological makeup of the nation's highest court. Existing research focuses on how the ideological compatibility of the president and the Senate affects the ideology of the president's nominees. However, little work addresses whether presidents can overcome an ideologically hostile Senate by spending political capital to support a nominee. As such, we examine the president's public expenditure of capital to obtain confirmation for Supreme Court nominees facing a Senate that is reticent to confirm. By content analyzing public statements made by presidents during confirmation battles we find strong support for the hypothesis that presidents strategically “go public.” Further, this strategy has a marked influence on presidents’ ability to win confirmation for their most important nominees.“...

Defending Diversity: Affirmative Action at the University of Michigan

Abstract: Even as lawsuits challenging its admissions policies made their way through the courts, the University of Michigan carried the torch for affirmative action in higher education.In June 2003, the Supreme Court vindicated UM's position on affirmative action when it ruled that race may be used as a factor for universities in their admissions programs, thus confirming what the UM had argued all along: diversity in the classroom translates to a beneficial and wide-ranging social value. With the green light given to the law school's admissions policies, Defending Diversity validates the positive benefits gained by students in a diverse educational setting.Written by prominent University of Michigan faculty, Defending Diversity is a timely response to the court's ruling. Providing factual background, historical setting, and the psychosocial implications of affirmative action, the book illuminates the many benefits of a diverse higher educational setting -- including preparing students to be full participants in a pluralistic democracy -- and demonstrates why affirmative action is necessary to achieve that diversity.Defending Diversity is a significant contribution to the ongoing discussion on affirmative action in higher education. Perhaps more important, it is a valuable record of the history, events, arguments, and issues surrounding the original lawsuits and the Supreme Court's subsequent ruling, and helps reclaim the debate from those forces opposed to affirmative action.Patricia Gurin is Professor Emerita, Department of Psychology, University of Michigan. Jeffrey S. Lehman, former Dean of the University of Michigan Law School, is President of Cornell University. Earl Lewis is Dean of Rackham Graduate School, University of Michigan.

The Most Activist Supreme Court in History: The Road to Modern Judicial Conservatism

Abstract: When conservatives took control of the federal judiciary in the 1980s, it was widely assumed that they would reverse the landmark rights-protecting precedents set by the Warren Court and replace them with a broad commitment to judicial restraint. Instead, the Supreme Court under Chief Justice William Rehnquist has reaffirmed most of those liberal decisions while creating its own brand of conservative judicial activism. Ranging from 1937 to the present, "The Most Activist Supreme Court in History" traces the legal and political forces that have shaped the modern Court. Thomas M. Keck argues that the tensions within modern conservatism have produced a court that exercises its own power quite actively, on behalf of both liberal and conservative ends. Despite the long-standing conservative commitment to restraint, the justices of the Rehnquist Court have stepped in to settle divisive political conflicts over abortion, affirmative action, gay rights, presidential elections, and much more. Keck focuses in particular on the role of Justices O'Connor and Kennedy, whose deciding votes have shaped this uncharacteristically activist Court.

Designing Tests of the Supreme Court and the Separation of Powers

Abstract: While rational choice models of Supreme Court decisionmaking have enhanced our appreciation for the separation of powers built into the Madisonian Constitutional design, convincing empirical suppor...

The Median Justice on the United States Supreme Court

Abstract: Black's \"Median Voter Theorem\" now figures prominently and crucially in a wide array of research on the United States Supreme Court, from studies on the nomination and confirmation of Justices, to investigations into the Court's resolution of disputes, to analyses of its impact on the hierarchy of justice. Nonetheless, and regardless of the substantive focus of the investigation, the question of how to locate the median Justice looms large. Because all extant answers have their share of problems, we set out to develop a more compelling approach-one that relies on methods developed by Martin and Quinn. Via this approach we derive a systematic accounting of the Justice with the highest (posterior) probability of having served as the median for each Term since 1937.

Crafting a Constitution for Afghanistan

Abstract: On 4 January 2004, nearly all 502 members of the Constitutional Loya Jirga (Grand Council) meeting in Kabul silently stood to approve a new constitution for the “Islamic Republic of Afghanistan” President Hamid Karzai signed and officially promulgated the document on 26 January 2004, inaugurating Afghanistan’s sixth constitution since King Amanullah Khan promulgated the first in 1923 Delegates hoped that this relatively liberal Islamic constitution would provide a framework for the long task of consolidating basic state structures, as the country struggled to emerge from decades of anti-Soviet jihad, interfactional and interethnic civil war, and wars of conquest and resistance by and against the radical Islamists of the Taliban movement In his speech to the closing session of the Loya Jirga, President Karzai explained why he thought that the new constitution—which mandated a presidential system with a bicameral parliament, a highly centralized administration with unprecedented rights for minority languages, and an Islamic legal system safeguarded by a Supreme Court with powers of judicial review—would meet the needs of a desperately indigent but proud country searching for a period of stability in which to rebuild The constitution was the next to last step in the road map to “reestablishing permanent institutions of government” outlined in the Bonn Accords of 5 December 2001 Afghans signed that agreement under UN auspices as the United States was completing the job of routing the Taliban regime that had given refuge to Osama bin Laden The constitution provided a framework for the “free and fair elections” to choose a Barnett R Rubin is director of studies and senior fellow at the Center on International Cooperation of New York University In late 2001, he advised UN Special Representative for Afghanistan Lakhdar Brahimi during the talks that led to the Bonn Accords Rubin’s books include The Fragmentation of Afghanistan: State Formation and Collapse in the International System (2nd ed, 2002)

The Institutionalization of the U.S. Supreme Court

Abstract: In pursuing their goals, members of the U.S. Supreme Court are affected by their institutional setting. How has that institutional environment changed over time and what have been the political consequences of those changes? Despite considerable analysis of the institutional dynamics of legislatures and executives, political scientists have been slow to bring time series techniques to the study of the Supreme Court, and as a result much less is known about its evolutionary path. Measuring a variety of organizational characteristics, I construct an index of the institutionalization of the Supreme Court from 1790 to 1996. This indicator suggests that the integration of the Court into the system of federal policy making has better enabled the justices to satisfy their objectives. To demonstrate this empirically, I test a series of error correction models of judicial influence, each of which confirms that the nature of the Supreme Court’s character has had considerable implications for the scope of the justices’ legal and political impact. These results underscore the need for judicial scholars to examine the Court’s policy making in longitudinal perspective.

Competing Approaches to Predicting Supreme Court Decision Making

Abstract: Political scientists and legal academics have long scrutinized the U.S. Supreme Court's work to understand what motivates the justices. Despite significant differences in methodology, both disciplines seek to explain the Court's decisions by focusing on examining past cases. This retrospective orientation is surprising. In other areas of government, for example, presidential elections and congressional decision making, political scientists engage in systematic efforts to predict outcomes, yet few have done this for court decisions. Legal academics, too, possess expertise that should enable them to forecast legal events with some accuracy. After all, the everyday practice of law requires lawyers to predict court decisions in order to advise clients or determine litigation strategies.The authors thank Michael Cherba, Nancy Cummings, David Dailey, Alison Garvey, Nick Hershman, and Robin Rimmer for their assistance. Their project is supported in part by National Science Foundation grants SES-0135855 and SES 0136679. The foundation bears no responsibility for the results or conclusions.

Extremely preterm birth and parental authority to refuse treatment--the case of Sidney Miller.

Abstract: In 1990, a neonatologist resuscitated a severely premature infant against the wishes of the parents. The child survived with severe disabilities. The parents sued the hospital for battery and negligence. In 2003, the Texas Supreme Court ruled in favor of the physicians and hospitals. According to the ruling, physicians who are faced with split-second, life-or-death decisions do not need parental consent to provide life-sustaining treatment to minors.

The 50Th Anniversary - An Unfinished Journey: The Legacy of Brown and the Narrowing of the Achievement Gap.

Abstract: Why, Mr. Ferguson and Mr. Mehta wonder, does the achievement gap persist 50 years after Brown declared that black children must receive a truly equal education? THE GOOD NEWS is that the achievement gaps between racial and ethnic groups in the U.S. are smaller than they were several decades ago. The bad news is that progress stopped around 1990.1 The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) continues to show large differences between the average scores of blacks and Hispanics on the one hand and those of whites and Asians on the other.2 Now, half a century after Brown v. Board of Education, while progress is evident and many milestones have been achieved - especially in the area of civil rights - policy measures focused on rights, resources, and required testing for students have not achieved their full promise for raising achievement and narrowing gaps between groups of students. And it is the failure to go behind the classroom door and foster high-quality instructional practices for all students, in all classrooms, in all schools that is strongly implicated in these disappointing results. What we need today is a more determined, high-quality, research-based emphasis on improving what happens in classrooms. But before we look at just what sorts of practices we need to adopt, some historical background is in order. Historical Overview One hundred and seven years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the doctrine of "separate but equal" in Plessy v. Ferguson. The conflict was over passenger accommodations on the East Louisiana Railroad. Nonetheless, the doctrine of "separate but equal" was codified in state laws governing schools and virtually all other types of public accommodations in the South, where the majority of African Americans lived. Representing an eight-person majority, Justice Henry Brown wrote the following: "The object of the [14th] Amendment was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law, but in the nature of things it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either." Half a century later, the doctrine of separate but equal still dominated the South, but the question being litigated was whether enforced segregation in public schools deprived black children of equal protection under the U.S. Constitution. On 17 May 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren issued the Court's decision in the cases subsumed into Brown. The Court's opinion granted that it might be possible with segregation to achieve equality of "tangible factors" - things that money can buy - but the Court rejected the idea that separate could be equal or that laws maintaining segregation could provide equal protection under the Constitution. Informed by the work of social scientists, including the black psychologist Kenneth Clark, the justices wrote the following about the harm that segregation was doing to black children: "To separate them from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone." Thus Brown was not merely about equality of resources; it was also about children's "hearts and minds" and "status in the community." The decision struck down the doctrine of separate but equal. It was a landmark event.3 In challenging the separate-but-equal doctrine of the Jim Crow South, the plaintiffs in Brown aimed to challenge white supremacist ideology and the moral injustice of forced segregation. In addition, they hoped that giving black children access to the schools and classrooms where white children studied would help to equalize educational resources and academic outcomes. Unfortunately, implementation of the court order was exceedingly slow and limited. …