Supreme court

About: Supreme court is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 41858 publications have been published within this topic receiving 306787 citations. The topic is also known as: court of last resort & highest court of appeal.

The Marshall Decision and Native Rights

Abstract: This book begins in its opening chapter with the individual at the centre of this controversy--Donald Marshall, Jr. He is a figure already well known to Canadians as a result of his wrongful conviction and the subsequent judicial inquiry of the 1980's. Here, Marshall is before the Court system again B this time for fishing without a licence, selling eels without a licence and fishing during a closed season. He admits to having caught and sold 463 pounds of eels without a licence and with a prohibited net within closed times. The only issue at trial, then, is whether he possesses a treaty right to catch and sell fish under the treaties of 1760-61 which exempted him from compliance with the regulations.Joined by Mi'kmaq chiefs, the Union of Nova Scotia Indians and the Confederacy of Mainland Mi'kmaq, a legal battle ensues which works its way through the court system ending up finally before the Supreme Court of Canada. In its ruling of September, 1999, the Supreme Court not only finds for Marshall but holds that he has established the existence and infringement of a local Mi'kmaq treaty right to carry on a small scale commercial eel fishery. Amidst the controversy which follows, the Court takes the rather unprecedented step of issuing a statement of clarification [November, 1999]. The statement addresses certain misconceptions about the judgement, principal among these being, that the Marshall decision is specifically about eels and not about other natural resources. Further the treaty right referred to in Marshall is a regulated right. This recognizes the stewardship of the Federal government, the continuing pre-eminence of conservation, and the need to consider the "rights" of other users. Finally, the right to a moderate livelihood is interpreted as being limited to securing "necessaries"--meaning "food, clothing and housing, supplemented by a few amenities" and not to the open-ended accumulation of wealth.For Coates, making sense of the Marshall decision requires a very broad and comprehensive perspective which must take account of the historical as well as contemporary circumstances of First Nations within the Maritime provinces. Accordingly, there are the historical relations which developed between First Nations and newcomers culminating in the treaties of 1760-61 B the agreements immediately relevant to the case at hand (chapter 2). As well, there are the contemporary social, economic and cultural conditions among these First Nations which finds them largely marginalized from the opportunities enjoyed by most non-Aboriginal Maritimers. Indeed, hardest hit appear to be Aboriginal youth who, even in the face of more vibrant First Nation communities and the reinforcement of language and culture, continue to experience a lack of belonging in a world markedly different from that of their ancestors (chapter 3).The Marshall decision is a legal case in a long line of other such cases, from St. Catherine's Milling and Lumber Company (1888) through Syliboy (1928), White and Bob (1965), Calder (1973), Guerin (1985), Simon (1985), and Sparrow (1990) to Van der Peet, N.T.C. Smokehouse, Gladstone (1996) and Delgamuukw (1997). Together these cases form not only a body of law on issues of resource, treaty and Aboriginal rights but have come to symbolize a hope for greater opportunity (chapter 4). …

Information Provision, Organizational Constraints, and the Decision to Submit an Amicus Curiae Brief in a U.S. Supreme Court Case

Abstract: How do organized interests select the Supreme Court cases in which to file amicus curiae briefs? Starting with the assumption that organized interests pursue policy influence, I argue that an organized interest will submit amicus curiae briefs in the cases that provide the greatest opportunity for the interest to influence the content of the majority opinion. Membership-based interests, however, will also have to consider the effect of their case-selection decisions on their ability to attract and retain membership support. I test my hypotheses with data on a large sample of organized interests and their amicus curiae brief filings in the 1991-1995 Supreme Court terms. The results of this analysis provide support for my hypotheses and indicate that organized interests seek out cases in which the justices are relatively information-poor. Membership-based interests also choose cases that allow for visible and apparently “successful” participation.

Sorcerers' Apprentices: 100 Years of Law Clerks at the United States Supreme Court

Abstract: IllustrationsAcknowledgments Preface: Awesome Responsibility and Complete Subservience 1 Introduction: The Institutionalization of the Supreme Court Law Clerk 2 A Great Ordeal: Selecting Supreme Court Law Clerks 3 The Junior Court: Deciding to Decide 4 Decision Making: Mission-Inspired Crusaders? 5 Opinion Writing: From Research Assistants to Junior Justices 6 Conclusion: Sorcerers' Apprentices Appendix A. "Memorandum for the Law Clerks" from the Chambers of Chief Justice Earl Warren Appendix B. Letter from Stephen G. Breyer to Earl Warren, October 6, 1963 Appendix C. Letter from John Minor Wisdom to Hugo Black, October 15, 1965 Appendix D. Justice Harry A. Blackmun's Talking Points for Interviewing Prospective Law Clerks Appendix E. Memorandum from Molly McUsic to Harry A. Blackmun, re: Certiorari Petition,Planned Parenthood v. Casey, January 4, 1992 Appendix F. Memorandum from Stephanie A.Dangel to Harry A. Blackmun, June 26, 1992 Appendix G. United States Supreme CourtLaw Clerk Questionnaire Notes BibliographyIndex About the Authors

The 'Liberation' of Federal Judges' Discretion in the Wake of the Booker/Fanfan Decision: Is There Increased Disparity and Divergence Between Courts?

Abstract: The United States Sentencing Guidelines are among the most ambitious attempts in history to control sentencing discretion. However, a major sea change occurred in January of 2005, when the U.S Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Booker and Fanfan that in order to be constitutional, the federal guidelines must be advisory rather than presumptive. The impact of the Booker/Fanfan decisions on interjurisdictional variation and sentencing disparity is an opportunity to examine the issue of whether the increased opportunity to sentence according to substantively rational criteria entails increased extralegal disparity. We draw on a conceptualization of courts as communities and a focal concerns model of sentencing decisions to frame expectations about federal sentencing in the wake of Booker/Fanfan. We test these expectations using USSC data on federal sentencing outcomes from four time periods: prior to the 2003 PROTECT Act, the period governed by the PROTECT Act, post-Booker/Fanfan, and post-Gall v U.S. In general, we find that extralegal disparity and between-district variation in the effects of extralegal factors on sentencing have not increased post-Booker and Gall. We conclude that allowing judges greater freedom to exercise substantive rationality does not necessarily result in increased extralegal disparity.

Keeping the Compound Republic: Essays on American Federalism

Abstract: The framers of the U. S. Constitution focused intently on the difficulties of achieving a workable middle ground between national and local authority. They located that middle ground in a new form of federalism that James Madison called the ""compound republic."" The term conveys the complicated and ambiguous intent of the framing generation and helps to make comprehensible what otherwise is bewildering to the modern citizenry: a form of government that divides and disperses official power between majorities of two different kinds --one composed of individual voters, and the other, of the distinct political societies we call states. America's federalism is the subject of this collection of essays by Martha Derthick, a leading scholar of American government. She explores the nature of the compound republic, with attention both to its enduring features and to the changes wrought in the twentieth century by Progressivism, the New Deal, and the civil rights revolution. Interest in federalism is likely to increase in the wake of the 2000 presidential election. There are demands for reform of the electoral college, given heightened awareness that it does not strictly reflect the popular vote. The U. S. Supreme Court, under Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, has mounted an explicit and controversial defense of federalism, and new nominees to the Court are likely to be questioned on that subject and appraised in part by their responses. Derthick's essays invite readers to join the Court in weighing the contemporary importance of federalism as an institution of government.