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.

Marriage, Law and Gender : A Feminist Inquiry

Abstract: A series of constitutional challenges to the exclusion of gay male and lesbian couples from the matrix of rights and responsibilities which comprise marriage were brought and failed twenty years ago. The most dramatic development to date in the campaign to establish a right to gay marriage occurred in May 1993, when the Hawaii Supreme Court ruled that, under the state constitution, marriage could not be limited to opposite-sex couples unless the state could demonstrate a compelling interest in doing so. A number of municipalities have adopted domestic partnership laws granting recognition for limited purposes to unmarried couples who met certain functional criteria roughly comparable to marriage. In reality, however, the definition of marriage is grounded on the social category of gender. Same-sex marriage could create the model in law for an egalitarian kind of interpersonal relation, outside the gendered terms of power, for many marriages.

The Second Amendment : Toward an Afro-Americanist Reconsideration

Abstract: Many of the issues surrounding the Second Amendment debate are raised in particularly sharp relief from the perspective of African-American history. With the exception of Native Americans, no people in American history have been more influenced by violence than blacks. Private and public violence maintained slavery. The nation's most destructive conflict ended the "peculiar institution." That all too brief experiment in racial egalitarianism, Reconstruction, was ended by private violence and abetted by Supreme Court sanction Jim Crow was sustained by private violence, often with public assistance. If today the memories of past interracial violence are beginning to fade, they are being quickly replaced by the frightening phenomenon of black-on-black violence, making life all too precarious for poor blacks in inner city neighborhoods. Questions raised by the Second Amendment, particularly those concerning self-defense, crime, participation in the security of the community, and the wisdom or utility of relying exclusively on the state for protection, thus take on a peculiar urgency in light of the modern Afro-American experience.

Concern for Policy Outputs as a Cue for Supreme Court Decisions on Certiorari

Abstract: IN CONTRAST TO the large and growing literature on Supreme Court decision-making in cases decided with full opinions, relatively little has been written about the prior court decisions to grant or deny review on petitions for certiorari. Such a shortcoming may be due in part to the difficulty in obtaining the relevant empirical facts about the process of decision-making which the Supreme Court's "doctrine of secrecy" produces. This lack of attention should not, however, be allowed to obscure the obvious policy significance of these decisions. In the past about 75 percent of all cases that went to oral argument reached the Supreme Court through petitions for certiorari.' Certiorari decisions are thus a crucial part of the gatekeeping processes by which the justices determine which issues will be the subjects of Court output. The justices on the Supreme Court have done little to aid scholars who seek to understand the process. Several studies have suggested that the official court criteria, contained in Rule 19, shed little light

What has a decade of Daubert wrought

Abstract: There have been changes within the judicial system that may be attributable to opinions on the admissibility of expert testimony that began with the Supreme Court's 1993 decision in Daubert v Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. After surveying Daubert and subsequent related Supreme Court opinions, I examine a number of questions. Do the factors courts apply post-Daubert in ruling on the admissibility of expert testimony make scientific sense? Has Daubert had an impact on the willingness of scientists to become expert witnesses? What do we know about Daubert's impact on improving science in the court room? What has been Daubert's effect on access to the courts? Does Daubert further public policy objectives of protecting the public against harm?

Sensationalism and Sobriety Differential Media Exposure and Attitudes Toward American Courts

Abstract: While a great deal of research has focused on under- standing the foundations of public support for American courts, scant attention has been paid to the role of the media for such attitudes. Given the media's demonstrated ability to influence public opinion, this remains a substantial gap in the literature. In the present paper we examine how different types of media—sensationalist (i.e., political radio and cable news) or sober (i.e., newspapers and network news) — influence individuals' attitudes toward both the U.S. Supreme Court and courts at the state level. In line with our predictions, we find that sensationalist media exposure depresses both diffuse and specific support for American courts. Additionally, our results call into ques- tion the unconditional nature of the ubiquitous sophistication-approval relationship. We find that sophistication's positive effect on court atti- tudes is conditional on an individual's particular source of political information.