Topic
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.
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Journal Article•
49 citations
TL;DR: The 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision on Brown v. Board of Education concluded that segregated schools were inherently unequal and therefore unlawful as mentioned in this paper, but this decision was not based on the principle of equality.
Abstract: Background/ContextThe 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision on Brown v. Board of Education concluded that segregated schools were inherently unequal and therefore unlawful. That decision was not based s...
49 citations
TL;DR: It is argued that, within this framework, high predictability is a quantitative proxy for stable justice blocks, which probably reflect stable a priori attitudes toward the law and that aggregate court predictability has been significantly lower during Democratic presidencies.
Abstract: Successful attempts to predict judges' votes shed light into how legal decisions are made and, ultimately, into the behavior and evolution of the judiciary. Here, we investigate to what extent it is possible to make predictions of a justice's vote based on the other justices' votes in the same case. For our predictions, we use models and methods that have been developed to uncover hidden associations between actors in complex social networks. We show that these methods are more accurate at predicting justice's votes than forecasts made by legal experts and by algorithms that take into consideration the content of the cases. We argue that, within our framework, high predictability is a quantitative proxy for stable justice (and case) blocks, which probably reflect stable a priori attitudes toward the law. We find that U.S. Supreme Court justice votes are more predictable than one would expect from an ideal court composed of perfectly independent justices. Deviations from ideal behavior are most apparent in divided 5–4 decisions, where justice blocks seem to be most stable. Moreover, we find evidence that justice predictability decreased during the 50-year period spanning from the Warren Court to the Rehnquist Court, and that aggregate court predictability has been significantly lower during Democratic presidencies. More broadly, our results show that it is possible to use methods developed for the analysis of complex social networks to quantitatively investigate historical questions related to political decision-making.
49 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the increasing information flow from the private sector to the government, especially in light of the response to September 11, 2001, and propose a new and far-reaching solution.
Abstract: In this article, Professor Solove examines the increasing information flow from the private sector to the government, especially in light of the response to September 11, 2001. In today's Information Age, private sector entities are gathering an unprecedented amount of personal information about individuals, and the data is increasingly being accessed by government law enforcement officials. This government information gathering takes place outside the bounds of the Fourth Amendment, since the Supreme Court held in Smith v. Maryland and United States v. Miller that the Fourth Amendment does not apply to records held by third parties. Law enforcement officials can, with little restriction or judicial oversight, assemble what amounts to a digital dossier about a person by obtaining the personal details aggregated by various banks, businesses, websites, employers, ISPs, and other entities. On the other hand, access to information held by third parties is often critical to effective law enforcement. In light of the growing amount of personal data held by the private sector in the Information Age, to what extent should the government be restricted in its gathering of personal data from the private sector? In the void left by the Fourth Amendment, a series of statutes regulate government access to third party records, but this regime is woefully inadequate and ineffective. Reversing Smith and Miller will not work; the problem is far too complicated. Professor Solove explains why these solutions fail, and he proposes a new and far-reaching solution.
49 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1987
TL;DR: In this article, Howard Jones describes how, in 1839, Joseph Cinque led a revolt on the Spanish slave ship, the Amistad, in the Caribbean and the mutiny resulted in a trial before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Abstract: Published for the first time in the UK to coincide with Steven Spielberg's forthcoming movie Amistad, Mutiny on the Amistad presents the first full-scale treatment of the only instance in history where African blacks, seized by slave dealers, won their freedom and returned home. Howard Jones describes how, in 1839, Joseph Cinque led a revolt on the Spanish slave ship, the Amistad, in the Caribbean. Allowing only the captain and first mate to live in order to steer the ship back to Sierra Leone, the Africans were tricked and taken to New York. The seizure of the ship by an American naval vessel near Montauk, Long Island, the arrest of the Africans in Connecticut, and the Spanish protest against the violation of their property rights created an international controversy. The Amistad affair united Lewis Tappan and other abolitionists who put the 'law of nature' on trial in the United States by their refusal to accept a legal system that claimed to dispense justice while permitting artificial distinctions based on race or colour. The mutiny resulted in a trial before the U.S. Supreme Court that pitted former President John Quincy Adams against the federal government. Jones vividly recaptures this compelling drama-the most famous slavery case before Dred Scott-that climaxed in the court's ruling to free the captives and allow them to return to Africa.
49 citations