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.

A Reappraisal of Diversification in the Federal Courts: Gender Effects in the Courts of Appeals

Abstract: Prior scholarship on the effect of the increasing number of female judges leads to three contrasting sets of expectations. Early writings and views of affirmative-action activists suggested that female judges would be more liberal than male judges. On the other hand, a series of empirical studies suggest that we should expect no gender differences. In contrast to both of these perspectives, several feminist scholars suggest that women will be more liberal only when that position expresses support for full participation in the community. These contrasting expectations were tested by analyzing the votes of appeals court decisions in three issue areas. No differences were discovered between male and female judges in obscenity or criminal search and seizure cases. However, in employment discrimination cases, female judges were significantly more liberal than their male colleagues.

Violent video games and the Supreme Court: Lessons for the scientific community in the wake of Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association.

Abstract: In June 2011 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that video games enjoy full free speech protections and that the regulation of violent game sales to minors is unconstitutional. The Supreme Court also referred to psychological research on violent video games as "unpersuasive" and noted that such research contains many methodological flaws. Recent reviews in many scholarly journals have come to similar conclusions, although much debate continues. Given past statements by the American Psychological Association linking video game and media violence with aggression, the Supreme Court ruling, particularly its critique of the science, is likely to be shocking and disappointing to some psychologists. One possible outcome is that the psychological community may increase the conclusiveness of their statements linking violent games to harm as a form of defensive reaction. However, in this article the author argues that the psychological community would be better served by reflecting on this research and considering whether the scientific process failed by permitting and even encouraging statements about video game violence that exceeded the data or ignored conflicting data. Although it is likely that debates on this issue will continue, a move toward caution and conservatism as well as increased dialogue between scholars on opposing sides of this debate will be necessary to restore scientific credibility. The current article reviews the involvement of the psychological science community in the Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association case and suggests that it might learn from some of the errors in this case for the future. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved). Language: en

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

The Dynamics of Public Support for the Supreme Court

Abstract: Past empirical studies of factors affecting public support for the Supreme Court suggest: (1) the Supreme Court's decisions are more often congruent than incongruent with public opinion; (2) public response to decisions influences subsequent levels of institutional support; (3) negative reactions more strongly affect institutional support than do positive reactions; and (4) support is subject to value-based regeneration due to a link between the Court and basic democratic values. Although a wealth of empirical studies underlies these propositions, such findings appear inconsistent with the observed character of aggregate public support for the Court-namely, that levels of support tend to be high and that support is quite stable over time. To explore this tension, we construct a dynamic model of public support for the Supreme Court, guided by our four empirically derived propositions. Model analysis and estimation demonstrates that an active and occasionally controversial Supreme Court can maintain aggrega...

Lessons for the Future of Affirmative Action from the past of the Religion Clauses

Abstract: For both educational affirmative action and the use of race in districting, this essay pursues parallels with the Supreme Court's religion clause jurisprudence in aid of the argument that the approach mapped out by the Powell opinion in Bakke, the Michigan District Court in Gratz, and the Supreme Court dissenters in the Shaw v. Reno line of voting rights cases makes more sense as a part of our constitutional law than the sort of categorical opposition to the use of race in anything other than a strictly remedial context that is rapidly becoming its chief competition. My contention is that the Supreme Court's attitude toward race, at least in the two contexts of educational affirmative action and voting rights, should follow the same trajectory as its attitude toward religion already has. The trajectory I have in mind is the following: For a period of time, on Establishment Clause grounds, the exclusion of religion and the religious from otherwise generally available opportunities was endorsed, indeed was seen as constitutionally required. Then the Court came to realize that it worked a discrimination against those whose central organizing characteristic or salient trait was their religion to allow other such characteristics, but not religion, to form the basis for inclusion. Similarly, to allow every other basis for commonality or salience to count and not race may be seen to disadvantage those for whom race is a defining characteristic in a way that itself implicates the Equal Protection Clause. To put the argument in extremely compressed and referential form, if colorblindness is analogous to aggressive enforcement of the Establishment Clause, then, while the University of California's use of race in the plan struck down in Bakke may resemble the New York legislature's use of religion in the districting legislation struck down in Kiryas Joel, the inclusion of race in the Harvard admissions plan praised by Justice Powell more closely resembles the inclusion of religion mandated by the Supreme Court for the University of Virginia's funding scheme in Rosenberger. And, if the affirmative action claims of racial minorities are like the accommodation claims of religious minorities, then, while some voluntary pursuit of racial diversity by public educational institutions is like permissible accommodation, some majority minority districting under the Voting Rights Act is like required accommodation.