Supreme Court upholds criminal prohibitions on possession of marijuana for recreational use

In two recent decisions, R v Malmo-Levine and R v Caine (decided together) and R v Clay, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the criminal prohibition on marijuana possession, in the absence of a regulatory exemption for medical purposes, is constitutional.     

Feminist theory confronts US Supreme Court rhetoric: the case of abortion rights

The research presented below analyses the rhetoric of abortion jurisprudence from the perspective of fundamental principles of feminist theory. While focused primarily on the American experience, it addresses and raises questions that are on the political agenda in a significant number of contemporary societies. The feminist principles identified, and against which judicial rhetoric is assessed, include: the importance of actual life experience over abstract principles, the significance of the distinction between the public and private realms and the understanding of society as a web of relationships. Demonstrated by the relevant data is that the decisions of the judiciary restrictive of reproductive choice are characterized by a distinctly non-feminist rhetoric.     

Restraining the Court: Assessing Accounts of Congressional Attempts to Limit Supreme Court Authority

We propose a multilevel account of legislative Court curbing in order to assess existing explanations as to why such proposals come about. We argue that although Court curbing is commonly seen as the result of institutional conflict between Congress and the Supreme Court, it is best understood as a product of three interrelated factors: the individual motivations on the part of lawmakers, the partisan context in which they operate, and institutional disagreements between Court and legislature. We find evidence that micro‐level factors offer an important insight into Court curbing that institution‐focused explanations alone cannot.