Citations to Authority in Supreme Court Opinions

This article analyzes citations used by the U.S. Supreme Court in its majority opinions. The research explores variations in citations and evaluates various explanations for these variations, including the potential impact of individual judicial style, legal factors, and group interaction in the formation of opinions. The article suggests that systematic analysis of citations holds potential for contributing to our understanding of the judicial process.     

Campaign contributions in Texas Supreme Court races

One of the most disturbing features of an elective judiciary is judicial campaign finance. This paper explores the financing of the 1988 Texas Supreme Court races, probably the most expensive partisan judicial election campaign in history. It examines the sources of the funding of those six seats on the court in terms of competition among interest groups for control of the court. It also examines proposed reforms in the system of campaign finance and points out that those reforms are not neutral tools of good government, but that instead they have massive political implications for the interests vying to influence the direction of tort law in the state.     

German Constitutional Law in the UK Supreme Court

Liverpool Law Review - The outgoing tide of EU law will be Britain’s most significant constitutional change in recent times. In an era of uncertainties, the UK Supreme Court proved to be a...     

Social science in Supreme Court criminal cases and briefs

This article describes citations of social science research evidence in 200 criminal cases decided by the Supreme Court and in the briefs filed by the parties and amici curiae in these cases. It also examines the uses of social science authorities in samples of Supreme Court exclusionary rule and jury decisionmaking cases, and accompanying briefs. The correspondence between the social science references cited in the decisions and the briefs is used as one measure of the brief-writers' contributions to the Court's use of social science materials, and related contributions of the brief-writers are explored, as well. The justices appeared to locate the majority of social science references cited in their opinions without assistance from the briefs, and thus also presumably attempted to evaluate the research evidence on their own. Individuals and organizations with scientific expertise rarely filed amicus briefs in these cases, which may help explain why the Court so frequently was without assistance in locating or examining research evidence. It is suggested that the appellate judiciary's informed use of social science materials would be promoted if more social scientists, and their professional organizations, participated as amici curiae in cases presenting social fact issues within their competence.     

The Problem of Emergency in the American Supreme Court

Sixty years before Carl Schmitt wrote his Political Theology, and more than a 100 years before President Bush announced a ‘war on terrorism’ the American Supreme Court grappled with the difficult issue of emergency powers in connection with issues arising out of the American Civil War (1861–1865). The question confronting the Court in a set of cases named the Prize Cases was whether President Lincoln’s decision to respond to acts of aggression by the secessionist Southern states with measures of war was lawful. The legal problem was that Lincoln had made this decision unilaterally although the American Constitution specifically allocates the power to declare war to Congress. The Court solved the dilemma by arguing that in cases where no war has been declared, the decision whether the country is in a state of war is ultimately ‘a question to be decided by him [the President], and [the Supreme] Court must be governed by the decisions and acts of the political department of the Government to which this power was entrusted’ (Prize, p. 669). The precedent, which the Court thereby laid down, has since played out as an important leverage for the Bush government’s legal arguments in connection with the war on terrorism. This article engages the theoretical framework of Locke, Schmitt and Agamben in order to come to a better understanding of this important set of cases.     

Conservatorship of Wendland: in the Supreme Court of California

HELD: A conservator of the person may not withhold tube feeding from a conscious conservatee who is not terminally ill, comatose, or in a persistent vegetative state, absent clear and convincing evidence that the conservator's decision is in accordance with either the conservatee's own wishes or his best interest.     

Preston v. Meriter Hospital in the Supreme Court of Wisconsin

When a baby is born in a hospital birthing center, the newborn has come to the "emergency department" for purposes of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA). Thus, the hospital must provide "an appropriate medical screening examination" to any infant born at the hospital birthing center in order to determine whether the infant has an emergency medical condition.     

Supreme Court denies leave to appeal in medical marijuana charter challenge

As previously reported in this publication, in January 2002 the Ontario Court of Appeal denied Jim Wakeford's claim that Canada's laws prohibiting marijuana possession and cultivation infringe his constitutional rights to liberty and security of the person. On 22 November 2002 the Supreme Court of Canada announced that it would not hear his appeal from that decision.     

Thirty Years of Social Science in Supreme Court Criminal Cases*

The Supreme Court early took note of extralegal, “social science” materials in Muller v. Oregon (1908), and a half-century later made specific reference to social science authorities in the famous footnote 11 of Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Since Brown, much has been written about the Supreme Court's use of social science research evidence, but there has been little systematic study of that use. Those writing on the subject commonly focus on areas of law such as jury size, where social science has been used, and have generally assumed that social science information has been utilized in Supreme Court decisions with increasing regularity. Surprisingly little is known, however, about either the justices' baseline use of social science authorities, or many other aspects of their uses of social science information. The focus here is on the citation of social science research evidence in a sample of 240 criminal cases decided during the 30 years between the Supreme Court's 1958 and 1987 Terms. The resulting portrait contributes to a fuller understanding of the justices' use of social science materials, and may ultimately help promote more effective utilization of social science research evidence in Supreme Court decisions.