Suchergebnisse

The most important lesson that can be learned from Dred Scott is that the Supreme Court should exercise caution when addressing political controversy. Therefore, the Court's handling of Bush v. Gore was rather peculiar. This article looks at the legal system's approach to the 2000 US presidential election. It looks first at the protest action of the FL Supreme Court & the US Supreme Court. It then examines the contest action of both court systems. Finally, the article examines reaction to the Supreme Court's decision, especially the Court's partisan leanings. The article concludes that the Supreme Court's actions in the 2000 election prove that the highest court in the land operates under the assumption that the people are too "stupid or too irrational" to govern. In making this assumption, the justices of the Supreme Court demonstrated both their arrogance & their willingness to alter the law. K. A. Larsen

Supreme Court Justices' uniform professional backgrounds have drawn increasing criticism. Yet it is unclear how diverse professional training would affect the Court's decisions. This Article offers the first empirical analysis of how Justices with diverse professional training vote: It examines a unique period when Justices with formal legal education sat with Justices who entered the profession by reading the law alone. The study finds that Justices' levels of agreement and politically independent voting vary significantly according to their professional training. In cases which divided the Court, Justices who shared the benefit of formal legal education (1) voted together more often and (2) voted more independently of their appointing presidents' ideologies than Justices without this background. These findings substantially qualify earlier views on the desirability of Justices without formal legal education. Diversity in professional training is consistent with calls for a more politically responsive Court. It does not support arguments for an optimally diverse group of decision makers, however, unless one is also willing to accept diminished political independence that has been shown to accompany diverse professional training.

Amy Coney Barrett's nomination would make the Supreme Court more conservative than it has been in decades, even more conservative than the majority of the public. But one piece of research suggests that an out-of-step Court will not just have its way.

This paper from Tom Clark, Professor of Political Science at Emory University, shows why our new conservative Court may still follow public opinion.

On 15 November 2023, the UK Supreme Court (UKSC) unanimously declared the government's policy of removing some asylum seekers to Rwanda to process their claims unlawful. Like the Court of Appeal, it found substantial grounds for believing that asylum seekers would face a real risk of ill-treatment because of insufficient guarantees against refoulement. This post explores the origin and significance of the UKSC judgment and the legal and policy implications of the UK government's immediate response to it.