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In two related decisions in Chamber of Commerce of the United States of America v. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the District of Columbia Federal Court of Appeals ruled that the SEC had not fully complied with some provisions of the Administrative Procedures Act when it required that the boards of investment companies managing mutual funds have at least 75% of their membership and the Chairman be independent directors. In preparation for renewed rule making, the Office of Economic Analysis of the SEC prepared a Power Study to respond to an industry-sponsored report claiming that the returns of funds with independent boards and chairs are not superior to funds with boards dominated by management. The Power Study concluded that the available studies on the effectiveness of independent board members do not have sufficient statistical power to detect a meaningful difference in the returns of the two types of funds. This paper demonstrates that the method used by the SEC in their power calculation is not correct, unless a very restrictive condition that rarely occurs in practice holds. When the appropriate power formulas are used, the expected power of studies of the same size as the ones examined by the SEC is actually lower than the corresponding results of the SEC. Thus, the results in the paper actually strengthen the argument that the SEC is advocating. The relevance of both the SEC and the industry studies to the main issue in the case is also questioned in the discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The received wisdom in the scholarly literature on the US Supreme Court is that the perceived legitimacy of the institution is largely independent of the Court's policy output. Legitimacy is thought to be rooted in more stable factors, such as support for democratic values, and thus to be immune from ideological discontent with any particular decision. While recent research has demonstrated a general association between political predispositions and legitimacy, questions remain about the extent to which the specific decisions of the Court might shape legitimacy judgments in the mass public. In this paper, we examine the relationship between ideology, political sophistication, and evaluations of Supreme Court legitimacy in the aftermath of the recent decision on the Affordable Care Act. Our findings suggest a substantial role for Court policymaking in shaping perceptions of legitimacy in the mass public, but the nature of the relationship is conditional on political sophistication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court on several court cases including Safford Unified School District No. 1 v. Redding, New Jersey v. T.L.O. and Vernonia School District 47J v. Acton. It relates cases concerning the fourth amendment rights of students in schools. It mentions that the fourth amendment allows people to be secure in their persons, houses and papers against unreasonable searches and seizures.

The article discusses the court case, Ibrahim Ali versus Michael B. Mukasey, in which the Seventh Circuit gave in to a statutory interpretation put forth by the Board of Immigration Appeals in the U.S. The court held that an immigration court could consider additional evidence beyond the charging papers and judgment of conviction. This decision countermanded conflicting Seventh Circuit precedents, elucidating that administrative discretion belongs to the agency rather than to the court.

The article examines the U.S. Supreme Court's choice of law decisions in the Lochner versus New York case. This paper will also show that, while the U.S. Supreme Court's choice of law decisions implied certain philosophical preconceptions, that will explain the rise and fall of the Lochner Era. A comprehensive account of how the court's choice of law doctrines operated as a matter of constitutional law is provided and traditional criticisms of inapplicable to the court's choice of law cases are described. Furthermore, it resolves questions in Lochner scholarship, through illustrating how conceptions of legislative and judicial power, gave light on Lochner Era fundamental right.

The article examines the U.S. Supreme Court's lack of clarity about the economic projections of the Penn Central test in contrast to recent decisions from the Federal Claims Court and the Federal Circuit Court to show how those courts have advanced the framework of the test and measurement of damages. Some section of this paper review conducted cases to show how these courts have examined and relied on the economic underpinnings of this test in recent years. The U.S. Supreme Court implies that regulatory takings do not require that all value be eliminated before a citizen is entitled to compensation.

The article focuses on the reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Kelo v. City of New London which involved disturbances around the country. The paper also explores how best to think about Susette Kelo once the initial reactions subsides. The Court invited states and localities to consider carefully the benefits and burdens of using eminent domain for economic development. The Court's ruling that the scope of public use is coextensive with the police power has rejected the argument that private benefits generated by a condemnation render it constitutionally suspect.

Although the residues of official segregation are widespread, affirmative action continues to meet resistance in both official and everyday life, even in such recent Supreme Court decisions as Grutter v Bollinger (539 U.S. 306). This is due in part to a governing ontology that draws the line between individual and collective. But there are other possibilities for conceiving the social, and I offer one here in a theory of affirmative action that is developed through close examination of sharing and promising as elemental qualities of equitable communal life. The nature and value of these actions are demonstrated in narrative formulations of fairness as exemplified in triage and the situation at the end of slavery; of the difference between equality and equity and how justice depends on their conjunction; and finally of theorizing how these may come together in the permutable, opaque, yet resilient interdependence of person and community that represents most deeply the Greek idea of two in one, that is, of one two, not two ones. In these respects the paper is successful insofar as it discloses the kinds of reasoning that underlie both resistance and commitment to affirmative action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]