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“The court and the public” argues that a judge’s awareness of public opinion is not only inevitable, but also necessary. Can the Court also influence the public? The long tenures of the justices do not seem to affect the equilibrium in which the Court and the public exist. Public polls show some approval for the Supreme Court in general, rather than its specific actions. However, famously contentious cases such as Roe v. Wade reveal the intersection of public opinion and Court judgment, showing what happens when the Court feels its legitimacy is threatened. Has the Court aligned itself with public opinion over time?

A very small percentage of cases reach the Supreme Court. “The Court at Work” explains that even if a case meets all the criteria, the justices are still at liberty to refuse it. The Court has navigated debates about the separation of powers and conflicting approaches to interpretations of the statutes. The growth of the administrative state means that the Court is now more often tasked with determining whether administrative agencies are carrying out their duties correctly. What do cases and controversies mean to the Supreme Court? Why are these terms important, and how have the Court’s interpretations of them changed over time?

This Article is the first to examine the behavior of judges and their law clerks (officially entitled référendaires) at the Court of Justice of the European Union. It identifies a number of serious issues affecting Court performance. First, the Article finds that the Court's high judicial salaries and lack of procedural safe-guards for EU judicial appointments attract political appointees. As a consequence, some judges who are selected are not compe-tent to perform their duties and are dominated by their référen-daires. Moreover, the high turnover rate of EU judges hampers their productivity and increases their dependence on the référen-daires. Using a sample of data hand-collected from LinkedIn, the Article demonstrates that référendaires are drawn from a rela-tively closed social network. There is no open platform for re-cruiting référendaires, and the requirement of French as the working language significantly limits the pool of eligible candi-dates. The inefficiency of the référendaire labor market results in less competition, leading many référendaires to stay longer at the Court. The revolving door between the Court and the European Commission raises serious conflict issues, as the Commission is able to exert influence on the Court from the inside and gain a comparative advantage in litigation. In addition, the Court’s practice of issuing a single, collegial decision encourages free-riding, increases pressures for judges and référendaires to con-form, and suppresses dissent, as illustrated in the Microsoft case. Last but not least, the division of labor between the General Court and the Court of Justice could lead to divergent incentives for judges working at different levels of the Court.

How does the Supreme Court choose among cases to grant cert? In the context of a model that considers a strategic Supreme Court, a continuum of rule-following lower courts, a set of cases available for revision, and a distribution of future lower court cases, we show that the Court grants cert to the case that will most significantly shape future lower court case outcomes in the direction that the Court prefers. That is, the Court grants cert to the case with maximum salience. If the Court is rather liberal (conservative) then the most salient case is the one that moves the discretionary range of the legal standard as far left (right) as possible. But if the Court is moderate, then the most salient case will be a function of the skewedness of the distribution of ideologies of the lower courts and the likelihood that future cases will fall within the part of the discretionary range that is adjusted if the case is granted cert. Variations take place when the ideology of the Court is moderately liberal, moderately conservative or fully moderate. Extensions of the model allow us to identify the sensitivity of the results to the number of petitions for revision; the variety of legal topics covered by the petitions; and anticipation of whether the Court will confirm or reverse.

Since 2013 judicial reforms in China have intensified. While recent studies of the Chinese judiciary have focused on structural reforms concerning the jurisdiction of courts and internal court management, it has largely gone unnoticed that the Supreme People’s Court (SPC) has established an open-access database archiving the decisions of every court in China. On the basis of legal documents, secondary literature and interviews with experts, this study investigates the implications of the new database. We find that the database establishes new channels of communication that affect the relationship between the courts and the public, and the position of judges within the judiciary. Further, the open-access database facilitates changes in the structure of communication among legal experts, which in turn promotes legal professionalism. We argue that the SPC made use of the party policy on the direct accountability of the courts towards the people in order to pursue its institutional interest in a professional judiciary.

Legal precedent serves as the foundation of the common law. Judges provide their reasoning through precedent, citing cases to support their conclusion while distinguishing between cases cited by that counsel in favor of an opposing result. Legal precedent also provides the mechanism by which judges communicate with one another, at the same time providing guidance to prospective litigants and the practicing bar. This process is particularly important for supreme courts, whose decisions bind all lower courts within their jurisdiction. For this reason, in most common‐law jurisdictions, the supreme court decides relatively few cases but draws heavily on precedent for the opinions it issues. The Supreme Court in India stands in contrast to its counterparts in countries such as the United States and Canada in that it decides thousands, rather than tens, of cases. Examining the universe of Court decisions from 1950–2010, we find that the Court elects not to cite precedent in nearly half its opinions. In turn, these opinions without citation to precedent are rarely subsequently cited. However, there is a second set of decisions that is more analogous to U.S. Supreme Court decisions. These decisions do cite prior decisions and are cited by later cases. Opinions that do cite precedent gravitate to older opinions, whose salience often endures for decades. These findings suggest the Court is constrained in its ability to process a heavy caseload, and makes strategic decisions as to which opinions to emphasize through its use of precedent.

This study grew out of my on-the-job blogging. At both the Charleston School of Law and the J. Rueben Clark Law School, I read every opinion from the state and federal appellate courts with jurisdiction over South Carolina and Utah respectively, summarizing the binding authority and posting those summaries online at the Barrister blog and the Binding the Law blog. This has served as excellent current awareness and bar preparation service to the law school communities and a research tool to the legal community generally.

The article examines how states talk about the International Criminal Court (ICC, or the Court) through the lens of Albert Hirschman’s exit, voice and loyalty framework. Based on a content analysis...

InShergill & Others v. Khaira & Others[2014] UKSC 33, the UK courts considered whether a Sikh holy saint had the power to dismiss trustees who questioned his “succession” to the religious institution of theNirmal Kutia Johal. The Supreme Court, reversing the decision of the Court of Appeal that religious questions were “nonjusticiable,” reinstated the judgment at first instance of the High Court to the contrary. The decision of the Supreme Court is important because whenever questions of the identification and legitimacy of successors to a religious institution have arisen, their “justiciability” before a secular court has invariably been a bone of contention on grounds that it threatens the autonomy of religious institutions. InShergillthe Supreme Court got around these concerns by drawing a normative distinction between the public law of the land (which the courts are required to determine), and the internal private law of a religious institution on matters of succession, ordination, and removal (which are not in themselves for the courts to decide). ButShergillalso went further than previous case law in two respects. First, the fundamental tenets of a belief system are capable of an objective assessment by a secular court provided that there is public law element to a dispute, in which case the court can then decide on the fitness of the successor for office. This means there is no general presumption that a secular court is barred from considering religious questions per se. Second, these principles apply just as much to the judicial consideration of non-Christian faiths as they to the Christian religion, and this is so notwithstanding the court's unfamiliarity with other faiths.

Bush v. Gore was a straightforward and legally correct decision. For more than a quarter century, the Supreme Court has treated the stuffing of ballot boxes as a paradigmatic violation of the Equal Protection Clause. Much more subtle and indirect forms of vote dilution have also been outlawed. Like some of those practices, the selective and partial recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court may have been an inadvertent form of vote dilution. But that recount had effects that were virtually indistinguishable from those in the paradigmatic case. There is no meaningful difference between adding illegal votes to the count and selectively adding legal votes, which is what the Florida court was doing. The Supreme Court rightly concluded that the vote dilution in this case violated well-established equal protection principles. Nor did the Supreme Court err in its response to this constitutional violation. Although the Court acted with unprecedented dispatch after the Florida court's December 8, 2000 decision, it was highly improbable that a legally proper recount could be conducted by the December 18 deadline set by federal law. And it was quite impossible for such a recount to meet the December 12 deadline that the Florida court itself had found in Florida law. Contrary to a widespread misconception, the U.S. Supreme Court properly accepted the Florida court's interpretation of state law and provided that court with an opportunity to reconsider its own interpretation of state law. When the clock ran out, it was entirely due to mistakes and delays attributable to the Florida court. The Supreme Court's majority opinion has been subjected to a barrage of political criticisms of a kind that might more fittingly be directed against a Senate Majority Leader or a Secretary of State. Ironically, it is precisely because the Justices correctly applied the law that they have been accused of having partisan motives.

This chapter considers the actions commenced before the Court of Justice. These include actions by the European Commission and other member states against a member state (Articles 258–60 TFEU); judicial review of acts of the institutions (Article 263 TFEU); the action against the institutions for a failure to act (Article 265 TFEU); actions for damages (Articles 268 and 340 TFEU); and the right to plead the illegality of an EU regulation (Article 277 TFEU). The chapter also considers interim measures under Articles 278 and 279 TFEU and enforcement actions arising from the Commission enforcement of EU competition law against individuals.

The proposed international criminal section of the African Court of Justice and Human and Peoples Rights (the African Criminal Court) involves a number of progressive features. Among them is the Court’s authority to hear cases against corporations for a comprehensive list of international and transnational crimes. According to Article 46C of the African Criminal Court’s statute, entitled ‘Corporate Criminal Liability’, ‘the Court shall have jurisdiction over legal persons, with the exception of States.’ As no international criminal court has yet to exercise jurisdiction over corporations for international or transnational crimes, the African Criminal Court, should it come into operation, will necessarily tread new ground. This paper forensically examines the contours of Article 46C, with a view to elucidating its scope and to explore some of the challenges it raises.

The United States Supreme Court has significant influence over the development of legal policy, yet it must rely on external actors to bring to fruition the desired effect of its decisions. Among the most important such actors are state high courts who are often motivated to issue decisions promoting policies at odds with the U.S. Supreme Court and who have mechanisms to legitimize such decisions. This study builds on existing work on state court compliance with U.S. Supreme Court precedent by introducing a new theoretical framework that accounts for the impact of state-specific precedent vitality, or the degree to which the high court of a specific state has positively treated a U.S. Supreme Court precedent, on state high court compliance. Our analysis of state high court treatment of Miller v. California provides strong evidence for the importance of state-specific vitality as a determinant of state high court compliance.

The South African adversarial system of civil procedure in the High Court owes its origin to that of England. As with all civil procedural systems, the South African system is not stagnant. Its primary sources, namely Acts of Parliament and rules of court, are constantly amended in an attempt to meet the changing needs of society. Court delay and costinefficient procedural mechanisms, however, contribute to public dismay. The High Court, in the exercise of its inherent power to regulate its process, do so with the purpose of enhancing access to justice. The advantage of the system lies in the fact that it is not cast in stone but could, subject to the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996, be developed to make it more accessible to the public whilst protecting the public’s fundamental rights entrenched in the Constitution and, in this regard, particularly the right to afair trial embedded in sec. 34 of the Constitution. This contribution gives an overview of the system with reference to the court structure, the judiciary, the process in the High Court and its underlying principles, appeals, class actions and alternative civil dispute resolution mechanisms.

The Constitutional Court does not only interpreting the Constitution in judicial review cases. The Courtalso applies legal construction which include constitutional construction and statutory construction. Thisarticle aims to identify this approach in the Court rulings. It also seeks to find conditions that trigger theCourt to venture on discovering the law by applying legal construction.

It is rare for a national court to be invited to recognise and enforce a judgment from an international or regional court, as opposed to a judgment from a foreign national court. This article examines a decision of the High Court of Ghana given in respect of an application to enforce a judgment of the ECOWAS Court of Justice. The article examines the bases of the Ghanaian court's decision not to enforce the ECOWAS judgment and suggests how future cases may be decided.

The literature on the U.S. Supreme Court has paid substantial attention to the perceived legitimacy of the Court’s decisions. However, much less attention has been paid to the perceived legitimacy of the reasons the Court provides for its opinions. We design two experiments to understand how the public perceives opinion content. Unlike prior studies, we take it as a given that the Court uses legal reasons in its decisions. This offers us a baseline by which to compare departures from these legal reasons. We find that extralegal reasons, when paired with legal reasons, do nothing to harm the legitimacy of the Court. Furthermore, we find that even with a lack of legal reasons, the use of extralegal reasons does not harm the legitimacy of the Court, even among those who find that these reasons are inappropriate for the Court to use.

Resumo Atualmente, o Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF) ocupa hoje posição central no processo político nacional. Suas decisões são a última palavra oficial sobre os temas a que se referem, concentrando poderes para resolver conflitos políticos e morais, para além das esferas majoritárias. Esse cenário, porém, é muito diferente dos anos 1990, quando o STF não ocupava posição tão destacada na política brasileira. Neste artigo, discutiremos essa configuração do poder e do papel do STF por meio de análises do tribunal que a constituinte criou, mas também do que os ministros criaram por meio de práticas institucionais e interpretações de seus próprios poderes. Exploraremos algumas consequências mais recentes da manifestação do próprio poder conferido ao STF nesse processo de reconfiguração institucional, delineando, de maneira preliminar, novas tendências na forma de atuação política do tribunal. Argumentamos, também, que, em vez de atuar apenas como ponto de veto a decisões majoritárias, como câmara revisora do que faz o Congresso, o tribunal já sinalizou disposição para receber (e aceitar) provocações para funcionar como uma espécie de primeira câmara legislativa. Abstract The Brazilian Supreme Federal Court (STF) occupies a central role in the national political process. The court´s decisions have been the last official word on many key constitutional controversies, and it has increasingly asserted its own powers to solve political and moral conflicts, even against majoritarian decisions. This scenario, however, is very different from the 90s, when the court was much less relevant in national politics. In this paper, we engage with and try to map this process of institutional transformation by analyzing and contrasting the court that the constitution created in its original text, and the court that the Justices themselves have recreated, by means of institutional practices and constitutional interpretation of their own powers. We will explore some of the implications of the institutional transformations driven by the court itself, by identifying a set of new trends in the ways by which the court participates in the national political process. The paper concludes by arguing that, instead of acting just as a veto point to majoritarian decisions (that is, as a third legislative chamber), the court has been signaling its willingness to accept (and to rule on) cases in which it will be forced to act as a first legislative chamber.

The Supreme Court deals with many political cases, where policies are at stake, while on the other hand there is the politics within the Court which can also play an important role. It is difficult to judge the current system without sound empirical and theoretical studies, so one cannot confidently assess the effectiveness of the paper appeals in the American System in the light of the long history of the UK system, of different career paths of advocates in these two countries and of different routes of appointment for judges in both jurisdictions. Nevertheless, any interviews that were conducted with senior judges in the UK were conducted a long time ago and might not be applicable to the current realities. It is true that the British system is open to moderation—the elimination of the House of Lords and its replacement with the Supreme Court is the best example—but maybe more changes are needed. It is paramount that greater diversity in the profession brings fresh perspectives. This is evident in electing practitioners with different career paths, such as Justice Kennedy and Lord Sumption. The president of the Supreme Court, Lord Neuberger, even suggested advertising the next position in the Supreme Court to be on a part time basis, to enable the election of an academic. As stated in the introduction, since Abela and others v Baadarani is a case with important principles at stake, is there a space for political disagreement?

Like everything else in the Bill of Rights, the Second Amendment originally restrained only the new federal government. This left the states free to regulate weapons as they saw fit, just as they were free to regulate such matters as speech and religion. The Supreme Court did not invalidate a federal statute under the Second Amendment until 2008, and it was only in 2010 that a regulation adopted pursuant to state law was struck down. These two decisions — District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. City of Chicago — prompted a stream of litigation that may eventually put significant constraints on legislative efforts to regulate the possession and use of weapons. As this is written in July 2017, however, it seems more likely that the Court’s decisions will prove to have very limited practical effects. It is worth recalling the Rehnquist Court’s Commerce Clause decision in United States v. Lopez, which set off celebrations and lamentations about a federalism revolution that has yet to come about. Similarly, the Roberts Court has so far shown only that the Second Amendment does not leave governments with absolutely limitless regulatory power. This contribution to American Federalism and Public Policy (edited by Christopher P. Banks) begins with a brief sketch of the legal and historical background that set the stage for Heller and McDonald. After a description of those cases, the chapter surveys the application of the decisions by the lower courts. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the Supreme Court’s response to the case law developed by the lower courts.

The article sheds light on provisions of Codes of Civil Procedure of 1853 and 1860 concerning ordinary legal remedies. As this matter was codified for the first time, a necessity of amending and supplementing some provisions soon emerged. Those amendments and supplements, along with original provisions were examined in this paper. The author also deals with regulations on jurisdiction of Court of Appeal, Court of Cassation and Supreme court. Types and categories of ordinary legal remedies were scrutinized, as well as strict time limits within one should lodge an appeal and proper grounds for making an appeal. The author also responds to questions under which circumstances are ordinary legal remedies allowed, and what types of decisions a higher court can make after reviewing the correctness and reasonableness of a decision issued by a lower court. Shortly after enactment of the Code of 1853 it appeared that judicial procedure is too complicated, expensive and ineffective due to too many legal remedies and legal jurisdictions. That is the reason why the Supreme court as the highest court within the hierarchy of legal jurisdictions and as final court of appeal was abolished in 1860, when new Code of Civil Procedure had been passed. New codification envisaged Court of Appeal as second instance court and, at the same time, court of last resort. Regarding legal remedies, Code of 1860 introduced appeal as sole ordinary legal remedy.

Twenty-five years ago, in this Journal, Hilary Charlesworth, Christine Chinkin, and Shelley Wright argued that the structures of international law “privilege men.” As shown in Table 1, which summarizes data from a forthcoming article, on nine of twelve international courts of varied size, subject-matter jurisdiction, and global and regional membership, women made up 20 percent or less of the bench in mid 2015. On many of these courts, the percentage of women on the bench has stayed constant, vacillated, or even declined over time. Women made up a lower percentage of the bench in mid 2015 than in previous years on two-thirds of the courts surveyed.

The Constitution of Kenya provides that the sovereign power of the people shall be vested in the executive, the legislature and the judiciary, reflecting the democratic ideal that if power is concentrated in the hands of a few, it is prone to misuse. This provision aims to safeguard against arbitrary and capricious governance and the abuse of power. In the new constitutional order, there has been instances of tensions between the judiciary and the other arms of government. Unfortunate incidents of members of the Legislature referring to court orders as stupid and idiotic with blatant disregard for court orders have been witnessed. In a government whose legitimacy is vindicated by a court, it is ironical to observe a selective attitude towards respecting subsequent court orders. This paper aims to consider the disregard of court orders against the backdrop of the separation of powers and other relevant principles of constitutionalism.

The article analyses the changes of jurisdiction of the Court of Justice of the European Union after the coming into force of the Treaty of Lisbon to give preliminary rulings in the proceedings launched where a national court submits a reference for preliminary ruling when considering a criminal matter as well as on a request from a national court to interpret a legal act of the European Union or deliver an opinion on its validity. In addition, it investigates the preliminary ruling, the requirements to fulfil when presenting procedural documents, and conditions of applying special measures in organizing the proceedings. The analysis of the relevant case-law of the Court of Justice of the European Union will also help to reflect the potential trends of its future development. On the basis of the analysis of the case-law of the Court of Justice, the following conclusion is made: after the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon and expiry of the transitional period, no restrictions have been left for national courts (irrespective of their position in the national legislative system) to submit a reference for a preliminary ruling before the Court of Justice of the European Union where preliminary questions are related to the area of freedom, security and justice, therefore, the following trend arises: national courts more often decide to use this opportunity of cooperation with the Court also when a criminal case is pending before a national court. In the process of a preliminary ruling the role of a national court is very important, as it, requesting for a preliminary ruling, not only initiates the opening of the process, but also the quality of procedural documents submitted by a referring court may determine the progress, duration and result of the proceedings. Therefore, the requirements and stipulations laid down accordingly in Article 94 of the Rules of Procedure of the Court of Justice and Recommendations to national courts in relation to the initiation of preliminary ruling proceedings are very important. An active use of national courts of a possibility to submit a reference for a preliminary ruling to the Court of Justice in cases where there are doubts as regards interpretation of the European Union legal acts in considering criminal cases and the preliminary rulings of the Court of Justice contributes to the attaining of one of the main objectives laid down in Article 267 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union: to ensure uniform interpretation and application of the European Union law throughout the Union.

This study investigates the politics of appointments to the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the court established under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to review secret federal government requests for warrants related to national security investigations. Since the FISA Court's creation, its members have been appointed entirely at the discretion of the Chief Justice of the United States, who selects FISA Court judges from among the pool of existing U.S. District Court judges. Using data on the common space scores of the federal district judges appointed to the court, and the limited information available on the court's decisions, we explore the implications of this, both for the ideological makeup of the FISA Court's judges and for the oversight function they perform. The results suggest that the court has become decidedly more conservative in recent years, far more so than the district courts overall, with potentially serious implications for its abilit...

The Supreme Court dominates America’s legal establishment. Predicting its decisions has, arguably, and for all practicality, become an industry. The traditions of the court have endowed it with a teleological approach which makes predicting the court’s decisions difficult. On important decisions, especially those with political overtones, the Justices on the court show a strong preference to vote along partisan lines, in harmony with the party that nominated them onto the court - but not always. In a review of the court’s history, in key decisions Justices have departed from their more predictable partisanship. Our analysis shows that when judges depart from their predictable partisanship, they do so for fairly consistent, if not predictable, reasons: institution building. This paper argues that the Supreme Court behaves in a manner consistent with Max Weber"s social theory: that a bureaucracy will labor to perpetuate itself. The Supreme Court often makes decisions for the purpose of enhancing and perpetuating the institution of the Court itself. Because the Supreme Court is a national institution, at times “institution building” means nation building. This paper studies the tension of partisanship versus institution building in Supreme Court decisions: the dynamics of fission versus fusion, the tension that exist between these two poles and the mechanics of how this is worked out, creates arguably some of the greatest drama in the Court’s history as demonstrated in Marbury v. Madison and Bush v. Gore.

At a joint press conference in April of 2012, a reporter asked President Barack Obama to speculate on how the Supreme Court might rule concerning the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Ultimately, the president said, "I'm confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress." (1) Whether or not this statement shaped the Court's decision in June to uphold the Act; the president's rhetoric fueled a debate in the popular media about the appropriateness of the president attempting to influence the Court by going public in this manner (e.g., Editorial Board 2012; Hartman 2012). This is so even though the president mentioned National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius (2012) on only two occasions prior to the Court's decision. The bulk of the president s attention to this case occurred after the decision, in dozens of stump speeches delivered during the 2012 presidential election campaign. These remarks are not the only high-profile instance of presidents targeting Supreme Court cases in their public rhetoric. President Obama famously raised concerns about Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010) during his 2010 State of the Union Address and called on Congress to counteract Shelby County v. Holder (2013), the Court's decision to invalidate the preclearance provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. George W. Bush publicized his opposition to affirmative action prior to the Court's decisions in Gratz v. Bollinger (2003) and Grutter v. Bollinger (2003). (2) Even 50 years ago, President Johnson praised the Court's decisions in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and Shelley v. Kraemer (1948) as he encouraged Congress to pass more expansive civil rights legislation. (3) Despite these examples of presidential speeches referencing Supreme Court cases, we lack a firm understanding of when, how frequently, and why presidents mention Supreme Court cases in their public statements. To date, most going public research that examines the interrelationships between the executive and judicial branches of government focuses on judicial nominations, not Supreme Court cases (Cameron and Park 2011; Holmes 2007, 2008; Johnson and Roberts 2004; Krutz, Fleisher, and Bond 1998; Maltese 1995a). In addition, only limited research shows that presidents increase their public attention to policy issues in response to Supreme Court cases on those issues (Flemming, Wood, and Bohte 1999; see Ura 2014). Moreover, despite the firestorm surrounding President Obama's comments delivered before the Court's ruling in the Sebelius case, we know next to nothing about how frequently presidents speak on pending decisions or whether they focus their public attention on decided cases. We remedy this state of affairs by investigating the frequency of both written and spoken comments on historic and recently decided Supreme Court decisions. To do this, we have cataloged the number of times per month that presidents mention Supreme Court cases in public comments from the Eisenhower to Obama administrations (1953-2012). We use these data to explore two significant topics. First, we analyze the timing of presidential references to Supreme Court cases to determine whether presidents mention cases pending before the Court or discuss cases after they have been decided. Because we find that presidents speak almost exclusively about Supreme Court cases after they have been decided, our primary research question asks: what explains the frequency of the president's monthly public commentary on decided Supreme Court cases? To answer this question, we build upon research that explains the number of presidential speeches over time (Eshbaugh-Soha 2010; Hager and Sullivan 1994; Kernell 1997; Powell 1999; Ragsdale 1984), which concludes, to varying degrees, that presidents speak publicly to bolster their reelection, historical legacies, and policy goals. …

This article assesses the social positions of the plaintiffs and defendants who appeared before a small claims court, namely the Peacemaker court (Vredemakers) of the city of Leiden in the Dutch Republic in the eighteenth century, a low threshold law court that boasted a quick and inexpensive procedure. Analysis of the social positions of the court's plaintiffs and defendants helps reveal the extent to which lower social groups actively made use of it. The article is based on linkage between a sample of users of the Peacemaker court during the years 1750–54 and a census of 1749 comprising socio-economic data for the entire Leiden population. The court clientele of the Peacemaker court was distinctively elitist. The court was thus first and foremost a forum for an inner group of more well-to-do households who were firmly established in the local community. The Peacemaker court was notably inexpensive and simple in its procedures, yet lower social groups remained markedly reticent to file complaints there, ...

The UK Supreme Court has considered, for the first time, the effect on an insurance claim of a ‘fraudulent device’ – the embellishment of that claim. In doing so, it has also clarified the ambit of the doctrine of utmost good faith, which for centuries has underpinned UK insurance contracts. The extent of the uncertainty which has hitherto surrounded this area of law can be seen by the fact that the opinion of four Supreme Court judges prevailed, notwithstanding the opposing views of five judges, one in the High Court, three in the Court of Appeal and one in the Supreme Court. This briefing note discusses the Supreme Court’s recent judgement in Versloot Dredging BV and another v. HDI Gerling Industrie Versicherung AG and others.

The Supreme Court of the United States stands at the head of the nation’s judicial system. Created in Article III of the Constitution of 1787 but obscured by the other branches of government during the first few decades of its history, the Court came into its own as a co-equal branch in the early 19th century. Its exercise of judicial review—the power that it claimed to determine the constitutionality of legislative acts—gave the Court a unique status as the final arbiter of the nation’s constitutional conflicts. From the slavery question during the antebellum era to abortion and gay rights in more recent times, the Court has decided cases brought to it by individual litigants, and in doing so has shaped American constitutional and legal development. Composed of unelected justices who serve “during good behavior,” the Court’s rise in stature has not gone uncontested. Throughout the nation’s history, Congress, the president, and organized interest groups have all attempted to influence the Court’s jurisdiction, composition, and decision making. The Court’s prominence reflects Americans’ historically paradoxical attitudes toward the judiciary: they have often been suspicious of the power of unelected judges at the same time that they have relied on independent judicial institutions to resolve their deepest disputes.

This paper evaluates the impact of a higher court articulating doctrine as either a “rule” or a “standard.” The legal doctrine we evaluate concerns police searches based upon information supplied by confidential informants. The Supreme Court’s Aguilar-Spinelli test was a rule, and its Illinois v. Gates “totality of the circumstances” test is a standard. Using a data set of circuit court opinions from 1951 to 1999, we compare circuit-level implementation of these two doctrines. The results suggest that rules are more effective than standards at constraining ideological voting in lower courts.