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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.

“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?

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.

I argue the Supreme Court learns to craft legal rules by relying on the Courts of Appeals as laboratories of law, observing their decisions and reviewing those that best inform legal development. I develop a model that shows how the Supreme Court leverages multiple Courts of Appeals decisions to identify which will be most informative to review, and what decision to make upon review. Because an unbiased judge only makes an extreme decision when there is an imbalance in the parties’ evidence, the Supreme Court is able to draw inferences from cases it chooses not to review. The results shed light on how hierarchy eases the inherent difficulty and uncertainty of crafting law and on how the Supreme Court learns to create doctrine.

We offer a novel theory on Supreme Court impact that makes several key contributions beyond existing accounts. We argue that policy-oriented justices are particularly attentive to the impact of their precedents within the U.S. Courts of Appeals. We provide a framework in which both Supreme Court and circuit-level influences drive U.S. Courts of Appeals responses to the Supreme Court’s precedents. Principally, we argue that the Supreme Court’s use of its summary decisions, which explicitly reference its formally argued decisions, increase circuit court utility of the High Court’s precedents. We test our predictions using new data on appeals court responses to the Supreme Court’s precedents. The empirical results support our account and shed new light on the hierarchical dynamic within the American federal judiciary.

McGuire et al. (2009) set out to develop a better measure of the policy content of the U.S. Supreme Court's decisions. They justify their measure using a formal model, which they test empirically. ...

The Supreme Court sometimes chooses to use its limited time to revisit earlier decisions. In doing so, the justices signal the importance of reasserting, correcting, or reconsidering their arguments. We find that the likelihood of the Supreme Court revisiting a case in a given year increases significantly as the number of circuit courts critical of that opinion increases. These results suggest that an acknowledgment of the important role of the circuit courts influences the decision to revisit cases. Even if the Court merely clarifies or reinforces earlier opinions, criticism in the circuits prompts the Court to take some action. Though the Supreme Court’s word is final, barring a constitutional amendment or legislative override in nonconstitutional cases, the mechanism of criticism in the circuits allows reconsideration of many issues already decided by the Court and sheds light on the importance of institutional structures to the maintenance of the rule of law.

High-profile cases in the Supreme Court of the United States (‘SCOTUS’) on religion tend to attract a certain amount of academic comment in the United Kingdom but US judgments are cited only infrequently by the superior courts in the UK. In return, SCOTUS rarely cites foreign judgments at all. The reason, it is suggested, is that the effect given by the First Amendment to the US Constitution is to render US case law of less relevance to the UK than, for example, judgments from jurisdictions such as Canada and Australia.

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.

Neste artigo discutimos os papéis que o Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF) tem desempenhado ao arbitrar interesses em disputa no controle de constitucionalidade das leis, via ações direitas de inconstitucionalidade (ADIs). Para isso, baseamo-nos na análise quantitativa das ADIs julgadas pelo tribunal entre os anos de 1988 e 2014, mapeando o conteúdo de sua agenda decisória, verificando em que medida o Supremo tem feito diferença nas arenas de conflito social e político do país. Concluímos que apesar do Supremo arbitrar importantes disputas sociais e políticas, sua agenda tem sido tomada por uma pauta ligada ao delineamento das carreiras públicas, decidindo sobre expansão ou contenção das prerrogativas da burocracia do Estado. Entre os diversos papéis que a literatura corrente acerca da judicialização da política tem atribuído às supremas cortes ao redor do mundo, num cenário de expansão do poder político do Judiciário, verificamos que no caso do Brasil, mais do que instituição contramajoritária ou instância de implementação de direitos sociais e coletivos, o STF tem desempenhado papel de verdadeiro órgão de deliberação corporativa. In this paper we discuss the roles that Brazil’s Supreme Court (STF) has played while arbitrating interests in dispute in the constitutionality control of laws, via judicial review cases (ADIs). For this, we rely on quantitative analysis of ADIs judged by the court between the years of 1988 and 2014, mapping the content of the Court’s decision-making agenda and the scope of its decisions, determining to what extent the Supreme Court has made a difference in arenas of social and political conflict in the country. We conclude that despite taking part in important disputes in arenas of social and political conflict, Supreme Court’s agenda has been taken by issues related to the delineation of public careers, deciding on expansion or restraint of state bureaucracy prerogatives. Among the different roles that the current literature on judicialization of politics has attributed to Supreme Courts around the world, in a scenario of expanding political power of the judiciary, we found out that in Brazil, more than a counter majoritarian institution, or an instance to advance social and collective rights, Supreme Court has played the role of true corporate deliberation body.

This article analyzes how the public perceives the Supreme Court's decision-making in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. (2014) and National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius (2012). Using theories of motivated reasoning and cognitive dissonance, I hypothesize that whether an individual approves or disapproves of the Court's decision will influence how they perceive the Court's decision-making. Specifically, those who approve of the Court's decision are more likely to be motivated to perceive the Court's decision-making in a legalistic fashion. However, those who disapprove of the decision are more likely to be motivated to perceive the Court's decision-making in a non-legalistic fashion. I find support for these hypotheses in analysis of both cases. The results presented in this article suggest that scholars need to consider how the public reacts to individual Court cases when studying how the public perceives the Court's decision-making. Further, these findings help explain the gro...

The influence of U.S. Supreme Court majority opinions depends critically on how these opinions are received and treated by lower courts, which decide the vast majority of legal disputes. We argue that the retirement of justices on the Supreme Court serves as a simple heuristic device for lower court judges in deciding how much deference to show to Supreme Court precedent. Using a unique data set of the treatment of all Supreme Court majority opinions in the courts of appeals from 1953 to 2012, we find that negative treatments of Supreme Court opinions increase, and positive treatments decrease, as the justices who supported a decision retire from the Court. Importantly, this effect exists over and above the impact of retirements on the ideological makeup of the Supreme Court.

1. Our sixth annual round-up of the ten most interesting public law judgments delivered by the Supreme Court, in the legal year 2014–2015, has been more difficult this year than some of the recent ...

In principle, the constitutional precepts envisage that judicial decisions are not subject to extrajudicial control. However, in the course of deciding on constitutional complaints, the Constitutional Court reviews the compliance of individual legal acts and actions of state authorities with the Constitution, including court decisions on cases involving the constitutionally guaranteed rights. Hence, in order to eliminate tension or even contradiction between the constitutional precepts, the constitutional review of judicial decisions should be considered as a special form of judicial control, regardless of the fact that the Constitutional Court is not part of the judicial structure in the strict organizational sense. Thus, unlike the cases where the Court is involved in the normative control of the applicable law, in the process of reviewing judicial decision of lower courts the constitutional judiciary acts in the capacity of a specific judicial authority. According to another possible interpretation of the aforementioned constitutional norms, the direct constitutional protection of the constitutionally guaranteed rights may only be pursued in the process of reviewing individual legal acts and actions of state authorities, but not by pursuing a judicial review of court decisions which the Constitutional Court has no jurisdiction to decide upon. Thus, the dogma of judicial independence would prevail over the dogma of direct protection of fundamental rights. The third interpretation of this relationship maintains that that judicial decisions may be subject to control but, in this specific case, the Constitutional Court may only issue an opinion (a statement) rather than a binding decision which would cancel the lower court judgment. Then, it is up to the judicial authorities of the lower instance to adjust their judicial decision, which in the opinion of the Constitutional Court constitutes a violation of the constitutionally guaranteed rights, with the Constitution. In the long-standing practice of the Constitutional Court of Serbia, this competence has been perceived as the capacity to review all individual legal acts within the general framework of the Court's constitutional authority to directly protect fundamental human and minority rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution, provided that this competence does not have the character of a last-instance control of the legal validity of the court decision in totum, in a manner exercised by higher judicial instances in regular court proceedings. With reference to these assumptions, the paper will examine and discuss the eligibility, scope, reach and limits of constitutional review of judicial decisions.

When the U.S. Supreme Court exercises its power of judicial review over state laws, its decisions, like the legislation it considers, frequently speak to major policy debates. Despite the Court's routine involvement with state statutes, theoretical explanations of judicial review generally do not distinguish between state laws and federal laws. The characteristics of state legislatures lead legislators in different states to have distinct perspectives and incentives, and ultimately affect the types of laws enacted in different states. We suggest that because the level of professionalism of state legislatures affects the types of laws pursued by different states, it may also affect the likelihood that a state has a law struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court. We find support for this expectation. Specifically, legislative professionalism is associated with an increased likelihood that a state has a law invalidated by the Court. This new evidence indicates that it is important to consider the legislative context in which state laws originate when examining the Court's review of state laws.

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...

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. …

Against the background of a broadly shared perception of the United States and the European Union as very different kinds of international actors, and a related assumption that the US Supreme Court and the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) treat international law very differently, this article examines the approaches of the CJEU and the US Supreme Court to the internalization of international law over the decade 2002–2012. The perception of the US in recent decades has been as a frequently unilateralist and exceptionalist actor in international relations, with the Supreme Court remaining resistant to law which emanates from outside the American legislative process, or which lacks a clear domestic imprimatur as applicable US law. The EU, by contrast, is perceived as having a greater commitment to multilateralism and to the development and observance of international law, and the case-law of the Court of Justice has until recently been generally viewed—with its WTO jurisprudence seen as an exception—as actively contributing to that image through its embrace and internalization of international law norms. The analysis over a ten-year period of the case law of the two courts dealing with international law suggests, however, that, rather than a simplified picture of the Supreme Court as the skeptical judicial arm of an internationally exceptionalist United States and the CJEU as the welcoming judicial arm of an open and internationalist European Union, there are many more commonalities between the approaches of the two courts than conventional depictions acknowledge.

This research addresses the central product of judicial work, written opinions. We investigate whether lower court judges are in the position to influence the interpretation of law at higher courts through their own opinions. An examination of 847 state supreme court cases in 1997 shows that the writings of lower court judges do serve as a foundational basis in a bottom-up method of opinion writing, which is conditioned by career factors, including previous jobs and being appointed to the state supreme court, and the judicial workload. This research expands our understanding of opinion writing by shedding light on the differences and similarities in the ingredients of judicial opinions at different court levels and corroborates the growing importance and effectiveness of lower court judges in the creation of law.

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.

Understanding the conditions under which the Supreme Court sets its agenda is crucial to understanding Supreme Court behavior. After all, before the justices make any decision on the merits of a case, they must first decide whether to hear it at all. This chapter analyzes Supreme Court agenda-setting. It begins by describing the process justices employ to select cases to review. It examines how parties file certiorari petitions, the certiorari pool used to provide guidance to the justices, and the conferences in which justices vote to grant or deny review to cert petitions. The chapter then discusses four explanations political scientists have provided to explain the conditions under which justices set the agenda. The article concludes by examining limitations of existing scholarship and providing suggestions for future scholarship.

Research on the legitimacy of the US Supreme Court has blossomed of late, with scholars investigating many different hypotheses derived from legitimacy theory. As the theory has been pushed, a number of new controversies have emerged. Here, we identify four such debates: (a) whether the Court's legitimacy rests on satisfaction with its performance, (b) whether support for the Supreme Court reflects the polarization of politics in the contemporary United States, (c) whether the Court's legitimacy requires belief in the “myth of legality”, and (d) whether judicial decisions can change public opinion. Our analysis of these issues generally concludes that the Supreme Court's legitimacy is reasonably secure, in part because individual rulings have little impact on support for the institution, in part because the Court has access to powerful and influential symbols of judicial authority, and in part because the current Supreme Court issues roughly equal numbers of conservative and liberal decisions.

This article is about the pharma patent litigation sparked by Lundbeck's blockbuster drug for escitalopram. The article focuses on the trials and tribulations before the Dutch Patent Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court, while also briefly contrasting and comparing this with the decisions in Germany and the United Kingdom. Particular attention is given to novel substances which can be fully envisaged but not yet made. Under the doctrine, set out by the Technical Boards of Appeal, such envisaged substance can still be considered to be non-obvious and therefore patented if the claimed method for preparing such substance is the first to achieve this in an inventive manner. The Dutch Supreme Court follows this doctrine. The author criticizes the lack of explanation provided by the Supreme Court in reversing the decision of the Court of Appeal. By merely referring to foreign precedent, the Supreme Court violates its (own) duty to state (its own) reasons. The article concludes by outlining the practical impact of the decision of the Supreme Court: inventors developing a (novel and) inventive process for obtaining a (novel) product which can be fully envisaged but not yet made, can obtain not only a process claim for inventing the process, but also monopolize the substance under a product claim.

The court unification movement has progressed in fits and starts over the decades. Recent proposals have been put forth that attempt to continue the move toward a state court structure that utilizes a more coherent approach to governance. Drawing on a survey of court personnel who were asked about a set of proposed governance principles, this article examines how state court judges and administrators view their roles and responsibilities in the court system, the current need for court reform, the importance of future trends, and whether they are confident in the performance of their respective court system. Three hundred and seventy-five judges and administrators answered sixty-two questions regarding principles governing state court procedures and measures of their confidence in the court system. Participants overwhelmingly agreed that changes in court governance are necessary, although the degree of change for specific principles and trends was moderated by career, age, and time working for the courts. ...

The U.S. Supreme Court is traditionally thought to hold little influence over social or political change; however, recent evidence suggests the Court may wield significant power, especially with regard to criminal justice. Most studies evaluate judicial power by examining the effects of individual rulings on the implementation of specific policies, but this approach may overlook the broader impact of courts on society. Instead, I adopt an aggregate approach to test U.S. Supreme Court power. I find that aggregate conservative decision making by the Court is positively associated with long-term shifts in new admissions to U.S. federal prisons. These results suggest the Court possesses significant power to influence important social outcomes, at least in the context of the criminal justice system.

When the U.S. Supreme Court sits with an even number of justices participating, there is a risk that the Court will be deadlocked in a tied vote. While this outcome awards the individual respondent with a victory, it also preserves circuit splits and other ambiguities in the law. In this article, we examine the conditions under which an even-membered Supreme Court actually results in a tie vote. We argue that the Court recognizes the potentially damaging consequences of 4-4 rulings and seeks to avoid them when those consequences would be most severe. Consistent with that conjecture, we find that ties are less likely when a decision is necessary to resolve a dispute in the lower courts and when cases are important to the executive branch.

Based upon a violation of Art 47 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (hereinafter: the Charter) the Supreme Administrative Court (Verwaltungsgerichtshof) repealed a decision of the Independent Tax Panel which had denied the applicant an oral hearing. It thereby ruled for the first time that by the law of the European Union the Supreme Administrative Court itself is obligated to implement the Charter, even though the Austrian Constitutional Court in an earlier judgment had qualified the rights of the Charter to be equivalent to constitutionally guaranteed rights.

Covering the United States Supreme Court in the Digital Age. Richard Davis, ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. 269 pp. $99 hbk. $79 ebk.At a time when the president is able to live broadcast an enhanced version of the State of the Union address to a streaming web address and all watchers are able to live-tweet their responses directly to the executive branch or their representative, there is no doubt that the government has embraced both the mass media and digital technology. Reporters are embedded in the White House and have access to members of Congress-along with having constant Internet access and the ability to send a story to the national audience within seconds of the event occurring. Indeed, there is much research regarding agenda setting and framing as ideas move from the executive and legislative elites to the press corps to the public and back up the chain.In a marked contrast to these behaviors, the third branch of government, the Supreme Court, still maintains a wary and watchful eye on the news media. Due to this strained relationship, there is relatively little research in the ways that the judges interact with the news media on a consistent basis. Edited by Richard Davis out of Brigham Young University, this volume is one step in reducing this gap in the literature. In 18 chapters, he compiles the recent research on the ways the news media interacts with the Supreme Court and how the justices have, in turn, controlled, responded, and used the press coverage to their advantage.Studying press coverage of the Supreme Court is necessarily complex and requires a multifaceted approach to give the relationship justice. Davis achieves that balance by choosing works that are broad and varied enough to touch on the ways the press and the Court influence each other and the public. The chapters, extending from firsthand accounts regarding difficulties the press face when covering the Court to detailed quantitative analyses of framing effects and public support, paint a comprehensive picture of the state of the research at this moment. The book aims to analyze all aspects of this relationship from the ways the Court uses the press, to the impact of the media on public opinion, in a way that appeals to all types of readers. As such, the chapters can be broken down into five general themes: the historical relationship, the nature and type of press coverage, the role of the media in the Court, the view from the pressroom, and the view from the Court. This ensures that many avenues of research are represented.The strength of this book lies in the sheer breadth of themes addressed by the contributing authors in studying the relationship between the Supreme Court and the media. …

When the Supreme Court takes action, it establishes national policy within an issue area. A traditional, legal view holds that the decisions of the Court settle questions of law and thereby close the door on future litigation, reducing the need for future attention to that issue. Alternatively, an emerging interest group perspective suggests the Court, in deciding cases, provides signals that encourage additional attention to particular issues. I examine these competing perspectives of what happens in the federal courts after Supreme Court decisions. My results indicate that while Supreme Court decisions generally settle areas of law in terms of overall litigation rates, they also introduce new information that leads to increases in the attention of judges and interest groups to those particular issues.

Legal remedies applied in the proceedings before the Court of Justice of the European Union have some distinctive features as compared to the legal remedies used in the national judicial systems. At first, the communitarian justice system originally did not envisage the possibility of filing an appeal with this Court as a regular legal remedy but there were other remedies that could be pursued in respect of the judgments issued by the Court. After the establishment of the Court of First Instance, the Procedural Law of the European Union introduced the possibility of filing an appeal with the Court of Justice against the judgments of the Court of First Instance. Later, the Court of First Instance became competent to decide on appeals against the judgments rendered by the judicial panels, which were established in the meantime. The Court of First Instance and judicial panels reserved the possibility of using other legal remedies against the final decisions rendered by these judicial authorities. In this respect, the Lisbon Treaty did not bring any significant changes, except that the Court of First Instance was renamed into the General Court whereas the judicial panels were designated as specialized courts. Taking into account the system of legal remedies recognized by the Procedural Law of the European Union, the first part of the paper deals with appeals as a regular legal instrument for bringing the case before a higher instance court which is to review the judgment of a lower instance court, including appeals against the decisions of the General Court and specialized courts. In the second part of the paper, the authors focus on the legal remedies which are awarded by the same court that issued the judgment. This category includes the application of a third party and revision, which may be considered as extraordinary legal remedies, as well as the objection against the judgment by default, judgment interpretation, judgment rectification and supplementing the judgment, which are considered to be extraordinary procedural remedies. Sistem pravnih lekova u procesnom pravu Evropske unije ima specifičnosti u poređenju sa nacionalnim pravosudnim sistemima. U prvo vreme u postupku pred Sudom pravde nije postojala žalba kao redovno pravno sredstvo, već su predviđeni drugi pravni lekovi koji su se mogli podneti Sudu upravo povodom njegovih konačnih presuda. Posle osnivanja Prvostepenog suda u procesno pravo Evropske unije uvedena je mogućnost podnošenja žalbi protiv njegovih presuda Sudu pravde. Kasnije je Prvostepeni sud postao nadležan da odlučuje o žalbama koje su, u međuvremenu osnovani, sudski paneli doneli u prvom stepenu. U postupcima pred Prvostepenim sudom i sudskim panelima zadržana je mogućnost korišćenja drugih pravnih lekova protiv njihovih konačnih odluka o kojima su odlučivali isti ovi sudovi. U tom pogledu Lisabonski ugovor nije ništa značajnije izmenio, osim što je Prvostepeni sud preimenovao u Opšti sud, a sudske panele u specijalizovane sudove.

Through judicial review, the United States Supreme Court has played a pivotal role in deciding and/or interpreting the constitutionality of legislation. Since the passage of the Pure, Food and Drug Act in 1906, the Supreme Court’s role has been integral in formulating drug policy. In some instances, the Court’s decisions have limited the authority of the federal government, while in others have greatly expanded this authority. As a direct result of the decision-making of the Supreme Court, limitations have periodically been placed on Congress to regulate controlled substances. Many people, who were perceived as medical patients, became criminal drug users. The Court has restricted and later approved of the use of drugs during the free exercise of religion. Lastly, the Court has continually reinforced the supremacy of the federal government over the states, in turn limiting the ability of the states to consider marijuana legislative reform.

The traditional process of educating undergraduates is often relegated to the passive lecturing format. One means of engaging students in active learning is through the use of simulations. Students were asked to take on the roles of United States senators and a Supreme Court nominee during a United States Supreme Court confirmation hearing simulation. Each student participated by researching a sitting senator and the nominee selected and engaged in a question-and-answer session as is done in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Students came away from this valuable experience by not only learning a great deal about the operation of the confirmation hearing as well as the substantive material learned but participating in a process that few people will ever actually experience.

The article reveals the problem of applying the principle of the social state in the practice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

The study of U.S. state supreme courts has been significantly constrained by a lack of available data. To remedy this deficiency, this article introduces an original data set of every state supreme...