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The Legal Practitioners Act of 2000 authorises the Sierra Leone Bar Association to elect six legal practitioners for membership of the General Legal Council (Council), which is the regulatory body of the legal profession in Sierra Leone. In April 2019, Ibrahim Sorie was among the legal practitioners elected to the Council. Subsequently, I—another legal practitioner—objected to and petitioned in the High Court of Sierra Leone Sorie’s election to the Council on the basis of ineligibility. The thrust of my objection was that Sorie, a two-term ex-president of the Sierra Leone Bar Association had not yet attained the necessary fifteen-year standing qualification at the date of his appointment to the Council, based on his year of enrolment into the Permanent Register or Roll of Court in 2011. Sorie filed an action in the Supreme Court against the Council invoking the exclusive original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court to interpret certain portions of the Constitution of Sierra Leone vis-à-vis the eligibility provision for membership to the Council in the Legal Practitioners Act.2 The Supreme Court delivered a controversial 97-paged judgment on 27 October 2020.

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Over the last century there has been significant growth within our society of practices that distribute costs and benefits to individuals based on statistical knowledge about the population. These actuarial practices like insurance premium setting and standardized testing in educational admissions are successful largely because they allow power to be exercised more effectively and at lower political cost. At the same time they generate ideological effects which have the potential to transform the way individuals understand themselves and their groups. In a 1977 case, Los Angeles Water and Power v. Manhart (435 U.S. 702), the United States Supreme Court considered a challenge to the actuarial use of gender in setting employee benefits. The case and the debates it generated illuminate the danger posed by the ideological effects of actuarial practices to our political culture in general, and to traditionally disempowered classes such as women in particular. At the same time it illustrates the limitation of traditional legal rights discourse as a means of resisting these dangers.

This study aims to analyze the original jurisdiction to the crime of bigamy in the early 17th century, when ecclesiastical jurisdiction claimed for a supremacy in that matter against Inquisition in Portuguese Empire. The methodology includes both primary sources which illustrate the debates that time and contemporary literature. As a result, we realized that many actors influenced in the attempt to find a final solution for this conflict, such as the appeal to the Pope and the mediation of the King in Church’s internal affairs, what denotes the multinormative perspective in the Portuguese colonial context and the convivence of different jurisdictions even when there was a conflict between them. O objetivo deste ensaio é analisar a discussão sobre a competência originária para o crime de bigamia no início do século XVII, em face da jurisdição eclesiástica ter entrado em confronto com a da Inquisição, que ocorreu no âmbito do império colonial português. A metodologia utilizada envolveu tanto o estudo de fontes primárias, que ilustram os debates que ocorreram acerca da temática, bem como o posicionamento de estudiosos do período. Os resultados alcançados demonstram que o processo de tentativa de encontrar uma solução definitiva para o conflito envolveu diversas esferas, destacando-se o apelo ao papa e a mediação do próprio rei em desentendimentos internos da Igreja Católica, percebendo-se que a tônica no cenário multinormativo do contexto colonial português envolveu diversas jurisdições, que não necessariamente sobrepujavam as outras envolvidas, mesmo quando entravam em conflito.

The manner in which political institutions convey their policy outcomes can have important implications for how the public views institutions’ policy decisions. This paper explores whether the way in which the U.S. Supreme Court communicates its policy decrees affects how favorably members of the public assess its decisions. Specifically, we investigate whether attributing a decision to the nation’s High Court or to an individual justice influences the public’s agreement with the Court’s rulings. Using an experimental design, we find that when a Supreme Court outcome is ascribed to the institution as a whole, rather than to a particular justice, people are more apt to agree with the policy decision. We also find that identifying the gender of the opinion author affects public agreement under certain conditions. Our findings have important implications for how public support for institutional policy-making operates, as well as the dynamics of how the Supreme Court manages to accumulate and maintain public goodwill.

If any of Indonesia’s judiciary branches can be said to have been in constant flux before and after the one roof system under the Supreme Court, it is the Administrative Court. From limited jurisdiction—by limitation from The Administrative Court Act (ACA), (Undang-Undang Tentang Peradilan Tata Usaha Negara) and others unresponsive legal policy, establishment of new court, and supreme court decision—to expansion jurisdiction by enactment of Government Administration Act (GAA), (Undang-Undang Tentang Administrasi Pemerintahan) and establishment sectoral laws, including expansion from Constitutional Court decision, has brought dynamic changing to the Administrative Court jurisdiction. In this paper, I will discuss to what extent the Administrative Courts have indeed changed, survived, and improved the administration of justice in their field. I will first provide a short overview of the original jurisdiction on the Administrative Court Act (ACA), followed by an analysis of the legal impact of the enactment of the Government Administration Act (GAA) and other relevant Law and Regulation. This paper demonstrated that Administrative Court jurisdiction expansion urgently required harmonization between the ACA and the GAA: the existing legal gap has been not sufficiently filled by the Supreme Court Regulation (SCR) or Supreme Court Circular (SCC).

This book provides a systematic and comprehensive analysis of the ICC's jurisdiction over nationals of non-States Parties. It is within the context of developments at the Court in recent years that this work addresses the overarching question: On what legal basis is the ICC authorised to exercise jurisdiction over nationals of non-States Parties? Engaging with ICC jurisprudence and building upon arguments developed in legal scholarship, this book explores the theory of delegated jurisdiction and critically examines the idea that the Court might alternatively be exercising jurisdiction inherent to the international community. It argues that delegation of territorial jurisdiction and implied consent by virtue of UN membership provide a legal basis to allow the ICC to exercise jurisdiction over nationals of non-States Parties in almost all situations envisaged by the Rome Statute.

The Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) serves as both a final appellate court and, under its original jurisdiction, as a treaty-interpreting court. Under this latter jurisdiction the CCJ has developed and enhanced the effectiveness of Caribbean Community law. It has introduced a number of legal doctrines, several of which parallel doctrines of European Union law. In doing so the Court has challenged fundamental national legal norms and traditions, including the dualist view of the relationship between international law and municipal law, the principles of constitutional supremacy and separation of powers, the role of legitimate expectations, and potential for indirect effect. This chapter introduces the CCJ’s original jurisdiction jurisprudence and places it in its legal and historical context. It identifies the different bases under which the CCJ can take jurisdiction, and critically discusses some of its foundational decisions in two areas, namely, free movement of persons and the rules related to the Common External Tariff. The chapter compares the jurisprudence of the CCJ to that of the European Court of Justice in order to assess the former’s potential effect upon Caribbean constitutional norms. The chapter concludes by suggesting that the CCJ has laid the foundations for significant legal developments which may reshape our understandings of the relationship between the regional and national spheres and the scope of authority within each sphere.

“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?

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.

Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court opened the 2017-2018 term with its most important focus on alternative dispute resolution in decades.

The EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) was conceived of as an area ill-suited for full judicial review by the Court of Justice of the European Union. The Lisbon Treaty confers on the Court limited jurisdiction which the recent case law has interpreted in broad terms. This article will place this case law in the broader constitutional setting of the EU legal order and will provide a critical analysis of its implications for both the EU's and domestic courts. The analysis is structured on the basis of three main themes. The first is about the position of CFSP in the EU's constitutional architecture: the article will analyse the constitutional ambivalence that characterizes this position and how it is conveyed by the provisions of the Treaty on the European Union and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union governing the Court's jurisdiction. The second theme is about the recent case law, and the integrationist approach that the Court of Justice has adopted to the scope of its jurisdiction. The third theme is about national courts: the article will argue that recent case law has been too quick to dismiss them, and that primary law renders them an essential part of the judicial review system governing CFSP.

This article investigates the proper ambit of trust jurisdiction clauses. The author proposes that whether a trust-related proceeding is or is not subject to any jurisdiction clause in the trust instrument should be decided according to two key criteria: the proximity of the parties to the proceeding to the drafting of the trust instrument and whether the issues under review in the proceeding are part of the routine running of the trust, an attempt to undermine the trust, or an attack on an officer’s functioning within the trust framework. Other factors to be taken into account are the likely costs of proceedings before the chosen court and elsewhere (including difficulties over security for costs), the extent to which the chosen court offers a realistic prospect of a fair hearing, and the extent to which any court orders granted, whether by the court named in a jurisdiction clause or another court, are likely to be enforceable in practice.

Most state supreme court justices have time-bound terms that require them to be reappointed or reelected after a certain amount of time. In three American states, South Carolina, Vermont, and Virginia, the legislature has the sole power to retain justices. Legislatures, and their specialized judiciary committees, are well positioned to monitor judicial behavior and can reject retention for justices who are unacceptable. This turns the legislature's oversight authority into influence over policy making by justices who still need to be reappointed to additional terms. But some justices (co-partisans) are insulated from this influence by their connections to the majority party, which substantially increases the likelihood of their retention. I show that, between 1995 and 2014, justices appointed by the minority party who were eligible for a new term voted more in line with the preferences of their legislature than those who were no longer eligible for a new term due to mandatory or voluntary retirement. No similar effect is found among appointees of the majority party. To support my argument that it is the legislature's reappointment authority that gives them this power, I conduct a placebo test to show that governors in these states enjoy no comparable influence on reappointment-seeking justices. This legislative influence represents a substantial limitation on judicial independence.

One of the most interesting and controversial crimes that belong to the subject matter jurisdiction of the newly to be established African Criminal Chamber is undoubtedly the crime of unconstitutional change of government. This article explores the question why this offence is upgraded to the regional level of criminal law enforcement. After all, any criminalization of the conduct at a regional level and the concomitant inclusion of the offence in the jurisdiction of regional courts raises questions about the right of foreign intervention in internal political affairs and the curtailment of the right to rebel. The crime of unconstitutional change of government is tested against these principles and it is concluded that they do not impede criminalization, nor the elevation of the crime to a regional level. In search of a positive argument in defence of the inclusion of the crime within the jurisdiction of the African Court, I contend that the best explanation is that insurgencies are not contained to single states but are inclined to spread to other countries. In view of the specific African experience, where endemic conflicts have proved to be contagious, it is clear that states have a common interest in suppressing both the dynamic and static form of unconstitutional change of government.

One of the issues that the current proliferation of international courts and jurisdictions raised in the international legal order is overlapping jurisdiction. On 27 June 2014, the Assembly of the African Union adopted a protocol on the Amendments to the Protocol on the Statute of the African Court of Justice and Human Rights which extends the jurisdiction of the court to cover international crimes. The decision of the AU to clothe the African court with a criminal jurisdiction has brought, once again, the issue of overlapping jurisdiction to the surface. This article is an attempt to answer the questions: to what extent does the criminal jurisdiction of the African court overlap with the jurisdiction of the ICC, and is the issue of overlapping jurisdiction a common occurrence or an imminent concern? Taking the crimes under the jurisdiction of the courts and the fact that large numbers of African states are state parties to the ICC into consideration, many tend to argue that overlapping jurisdiction is inevitable and is likely to cause friction for the primacy of jurisdiction. However, this article argues that a close scrutiny of the substantive and territorial jurisdiction of the ICC and the African Court suggests that the issue of overlapping jurisdiction is both rare and of remote concern.

In a span of three weeks during the spring of 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court issued three patent decisions, bringing the total number of patent decisions for the 2016-2017 term to six. This means that the October 2016 term ties the previous record of six patent decisions in the October 2014 term. This represents a tremendous increase in the number of patent decisions compared to earlier times, and particularly the early days of the Federal Circuit. For reference, during the first quarter of a century the Federal Circuit was in existence, the Supreme Court heard on average less than one patent case per year. The three most recent decisions, Sandoz, TC Heartland, and Impression Products are typical of recent Supreme Court patent jurisprudence in that they all soundly rejected the Court of Appeals of the Federal Circuit’s interpretation of statute and/or Supreme Court precedent, and all of the decisions resulted in a reduction of patent rights for patent owners. In this regard, they are quite representative of a wave of patent decisions by the Supreme Court over the last decade that challenged no signs of abating. In the aggregate, these decisions have led to a marked accretion of patent owner rights, that has weakened the value of issued patents and/or made it more difficult to obtain patents. This Article reviews these decisions, identifying the specific devaluation and its likely impact on biotechnology.

In common with most decisions of the Supreme Court, the judgment in R. (on the application of Carmichael) v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions [2016] UKSC 58 tells two stories: a short version and a long version. This article outlines both. The short story is the immediate impact of the decision: the application of the high-bar ‘manifestly without reasonable foundation test’, a distinction drawn on ‘transparent medical need’, and the lack of regard given to international obligations under the UNCRPD and the UNCRC. The long story is how this decision fits into the ‘cut-and-devolve’ approach to welfare reform in the UK, where local authorities are left to mitigate the effects of centrally determined benefit reductions without adequate support. After outlining the basis of the decision and its likely effects, this article argues that the decision does little to square this key structural circle at the heart of the UK government's welfare reform agenda.

In its recent decision in Carter v Canada (Attorney General), the Supreme Court of Canada clarified when it is appropriate for courts to reconsider Supreme Court precedent. Accordingly, the Court concluded that a fundamental shift or change in international legal standards that differs from the approach adopted in the original Supreme Court decision is a ground for reviewing previous decisions. In 1999, the Supreme Court concluded that a maternal tort liability does not exist in Canadian common law. This paper will parse whether Canada’s approach to maternal tort liability still accords with international legal standards or whether it is time that the issue should be reconsidered by the courts.

A model of negligence in common law jurisdictions is a conceptual structure that basically seeks to align the three legal concepts used by courts to administer negligence law with the three substantive elements that constitute, justify and limit negligence liability. The three legal concepts are carelessness, legal causation (assuming factual causation) and duty. The three substantive elements are undesirable conduct, a sufficient link between this conduct and harm, and the desirability of liability. Another major task of a model of negligence is to explain the role and meaning of the foreseeability requirement in each concept and element of liability. The traditional model of negligence, identified with the sequence duty-breach-causation, is characterised by the double role that is assigns to the duty concept. This concept is aligned both with the element of undesirable conduct (conduct is undesirable only when breaching a pre-existing duty), and with the element of desirable liability (liability is desirable only where policy considerations justify a finding of a duty to compensate). Being a servant of two masters, the duty concept is the major source of the confusion and ambiguities that have plagued negligence law for generations. Against this background the traditional model was challenged in 2013 in Israel’s Supreme Court by a Justice who embraced an alternative model formerly suggested by the author. The essence of this new model is to align the duty concept only with the element of desirable liability, severing it from the element of undesirable conduct. Such change arguably disperses confusion and ambiguities, and clarifies the roles and meaning of the foreseeability requirement. In 2014, however, another Justice challenged the new model and called for the reinstatement of the traditional model in a different version. This paper explains why the new 2013 model is preferable to the traditional model in all relevant aspects. The analysis sheds new light on the notions of proximity, special relations, reliance, assumption of responsibility and prima-facie duty. The analysis also serves as a comparative perspective on fault-based liability in continental European jurisdictions.

The Czech Republic, as a signatory of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, has vested the practice of state administration in the field of care for minor children to the authorities of social and legal protection of children (OSPOD). The purpose of such legal establishment is to provide complex care for minor children on the lowest administrative instance (according to the Act on Social and Legal Protection of Children). Territorial jurisdiction of OSPODs is determined by Act No. 359/1999 Coll., on the Social and Legal Protection of Children, and is therefore established according to the official permanent residence of each child. The real decision-making regarding the protection of the rights of minors is the responsibility of municipal courts. These courts appoint OSPODs as “collision representatives” who protect the interests of minor children in court proceedings. However, the territorial jurisdiction of these courts is determined by Act No. 292/2013 Coll., on Special Court Proceedings. According to this latter act, the court that is eligible to carry out proceedings is the general court of the minor, and in fact it is typically the court where the minor resides. The real place of residence and the place of official permanent residence are not always identical. The aim of this paper is to assess the complex legislation on the issue in theory, and to point out the practical impact and possible problems derived from the different territorial jurisdiction of OSPODs and courts. Additionally, qualitative research has been carried out, based on structured interviews. The respondents are nine municipal court judges who specialize in family law, and nine leading employees of OSPODs. The respondents in both groups are selected in matching pairs, so that their responses reflect the mutual positional relation of the judges in the territory of the court and the local OSPODs. On the theoretical level, the research concerns the evaluation of judicial scholarly writings and court decisions in the field and defines and identifies the problems derived from the different territorial jurisdiction of the bodies. In the interviews, all respondents said that they found the different jurisdictions highly problematic. The wider impact of the issue has also been assessed in terms of guaranteeing the participation of collision representatives in the decision making of courts regarding minor children.

For effective working management of the Supreme Court, Rules have been framed under Article 145 of the Constitution conferring power on the Chief Justice to constitute benches for disposal of cases. The Supreme Court Rules, 2013 provides that the procedural aspects of civil appeals, criminal appeals, original jurisdiction, review, supervisory jurisdiction, reference, review. Article 145 gives to the Supreme Court power to frame rules including rules regarding condition on which a person can practice before the Supreme Court. Such a rule would be valid and binding and such a rule if framed would not have anything to do with the disciplinary jurisdiction of State Bar Councils.

Constitutional adjudication in Malawi only became commonplace after the adoption of a new Constitution in 1994. Like many Anglophone countries, Malawi follows the decentralised model of constitutional adjudication. Under this arrangement, the High Court has unlimited original jurisdiction to hear any civil or criminal matters, including constitutional matters. The Courts Act, however, requires the High Court to sit with an enhanced quorum when it is seized of cases that substantively relate to, or concern the interpretation and application of the Constitution. It is when the High Court sits with a reconfigured quorum that it is popularly referred to as the "constitutional court" (the Court). This article analyses constitutional adjudication in Malawi by focusing on the operation of the Court. Specifically, it analyses the scope of the Court's jurisdiction, the type of constitutional review that it conducts, the regulation of access to the Court, the forms of decisions and remedies that it grants, and the Court's independence. Keywords: constitutional law, constitutional adjudication, High Court of Malawi.

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.

The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit is a unique institution. Unlike other circuit courts, the Federal Circuit’s jurisdiction is bound by subject area rather than geography, and it was created to address a unique set of problems specific to patent law. These characteristics have affected its institutional development and made the court one of the most frequently studied appellate courts. This chapter examines this development and describes the evolving qualities that have helped the Federal Circuit distinguish itself, for better or worse, as an institution.This chapter begins with an overview of the concerns existing before creation of the Federal Circuit and then discusses the Federal Court Improvements Act of 1982, including what Congress was trying to achieve with the Federal Circuit and how the court was structured in terms of subject matter jurisdiction and the courts it replaced. Next, this chapter will describe the problem of not having a uniform patent law and how the Federal Circuit has impacted uniformity. It will describe how forum shopping was influenced and whether uniformity has affected the diversity and percolation of ideas related to patent law.This chapter then discusses how the Federal Circuit has impacted certainty and predictability of patent law. It begins by looking at where the pressure for certainty comes from. It then focuses on the Federal Circuit’s treatment of a few representative issues to determine whether the court has succeeded in providing it.Next, this chapter explores the quality of the Federal Circuit’s patent jurisprudence, including whether the Federal Circuit is too formalistic in its decisionmaking and if it pays enough attention to policy and technological considerations and scholarship.Given the focus on the Federal Circuit as an institution, this chapter will describe how the Federal Circuit is structured, the makeup of the individual judges on the court, and how these qualities affect the court as such. The role of individual judges and types of judges on the Federal Circuit are examined as well as how internal dynamics and en banc hearings play a role in the decisionmaking process. This chapter then explores the Federal Circuit’s interactions with other institutions and examines which institutions are and should be performing what role in the development of patent law. This section notes the interesting and dynamic interactions the Federal Circuit has had with the Supreme Court, the United States Patent and Trademark Office, district courts, the Solicitor General, and Congress. Finally, this chapter closes with concluding thoughts about empirical research on the Federal Circuit and suggests further areas of exploration.

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.

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 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 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.