scholarly journals Setting the Social Agenda: Deciding to Review High-Profile Cases at the Supreme Court

2009 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Social Agenda ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Supreme Court

scholarly journals Informal networks and judicial decisions: Insights from the Supreme Court of the Philippines, 1986–2015

2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (5) ◽  
pp. 616-633 ◽  
Author(s):  
Björn Dressel ◽  
Tomoo Inoue
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Informal Networks ◽  
Significant Evidence ◽  
Presidential Appointments ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Judicial Decisions ◽  
The Supreme Court

To what extent do informal networks shape the decisions of the Supreme Court of the Philippines? Though often raised in the Philippines, this question has never been studied empirically. To answer it, we constructed a set of social network variables to assess how informal ties, based on university connections and work affiliations, may have influenced the court’s decisions between 1986 and 2015 in 47 politically high-profile cases. Providing statistically significant evidence for the effects of political influence (presidential appointments) and hierarchical pressure (the vote of the Chief Justice) on related networks, our analysis suggests a continuing tension on the Supreme Court bench between professionalism and informality. Because the findings advance both theoretical and empirical understanding of larger issues at the intersection of courts and society throughout the region, we recommend more attention to the role of judicial networks, external to the courts as well as within them.

scholarly journals Fascism-lite in America (or The Social Ideal of Donald Trump)

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 291-315 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ewan McGaughey
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
State Intervention ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Campaigns ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Citizens United ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Supreme Court

Abstract What explains the election of the 45th President of the United States? Many commentators have said that Trump is a fascist. This builds on grave concerns, since Citizens United, that democracy is being corrupted. This article suggests the long term cause, and the shape of ideology is more complex. In 1971, an extraordinary memorandum of Lewis Powell for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce urged that ‘[b]usiness interests’ should ‘press vigorously in all political arenas for support’. Richard Nixon appointed Powell to the Supreme Court, and a few years later, despite powerful dissent, a majority in Buckley v. Valeo held that candidates may spend unlimited funds on their own political campaigns, a decision of which Donald Trump, and others, have taken full advantage. Citizens United compounded the problems, but Buckley v. Valeo was the ‘Trump for President’ case. This provided a platform from which Trump could propel himself into extensive media coverage. The 2016 election was inseparable from the social ideal pursued by a majority of the Supreme Court since 1976. No modern judiciary had engaged in a more sustained assault on democracy and human rights. Properly understood, ‘fascism’ is a contrasting, hybrid political ideology. It mixes liberalism’s dislike of state intervention, social conservatism’s embrace of welfare provision for insiders (not ‘outsiders’), and collectivism’s view that associations are key actors in a class conflict. Although out of control, Trump is closely linked to neo-conservative politics. It is too hostile to insider welfare to be called ‘fascist’. Its political ideology is weaker. If we had to give it a name, the social ideal of Donald Trump is ‘fascism-lite’.

A Secular Failure: Sectarianism and Communalism in Shayara Bano v. Union of India

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-71
Author(s):  
Jeffrey A. Redding
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Family Law ◽  
High Profile ◽  
The Social ◽  
Legal Legitimacy ◽  
Indian Supreme Court ◽  
Religious Systems ◽  
Muslim Family ◽  
Secular State

AbstractProponents of secularism often describe their support for this form of governance in terms of the protections it provides against the excesses, dangers, and coercions of religious governance. In reality, however, the differences between secular and religious systems of governance are often overstated, with secularism’s promises being in conversation with secularism’s failures. This article explores one recent and important instance of such secular failure, namely the high-profile Indian case of Shayara Bano v. Union of India deciding the legal legitimacy of “triple talaq,” a common Indian Muslim divorce practice. During the litigation of this case, a prominent Indian Muslim organization ended up engaging in sectarian modes of argumentation, whereby aspersions were cast on the Muslim bona fides of certain persons and communities. Further, in the course of deciding Shayara Bano, a religiously diverse set of Indian Supreme Court justices found themselves disagreeing along communal lines about either the necessity or ability of the secular state to “reform” Muslim family law. In all this, sectarian and communitarian divisions in India were heightened, and the social peace and religious freedom promised by secularism were severely undermined.

Social Science in the Courtroom

2021 ◽  
pp. 240-243
Author(s):  
Michael J. Rosenfeld
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Board Of Education ◽  
White Children ◽  
Same Sex Couples ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Many

Chapter 18 describes social science research of the 1940s and 1950s that showed how segregation harmed both minority and majority populations and thereby played a role in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954. Between 1896, when the Supreme Court endorsed segregation in Plessy v. Ferguson to 1954, when the Supreme Court rejected segregation, social science had built a consensus about the many harms and costs that racial segregation imposed on Black and on White children. Like school desegregation, marriage equality’s victories in the courts were built on a social science consensus, specifically the social science consensus that children raised by same-sex couples have good outcomes.

The Administration and the Judge: Pragmatism in Belgian Case Law (1890–1910)

2021 ◽  
pp. 73-112
Author(s):  
Yseult Marique
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Local Institutions ◽  
Formal Approach ◽  
Administrative Action ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Technological Context

Analysing the administrative case law of the Belgian Supreme Court between 1890 and 1910, this chapter shows that the Supreme Court applied the main features of a positivist legal thought (based on the assumption of clarity, coherence, and completeness of the formal law) to administrative action and its legality. It equipped the central and local institutions of the State with functioning powers, allowing an operational state to develop despite social unrest. As the social and technological context changed at the end of the nineteenth century, the statute book became more confused, however. This gave the Supreme Court ample room to interpret the law creatively and pragmatically. The ‘administrative miracle’ in Belgium is that the Supreme Court did not shackle social forces and unbridle the administration so much that the very course it wanted to avert actually happened. This may be down to the creative judicial genius that the Belgian judiciary developed a formal approach whilst deciding pragmatically on the substance of cases.

Content Analysis Tools Applied to the Speech on Economic Growth and Sustainability - Building Materials and the Asbestos Issue

2017 ◽  
Vol 865 ◽  
pp. 667-671 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luiz Antonio Coelho Lopes ◽  
Mara Telles Salles
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Building Materials ◽  
Analytical Techniques ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Public Audience ◽  
Derivative Products

This work proposes and appreciates the use of content analysis techniques on dilemmas involving economic growth and environmental sustainability. To achieve this purpose, uses the asbestos issue, through the exam of specialists’ communications in a public audience on the Federal Supreme Court, in which the unconstitutionality of the State law that forbids the utilization of this material. The specialists who were called by the Supreme Court are divided between those who admit the possibility of its safe use and the ones who preach its ban and their speeches are studied based on the differences between the different kinds of asbestos, serpentine and amphibole. Additionally, are considered the social costs of its maintenance in terms of health and social security and the costs involved in its substitution in terms of job positions, income and derivative products’ prices. The content analytical techniques proved adequate to the evaluation of speeches and communications between currents with distinct positioning in terms of sustainability and development.

Interpretation in Criminal Law

1986 ◽  
Vol 21 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 358-387 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mordechai Kremnitzer
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Social Interest ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Secondary Meaning

In recent years a new trend has appeared in decisions of the Supreme Court concerning the interpretation of criminal prohibitions. According to this trend – which will be analysed in the course of this article – a penal statute must be interpreted in the same way as every other statute, there being no rule of restrictive interpretation particular to criminal law. The interpreter must choose that interpretative option which best realizes the objective of the legislation, even when that option is based on the irregular and secondary meaning of the words. The legislative objective is often identified by the Court as the broadest possible defence of the social interest protected by the norm. It is this trend that we wish to discuss, or rather, to criticize.

Political Science and Science Fiction

1958 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 1026-1029 ◽  
Author(s):  
John P. Roche
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Public Law ◽  
Frame Of Reference ◽  
Board Of Education ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The World ◽  
The Right

I want to dissent initially from the rather constricting frame of reference that Schubert has established in his paper. He has every right in the world to set rhetorical snares, but I have no intention of walking into them. If I may summarize, Schubert asserts that he is a spokesman for a radical new direction in the study of public law, claiming that the old ways are moribund. He further urges that we should look with envy at the creative function of the social psychologists who supplied the Supreme Court with the banners it carried in Brown v. Board of Education while we were bumbling around with historical and philosophical trivia. He concludes that instead of wasting our time with talmudic disputations on whether the Supreme Court reached the “right” or the “wrong” decisions in specific cases, we should settle down to build a firm “scientific” foundation for our discipline.Not the least amusing aspect of this indictment is that I find myself billed as the defender of the ancien régime, as the de Maistre of public law. Therefore, for the benetfit of the young and impressionistic, let me break loose from Schubert's rhetorical trap: I too think that much of the research done in public law—and, for that matter, in political science generally—has been trivial.

APPLICATION THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES PRINCIPLE OF SOCIAL STATE

10.12737/903 ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-81
Author(s):  
Владимир Сафонов ◽  
Vladimir Safonov
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social State ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The U.S

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

Kiobel and the Weakening of Precedent: A Long Walk for a Short Drink

2013 ◽  
Vol 107 (4) ◽  
pp. 841-845 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph G. Steinhardt
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Gilded Age ◽  
High Profile ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Alien Tort Statute

Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. marks the second time in nine years that the Supreme Court has ruled unanimously that the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) does not provide jurisdiction in a high-profile human rights case, a sequence that might suggest an end to the gilded age of human rights litigation that began with Filártiga v. Peña-Irala. On closer analysis, however, Kiobel, like Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain before it, adopts a rhetoric of caution without foreclosing litigation that fits the Filártiga model. To the contrary, Sosa and Kiobel invite considerably more ATS litigation than they resolve or bar and therefore confirm Justice Antonin Scalia’s memorable encapsulation of the Court’s “Never Say Never Jurisprudence.” All four of the opinions in Kiobel confirm that multiple significant issues remain for future resolution, but it is unrealistic to expect answers on the basis of the Court’s decision because what is law in Kiobel isnt clear and what is clear in Kiobel isn’t law.

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