Federal Courts: Authority of State Court Decisions in Federal Courts

1941 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 380
Author(s):  
Albert J. Shults
Keyword(s):  
Federal Courts ◽  
State Court ◽  
Court Decisions

Public Perceptions of State Court Impartiality and Court Legitimacy in an Era of Partisan Politics

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-80
Author(s):  
Corey Barwick ◽  
Ryan Dawkins
Keyword(s):  
Public Perceptions ◽  
State Court ◽  
Partisan Politics ◽  
Court Decisions ◽  
State Supreme Courts ◽  
Supreme Courts ◽  
Political World ◽  
Policy Goals ◽  
Citizen Perceptions ◽  
Original Survey

Why do some people evaluate state supreme courts as more legitimate than others? Conventional academic wisdom suggests that people evaluate courts in nonpartisan ways, and that people make a distinction between how they evaluate individual court decisions and how they evaluate the court’s legitimacy more broadly. We challenge this idea by arguing that people’s partisan identities have a strong influence on how people evaluate the impartiality of courts, just as they do other aspects of the political world. Using original survey experiments, validated by existing observational survey data, we show that people perceive state supreme courts as being more impartial when courts issue decisions that match the ideological preferences of their preferred political party, while court decisions at odds with their party’s policy goals diminish people’s belief that courts are impartial arbiters of the law. We also show that the effects of citizen perceptions of impartiality erode evaluations of state court legitimacy, which makes them want to limit the independence of judicial institutions.

From Rogers to Rivers: The Rights of the Mentally Ill to Refuse Medication

1987 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-52
Author(s):  
Ellen Wright Clayton
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Psychotropic Drugs ◽  
Mentally Ill ◽  
United States Supreme Court ◽  
Federal Courts ◽  
State Courts ◽  
Court Decisions ◽  
Marked Contrast ◽  
Patients Rights ◽  
Treatment Refusals

AbstractMany individuals with mental illness wish to avoid psychotropic drugs, a type of treatment that may relieve their symptoms only at the risk of unpleasant, even permanent, side effects. In marked contrast to the widely-held view that most patients may refuse any treatment and that even patients with mental illness may reject other psychoactive interventions such as electroconvulsive therapy and psychosurgery, the courts and legislatures have been slow to recognize any right to refuse psychotropic drugs. This Article demonstrates that many of the justifications offered for forcing patients to take unwanted medications are inadequate and that unless treatment refusals are reviewed outside mental institutions, patients’ rights will rarely receive appropriate deference. The author analyzes the federal and state litigation to determine whether the courts have fashioned meaningful relief for the mentally ill. The Article concludes that two recent United States Supreme Court decisions have made it impossible for the federal courts to provide adequate protection. By contrast, several state courts have responded to the needs and rights of patients with mental illness.

scholarly journals In the Beginning There Was None: Supreme Court Review of State Criminal Prosecutions

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin C. Walsh
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Federal Court ◽  
Structural Relationship ◽  
State Court ◽  
Court Decisions ◽  
Court System ◽  
Federal Law ◽  
Federal Judiciary ◽  
Federal Jurisdiction ◽  
In The Beginning

This Article challenges the unquestioned assumption of all contemporary scholars of federal jurisdiction that section 25 of the Judiciary Act of 1789 authorized Supreme Court appellate review of state criminal prosecutions. Section 25 has long been thought to be one of the most important provisions of the most important jurisdictional statute enacted by Congress. The Judiciary Act of 1789 gave concrete institutional shape to a federal judiciary only incompletely defined by Article III. And section 25 supplied a key piece of the structural relationship between the previously existing state court systems and the new federal court system that Congress constructed with the Act. It provided for Supreme Court appellate review of certain state court decisions denying the federal-law-based rights of certain litigants.

Introduction: The Desegregation Dilemma

1995 ◽  
Author(s):  
David J. Armor
Keyword(s):  
School Districts ◽  
School Choice ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Federal Courts ◽  
State Court ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
State Constitutions ◽  
Current Events ◽  
The City

Despite nearly four decades of controversy and debate over school segregation, the desegregation dilemma is still largely unresolved. The “busing” problem has received less national attention in recent years, and there are no riots, bus burnings, and school boycotts, as witnessed in earlier decades. Yet current events reveal the depth of a dilemma that has divided educators, parents, jurists, social scientists, and many other groups since the beginning of the civil rights movement. Indicators of the current desegregation dilemma are numerous. Hundreds of school districts throughout the country still impose busing for desegregation purposes, many under court orders that are now more than twenty years old. Although the types of desegregation plans have evolved to some extent, with increased emphasis on school choice, many plans still compel children to attend schools that their parents would not choose, solely for the purpose of racial “balance.” Further, after a period of quiescence, school desegregation was again the subject of several major Supreme Court decisions in 1991 and 1992. The decisions affected the length of time and the conditions under which a school district has to maintain a court-ordered busing plan. Although these decisions dispelled a common misconception that school systems have to maintain desegregation plans “in perpetuity,” it is still unclear how many school districts can or will end their busing plans. Finally, new desegregation litigation and controversies continue to surface. In 1989 a lawsuit was initiated in a Connecticut state court by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to compel desegregation between the city of Hartford and its suburban districts. A similar city suburbs desegregation strategy failed in the federal courts, but the Hartford lawsuit seeks to build on the success of school equal-finance cases under state constitutions. In 1991 the school board of La Crosse, Wisconsin, adopted a busing plan to equalize economic (rather than race) differences among schools. Reminiscent of the busing controversies of the 1970s, all board members who supported the busing plan were voted out of office in a regular and a recall election, reflecting the widespread community opposition to busing for the purpose of achieving socioeconomic balance in schools.

28 USC § 1782—looking for consensus

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 331-345
Author(s):  
David J Stute
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Federal Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
Federal Courts ◽  
The Other ◽  
Court Decisions ◽  
Arbitral Tribunal ◽  
Civil Proceedings ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Definition Of

Abstract Since the 1948 enactment of 28 USC § 1782 in the United States, no consensus has emerged as to the availability of federal court discovery to parties in private foreign or international arbitral proceedings. This year, within months of one another, six federal courts have issued rulings that are widely inconsistent on the availability of section 1782 discovery. The courts have ruled that a proceeding before a private international arbitral tribunal is eligible for section 1782 discovery; that, categorically, no such discovery is available; that the definition of private arbitral tribunal applies to CIETAC; and that discovery is available by virtue of a party’s parallel pursuit of discovery through foreign civil proceedings. As these cases demonstrate, recent US court decisions have brought no predictability, let alone certainty, to the subject. Congress, on the other hand, could and should amend the statute so as to include private tribunals in the scope of section 1782. This article discusses the case law’s state of disarray; proposes a legislative solution; considers the proposed amendment’s merits; and advocates for Congress to act.

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