Business Of Courts Research Articles

Regulating interpersonal debt in the bishop's court of Carpentras: litigation, litigators and the court, 1486 and 1487

Using notarial records, this article explains who sued whom at the bishop's court at Carpentras, why they did so and how the court managed people and their debt disputes. In 1486 and 1487, creditors pursued 240 suits over unpaid loans (about three-quarters of the court's business). Litigants spanned the social spectrum and included both Christians and Jews, suggesting that the court was well embedded in the local economy. This diversity, as well as the predominance of ‘horizontal lending’, matches regional trends. Drawing upon anecdotal evidence and quantitative work, the court's procedures, functions and appeal are explained. Since most loans were made orally, proving their existence was difficult. Cases rarely reached rulings and creditors could not expect from ecclesiastical judges the coercive innovations adopted by secular courts. Yet, this church court was a popular forum to authenticate debts, pressure debtors into confession and encourage peaceful, private concords.

In re Stepan Co., No. 2010-1261 (Fed. Cir. Oct. 5, 2011)

Biotechnology Law ReportVol. 31, No. 1 DocumentsIn re Stepan Co., No. 2010-1261 (Fed. Cir. Oct. 5, 2011)Published Online:9 Mar 2012https://doi.org/10.1089/blr.2012.9996AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB Permissions & CitationsPermissionsDownload CitationsTrack CitationsAdd to favorites Back To Publication ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmail FiguresReferencesRelatedDetailsCited byA Tale of Seven Districts: Understanding the Past, Present, and Future of Patent Filings to Form Stronger Patent Venue Jurisprudence under 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a)SSRN Electronic Journal, Vol. 589The Case Against Product Configuration Trade DressSSRN Electronic JournalExperts, Generalists, Laypeople -- and the Federal CircuitSSRN Electronic JournalInsurance Fraud, Agency, and Opportunism: False Swearing in Insurance ClaimsSSRN Electronic JournalWhat's in, and What's Out: How IP's Boundary Rules Shape InnovationSSRN Electronic JournalResolving Eligibility and Indefiniteness in Proper Context: Applying Alice and AristocratSSRN Electronic JournalExamining SuccessSSRN Electronic JournalSubjecting Software Subject-Matter to Limitations that MatterSSRN Electronic JournalIf You Can't Beat 'Em, Join 'Em? How Sitting by Designation Affects Judicial BehaviorSSRN Electronic JournalThe Federal Circuit's New Obviousness Jurisprudence: An Empirical StudySSRN Electronic JournalThe Promise of the Patent in Canada and Around the WorldSSRN Electronic JournalPoliticizing Patents - Patenting Biotechnology in the Wake of Section 33, Prometheus, and CLS BankSSRN Electronic JournalSoftware Patents and the Return of Functional ClaimingSSRN Electronic JournalTen Years of Inter Partes Patent Reexamination Appeals: An Empirical ViewSSRN Electronic JournalWhose Rules Rule? Federal Circuit Review of Divergent USPTO and District Court DecisionsSSRN Electronic JournalWeeds and Seeds in the Supreme Court's Business Method Patents Decision: New Directions for Regulating Patent ScopeSSRN Electronic Journal, Vol. 26The Stochastic Relationship Between Patents and AntitrustSSRN Electronic JournalImproving the Federal Circuit's Approach to Choice of Law for Procedural Matters in Patent CasesSSRN Electronic JournalIntellectual Property Protection and Agricultural Biotechnology A Multidisciplinary PerspectiveSSRN Electronic Journal Volume 31Issue 1Feb 2012 InformationCopyright 2012, Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.To cite this article:In re Stepan Co., No. 2010-1261 (Fed. Cir. Oct. 5, 2011).Biotechnology Law Report.Feb 2012.87-90.http://doi.org/10.1089/blr.2012.9996Published in Volume: 31 Issue 1: March 9, 2012Online Ahead of Print:January 6, 2012PDF download

The investment of private equity fund in the corporation under the court's business reorganization process and the termination of the reorganization process - Introduction of a bankruptcy court case and some legal issues on it

The investment of private equity fund in the corporation under the court's business reorganization process and the termination of the reorganization process - Introduction of a bankruptcy court case and some legal issues on it

Weeds and Seeds in the Supreme Court's Business Method Patents Decision: New Directions for Regulating Patent Scope

In the 2010 Bilski decision, the Supreme Court visited the garden of doctrines on patent-eligible subject matter, a garden delineated in statutory terms by Section 101 of the Patent Act. The Court rejected categorical approaches, such as an enshrinement of a machine-ortransformation test as the sole measure for a patentable “process,” or a ban on business-method patents, but it affirmed rejection of the patent claims in question, which concerned commodities trading hedging transactions, as drawn to an abstract idea. Unfortunately, in Bilski, the Court passed on an opportunity to pull some doctrinal weeds that have been proliferating in the garden for years. But the Court also planted seeds for the growth of a more rational approach to regulating patent scope, one that is both consistent with the established doctrinal structure of the patent system and sufficiently limiting of overreaching patent claims to intangible processes, business methods, and natural phenomena. Critical to development of a better approach to Section 101 patenteligible subject matter is the need to recognize a distinction between two inquiries: (1) has an inventor made and disclosed a new and useful patentable invention?; and (2) what is the appropriate scope of protection for the patentable invention? Both inquiries can and should be conducted using established and well-understood doctrinal tools, which unlike the Section 101 patent-eligible subject matter tool used by the Court in Bilski, entail full consideration of the facts surrounding an alleged invention. Used with appropriate vigor, this fact-based approach can effectively screen out virtually all claims to putative “inventions” that are, on analysis, only abstract ideas or natural phenomena, and all claims that preempt subject matter that is old, not practically useful or beyond what the patent applicant has actually invented. There rarely would be an occasion to reach a Section 101 abstract-idea challenge, as was pressed upon the Court in Bilski.

The Other Supreme Court

Despite the Constitution's one supreme Court language, the Supreme Court came in two flavors for 37 years. From 1802 to 1838, the members of the Court gathered in Washington every winter for a conventional en banc February Term, but then in the summer a single Justice would return to the nation's capital to sit alone as a rump Supreme Court for a short August Term. This odd one-Justice rump Court does not fit the long-standing and widely-accepted understanding that the words one supreme Court mean one [indivisible] supreme Court - a single en banc body consisting of all of its available and qualified members to conduct its business. framers of the Constitution thought that was what they said when they chose those words, as the records of the constitutional convention of 1787 show. Gouverneur Morris, an influential figure in the drafting of the Constitution, recalled this point on the floor of the Senate in 1802: The constitution says, the judicial power shall be vested in one supreme court, and in inferior courts. legislature can therefore only organize one supreme court, but they may establish as many inferior courts as they shall think proper. A couple of generations later, Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite was even more emphatic about the indivisibility of the one Supreme Court. Addressing a banquet in Philadelphia during a celebration of the centennial of the Constitution, while Congress in Washington debated proposals to enlarge and panelize the Court, he said, I beg you to note this language: 'ONE SUPREME COURT and such inferior courts as Congress MAY, FROM TIME TO TIME, ordain and establish.' Not a Supreme Court or Supreme Courts, but 'ONE,' and ONLY ONE. This one Supreme Court Congress cannot abolish, neither can it create another. Upon this the Constitution has no doubtful meaning. There must be one, and but one. Over the years, members of the Court from Justice Stephen J. Field to Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes to retired Chief Justice Earl Warren made similar arguments. Nothing has changed, then, since the Constitution was written and ratified. It is and always has been understood that Congress's implementation of the one supreme Court language of Article III has not involved and could not involve a reorganization of the Court under which some Justice or Justices conducted the Court's business while others qualified to serve were compelled to watch from the sidelines. But this historical belief in perfect congressional perpetuation of the one [indivisible] supreme Court is mistaken. Early Congresses did not always treat the constitutional commitment to one supreme Court as an absolute bar to all subdivision of the structure and business of the Court. And the Supreme Court itself went along with the legislature in the 1802 creation of the one-Justice rump Supreme Court that sat every year on the first Monday of August until 1839.

Judicial Recusal and the Search for the Bright Line

Justice Stevens also rejected government's argument that because petition ers' hearing before panel was not fundamentally unfair and did not impugn integrity or public reputation of court, and because petitioners failed to lodge an initial objection to panel's composition, relief was not appropriate under plain error review. Justice Stevens suggested that invalid composition of panel was not cured simply by fact that Article IV judge was well qualified and proceedings were fair. Id. at 81. Indeed, if all parties below had requested an Article IV judge, that judge's mere presence rendered panel invalid. The gov ernment's final argument was that court-of-appeals decision should be upheld because 28 U.S.C. 46(d) allows two judges to constitute a proper quorum to legally conduct business. This claim was also rejected on ground that statute requires three judges in first instance; that is, it contemplates a situation where, should a third judge die or be disqualified, other two judges could finish court's busi ness, not a situation in which a properly composed panel did not exist ab initio. Although agreeing that Article IV judges cannot sit on a U.S. Court of Appeals, Chief Justice Rehnquist and three other justices dissented as to issue of remedy. Because petitioners had failed to make a timely objection to panel's composi tion, plain-error doctrine allowed court to vacate petitioner's sentences only if the error 'seriously affect[s] fairness, integrity, or public reputation of judicial proceedings.' Id. at 84. The chief justice noted that petitioners had never suggested that territorial chief judge was biased or incompetent, and, consequently even assuming that error affected petitioners' substantial rights, it simply did not affect fairness, integrity, or public reputation of judicial proceedings. Id.

Compliance With Final Judgments of the International Court of Justice Since 1987

Commentators on the International Court of Justice (ICJ) note that cases of noncompliance with final judgments are very rare. The ICJ registrar Philippe Couvreur, however, recognized that compliance is often hard to determine because judgments are varied, declarations may not reflect actual conduct, effects may only become apparent long after the judgment is given, and the legal or political situation may substantially change after the judgment. In this vein, Judge Jennings asked:The judgments of the Court are binding in law, but do they, in fact, resolve the matter? More work needs to be done here. It is ironic that the Court's business up to the delivery of judgment is published in lavish detail, but it is not at all easy to find out what happened afterwards.

Shackled in the Land of Liberty: No Rights for Children

This article addresses the rights of children in areas of juvenile justice, child welfare, and mental health. Although a large proportion of the juvenile court's business includes child welfare and mental health cases, these important areas are rarely considered by authors concerned with the future of the juvenile court. In mental health, children have few, if any, rights. Yet, they are often subjected to abuse and constraints that would constitute major civil rights violations if they were adults. In child welfare, children have some basic rights, but they are often dependent upon the virtually unbridled discretion of child welfare and other administrative officials. More often than not, the juvenile court plays a perfunctory role in the process and merely rubber-stamps recommendations made by child welfare personnel. The article discusses the implications of these issues and how they should be addressed in the future.

Ideological Patterns in the Justices' Voting in the Burger Court's Business Cases

Recent research has shown that economic liberalism no longer explains the Burger Court's business decisions. To discover what does, Hagle and Spaeth (1992) systematically analyzed the universe of Burger Court business decisions and found that a small set of ideological variables, which they labeled "instrumental libertarianism" accounted for most of these decisions. To supplement our 1992 study, we have constructed optimal models for the 10 most frequently participating Burger Court justices. These vary little from that of the Court. The three most antibusiness justices support governmental regulation, as do the two probusiness states' righters. Three justices are libertarians, one is a national supremacist, and one displays no distinctive behavior on any of our independent variables. In support of their regulatory preferences, the individual justices display varying support for agency action and judicial activism/restraint.

Court-Martial (review)

BOOK REVIEWS283 battle fronts. At least one soldier from this county seems to have been in every engagement, major or minor, during the years 1861-1865. Some were killed, others wounded, and many saw the inside of Confederate prison camps. All the activity on the home front is given in detail. He does not neglect even the unsavory activities such as bounty jumping and desertion . It is an effective format that certainly was microcosmic for every county North or South during the war. This book has gone through three editions and this reviewer hopes that there are more to come. If so, some errors should be corrected. On p. 14 Confederate Gen. James J. Archer is mentioned and eight lines later he becomes "Arthur." On p. 15, the word "thousands" is misspelled. On p. 75 a soldier given up for dead returns home in 1862 after the battle of Gettysburg. But these defects are minor. What appears to be a regional account of the war turns out to be all embracing and universal which is the test of any good book. James Barnett Cincinnati, Ohio Court-Martial. By John F. Marszalek, Jr. (New York: Charles Scribner 's Sons. 1972. Pp. xvi, 320. $8.95.) John Marszalek's Court-Martial is the story of Johnson C. Whittaker's experience as a black cadet at the United States Military Academy. The book focuses on the aftermath of a night attack that Whittaker suffered during his senior year. His explanation of how and why the attack occurred was disputed by his fellow cadets and, after a brief investigation, the Academy charged him with having faked the incident . A court of inquiry and a formal court-martial followed and both confirmed the Academy's original findings. Marszalek recreates the setting in which these happenings took place and carefully follows Whittaker through the long months of controversy and litigation. A professor of history at Mississippi State University, Marszalek sensitively portrays Whittaker's ordeal as "one man's battle against discrimination and injustice" (p. xi). In a less convincing fashion, he also interprets Whittaker's difficulties as a micro-history of the black experience in America. Shortly after Whittaker's arrival in 1876, white cadets joined in systematically ostracizing him. Other Negro cadets before Whittaker, such as Henry O. Flipper, had received the same treatment. Officially the Academy barred racial discrimination. At the same time, hazing and social ostracism were tolerated as acceptable means of censuring any cadet who failed to measure up to traditional military standards. General John M. Schofield, West Point superintendent during Whittaker 's years there, defended such practices and asserted that, as ap- 284CIVIL WAR HISTORY plied to black cadets, they revealed no racial prejudice. From the beginning , Whittaker resented this imposed isolation, but he concentrated on his studies and progressed steadily through the curriculum. He was close to graduating when, on the night of April 5, 1880, he was awakened in his room by three masked men and severely roughed up. The assailants also cut his hair, sliced an ear and left him bound up on the floor. The next morning, Whittaker was found still dazed, his hands and feet tightly strapped together. Almost immediately, both cadets and Academy officials expressed skepticism that anyone from their ranks could be responsible. An investigation launched by the school quickly concluded that Whittaker himself had concocted the attack, mutilating himself in the process, to embarrass the Academy for having been ostracized. At Whittaker's request, a court of inquiry convened. The conducting of the court's business became a nationally publicized event and an emotional issue between supporters and opponents of the old Radical Republican civil rights program. Whittaker found himself a pawn in a larger contest between reactionary and liberal civil libertarians who interpreted his situation in terms of their own partisan or social biases. The court of inquiry found Whittaker culpable of having committed self-mutilation. His supporters protested this decision so vigorously that President Rutherford B. Hayes ordered a formal court-martial to settle the episode. In early 1881, Whittaker and his lawyer, abolitionist Daniel H. Chamberlain, entered a plea of not guilty as the formal proceedings began. Whittaker was well...