Supreme Court's Role Research Articles

Iraq's Counterterrorism Laws Under Scrutiny Unjustified Asset Freezes

In response to the terrorist threat posed by ISIS, Iraq implemented legal frameworks aimed at disrupting terrorist financing, including the establishment of a committee to freeze terrorist assets as per international and national laws. This study assesses the effectiveness of these measures through qualitative analysis of legal documents and judicial reviews by the Federal Supreme Court, which found many asset freezes to be unjustified. The findings indicate a need for procedural refinement to ensure fair and effective enforcement, highlighting the challenges of balancing legal integrity with counterterrorism efforts in Iraq. Highlights: Effectiveness: Examines the effectiveness of Iraq's asset freezing against terrorism, identifying practical issues. Judicial Oversight: Highlights the Federal Supreme Court's role in overturning unjustified asset freezes. Legal Refinement: Emphasizes the need to refine procedures to ensure fairness and compliance with international standards. Keywords: Terrorism Financing, Legal Frameworks, Asset Freezing, Judicial Review, Counterterrorism

HOW CULTURE AFFECTS ABORTION LAWS AND ITS IMPACTS

The Supreme Court's role in shaping reproductive rights for women in the United States has been significant since the landmark ruling in Roe v. Wade in 1973. However, the ongoing debate over access to reproductive healthcare and abortion rights persisted, leading to the recent overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022. This research explores the impact of legislative laws on abortion in the United States, focusing on the Dobbs v. Jackson case and its aftermath. This research discusses how trigger bans and gestational bans have resulted in a rapid decline in access to abortion services, particularly for marginalized communities. It also highlights the impact of these laws on young pregnant girls, who already face limited abortion options due to existing restrictions. This research further examines the role of culture in shaping views on abortion, including religious beliefs, stigma, and geographical location. It concludes by discussing the shift from pro-life to pro-choice views among Americans and the need for increased media coverage and advocacy campaigns to challenge stigma and humanize the abortion experience.

History of conflict between the legislature and the judiciary

The history of conflict between the legislature and the judiciary in India unfolds through the lens of judicial review, a pivotal tool ensuring governmental actions align with the Constitution. The judiciary's power, though not explicitly termed "judicial review," is derived from Article 13. Early clashes emerged with the interpretation of property rights and land reforms, leading to amendments and counteractions. The landmark Golaknath case (1967) challenged parliamentary authority, introducing the concept of the "basic structure." Subsequent amendments and the 42nd Amendment reflected attempts to redefine the balance between fundamental rights and directive principles during the tumultuous period of emergency. The Supreme Court's role in upholding constitutional principles and the precedence of fundamental rights over legislative actions remains a cornerstone in India's constitutional framework.

Role of Supreme Courts in Ensuring Uniform Judicial Practice: Trends in the Post-Soviet Space

Due to various factors, states choose different approaches to ensuring uniform judicial practice, which is a necessary component of legal certainty. While in the common law countries judicial precedent has been a trusted tool for this task, in socialist countries lower courts would follow the guiding clarifications of the top judicial bodies. Following the collapse of the USSR, three separate trends took shape in the 1990s – 2000s: statutory establishment and detailed description of the guiding (and even obligatory) role of clarifications made on relevant issues by the plenary body of the apex court, decrease of importance of such clarifications to a role of simple recommendations and complete abolishment of such an instrument. Having studied the legislative changes in post-Soviet countries, we may conclude that due to the inevitable role of the apex court as a beacon of judicial practice, abandoning clarifications on issues of judicial practice increases the significance of that court’s decisions in individual cases, which effectively introduces elements of stare decisis into a country’s legal system.

The securities fraud class action after Goldman Sachs

This article analyzes a significant Supreme Court securities law decision from the 2020 term, Goldman Sachs v. Arkansas Teachers Retirement System (Goldman). Goldman was a blockbuster class action, brought by shareholders seeking $13 billion in damages from Goldman Sachs based on claims that date back to the 2008 financial crisis. This article proceeds by taking an in‐depth look at the case history of Goldman from start to finish. In the process, it shows that the Supreme Court's recent decision was more impactful than has been widely appreciated. Rather than being a recap of existing precedents, the Court's holding in Goldman made significant changes to some of the core doctrines in securities law that were first set forth in 1988 when the modern securities class action was created by Basic v. Levinson. This article also looks beyond doctrinal categories to assess how the Goldman decision can be understood as the latest chapter in the Supreme Court's longstanding role as a leading policy maker in the law of securities class actions. Lastly, the article explains how the precedent set in Goldman will affect securities litigation on the ground going forward. As a result of Goldman, it will be argued, the class certification stage in shareholder securities fraud suits has been moved closer to an open‐ended totality of the circumstances test, in which the federal courts have an increasing number of tools to act as gatekeepers on the merits of a litigation.

Adjudicating electoral disputes or judicialising politics? The Supreme Court of Ghana and the disputed 2012 presidential election in perspective

ABSTRACT The constitutional role of Supreme Courts to adjudicate disputed electoral outcomes is well-accepted within contemporary democracies. How a Supreme Court’s judicial reasoning is portrayed in the popular press will impact on citizens’ understanding of and commitment to democratic processes. In the protracted litigation in the aftermath of Ghana’s disputed 2012 election, its Supreme Court found its judgements and management of proceedings represented as partial, in terms of an unelected body determining political outcomes. This article explores two key questions: what was the nature of the coverage of the Court’s reasoning, and to what extent did this coverage fortify or threaten the legitimacy of the Supreme Court within the political system? It concludes that the specialist politics and law journalists failed to demystify the constitutional reasoning of the Court in such a way that ordinary citizens were able to gain an understanding of the judicial reasoning being applied. There is, the authors believe, some value in examining this issue despite the passage of time since the delivery of the court’s verdict.

Can Democratic Principles Protect High Courts from Partisan Backlash? Public Reactions to the Kenyan Supreme Court's Role in the 2017 Election Crisis

AbstractPublic support is central to the emergence of judicial power. Conventional wisdom holds that citizen commitment to democracy and the rule of law sustains this support. An implication is that such commitments should protect courts from partisan backlash following contentious rulings. But this remains largely untested. The Kenyan Supreme Court's historic 2017 elections rulings provide an unusual opportunity to test this expectation. After annulling the incumbent president's victory, the Court upheld his controversial repeat‐election win. With data from a national panel survey—conducted before and after the repeat election—we find important partisan‐based withdrawals/increases in judicial‐power support. There is no evidence that democratic principles attenuated partisan backlash; some were associated with its amplification. However, partisan losers maintain moderately high support despite backlash. Results advance debates about public support for judicial power and provide new evidence about public reactions to assertions of judicial authority in new democracies and electoral autocratic regimes.

The Supreme Court Role in Pakistan for the Elimination of Child Abuse

According to the 2017 National census children counts 39% of the whole population; the maximum of people residing in the rural areas have a very less developed social sector, although people living in the urban areas have comparatively good facilities that are small in number. They have good service delivery in education, health, social welfare, employment opportunities, awareness; fertility rate is good while the mortality rate is less, safe sanitation facilities, clean water and other facilitations that are necessary for a sound social sector. The Human development index is very low as it stand at 147/188 in 2016; Pakistan invest a very small amount in education (2.3%), health (0.76%) and the other sectors are also in a fragile situation, more over the standard of education and health are the lowest in the world, the nutritional facilities available to the children are below standard.

Enforcing the equal protection clause: congressional power, judicial doctrine, and constitutional law

For over a century, Congress's power to Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of the equal protection of laws has presented judges and scholars with a puzzle. What does it mean for Congress to enforce such a wide-ranging, open-ended provision when Supreme Court has insisted on its own superiority in interpreting Fourteenth Amendment? In Enforcing Equal Protection Clause, William D. Araiza offers a unique understanding of Congress's enforcement power and its relationship to Court's claim to supremacy when interpreting Constitution. Drawing on history of American thinking about equality in decades before and after Civil War, Araiza argues that congressional enforcement and judicial supremacy can co-exist, but only if Court limits its role to ensuring that enforcement legislation reasonably promotes core meaning of Equal Protection Clause. Much of Court's equal protection jurisprudence stops short of stating such core meaning, thus leaving Congress free (subject to appropriate judicial checks) to full scope of constitutional guarantee. Araiza's thesis reconciles Supreme Court's ultimate role in interpreting Constitution with Congress's superior capacity to transform Fourteenth Amendment's majestic principles into living reality. The Fourteenth Amendment's Enforcement Clause raises difficult issues of separation of powers, federalism, and constitutional rights. Araiza illuminates each of these in this scholarly, timely work that is both intellectually rigorous but also accessible to non-specialist readers.

A atuação do Poder Judiciário na implementação de políticas públicas: o caso da demarcação dos territórios quilombolas

The paper analyses the role of the Judiciary Power as for the unfolding of public policies. The subject of the so-called judicial activism is discussed within the context of the opinion given by the Brazilian Supreme Court on the ADI 3.239/DF, that is, a discussion related to the identification, delimitation and acknowledgment of vested rights, in the frame of occupied land by remnants communities of Afro ascendancy. The paper also discusses the pros and cons of an enlargement of the Constitution interpreters. In this sense, the amicus curiae and the public hearings are at large considered. There is a short report upon the judicial control of public policies, as well as to the judicial activism, with an aim of fixing a theoretical standpoint for the suggested analyses. Subsequently, the paper insists in the very importance of the enlargement of the number of judicial interpreters. The role of the amicus curiae is at the center of the discussion, especially as for the Brazilian Supreme Court decision make patterns. Finally, the paper argues for an inner reflection concerning the Brazilian Supreme Court role in the implementation of public policies, mainly in the realm of Afro descendants land property law.

The passenger cases and the commerce clause: immigrants, blacks, and states' rights in antebellum America

In 1849 Chief Justice Taney's Court delivered a 5-4 decision on the legal status of immigrants and free blacks under the federal commerce power. The closely divided decision, further emphasized by the fact there were eight opinions, played a part in the increasingly contested politics over growing immigration, and the controversies about fugitive slaves and the western expansion of slavery that resulted in the Compromise of 1850. In the decades after the Civil War federal regulation of immigration almost entirely displaced the role of the states. Yet, over a century later, Justice Scalia in Arizona v. US appealed to the era when states exercised greater control over who they allowed to cross their borders; a dissent which has returned the Passenger Cases to the contemporary relevance. The Passenger Cases provide a counter-history that allowed the Court to affirm federal supremacy and state-federal cooperation in Arizona I (2011) and II (2012). In The Passenger Cases and the Commerce Clause Tony Allan Freyer focuses on the antebellum Supreme Court's role prescribing state-federal regulation of immigrants, the movement of free blacks within the United States and on the origins, state court decisions, federal precedents, appellate arguments, and opinion-making that culminated in the Court's decision of the Passenger Cases. The Court's split decision provided political legitimacy for the 1850 Compromise: enactment of a stronger fugitive slave law, admission of slavery in western territories based on popular vote of residents (popular sovereignty), and the abolition of the slave trade in Washington D.C. The divided opinions in the Passenger Cases also influenced the immigrant and slavery crises which disrupted the balance between free and slave-labor states, culminating in the Civil War. The states did indeed enact laws enabling exclusion of undesirable white immigrants and free blacks. The 5-4 division of the Court anticipated the better known, but even more divisive, views of the Justices in the Dred Scott case (1857). And in considering the post-Reconstruction evolution of new standards by which to judge immigration issues, the Passenger Cases revealed the continuing controversy over how to treat those who wish to come to our country, even as federal law came to dominate the regulation of immigration. These issues continued to complicate immigration law as much today as they did more than a century and a half ago. The persistence of these problems suggested that a decent respect to the opinions of mankind continued to demand a coherent, humane, and more consistent immigration policy.

Preserving Institutional Power: The Supreme Court and Strategic Decision Making in the Separation of Powers

We argue that the Supreme Court's long‐term goal of maintaining legitimacy and institutional power reflects an underdeveloped strategic consideration in models of judicial decision making. Our article posits that both institutional‐ and policy‐related incentives exist for the Court to engage in strategic behavior, and that those motivations may be differentially applicable to decision making in constitutional versus statutory cases. Our results offer broad confirmation of the above hypotheses, providing an important supplement to our understanding of how Congress may affect the Supreme Court's role in constructing legal policy.Related Articles McKenzie, Mark Jonathan, and Michael A. Unger. 2011. “ .” Politics & Policy 39 (): 813‐834. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1747‐1346.2011.00317.x/full Sharma, Hemant, and John M. Scheb II. 2011. “.” Politics & Policy 39 (): 1077‐1105. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1747‐1346.2011.00325.x/full Curry, Brett, and Banks Miller. 2008. “.” Politics & Policy 36 (): 1094‐1124. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1747‐1346.2008.00151.x/full Related MediaFilm Clips: . 2012. “.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaoLMW5AF4Y . 2012. “.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCA38zjwNJM

Democracy and ‘punitive populism’: exploring the Supreme Court's role in El Salvador

El Salvador is characterized by the sad record of having one of the highest degrees of violence and crime in Latin America. Recent governments have tried to fight it with programmes called ‘mano dura’ or ‘super-mano dura’ with measures and practices that have often violated human rights and judicial guarantees. This paper aims to explore the Supreme Court's role in the application of these policies by the Salvadoran government. We discovered that the highest court in this country supports this kind of policies termed by some analysts ‘policies of punitive populism’. In this sense, the Constitutional Chamber acted in contrast to what is required by democratic theory. The paper proceeds as follows: in the first part we analyse the theoretical framework of public safety policies and frame the Salvadoran case. In the second part, we explore the Supreme Court cases that support (or not) these policies, examining the performance of the court in relation to these cases. The last part is a summary of our evidence.

The Supreme Court's Role in American Indian Policy by John H. Vinzant

The Supreme Court's Role in American Indian Policy <i>by John H. Vinzant</i>

Legalist vs. Interpretativist: The Supreme Court and the Democratic Transition in Mexico

We examine the expansion of the policy making power of the Mexican Supreme Court since 1994, when a reform turned the court into a constitutional tribunal. We build on the intuition that the Court can never act against the interests of both the executive and legislative branches simultaneously, otherwise the ruling is likely to be overturned and/or justices sanctioned. The Court can only influence policy when the elected branches have polarized preferences and the Court itself is centrally located. Despite the onset of divided government since 1997, the conditions for Court influence only appeared with the triumph of the PAN in the presidency in 2000. Multivariate regression confirms that the probability of striking down a law increased significantly after that year, but only in rulings likelier to involve substantive ideological disputes. In rulings used to resolve federalism disputes the Court showed a marked propensity to side with the PRI, the party that set the new judicial system in place and also controls most subnational units. Justices also differ in their view of the Supreme Court's role in a democracy. We explore this by analyzing justices’ voting records to estimate their ideal points, revealing the existence of two dimensions. Case studies confirm that the first dimension of cleavage is the standard left-right divide of normal politics, and the second corresponds to legalism vs. interpretativism.

The constitution of electoral speech law: the Supreme Court and freedom of expression in campaigns and elections

Bush v. Gore brought to the public's attention the significance of election law and the United States Supreme Court's role in structuring the rules that govern how campaigns and elections function in America. In this book, Brian K. Pinaire examines one expanding domain within this larger legal context: freedom of speech in the political process, or, what he terms, electoral speech law.Specifically, Pinaire examines the Court's evolving conceptions of free speech in the electoral process and then traces the consequences of various debates and determinations from the post-World War II era to the present. In his analysis of the broad range of cases from this period, supplemented by four recent case study investigations, Pinaire explores competing visions of electoral expression in the marketplace of ideas, various methods for analyzing speech dilemmas, the multiple influences that shape the justices' notions of both the potential for and privileged status of electoral communication, and the ultimate implications of these Court rulings for American democracy.

The Supreme Common Law Court of the United States

The U.S. Supreme Court's primary role in the history of the United States, especially in constitutional cases (and cases hovering in the universe of the Constitution), has been to limit Congress's ability to redefine and redistribute rights in a direction most people would characterize as liberal. In other words, the Supreme Court, for most of the history of the United States since the adoption of the Constitution, has been a conservative force against change and redistribution. The Court has used five distinct devices to advance its control over the law. First, it has construed rights-creating constitutional provisions narrowly when those provisions are advanced by minorities and other disadvantaged groups. Second, it has construed Congress's power to create rights narrowly, holding unconstitutional many efforts by Congress to either expand the rights of minorities and other disadvantaged groups, or to create new rights for such people. Third, the Court has construed civil rights statutes narrowly, often provoking legislative responses by Congress. Fourth, the Court has construed some constitutional provisions broadly in order to take control of areas of the law that had been thought of as within the control of the states. Fifth, the Court has expanded the scope of federal preemption of state law which results in reducing the sphere governed by state common law. While these devices do not all necessarily result in taking the law in a conservative direction, by and large that has been the use to which the Court has put them.One way in which the Court has advanced its agenda is by seizing power that, under federalism traditions, belong to state courts and state legislature. In several senses, the Supreme Court has begun to function like a Supreme Common Law Court of the United States. First, despite all of its federalism rhetoric, the Court seizes control of areas of the law that have traditionally been the domain of the states and imposes federal norms that is has created for the purpose. Second, the Court applies interpretive methods, in both constitutional and non-constitutional cases, that draw from traditional common law methodology and allow for a high degree of creativity.

Terrorism, Emergency Powers, and the Role of the US Supreme Court: An Interview with Neal K. Katyal

Abstract. The dialogue focuses on the major issues of the contemporary theoretical debate on judicial review and the Supreme Court's role in American constitutional democracy. The discussion begins with the US Supreme Court's case Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, successfully argued by Prof. Katyal last year, and covers important issues such as the separation and balance of powers after 9/11, the legitimacy of the laws of terror, the relation between US constitutional law and foreign law, the counter-majoritarian difficulties posed by the exercise of judicial review, and the legal academy's influence on legal practice.

Individual Rights and State Autonomy

In recent years, commentators have paid a great deal of attention to the Supreme Court's role in protecting state autonomy from the actions of Congress. By contrast, they have shown substantially less concern with the threat to state autonomy posed by decisions of the Court in other contexts - most notably, in individual rights cases such as Lawrence v. Texas, where the Court displaces the decisions of state governments. Instead, commentators generally fall into one of two camps: those who argue that the Constitution is primarily concerned with the protection of individual rights, and those who contend that the Constitution is best understood as a repository for the basic tenets of democratic theory. This paper takes a different view, arguing that a concern for state autonomy should be a central feature in the development of the jurisprudence of individual rights. It will argue that at every stage of the drafting of the original Constitution and subsequent amendments, the drafters were strongly constrained by a deep respect for the autonomy of state governments and that similar concerns should lead the Court to take a more restrained posture in considering constitutional challenges to state governmental actions.

The Supreme Court's Role in Choctaw and Chickasaw Dispossession

During the nineteenth century, Indian groups throughout the United States saw their lands taken from them through a variety of means, including land cessions and allotment. The Choctaw and Chickasaw, two of the Five Civilized Tribes of the southeastern United States, endured this process of dispossession. Although the U.S. Congress promulgated much of this dispossession through treaty‐based territorial demands, the Supreme Court proved an able partner in the process by subverting treaty guarantees and expanding congressional power. The dispute over the area known as “Greer County” provides an example of the Supreme Court's role in Indian dispossession, for its ruling in 1900 extinguished the Choctaw and Chickasaw claim to most of southwestern Oklahoma, earlier treaty provisions notwithstanding.