United States Supreme Court Research Articles

Implications of Blockchain-Powered Marketplace of Preowned Virtual Goods

The first‐sale doctrine, which protects consumers’ rights to resell purchased products, has been recognized by the US Supreme Court since 1908. In recent years, consumers have begun to purchase an increasing amount of virtual goods, which renders the first‐sale doctrine unclear. There are two main challenges leading to the uncertainty of the first‐sale doctrine in the digital age: lack of proper technology, and economic implications for developers and consumers. The advent of the blockchain solves the technology challenge, as it can track provenance and establish the chain of custody. In this study, we construct an analytical model to investigate the economic impact of trading preowned virtual items. Specifically, our model captures the decentralized nature of blockchain technology by allowing consumer‐to‐consumer trading, and considers the possibility that consumers prefer preowned virtual items over new ones because preowned items may be upgraded between purchase and resale. Lawmakers seek to strike a balance between the interests of virtual item developers and individual consumers. We show that, surprisingly, the introduction of a blockchain‐based preowned virtual item transaction can actually benefit both developer and consumer. The main intuition is that the developer can adjust the price when forward‐looking consumers incorporate the expected future transaction into their purchase decision. Our analysis also reveals that developers are more willing to embrace the secondary market when they can take a cut during the transaction. Our results provide important policy implications to the burgeoning debate of the first‐sale doctrine in the new digital world.

Perceptions of Officer-Involved Shootings by Police Officers and Civilians

In the source article, the researchers explored how perception and memory for a use-of-force incident differed between officers who actually participated in the incident and civilians who only viewed body-worn camera (BWC) footage of the incident. Police officers participated in two scenarios in a shooting simulator; civilians later viewed the BWC video of the officer’s participation. Numerous differences between these two groups were found when responding to questions about (a) what had happened during the incident and (b) what the perceived state of mind was of the officer during the incident. The findings have important implications for the application of Graham v. Connor, 1989. This US Supreme Court decision provides the standard for determining whether the force used by an officer was justified. It is important to acknowledge that the perspective of an officer on scene is likely to differ from that of civilians who only view the officer’s BWC recording afterward.

Hyping the Hypothetical: Talk and Temporality in US Supreme Court Oral Arguments

The US Supreme Court conducts much of its business through talk, including during oral arguments, where a central activity is the consideration of hypotheticals posed by justices. Using conversation analysis, I examine a key segment of the oral arguments for Citizens United v. FEC, one that arguably changed the course of campaign finance history. I identify the conversational devices employed to advance and contest one particular hypothetical, involving an imagined ban on books, subject to a speech-exchange system that differentially empowers justices to dictate both the terms of the discussion and the time afforded the advocate to respond to any particular question. The article offers the first disciplined qualitative analysis of interaction during oral arguments, illustrates the place of temporality in legal reasoning and argumentation, and makes several contributions to conversation analysis: it advances the study of institutional talk to a new legal setting, identifies some ways in which the machinery of talk can be harnessed for rhetorical effect, and demonstrates the analytical utility of prior knowledge of what a participant arrives to an encounter equipped to say.

Predictive Modelling in Legal Decision-Making: Leveraging Machine Learning for Forecasting Legal Outcomes

Predictive modelling holds significant promise in enhancing legal decision-making processes, particularly within the realm of the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS). This paper investigates the application of Machine Learning (ML) algorithms to forecast legal outcomes, utilizing a dataset comprising SCOTUS cases. Through rigorous preprocessing and analysis, various ML techniques including Decision Trees, Random Forest, Support Vector Machines (SVM), Naive Bayes, k-Nearest Neighbors (k-NN), and XGBoost are applied. The performance of these models is evaluated using precision, recall, F1-score, and accuracy metrics, revealing nuanced differences in their effectiveness. Notably, XGBoost emerges as the top-performing algorithm with an accuracy of 72%, showcasing its robustness in capturing intricate legal patterns. In contrast, Naive Bayes and Decision Tree algorithms exhibit lower accuracies of 61% and 52%, respectively, highlighting potential limitations in their applicability to legal datasets. The comparative analysis sheds light on the strengths and weaknesses of each algorithm, underscoring the importance of selecting appropriate techniques tailored to the complexities of legal decision-making. This study contributes to the growing body of literature on predictive modelling in legal studies, offering valuable insights into the potential applications and implications of ML in enhancing the efficiency and efficacy of legal processes.

Sex after Technology: The Rhetoric of Health Monitoring Apps and the Reversal of Roe v. Wade

ABSTRACT The convergence of artificial intelligence technologies with the growth of Christo-fascist movements in the United States presents an alarming threat to women’s health, especially considering known privacy violations by the major players—all in the shadow of the US Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade. These violations are ethotic; that is, they betray information that has been mined algorithmically to construct “user models,” bits and pieces of which are sold or otherwise circulated without true “user” consent or cooperation. Such models are best understood as algorithmic ethopoeia, mathematized representations of individuals charted as matrices of commodified categories for commercial trafficking, but also for politicians and law enforcement. Taking inspiration from abolitionist tools for resisting intersectional racism, and incorporating data feminism, we offer six categories of design heuristics to respect and maintain ethopoeic integrity, especially in the domain of women’s health in a post-Roe technological landscape, using a fundamental rhetorical concept to serve designers, as well as critics and activists.

Positioning sexual justice within social work teaching on human rights: countering contemporary sexuality oppression

ABSTRACT Access to sexual health, sexuality information, sexual expression and sexual pleasure is a human right. Yet, the sexual health and wellness landscape has become a battlefield. Recently large-scale sex-negative campaigns preceded the US Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022. The use of the word ‘gay’ was restricted in public schools along with efforts to ban drag queen story time. Further reports of increased violence against people who identify as transgender have increased. Given social work’s roots as an anti-oppressive, practice-based profession focused on social justice, social workers are ideally positioned to challenge this attack on sexual rights, sexual pleasure, and access to related services. Sexual justice pedagogy is a warranted first step. A review of the literature establishes the rationale behind sexuality being a human right, examining social work’s missed opportunities for sexual justice. Next, the current sexuality assault landscape in the US is reviewed and sexual justice is defined within social justice. Activities are presented providing educators exemplars to introduce sexual justice content in human rights teaching. I conclude with recommendations to create a learning environment that will help facilitate the understanding and integration of sexual justice within the teaching of human rights to social work students.

Dynamic factor models for binary data in circular spaces: an application to the US Supreme Court

Abstract Latent factor models are widely used in the social and behavioural sciences as scaling tools to map discrete multivariate outcomes into low-dimensional, continuous scales. In political science, dynamic versions of classical factor models have been widely used to study the evolution of justices’ preferences in multi-judge courts. In this paper, we discuss a new dynamic factor model that relies on a latent circular space that can accommodate voting behaviours in which justices commonly understood to be on opposite ends of the ideological spectrum vote together on a substantial number of otherwise closely divided opinions. We apply this model to data on nonunanimous decisions made by the US Supreme Court between 1937 and 2021, and show that for most of this period, voting patterns can be better described by a circular latent space.

High variability in self-pay pricing for vasectomy and vasectomy reversal in the United States.

In the United States (US) men who undergo vasectomy and/or vasectomy reversal (vasovasotomy) are likely to pay out-of-pocket for these procedures. We characterized the publicly disclosed pricing of both procedures with a focus on variability in self-pay prices. We queried all US hospitals for publicly disclosed prices of vasectomy and vasovasotomy. We assessed interhospital variability in self-pay pricing and compared hospitals charging high (≥75th percentile) and low (≤25th percentile) self-pay prices for either procedure. We also examined trends in pricing after the 2022 US Supreme Court decision that allowed individual states to ban abortion. Of 6692 hospitals, 1375 (20.5%) and 281 (4.2%) disclosed self-pay prices for vasectomy and vasovasotomy, respectively. There was a 17-fold difference between the 10th and 90th percentile self-pay prices for vasectomy ($421-$7147) and a 39-fold difference for vasovasotomy ($446-$17,249). Compared with hospitals charging low (≤25th percentile) self-pay prices for vasectomy or vasovasotomy, hospitals charging high (≥75th percentile) prices were larger (median 150 vs. 59 beds, p < 0.001) and more likely to be for-profit (31.2% vs. 7.8%, p < 0.001), academic-affiliated (52.7% vs. 23.1%, p < 0.001), and located in an urban zip code (70.1% vs. 41.3%, p < 0.001). From October 2022 to April 2023, the median self-pay price of vasectomy increased by 10% (from $1667 to $1832) while the median self-pay price of vasovasotomy decreased by 16% (from $3309 to $2786). We found large variability in self-pay pricing for vasectomy and vasectomy reversal, which may serve as a barrier to the accessibility of male reproductive care.

Unequal Spatial Consequences of Abortion Restrictions in Texas, 2021-2023.

Objectives. To demonstrate the spatially uneven effects of abortion restriction laws in Texas. Methods. We used network analysis to determine the change in distance to the nearest surgical abortion provider for 5253 Texas neighborhoods after the passing of Texas Senate Bill 8 (SB8; 2021) and the US Supreme Court's Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022) decision. We identified associations between key measures of neighborhood socioeconomic context and change in distance to providers using multivariable linear regression models. Results. After the Dobbs decision, Texas residents experienced an average change in distance to the nearest provider of 457 miles (SD = 179). Neighborhoods of concentrated disadvantage experienced the greatest increase in distance to abortion providers after SB8's passing, and neighborhoods with high levels of income inequality experienced the greatest increase in distance after the Dobbs decision. Conclusions. We document the rapidly changing abortion landscape in a highly restrictive state and show that women living in more disadvantaged and unequal areas are most affected by the increasing distance to providers. Public Health Implications. Our methods and findings will continue to be relevant in understanding the burden placed on women in areas where medical abortion has been restricted because of the Dobbs decision. (Am J Public Health. 2024;114(10):1024-1033. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2024.307652).

Social Media News as a Predictor of Sports Gambling Salience, Attitudes, and Behaviors in the United States

Gambling has become a more prominent aspect of American sports culture after the 2018 United States Supreme Court decision offered in Murphy v National Collegiate Athletic Association that rendered the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) unconstitutional. A secondary analysis of 2022 PEW American Trends Panel (ATP) data ( N = 3900) explores social media news exposure and satisfaction as predictors of the salience of, attitudes toward, and behavioral engagement with sports gambling. Social media news exposure and satisfaction do not predict individual-level salience of the expanded legalization of sports betting. However, social media news exposure and an individual’s satisfaction with news content on X, Facebook, and YouTube positively predict feelings that sports betting is good for society and sports culture. Social media news exposure positively predicts sports gambling behaviors. A broader media effects research agenda pertaining to sports gambling is outlined based on these findings.

Mapping the Geometry of Law Using Natural Language Processing

Judicial documents and judgments are a rich source of information about legal cases, litigants, and judicial decision-makers. Natural language processing (NLP) based approaches have recently received much attention for their ability to decipher implicit information from text. NLP researchers have successfully developed data-driven representations of text using dense vectors that encode the relations between those objects. In this study, we explore the application of the Doc2Vec model to legal language to understand judicial reasoning and identify implicit patterns in judgments and judges. In an application to federal appellate courts, we show that these vectors encode information that distinguishes courts in time and legal topics. We use Doc2Vec document embeddings to study the patterns and train a classifier model to predict cases with a high chance of being appealed at the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS). There are no existing benchmarks, and we present the first results at this task at scale. Furthermore, we analyze generic writing/judgment patterns of prominent judges using deep learning-based autoencoder models. Overall, we observe that Doc2Vec document embeddings capture important legal information and are helpful in downstream tasks.

UPHOLDING THE LEADERSHIP LESSONS OF THE LITTLE ROCK NINE

AbstractThe author, Leader to Leader’s editor‐in‐chief, reflects on how her father was a member of the 327th Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division of the United States Army, and as such had an important role in US history. She notes that in 1957, “President Dwight D. Eisenhower issued Executive Order 10730 sending my father’s regiment to Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas to maintain order as the school was desegregated.” This Executive Order “placed the Arkansas National Guard under federal authority and sent 1,000 US Army troops to Little Rock to enforce the US Supreme Court’s 1954 ruling in Brown v. the Board of Education that US State laws establishing segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segregated schools are otherwise equal in quality.” She relates that her father “ … remembers feeling the volatility of the situation that did not ignite, he believes, because of the discipline and presence of the 101st.” These thoughts resonated with her as she later interviewed the retired Army General Dennis J. Reimer, who in the 1990s was Chief of Staff of the United States Army, for her forthcoming documentary about our journal’s founder, Frances Hesselbein.

Inflation in 2022 did not affect congressional voting, but abortion did

This study examines voting in the 2022 United States congressional elections, contests that were widely expected to produce a sizable defeat for Democratic candidates for largely economic reasons. Based on a representative national probability sample of voters interviewed in both 2020 and 2022, individuals who changed their vote from one party's congressional candidate to another party's candidate did not do so in response to the salience of inflation or declining economic conditions. Instead, we find strong evidence that views on abortion were central to shifting votes in the midterm elections. Americans who favored (opposed) legal abortions were more likely to shift from voting for Republican (Democratic) candidates in 2020 to Democratic (Republican) candidates in 2022. Since a larger number of Americans supported than opposed legal abortions, the combination of these shifts ultimately improved the electoral prospects of Democratic candidates. New voters were especially likely to weigh abortion views heavily in their vote-shifting calculus. Likewise, those respondents whose confidence in the US Supreme Court declined from 2020 to 2022 were more likely to shift from voting for Republican to Democratic congressional candidates. We provide direct empirical evidence that changes in support for the Supreme Court, a nonpartisan branch of the federal government, are implicated in partisan voting behavior in another branch of government. We explore the implications of these findings for prevalent assumptions about how economic conditions influence voting, as well as for the relationship between the judiciary and electoral politics.

303 What’s next for animal welfare from a legal perspective?

Abstract California’s “Prop 12” indicated a significant change for animal agriculture generally, but for legally mandated animal welfare standards more specifically. This presentation will outline the general requirements of the law and aspects of the United States Supreme Court opinion finding it to be constitutional. It will also discuss the longer term and more widespread effects of the Supreme Court opinion on potential legislation in the United States. Finally, it will preview another Supreme Court case, heard this year and not yet decided, that may have an impact on the regulation of animal welfare.

Impact of post-Dobbs abortion restrictions on maternal-fetal medicine physicians in the Southeast: a qualitative study

BackgroundThe US Supreme Court overturned federal abortion protections in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. Many states in the Southeastern US responded with restrictive policies that limit and criminalize abortion care. ObjectiveTo characterize the impacts of abortion restrictions on maternal fetal medicine physicians (MFMs) in the Southeastern US post Dobbs. Study DesignWe conducted qualitative, semi-structured interviews with 35 MFMs in 10 Southeastern states between February and June 2023. Our recruitment strategy relied on convenience and snowball sampling. Audio-recorded interviews were analyzed using Dedoose software and a descriptive qualitative approach that incorporated deductive and inductive approaches. ResultsEmergent themes were identified, and a conceptual framework was developed based on overarching themes. We found that abortion laws and external constraints following Dobbs resulted in ethical, professional, and legal challenges for MFMs that led to changes in clinical practice and deviations from patient-centered care. These forced changes resulted in negative impacts on MFMs such as increased fear, hypervigilance, and increased workload for MFMs. The changes also prompted concerns about health risks and negative emotional impacts for patients. Supportive colleagues, hospital systems, and policies were associated with decreased stress, emotional distress, and disruption of healthcare delivery. ConclusionsAbortion restrictions in the Southeastern US limit the ability of MFMs to provide or facilitate abortions in the setting of fetal anomalies and maternal health risk. MFMs perceived these restrictions to have negative professional and emotional repercussions for themselves, as well as negative impacts on patients. Supportive colleagues and clear guidance from hospital systems and departments on how to interpret laws were protective. Our findings have implications for the MFM workforce and patient care in the region.

Trends in Female Sterilization Since Dobbs v. Jackson at an Academic Institution [ID 2683460

INTRODUCTION: The Dobbs v. Jackson United States Supreme Court decision, issued June 24, 2022, fundamentally altered options for addressing unintended pregnancy. This curtailing of access to abortion care may be an inflection point in how individuals capable of becoming pregnant select contraceptive options. We hypothesize that in the immediate wake of the Dobbs v. Jackson decision, those undergoing surgical sterilization will be younger in age and more likely to be nulliparous. METHODS: This was a retrospective chart review study. IRB approval was obtained for the study. Using CPT codes, we utilized Epic to identify all patients undergoing surgical sterilizations at an academic, tertiary care hospital during the 12 months preceding the Dobbs decision (June 24, 2021 to June 24, 2022) and the 12 months immediately after the Dobbs decision (June 25, 2022 to June 25, 2023). Charts were reviewed for age, insurance status, highest level of education, gravidity, parity, and type of sterilization procedure, as well as time between request for and completion of surgical sterilization. RESULTS: In the 12 months after the Dobbs v. Jackson decision, individuals undergoing female surgical sterilization via salpingectomy or tubal occlusion had a lower mean age and lower mean parity compared to those undergoing sterilization in the 12 months preceding Dobbs. CONCLUSION: This study demonstrates that, since the Dobbs v. Jackson decision, individuals seeking female surgical sterilization are younger and less likely to be multiparous. This implies that as access to abortion care in the United States becomes more tenuous, those who seek female surgical sterilization procedures as contraception are younger and lower parity individuals.

Evaluating participant engagement in a preconception cohort study in relation to the Dobbs decision.

On June 24th, 2022, the United States (US) Supreme Court's ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson, etal. (hereafter, the Dobbs decision) removed federal-level protections for induced abortion, sparking concerns about reproductive rights and health privacy. Although other pregnancy outcomes (e.g. spontaneous abortion, ectopic pregnancy) are not explicit targets of post-Dobbs abortion bans, study participants may be worried about how their reproductive health data are used by researchers in the post-Dobbs era. To evaluate the extent to which the Dobbs decision influenced participant's engagement in a preconception cohort study. We leveraged data spanning 20 weeks before and after the Dobbs decision (4 February 2022, to 11 November 2022) from US participants in Pregnancy Study Online (PRESTO), an internet-based prospective preconception cohort study of couples attempting conception. We categorised participants' state-level abortion access by residential location: banned or restricted rights; limited access; and protected rights. We evaluated three participant engagement outcomes: follow-up questionnaire completion; report of a pregnancy; and clicking on the invitation link for a fertility-tracking app. We fit separate linear regression models and restricted cubic splines to compare outcome prevalence before and after the Dobbs decision by state-level abortion category. A total of 585 newly enrolled participants and 1247 already-enrolled participants received 2802 invitations to complete a follow-up questionnaire. In states with limited or protected abortion rights, we observed little change in participant engagement. In states with banned or restricted abortion rights, however, we observed a 27.12 percentage point reduction (95% confidence interval -43.68, -10.51) in the prevalence of clicking on the invitation link for the fertility-tracking app comparing the post- versus pre-Dobbs periods. There was some evidence of reduced participant engagement after the Dobbs decision in states with banned or restricted abortion rights, indicating potentially deleterious effects on the conduct of reproductive health studies.

Post-Dobbs Challenges in Research and Patient Protections

This Viewpoint describes the challenges for clinical research and participant protections following the US Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

Liberal-democratic norms under contestation: Norm relations and their decoupling in the US Supreme Court’s decisions on abortion

Abstract This article studies the contestation of liberal-democratic norms from within the liberal international order (LIO), focusing on the case of abortion rights. The US Supreme Court’s decisions on abortion, central to both domestic and global debates, provide a compelling case study of how two opposing sides may invoke the same norms, rather than presenting a case of norm collision or co-optation. In contrast to the binary pro-choice versus anti-abortionist framing, this article shows that both sides invoke liberal-democratic norms, but differ in how they relate the norms to each other and how they interrupt established norm relations. Against this background, the article introduces the concept of norm decoupling, highlighting how norm entrepreneurs isolate certain norms from hitherto related norms. This process contributes to a more subtle backsliding of the LIO, particularly by decoupling majority votes from other democratic, substantial norms, and by decoupling liberal-democratic norms from their gendered dimensions. Norm decoupling thus explains diverging interpretations of shared norms within the same context. This advances our understanding of norm contestation and interpretation, shedding light on how liberal-democratic norms subtly erode from within the LIO.

Reproductive and Social Policies, Sociopolitical Stress, and Implications for Maternal and Child Health Equity.

Although many environmental exposures (e.g., air pollution) are geographically patterned and persist as a result of historic economic policies (e.g., redlining), the impact of reproductive and social policies on maternal and child health remains incompletely understood. Reproductive and social policies are increasingly important for maternal and child health equity, particularly following the 2022 US Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organization ("Dobbs decision"), which restricted access to abortion. Here, we summarize the literature from original research studies examining influences of reproductive and social policy on maternal and child health, focusing on impacts on adverse birth outcomes and policies as sources of stress. Several studies suggest that those most impacted by the Dobbs decision are younger, non-white, socioeconomically disadvantaged, and living in states with less access to government safety net programs, all of which are compounded by environmental injustices. Further, studies conducted in the wake of the Dobbs decision find elevated stress levels among women of reproductive age. This may represent one pathway leading to adverse birth outcomes, as epidemiologic studies demonstrate that preterm birth rates increased following the 2016 election, a period of heightened stress. Reproductive and social policies are understudied contributors to adverse outcomes for reproductive-aged women and their children. This has important implications for maternal and child health equity, as those who will be the most impacted by reproductive and social policies already experience the highest rates of adverse birth outcomes and environmental toxicant exposure.