Apportionment of the New York State Legislature

1961 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
pp. 870-881 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth C. Silva

[What follows below is the substance of a document Miss Silva prepared, which was filed on June 6, 1961, with the U. S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, as an Appendix to the petitioners' complaint in the case of W.M.C.A., Inc. et al. v. Caroline K. Simon, Secretary of the State of New York, et al. (61 Civil No. 1559, 1961). The suit seeks declaratory and injunctive relief and alleges that the apportionment and districting provisions of the New York Constitution deny the petitioners and others similarly situated both due process and the equal protection of the laws, contrary to the Fourteenth Amendment of the federal constitution. Miss Silva had been employed in 1959–60 as special consultant on legislative apportionment by the State of New York Temporary Commission on Revision and Simplification of the Constitution, which reproduced in two volumes as Staff Report No. 33 (April, 1960) the study she made for it.Litigation in the federal courts concerning legislative apportionments, from Colegrove v. Green, 328 U.S. 549 (1946) to Baker v. Carr, the Tennessee case pending in the Supreme Court at this writing, has been largely preoccupied with questions of federal jurisdiction. The document below does not touch this issue, but rather is confined to the practical effects of the apportionment and districting provisions of the New York Constitution. Man. Ed.]

1989 ◽  
Vol 83 (3) ◽  
pp. 565-568
Author(s):  
Carlos M. Vázquez

Plaintiffs and respondents, Amerada Hess Shipping Corp. and United Carriers, Inc., were respectively the charterer and owner of the Hercules, a crude oil tanker that was bombed in international waters by Argentine military aircraft during the war over the Malvinas or Falkland Islands. The ship was severely damaged and had to be scuttled off the coast of Brazil. After unsuccessfully seeking relief in Argentina, the companies filed suit against defendant and appellant, the Argentine Republic, in the Southern District of New York. Plaintiffs argued that the federal courts had jurisdiction under the Alien Tort Statute (28 U.S.C. §1350 (1982)), which confers federal jurisdiction over “any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States.” The district court dismissed the suit for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, holding that the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 (28 U.S.C. §§1330, 1602-1611 (1982)) (FSIA) is by its terms the sole basis of federal jurisdiction over cases against foreign states. A divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed. The Supreme Court (per Rehnquist, C.J.) unanimously reversed the Second Circuit and held that the FSIA provides the exclusive basis of federal jurisdiction over suits against foreign states.


Significance National and state leaders of his Democratic Party had been pressing Cuomo to resign since last week’s publication of a report from State Attorney-General Letitia James detailing his sexual harassment of eleven women, including state employees. Cuomo’s impeachment by the state legislature was looking all but certain by the time he resigned. Impacts Prosecutors in five New York State counties will continue to pursue separate criminal investigations despite Cuomo’s resignation. The State Assembly may complete the impeachment process, despite Cuomo’s resignation, in order to prevent him from running again. Cuomo will continue to talk up his liberal polices, his opposition to Donald Trump, and his leadership during the pandemic.


2006 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 826-828
Author(s):  
Erika Wilkinson

The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit recently upheld United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York Judge's denial of petitioner's application for a writ of habeas corpus. The Court held that it was not objectively unreasonable for the Appellate Division to conclude, in light of clearly established federal law as expressed by the Supreme Court of the United States, that a New York statute providing for the recommitment of specific defendants who plead not responsible by reason of mental disease or defect (NRRMDD) under a mere “preponderance of the evidence” standard does not violate either due process or the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 184-210
Author(s):  
Zia Akhtar

Summary In the United States (US) the family law litigant will have to consider the implications of laws that are federally recognised and those which the state embodies in its own family law statutes. The function of the equal protection clause and due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution protects the parties in family disputes that reach the court. The operation of the Full Faith and Credit Clause is an important consideration and is central to the question if the court can apply the law of the forum court (lex fori) or that of the state where the dispute emanated. The federal constitution allows the state courts to apply marriage laws of another state. If the issue is procedural, then the law of the state will be applied where the dispute that gave rise to the litigation (lex loci). This paper examines the interstate in family law by considering marriages, child custody, and adoption rules and it enquires whether the courts have been sufficiently consistent in interpreting family law of the state in accordance with Article IV, Section 1. There is also a section that compares the law in the US with the application of the lex fori rules in family cases in the Scottish jurisdiction and how that influences parties in family law disputes.


Author(s):  
Donald W. Rogers

This chapter traces Hague’s appeal through the Third Circuit Court of Appeals into the U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, showing how the Hughes court’s inner dynamics explain affirmation of the district court injunction. Observing flux in court personnel and law, the chapter shows that both courts embraced the contemporaneous civil liberties revolution by defending worker speech and assembly rights, but it reveals the Supreme Court as divided over constitutional logic. Justice Owen Roberts’s plurality opinion upheld speech and assembly rights under the Fourteenth Amendment privileges and immunities clause, Justice Harlan Fiske Stone’s concurrence incorporated the First Amendment into the Fourteenth Amendment due-process clause, and dissenters rejected federal jurisdiction. The ruling reflected the contentious evolution of civil liberties jurisprudence, not antiboss or labor law politics.


1974 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 357-359
Author(s):  
Burton S. Joseph

The writer attempts to explain the ramifications of some of the more significant new laws on drug abuse and child abuse enacted by the New York State Legislature and relate them to the problems of school personnel.


1941 ◽  
Vol 35 (5) ◽  
pp. 933-940
Author(s):  
Leonard S. Saxe

The Judicial Council and Its Objectives. My assignment is to implement Professor Sunderland's brilliant primer on judicial councils by a more specific presentation utilizing the experiences of the New York State Judicial Council. Of the three elements that enter into a consideration of the judicial branch of government, the first—the substantive law, the law of rights and duties—is not within the province of the judicial council either in New York or elsewhere. The second element—the machinery of justice—is the principal field of the judicial council. If the council does its work well in that field, attention cannot fail to be focused upon the third and most important element—also part of a judicial council's problems—the judicial personnel.


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