Personalized Law and Equal Protection

2021 ◽  
pp. 143-164
Author(s):  
Omri Ben-Shahar ◽  
Ariel Porat
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Constitution ◽  
Equal Protection ◽  
Court Cases ◽  
Disparate Impact ◽  
Equal Protection Clause ◽  
Attribute Data ◽  
Uniform Treatment

This chapter examines personalized law from the perspective of the Equal Protection Clause in the United States Constitution. Some classifications of people, when made for the purpose of differentiated treatment, are subject to stifling doctrinal constraints. Could such classifications be made under personalized law? The chapter argues that personalized law mitigates the constitutional concerns relating to suspect classifications. Treating people as individuals, using multi-attribute data-weighed tailoring, and not as identical members in a certain class, is permissible because members of the class are not singled out for class-specific uniform treatment. The chapter examines landmark Supreme Court cases on sex and race classifications, showing that the limits set by the Court and the narrow permission it granted for some uses of classifications, all fit well within a scheme of personalized law. In addition, the chapter examines problems of unintended disparate impact that could arise under personalized law, and demonstrates the unique advantage of the algorithmic methods fueling personalized law in reducing and eliminating such effects.

Sperry Corp. v. United States

1989 ◽  
Vol 83 (1) ◽  
pp. 86-90
Author(s):  
Rose Cecile Chan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
World Trade ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Constitution ◽  
Preliminary Ruling ◽  
Fifth Amendment ◽  
Court Of Appeals ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Federal Circuit

Plaintiffs, Sperry Corp. and Sperry World Trade Inc. (Sperry), received an award from the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal (Tribunal). Upon payment of the award, the United States deducted 2 percent of the total amount pursuant to a directive license issued by the Secretary of the Treasury regarding recovered claims by U.S. nationals against Iran. When plaintiffs challenged the authority of the Treasury to make the deduction and the United States Claims Court announced a preliminary ruling that concurred with plaintiffs’ position, the Executive persuaded Congress to approve legislation authorizing specified percentages to be deducted by the United States from Tribunal awards to U.S. citizens. Responding to the plaintiffs’ challenge to the constitutionality of the newly enacted statute, the United States Claims Court dismissed the suit and, on appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (per Meyer, J.) reversed and held: that the deduction constitutes a taking without compensation in violation of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. In September 1988, the United States filed notice of appeal with the Supreme Court.

American Perspectives on Self-Incrimination and the Compelled Production of Evidence

2002 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 218-242
Author(s):  
Mark Berger
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Constitution ◽  
Search And Seizure ◽  
Fifth Amendment ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Intimate Relation ◽  
Government Authority

The Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution provides that no person may be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself. The Boyd decision in 1886 recognised an intimate relation between the privilege against self-incrimination and the restrictions on search and seizure in the Fourth Amendment and created a virtually impenetrable barrier to government demands that a suspect or defendant be compelled to produce evidence against himself. However, since that time the Supreme Court has progressively restricted the scope of Fifth Amendment protection in relation to the compelled production of evidence. This has been achieved by requiring all citizens to appear before grand juries; by denying Fifth Amendment protection to entities; by holding that the compelled production of evidence does not breach the Fifth Amendment unless the very act of production is self-incriminatory; and by denying the privilege in relation to required records. The Supreme Court's stance reflects a recognition of the complexity of contemporary law enforcement problems and may be seen as an attempt to balance the state's interest in the successful prosecution of crime against the citizen's interest in being free from state intrusion. The effect of the Supreme Court's reforms has been to broaden government authority to compel offenders to assist in their own prosecutions whilst limiting Fifth Amendment protection to incrimination through the accused's own testimony or its equivalent.

California's Holocaust Victim Insurance Relief Act and American Preemption Doctrine

2003 ◽  
Vol 4 (11) ◽  
pp. 1193-1205 ◽  
Author(s):  
Libby Adler
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
United States Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public University ◽  
Fourteenth Amendment ◽  
United States Constitution ◽  
Historical Injustice ◽  
University Admissions ◽  
Equal Protection Clause

On the same day that the United States Supreme Court handed down its much anticipated decisions on affirmative action in higher education, holding that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution permits a degree of race-consciousness in public university admissions, it also issued a far less heralded decision with implications for the ability of the states to address historical injustice. In American Insurance Association v. Garamendi (Garamendi), five members of the Court, led by Justice Souter, found that California's Holocaust Victim Insurance Relief Act of 1999 (HVIRA) “interferes with the National Government's conduct of foreign relations” and is therefore preempted.

Social Policy, Power, and Social Science Research

1973 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Clark
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Constitution ◽  
Policy Decisions ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Equal Protection Clause ◽  
Public Policy Decisions

In its historic decision of May 17, 1954 (Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka),the United States Supreme Court ruled that state laws which required or permitted racial segregation in public education violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution. In concluding that "Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal," the Court cited the work of social scientists in its pioneering and controversial footnote eleven. This citation demonstrated dramatically that the theories and research findings of social scientists could influence public policy decisions on educational and other social problems. The use of social science research in the making of such important policy decisions raised the question among social scientists of the propriety of their involvement or the validity of their contribution to the decisions.

Immaturity and Fair Opportunity

2021 ◽  
pp. 301-338
Author(s):  
David O. Brink
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Juvenile Offenders ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
Court Cases ◽  
The Asymmetry ◽  
Adult Criminal Court

There is a moral asymmetry between juvenile and adult offenders if, all else being equal, juveniles should be punished less for their offenses than their adult counterparts should be punished. The trend to transfer juveniles to adult criminal court denies this asymmetry. Developmental and democratic rationales for the asymmetry are distinguished, and the developmental rationale is shown to be more basic. The developmental rationale for the asymmetry is reflected in Supreme Court cases in the United States recognizing constitutional limitations on sentences for juvenile offenders. These cases pose interesting questions about the tension between categorical sentencing rules and individualized justice.

Implying a Federal Constitutional Right to Education

2019 ◽  
pp. 135-163
Author(s):  
Derek W. Black
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Due Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Constitution ◽  
Equal Protection ◽  
Right To Education ◽  
Federal Constitutional ◽  
Substantive Due Process ◽  
Constitutional Right

In this chapter, Derek W. Black surveys the various litigation, judicial, and scholarly theories through which courts might recognize a right to education under the United States Constitution. He begins by sorting those theories into their major doctrinal categories and subcategories and explaining their basic arguments, including substantive due process, equal protection, privileges and immunities, citizenship, and originalism. Black then critically evaluates those theories, examining both the positives and negatives of the leading theories. He concludes that while a number of theories are plausible, scholarly theories have tended toward originalism in recent years and are the most likely to be successful before the courts.

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