Cases Without Controversies

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
James E. Pfander
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Federal Courts ◽  
Judicial Power ◽  
Habeas Corpus ◽  
Federal Law ◽  
Antebellum America ◽  
Article Iii Courts ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Over Time

Cases Without Controversies: Uncontested Adjudication in Article III Courts offers a new account of the power of federal courts in the United States to hear and determine uncontested applications to assert or register a claim of right. Familiar to lawyers in civil law countries as forms of voluntary or non-contentious jurisdiction, these uncontested applications fit uneasily with the commitment to adversary legalism in the United States. Indeed, modern accounts of federal judicial power often urge that the language of Article III of the U.S. Constitution limits federal courts to the adjudication of concrete disputes between adverse parties and rules out all forms of non-contentious jurisdiction. Said to rest on the so-called “case-or-controversy” requirement of Article III, this requirement of party contestation threatens the power of federal courts to conduct a range of familiar proceedings, such as the oversight of bankruptcy proceedings, the issuance of warrants, and the adjudication of applications for mandamus and habeas corpus relief. By recounting the tradition of naturalization and other uncontested litigation in antebellum America and coupling that tradition with an account of the important difference between cases and controversies, this book challenges the prevailing understanding of Article III. In addition to defending the power of federal courts to hear uncontested matters of federal law, this book examines the way the Constitution’s meaning has changed over time and suggests an interpretive methodology that would allow the U.S. Supreme Court to take account of the old and the new in defining the contours of federal judicial power.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
James E. Pfander
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Federal Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
Federal Courts ◽  
Court System ◽  
Federal Law ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
History Of ◽  
Article Iii Courts

This book’s introduction poses the problem of uncontested adjudication in the federal court system of the United States by focusing on the 2013 decision in United States v. Windsor. While in that case, the Supreme Court reached the merits despite the absence of a continuing dispute between the parties, Justice Antonin Scalia objected that doing so violated the adverse-party requirement, which he viewed as a constitutional requirement imposed by the case-or-controversy language of Article III. In arguing that federal courts may not entertain uncontested claims of right, Scalia’s dissent in Windsor nicely poses the question at the heart of this book. But the book reaches a different conclusion, based on the text and history of the Constitution, and the early practice of Article III courts. Having set the stage, the introduction offers an overview of the book’s argument. Part I describes the early practice of the antebellum federal courts, Part II the rise of the case-or-controversy rule in the early twentieth century, and Part III the continuing relevance of uncontested forms of adjudication. Synthesizing these strands, the book concludes that Article III courts can entertain proceedings to hear and determine uncontested applications to assert or register a claim of right under federal law.

Introduction

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noel Maurer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Latin America ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Institutional Reform ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Government ◽  
Foreign Investors ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Over Time

This introductory chapter discusses the shift from politicized confrontations like the imbroglio of 1900 to legalized disputes like the more orderly affair of 2007. It advances four basic findings. First, American government intervention on behalf of U.S. foreign investors was astoundingly successful at extracting compensation through the 1980s. Second, American domestic interests trumped strategic concerns again and again, for small economic gains relative to the U.S. economy and the potential strategic losses. Third, the United States proved unable to impose institutional reform in Latin America and West Africa even while American agents were in place. Finally, the technology that the U.S. government used to protect American property rights overseas changed radically over time.

Not Imprisonment in a Legal Sense

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelly Lytle Hernández
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
Chinese Immigrants ◽  
The United States ◽  
Federal Law ◽  
History Of ◽  
Immigrant Detention ◽  
One Year ◽  
The U.S

The third chapter is a western tale of national and global import. That tale, which sutures the split between the history of incarceration within the United States and the history of deportation from the United States, swirls around the passage of the 1892 Geary Act, a federal law that required all Chinese laborers in the United States to prove their legal residence and register with the federal government or be subject to up to one year of imprisonment at hard labor and, then, deportation. Chinese immigrants rebelled against the new law, refusing to be locked out, kicked out, or singled out for imprisonment. Launching the first mass civil disobedience campaign for immigrant rights in the history of the United States, Chinese immigrants forced the U.S. Supreme Court to issue a set of sweeping and enduring decisions regarding the future of U.S. immigration control. Buried in those decisions, which cut through Los Angeles during the summer of 1893, lay the invention of immigrant detention as a nonpunitive form of caging noncitizens within the United States. It was then an obscure and contested practice of indisputably racist origins. It is now one of the most dynamic sectors of the U.S. carceral landscape.

scholarly journals U.S. Supreme Court Denies Certiorari in Habeas Case Brought by Guantánamo Bay Detainee Challenging His Continuing Detention

2019 ◽  
Vol 113 (4) ◽  
pp. 849-855
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
September 11 ◽  
Habeas Corpus ◽  
Past Time ◽  
Guantanamo Bay ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
September 11 Attacks ◽  
The U.S

On June 10, 2019, the Supreme Court denied certiorari in a case in which the D.C. Circuit held that the United States could continue to detain an individual at Guantánamo Bay until the cessation of the hostilities that justified his initial detention, notwithstanding the extraordinary length of the hostilities to date. The case, Al-Alwi v. Trump, arises from petitioner Moath Hamza Ahmed Al-Alwi's petition for a writ of habeas corpus challenging the legality of his continued detention at the United States Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay. The Supreme Court's denial of certiorari was accompanied by a statement by Justice Breyer observing that “it is past time to confront the difficult question” of how long a detention grounded in the U.S. response to the September 11 attacks can be justified.

scholarly journals Latin American Immigration to the United States

Daedalus ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 142 (3) ◽  
pp. 48-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marta Tienda ◽  
Susana M. Sánchez
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Latin American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Children Of Immigrants ◽  
Foreign Born ◽  
Cumulative Impact ◽  
Political Conflicts ◽  
Latin American Immigration ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Over Time

This essay provides an overview of immigration from Latin America since 1960, focusing on changes in both the size and composition of the dominant streams and their cumulative impact on the U.S. foreign-born population. We briefly describe the deep historical roots of current migration streams and the policy backdrop against which migration from the region surged. Distinguishing among the three major pathways to U.S. residence – family sponsorship, asylum, and unauthorized entry – we explain how contemporary flows are related both to economic crises, political conflicts, and humanitarian incidents in sending countries, but especially to idiosyncratic application of existing laws over time. The concluding section highlights the importance of investing in the children of immigrants to meet the future labor needs of an aging nation.

A Saint of Our Own

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen Sprows Cummings
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
American Culture ◽  
The United States ◽  
Panoramic View ◽  
Pope Francis ◽  
Heaven And Earth ◽  
The Church ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Over Time

Canonization, the process by which the Catholic Church names saints, may be fundamentally about holiness, but it is never only about holiness. In the United States, it was often about the ways in which Catholics defined, defended, and celebrated their identities as Americans. This book traces saint-seeking in the United States from the 1880s, the decade in which U.S. Catholics nominated their first candidates for canonization, to 2015, the year Pope Francis named the twelfth American saint in the first such ceremony held on U.S. soil. It argues that U.S. Catholics’ search for a saint of their own sprung from a desire to persuade the Vatican to recognize their country’s holy heroes. But Rome was not U.S. saint-seekers only audience. For the U.S. Catholic faithful, saints served not only as mediators between heaven and earth, but also between the faith they professed and the American culture in which they lived. This panoramic view of American sanctity, focused on figures at the nexus of holiness and U.S. history, this book explores U.S. Catholics’ understanding of themselves both as members of the church and as citizens of the nation—and reveals how those identities converged, diverged, and changed over time.

scholarly journals A big-data analysis of political rhetoric relating the developments of the United States, China, and global powers

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 227-243
Author(s):  
Patrick Carter ◽  
Jeffrie Wang ◽  
Davis Chau
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Big Data ◽  
Data Analysis ◽  
Political Rhetoric ◽  
The United States ◽  
Big Data Analysis ◽  
Content Type ◽  
World Power ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Over Time

PurposeThe similarities between the developments of the United States (U.S.) and China into global powers (countries with global economic, military, and political influence) can be analyzed through big data analysis from both countries. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether or not China is on the same path to becoming a world power like what the U.S. did one hundred years ago.Design/methodology/approachThe data of this study is drawn from political rhetoric and linguistic analysis by using “big data” technology to identify the most common words and political trends over time from speeches made by the U.S. and Chinese leaders from three periods, including 1905-1945 in U.S., 1977-2017 in U.S. and 1977-2017 in China.FindingsRhetoric relating to national identity was most common amongst Chinese and the U.S. leaders over time. The differences between the early-modern U.S. and the current U.S. showed the behavioral changes of countries as they become powerful. It is concluded that China is not a world power at this stage. Yet, it is currently on the path towards becoming one, and is already reflecting characteristics of present-day U.S., a current world power.Originality/valueThis paper presents a novel approach to analyze historical documents through big data text mining, a methodology scarcely used in historical studies. It highlights how China as of now is most likely in a transitionary stage of becoming a world power.

Race, Space, Time

Peyote Effect ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 169-176
Author(s):  
Alexander S. Dawson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Economic Development ◽  
African American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Short History ◽  
Spanish Inquisition ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Over Time

We begin the book’s conclusion with the juxtaposition of two different stories of peyotism: the creation of an ecotourism business featuring Wixárika peyotism in Potrero de la Palmita, Nayarit, in 2010 and the short history of an African American peyotist church in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the 1920s. The former is licit, enjoying support by a state committed to economic development, while the latter faced constant threats from the police before collapsing, in part due to its members’ fear of arrest. These two stories remind us of the central roles that place and time play in the history of peyotism across the U.S.-Mexican border, but they also force us to consider the ways that ideas about race have informed the battles over peyote in Mexico and the United States. Particularly striking is the fact that the racial prohibitions enacted by the Spanish Inquisition resonate with current law. Also notable is the fact that Mexicans and Americans have deployed similar ideas about race over time in their battles over peyote. This speaks to the underlying anxieties that indigeneity evokes in both societies, as well as the role that indigenous subjects have played in the creation of whiteness in both the United States and Mexico.

Customary International Law and U.S. Judicial Power

2020 ◽  
pp. 251-264
Author(s):  
Thomas H. Lee
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Law ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Federal Courts ◽  
Judicial Power ◽  
Customary International Law ◽  
The Third

This chapter describes specific points of divergence between the Third and Fourth Restatements of the Foreign Relations Law of the United States regarding how U.S. courts should engage with customary international law. The Third Restatement, adopted in 1987, envisioned U.S. courts fluent in and engaged with international law, deploying a U.S. foreign relations jurisprudence in dialogue with international law and lawyers. Customary international law was a central feature of this vision because it was the prime pathway for human rights litigation in federal courts when U.S. treaty-based human-rights initiatives had stalled. Appearing thirty years later, the Fourth Restatement exhibits a fundamentally different orientation toward customary international law. Customary international law is no longer embraced as it was in the Third Restatement as an opportunity to play offense, to advance the international law of human rights. That vision inspired a reaction among some U.S. legal scholars who questioned the U.S. federal law status of customary international law and the legitimacy of U.S. judges advancing the customary international law of human rights. The Fourth Restatement seeks a middle ground by defending against this revision of customary international law’s status role in the United States, concerned that the revisionist view might encourage and provide cover for U.S. courts to dismiss cases and claims with foreign policy ramifications that they should be adjudicating. The approaches of the two Restatements, taken together, have contributed to the disengagement of U.S. judges from customary international law altogether, to the detriment of U.S. conduct of foreign policy and contrary to the original constitutional specification of the judicial power of the United States as reflected in Article III, the Judiciary Act of 1789 that established the federal courts, and early historical practice.

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