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.

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.

scholarly journals The Four Doctrines of Self-Executing Treaties

1995 ◽  
Vol 89 (4) ◽  
pp. 695-723 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Manuel Vázquez
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Federal Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
Federal Courts ◽  
The Self ◽  
Scholarly Writing ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Tremendous Amount

A distinction has become entrenched in United States law between treaties that are “self-executing” and those that are not. The precise nature of this distinction—indeed, its very existence—is a matter of some controversy’ and much confusion. More than one lower federal court has pronounced the distinction to be the “most confounding” in the United States law of treaties. A tremendous amount of scholarship has sought to clarify this distinction, but the honest observer cannot but agree with John Jackson’s observation that “[t]he substantial volume of scholarly writing on this issue has not yet resolved the confusion” surrounding it. The continuing, and remarkably candid, judicial confusion over this issue will, I hope, excuse yet another attempt to bring some coherence to the doctrine. In this article, I argue that much of the doctrinal disarray and judicial confusion is attributable to the failure of courts and commentators to recognize that for some time four distinct “doctrines” of self-executing treaties have been masquerading as one. With a view to furthering the development of doctrine in conformity with constitutional allocations of power, I identify these four “doctrines,” as reflected in the self-execution decisions of the Supreme Court and the lower federal courts, and I examine the very different types of analysis that they call for.

scholarly journals The Current Status of the Preclusive Effects of Judgments in the Federal Court System of the United States of America

Lexonomica ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-210
Author(s):  
Thomas Allan Heller
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
Federal Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
Federal Courts ◽  
Current Status ◽  
Court System ◽  
Res Judicata

Res judicata law in the United States of America has a long, extensive and complex history. The aim of this paper is to provide at least a working summary of some of the most important aspects of the current res judicata law in the federal court system of the United States. The flexible discovery, pleading and joinder rules have given rise to more expansive res judicata law. The paper will discuss what exactly constitutes a judgment; how the federal courts deal with the finality of judgments in multiple parties and multiple claim cases; the final judgment rule; the form of judgments; the methods to enter judgments and significance of entry of judgments; together with a detailed overview of the doctrine of res judicata itself, including the separate, but related twin doctrines of claim preclusion and issue preclusion.

Capacity, Attitudes, and Case Attributes: The Differential Success of the States before the United States Courts of Appeals

2005 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rorie Spill Solberg ◽  
Leonard Ray
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Federal Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
Federal Courts ◽  
Courts Of Appeals ◽  
The Past ◽  
Policy Goals ◽  
Adoption And Implementation ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Over Time

In the past few decades, the states have gained more discretion over policy adoption and implementation. Some of this expanded discretion has resulted from federal court rulings, as the states have increasingly used these courts to achieve their policy goals. But some states are more successful in the federal courts than others. Why is this? We examine cases argued by states in the United States Courts of Appeals between 1970 and 1996 to answer this question. Contrary to research at the Supreme Court level, we find no overall trend that the states are becoming more efficacious in court over time. We also find that the differences among the states' success in court cannot be attributed simply, or even primarily, to disparities in resources. Rather, case attributes and judicial attitudes provide the best explanations for state success in the Courts of Appeals.

A Century of America on Chinese Screens

2010 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 305-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhiwei Xiao
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Print Media ◽  
The United States ◽  
Sharp Contrast ◽  
American People ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Chinese Films ◽  
New Millennium

AbstractNo serious study has been published on how Chinese filmmakers have portrayed the United States and the American people over the last century. The number of such films is not large. That fact stands in sharp contrast not only to the number of "China pictures" produced in the United States, which is not surprising, but also in contrast to the major role played by Chinese print media. This essay surveys the history of Chinese cinematic images of America from the early twentieth century to the new millennium and notes the shifts from mostly positive portrayal in the pre-1949 Chinese films, to universal condemnation during the Mao years and to a more nuanced, complex, and multi-colored presentation of the last few decades.

Versatile and cheap: a global history of soy in the first half of the twentieth century

2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 461-482 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ines Prodöhl
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Cash Crop ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
Transnational Actors ◽  
History Of ◽  
Second World

AbstractThis article traces the complex and shifting organization of soy's production and consumption from Northeast China to Europe and the United States. It focuses on a set of national and transnational actors with differing interests in the global and national spread of soybeans. The combination of these actors in certain spatiotemporal contexts enabled a fundamental change in soy from an Asian to an American cash crop. At the beginning of the twentieth century, soy rapidly became Northeast China's cash crop, owing to steadily increasing Western demand. However, the versatility of soy – and soy oil in particular – offered a highly successful response to the agricultural and industrial challenges that the United States faced during the Great Depression and the Second World War. By the end of the war, American farmers in the Midwest cultivated more soybeans than their Chinese counterparts.

The Cambridge History of America and the World

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Military Power ◽  
American Empire ◽  
Global Power ◽  
Cultural Terms ◽  
The World ◽  
Fourth Volume ◽  
History Of

The fourth volume of The Cambridge History of America and the World examines the heights of American global power in the mid-twentieth century and how challenges from at home and abroad altered the United States and its role in the world. The second half of the twentieth century marked the pinnacle of American global power in economic, political, and cultural terms, but even as it reached such heights, the United States quickly faced new challenges to its power, originating both domestically and internationally. Highlighting cutting-edge ideas from scholars from all over the world, this volume anatomizes American power as well as the counters and alternatives to 'the American empire.' Topics include US economic and military power, American culture overseas, human rights and humanitarianism, third-world internationalism, immigration, communications technology, and the Anthropocene.

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