Prison Overcrowding Cases in the Aftermath of Wilson V. Seiter

1995 ◽  
Vol 75 (3) ◽  
pp. 390-405 ◽  
Author(s):  
JACK E. CALL
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Constitutional Rights ◽  
Court Cases ◽  
Legal Environment ◽  
Lower Court ◽  
Prison Overcrowding ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Deliberate Indifference

In 1991, the Supreme Court held in Wilson v. Seiter that in a prison conditions case, the plaintiff must prove that prison officials acted with deliberate indifference to the plaintiff's constitutional rights. Although this decision might appear to make it more difficult for inmates to win overcrowding lawsuits, it is predicted that this will not be the case. Published lower-court overcrowding cases are examined to determine what the effect of Wilson ( and two other Supreme Court cases decided since Wilson) has been. It is concluded that, although the number of published lower-court overcrowding cases since Wilson is not large, early indications are that these recent Supreme Court cases are not likely to have a dramatic impact upon the legal environment for prison overcrowding cases.

scholarly journals An Examination of the Coherence of Fourth Amendment Jurisprudence

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Kahn-Fogel
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Fourth Amendment ◽  
The Body ◽  
High Rate ◽  
Systematic Evaluation ◽  
Court Cases ◽  
Lower Court ◽  
Wrong Answer ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Lower Courts

For decades, scholars have routinely attacked the Supreme Court’s Fourth Amendment jurisprudence as an incoherent mess, impossible for lower courts to follow. These scholars have based their claims almost entirely on qualitative analysis of the Court’s opinions. This Article presents the first systematic evaluation of the consensus view of Fourth Amendment law as incoherent. The primary method I use to evaluate the coherence of the body of law is an assessment of lower court performance on Fourth Amendment issues the Supreme Court would later resolve. Because the Supreme Court’s agreement with lower courts likely reflects, at least in part, the clarity of the Supreme Court’s previous pronouncements, a high rate of agreement between lower courts and the Supreme Court would tend to suggest the coherence of the field. On the other hand, if the Court concludes most lower courts got the wrong answer to a Fourth Amendment question, that conclusion suggests either a lack of clarity in the Court’s precedent or that the Court simply shifted course after having issued seemingly straightforward pronouncements in the past. Either of these possibilities would suggest a kind of incoherence or instability in Fourth Amendment law. I examine lower court decisions dealing with issues the Supreme Court subsequently addressed over the course of twenty Supreme Court terms. Because Supreme Court cases tend to deal with the most difficult, divisive issues, I also compare the frequency with which the Court has felt compelled to review Fourth Amendment questions to the rate at which the Court has dealt with other important constitutional issues.

scholarly journals Erecting a Virtual Schoolhouse Gate

2019 ◽  
pp. 73-89
Author(s):  
Maryam Ahranjani
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
First Amendment ◽  
Freedom Of Speech ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Constitution ◽  
Constitutional Rights ◽  
Lower Court ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Interest In Technology

The very first amendment to the United States Constitution protects the freedom of speech. While the Supreme Court held in 1969 that students “do not shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate,” since then the Court has limited students' freedom of speech, stopping short of considering the boundaries of off-campus, online speech. Lower court holdings vary, meaning that a student engaging in certain online speech may not be punished at all in one state but would face harsh criminal punishments in another. The lack of a uniform standard leads to dangerously inconsistent punishments and poses the ultimate threat to constitutional knowledge and citizenship exercise: chilling of speech. Recent interest in technology-related cases and the presence of a new justice may reverse the Court's prior unwillingness to address this issue. In the meantime, this chapter argues that school districts should erect a virtual schoolhouse gate by implementing a uniform standard.

Dangerous Warrants

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nirej Sekhon
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Fourth Amendment ◽  
Constitutional Rights ◽  
Police Discretion ◽  
Accurate Identification ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Local Courts ◽  
State And Local ◽  
Municipal Court

The Supreme Court has cast judicial warrants as the Fourth Amendment gold standard for regulating police discretion. It has embraced a "warrant preference" on the premise that requiring police to obtain advance judicial approval for searches and seizures encourages accurate identification of evidence and suspects while minimizing interference with constitutional rights. The Court and commentators have overlooked the fact that most outstanding warrants do none of these things. Most outstanding warrants are what this article terms "non-compliance warrants": summarily issued arrest warrants for failures to comply with a court or police order. State and local courts are profligate in issuing such warrants for minor offenses. For example, the Department of Justice found that the municipal court in Ferguson, Missouri issued one warrant for every two of its residents. When issued as wantonly as this, warrants are dangerous because they generate police discretion rather than restrain it. Nonetheless, the Supreme Court has, most recently in Utah v. Strieff, treated non-compliance warrants as if no different from the traditional warrants that gave rise to the Fourth Amendment warrant preference. This article argues that non-compliance warrants pose unique dangers, constitutional and otherwise. Non-compliance warrants create powerful incentives for the police to conduct unconstitutional stops, particularly in poor and minority neighborhoods. Their enforcement also generates race and class feedback loops. Outstanding warrants beget arrests and arrests beget more warrants. Over time, this dynamic amplifies race and class disparities in criminal justice. The article concludes by prescribing a Fourth Amendment remedy to deter unconstitutional warrant checks. More importantly, the article identifies steps state and local courts might take to stem the continued proliferation of non-compliance warrants.

Confronting Forensic Pathologists

2021 ◽  
pp. 192536212110325
Author(s):  
Victor W. Weedn
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Forensic Pathology ◽  
Constitutional Rights ◽  
Court Cases ◽  
Forensic Pathologist ◽  
Sixth Amendment ◽  
Lower Courts ◽  
Forensic Scientists

Background: The Sixth Amendment Confrontation Clause gives defendants a right to confront their accusers. Method: U.S. Supreme Court cases that interpreted this right as applied to forensic scientists were reviewed. Results: Melendez-Diaz, Bullcoming, and Williams examined constitutional rights to confront forensic scientists. Lower courts have specifically examined their application to forensic pathology. Whether autopsy reports are considered “testimonial” varies among jurisdictions and has not been definitively settled. Defendants are generally able to compel testimony of forensic pathologists. Where the forensic pathologist is truly unavailable, the surrogate expert should be in a position to render an independent opinion.

scholarly journals U.S. Supreme Court Upholds Presidential Proclamation Restricting Entry of Individuals from Covered Countries

2018 ◽  
Vol 112 (4) ◽  
pp. 741-745 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
Establishment Clause ◽  
Lower Court ◽  
Security Interest ◽  
Foreign Countries ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Legal Challenges ◽  
Travel Restrictions ◽  
Preliminary Injunction

On June 26, 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld President Trump's most recent iteration of restrictions on entry to the United States by nationals from certain foreign countries. Following several rewrites of this travel ban, ensuing legal challenges, and lower court injunctions, the Court, in a five-to-four decision authored by Chief Justice Roberts, reversed the latest ruling of a lower court that had granted a partial preliminary injunction against the ban. Although acknowledging that there was considerable evidence tying the travel ban to bias against Muslims, the Supreme Court found that the plaintiffs were nonetheless unlikely to succeed either in their statutory claim that Trump lacked the authority to impose this ban or in their constitutional claim that the ban violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The Court accordingly reversed the lower court's injunction and remanded the case for further proceedings. The ruling, based on the Trump administration's asserted national security interest, leaves in place travel restrictions imposed on nationals of seven countries—Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen—only two of which are not Muslim-majority countries.

EXPRESSIVE MEANING, RACE, AND THE LAW:

Legal Theory ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-99
Author(s):  
Andrew Altman
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Legal Reasoning ◽  
Court Cases ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Expressive Meaning ◽  
The Law

Recently, legal and social thinkers have turned to the idea that actions possess a nonlinguistic meaning, called “expressive meaning.” In this article I examine the idea of expressive meaning and its role in legal reasoning. My focus is on a series of U.S. Supreme Court cases involving constitutional challenges to election districts drawn on the basis of race. The Supreme Court used the idea of expressive meaning in striking down the districts. After explicating the idea of expressive meaning, I explain and criticize the Court’s reasoning. I distinguish the approach of Justices Thomas and Scalia, who hold that all uses of race in districting do constitutional harm, from that of Justice O’Connor, who distinguishes uses of race that do constitutional harm from those that do not. I contend that Justice O’Connor is right to make the distinction but she draws the line using a questionable standard. A more defensible standard would be more accommodating to the districts that the Court invalidated.

The Warren Court and the Administration of Criminal Justice

1972 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-58
Author(s):  
Donal E.J. Macnamara ◽  
Edward Sagarin
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Constitutional Rights ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Warren Court ◽  
American Society

Three important changes in American society were given impetus by decisions of the Supreme Court under Earl Warren. These were in the issues of desegregation; one-man, one-vote; and the administration of criminal justice. The accusation against the Warren Court that it was coddling criminals and handcuffing police, belied by statistics, may have been incited by hostility that the Court had aroused because of its decisions on integration and electoral apportionment. Analysis of impor tant decisions in the years before Warren reveals a hesitant and ambiguous Court, taking both forward and backward steps in defense of the constitutional rights of the accused. Some of the Warren decisions on issues of criminal justice were unani mous, and others were made by a split court. A study of the voting records of Warren's colleagues leads to the belief that the major thrust of that court will not be reversed by its successor, unless under the pressure of a precipitate change in America's social atmosphere.

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