The Accidental Abstention Doctrine: After Nearly 30 Years, the Case for Diverting Federal Takings Claims to State Court Under Williamson County Has Yet to Be Made

More than 1000 passengers on a Panamanian-registered ferry drowned in the Red Sea. Some survivors and relatives of some of the victims sued the classification and certification ship society which had surveyed the ferry. Relying on the Brussels I Regulation, the plaintiffs sued the defendants in the latter’s seat (in Italy). The defendants claimed sovereign immunity as they were acting on behalf of Panama (that is, the flag state). The CJEU ruled that, generally, Article 1(1) of the Regulation means that an action for damages, brought against private-law corporations engaged in the classification and certification of ships on behalf of, and upon delegation from, a non-EU Member State, falls within the concept of ‘civil and commercial matters’ in the Regulation. The defendants were therefore not immune. The CJEU qualified its ruling by saying that this is conditional on the activity being not exercised under ‘public powers’ (within the meaning of EU law) because then it would then be a sovereign and not a commercial activity. The CJEU thereby ruled that the customary public international law principle that foreign states have immunity from jurisdiction does not preclude an EU Member State court seised of a dispute from exercising jurisdiction under the Regulation in these circumstances.

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An Update to the Squire State Court of Last Resort Professionalization Index

State Politics & Policy Quarterly ◽

10.1017/spq.2020.7 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-8

Author(s):

Peverill Squire ◽

Jordan Butcher

Keyword(s):

Relative Stability ◽

State Courts ◽

State Court ◽

Reform Movements ◽

Current Version ◽

The Future ◽

Relative Standing

Abstract The current version of the Squire state court of last resort professionalization index is regularly used in studies of state courts. We have updated the index for 2019, producing a second and more recent index. Given the relative stability between this index and its predecessor, it is unlikely that many findings will change. During the 15 years that lapsed between the first index and the more recent one, little changed in most states, while reforms in a few places substantially shifted the relative standing of their court of last resort. It seems unlikely that the nation will experience any sweeping reform movements impacting state courts of last resort across the board. The more likely scenario is the sort of idiosyncratic changes impacting a few courts that were witnessed over the last decade and a half. Thus, looking to the future, it may be prudent to update the index every 5–10 years to capture any notable alterations.

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Products Liability Law – Lessons from the Military and Industrial Contexts

Journal of Tort Law ◽

10.1515/jtl-2020-2002 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 13 (2) ◽

pp. 303-322

Author(s):

Nathan A. Schachtman

Keyword(s):

Common Law ◽

Consumer Products ◽

State Court ◽

Court Cases ◽

Industrial Products ◽

Products Liability ◽

Product Use ◽

Liability Law ◽

Industrial Settings ◽

The Military

AbstractThe policy bases for American products liability law have developed largely through a series of state court cases that involved products sold to ordinary consumers. These cases featured significant disparities between manufacturers and injured consumers in understanding latent risks from product use, and in their ability to avoid the risks and to absorb and to distribute the costs of the risks. The policy bases that appear cogent for consumer products fail to explain or justify the imposition of liability in many industrial settings, which involve military or industrial customers that are well aware of the products’ latent risks and that have moral, common law, statutory, and regulatory duties to ensure that the industrial products are used safely.

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Public Perceptions of State Court Impartiality and Court Legitimacy in an Era of Partisan Politics

State Politics & Policy Quarterly ◽

10.1177/1532440019883979 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 20 (1) ◽

pp. 54-80

Author(s):

Corey Barwick ◽

Ryan Dawkins

Keyword(s):

Public Perceptions ◽

State Court ◽

Partisan Politics ◽

Court Decisions ◽

State Supreme Courts ◽

Supreme Courts ◽

Political World ◽

Policy Goals ◽

Citizen Perceptions ◽

Original Survey

Why do some people evaluate state supreme courts as more legitimate than others? Conventional academic wisdom suggests that people evaluate courts in nonpartisan ways, and that people make a distinction between how they evaluate individual court decisions and how they evaluate the court’s legitimacy more broadly. We challenge this idea by arguing that people’s partisan identities have a strong influence on how people evaluate the impartiality of courts, just as they do other aspects of the political world. Using original survey experiments, validated by existing observational survey data, we show that people perceive state supreme courts as being more impartial when courts issue decisions that match the ideological preferences of their preferred political party, while court decisions at odds with their party’s policy goals diminish people’s belief that courts are impartial arbiters of the law. We also show that the effects of citizen perceptions of impartiality erode evaluations of state court legitimacy, which makes them want to limit the independence of judicial institutions.

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