Requiring What’s Not Required: Circuit Courts Are Disregarding Supreme Court Precedent and Revisiting Officer Inadvertence in Cyberlaw Cases

This article discusses courtroom proceedings in U.S. federal courts. It begins by examining how federal district courts conduct trials. To make clear how these proceedings run it compares what really happens in most trials compared to how Hollywood portrays trials. In addition, it considers several key rights associated with trial proceedings. From there, it considers how federal circuit courts conduct business in open court. A key aspect of this section is how circuit proceedings differ across the country because each circuit has different rules governing arguments. Finally, it assesses the oral arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court as well as how these proceedings may affect the decisions justices make. In each section it provides a descriptive overview of the processes and then discusses current research and direction for future analyses.

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Which Statute Will Trump

10.37419/lr.v5.i1.3 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 5 (1) ◽

pp. 105-131

Author(s):

Allen Al-Haj

Keyword(s):

Supreme Court ◽

Labor Relations ◽

United States Supreme Court ◽

The United States ◽

Unintended Consequences ◽

Class Action ◽

Mutual Aid ◽

National Labor Relations Board ◽

The Cost ◽

Circuit Courts

A law can often be a double-edged sword—its mandate or protection of one right will sometimes come at the cost of another. Compounding this problem of unintended consequences is that laws do not operate in a vacuum. Instead, laws interact with other laws, and if they conflict, courts must determine which will prevail. Determining the validity of class-action waivers in employment arbitration agreements will require reconciling the Federal Arbitration Act’s mandate that arbitration agreements be enforced according to their terms against the National Labor Relations Act’s protection of employees’ right to engage in concerted activities for the purpose of mutual aid and protection. The dispute over the validity of these agreements requires courts to determine which law and congressional policy should prevail. The National Labor Relations Board and circuit courts throughout the country have been unable to reach a uniform decision, which has prompted the United States Supreme Court to grant certiorari on a triad of cases concerning this issue. With a decision from the nation’s highest Court expected during the 2017–18 term, this Comment analyzes the background and legal arguments behind these competing statutes to determine how the Court is likely to rule. This Comment concludes that, given the Court’s previous rulings in arbitration and class-action cases and the recent Supreme Court confirmation of Justice Neil Gorsuch, the Court is likely to rule in favor of validating class-action waivers in employment arbitration agreements.

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Peer effects on the United States Supreme Court

Quantitative Economics ◽

10.3982/qe1296 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 (3) ◽

pp. 981-1019 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Richard Holden ◽

Michael Keane ◽

Matthew Lilley

Keyword(s):

Supreme Court ◽

Peer Effects ◽

Peer Group ◽

United States Supreme Court ◽

Supreme Court Decision ◽

The United States ◽

Mechanical Effect ◽

Using Data ◽

The Impact ◽

Circuit Courts

Using data on essentially every U.S. Supreme Court decision since 1946, we estimate a model of peer effects on the Court. We estimate the impact of justice ideology and justice votes on the votes of their peers. To identify the peer effects, we use two instruments that generate plausibly exogenous variation in the peer group itself, or in the votes of peers. The first instrument utilizes the fact that the composition of the Court varies from case to case due to recusals or absences for health reasons. The second utilizes the fact that many justices previously sat on Federal Circuit Courts, and justices are generally much less likely to overturn decisions in cases sourced from their former “home” court. We find large peer effects. For example, we can use our model to predict the impact of replacing Justice Ginsburg with Justice Barrett. Under the the assumption that Justice Barrett's ideological position aligns closely with Justice Scalia, for whom she clerked, we predict that her influence on the Court will increase the Conservative vote propensity of the other justices by 4.7 percentage points. That translates into 0.38 extra conservative votes per case on top of the impact of her own vote. In general, we find indirect effects are large relative to the direct mechanical effect of a justice's own vote.

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