Courts Continue to Address the Wealth Disparity Issue

1989 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael W. La Morte
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
School Finance ◽  
Appellate Court ◽  
State Supreme Courts ◽  
State School ◽  
Educational Adequacy ◽  
Supreme Courts ◽  
School Finance Litigation ◽  
School Financing ◽  
The U.S

Lawsuits in nearly three dozen states have challenged the constitutionality of state school finance provisions on equal protection or educational adequacy grounds. Presently, the U.S. Supreme Court, a federal appellate court, and 10 state supreme courts have upheld state provisions, and 7 state supreme courts have held school financing provisions unconstitutional. Although wealth-related school finance litigation began in 1968 and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on the issue in 1973, the judicial caldron continues to boil. Protracted rounds of litigation over the years in several states and a rash of recent suits reveal this issue to remain lively and contentious.

State Supreme Courts and Public Policy: A Bibliography

1981 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 1-3
Author(s):  
G.Alan Tarr
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
School Finance ◽  
Life Support ◽  
Plea Bargaining ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Political Scientist ◽  
State Supreme Courts ◽  
Supreme Courts ◽  
State Supreme Court

During the past decade political scientists have become increasingly aware that state supreme courts make major contributions to public policy. Various highly publicized decisions concerning, for example, school finance, the termination of life support systems, and plea bargaining have underlined the importance of state supreme court policymaking. Historical studies have documented that this policy involvement is not merely a recent phenomenon. However, the Burger Court's new federalism has invited state supreme courts to play a more active role, and many courts have availed themselves of this opportunity.Yet despite the obvious importance of state supreme court activity, research on their policymaking has lagged. In part this can be attributed to the sheer volume of cases they annually decide. Numerous law journals assist the political scientist in overcoming this difficulty by publishing annual surveys of state supreme court decisions. Listed below are journals which provide such surveys.

Malpractice & Negligence: State Supreme Courts Limit Therapists’ Duties to Third Parties

1999 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 204-205
Author(s):  
Megan Cleary
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Abuse ◽  
Child Sexual Abuse ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
New Hampshire ◽  
Third Parties ◽  
State Supreme Courts ◽  
Recovered Memories ◽  
Supreme Courts ◽  
Repressed Memory ◽  
University Of Colorado

In recent years, the law in the area of recovered memories in child sexual abuse cases has developed rapidly. See J.K. Murray, “Repression, Memory & Suggestibility: A Call for Limitations on the Admissibility of Repressed Memory Testimony in Abuse Trials,” University of Colorado Law Review, 66 (1995): 477-522, at 479. Three cases have defined the scope of liability to third parties. The cases, decided within six months of each other, all involved lawsuits by third parties against therapists, based on treatment in which the patients recovered memories of sexual abuse. The New Hampshire Supreme Court, in Hungerford v. Jones, 722 A.2d 478 (N.H. 1998), allowed such a claim to survive, while the supreme courts in Iowa, in J.A.H. v. Wadle & Associates, 589 N.W.2d 256 (Iowa 1999), and California, in Eear v. Sills, 82 Cal. Rptr. 281 (1991), rejected lawsuits brought by nonpatients for professional liability.

scholarly journals THE NON-RECOGNITION OF ISLAMIC MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE

2012 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
John McDermott
Keyword(s):  
General Rule ◽  
The United States ◽  
Spousal Abuse ◽  
Muslim Country ◽  
State Supreme Courts ◽  
Supreme Courts ◽  
Polygamous Marriage ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Islamic Marriage ◽  
The U.S

The general rule regarding the validity of foreign marriages followed by most US courts is that a marriage if validly performed is valid everywhere. But there are exceptions based on public policy. Thus, while a non-incestuous, monogamous marriage performed in a Muslim country between consenting adults would be recognized in the United States, a polygamous marriage most likely will not. Bigamy is a crime in all states, although the husband is rarely prosecuted unless there are other factors, e.g., spousal abuse or fraud. The U.S. Constitution’s protection of an individual’s religious rights might be asserted as a basis for allowing Muslim men to have more than one wife but it seems unlikely to succeed as the Supreme Court rejected a similar argument in a case involving a Mormon man who had several wives as permitted by his religion. However, several state supreme courts have recently held that a State cannot constitutionally ban same sex marriages; this article explores the possibility that similar bans on polygamous marriage might be held to be unconstitutional. The article also explores the difficulties encountered in attempting to have a US court give effect to a Ṭalāq divorce, especially where the Ṭalāq is not confirmed by a court or other judicial body.

Supreme Court Elections: How Much They Have Changed, Why They Changed, and What Difference It Makes

2017 ◽  
Vol 42 (03) ◽  
pp. 900-923 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence Baum
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Interest Group ◽  
The United States ◽  
Business Community ◽  
State Supreme Courts ◽  
Supreme Courts ◽  
Electoral Campaigns ◽  
State Supreme Court ◽  
Selection Systems

This essay draws on four recent studies of elections to state supreme courts in the United States to probe widely perceived changes in the scale and content of electoral campaigns for seats on state supreme courts. 1 Evidence from these studies and other sources indicates that changes have indeed occurred, though they are more limited than most commentaries suggest. These changes stem most directly from trends in state supreme court policy that have attracted interest-group activity, especially from the business community. Like their extent, the effects of change in supreme court campaigns have been meaningful although exaggerated by many observers. What we have learned about changes in supreme court elections has implications for choices among selection systems, but those implications are mixed and complex.

The Quixotic Search for Consensus on the U.S. Supreme Court: A Cross-Judicial Empirical Analysis of the Rehnquist Court Justices

1997 ◽  
Vol 91 (2) ◽  
pp. 390-408 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott D. Gerber ◽  
Keeok Park
Keyword(s):  
Behavior Change ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Empirical Analysis ◽  
Appellate Court ◽  
Lower Court ◽  
Stare Decisis ◽  
Rehnquist Court ◽  
Institutional Differences ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Opinion Writing

In this first systematic and extensive application of cross-judicial methodology, we examine the members of the Rehnquist Court (1986–94 terms) with prior appellate court experience to discern any correlation with their Supreme Court behavior in terms of nonconsensual opinion writing and voting. We find that they become less consensual as justices than they were as judges in the lower court. Importantly, this finding holds after controlling for such institutional differences between the two court levels as size, ideology, case types, stare decisis, and norms. Consistent with the neoinstitutional perspective, we surmise that this behavior change is due to the modern Supreme Court being unique, a court on which the members feel it is desirable, necessary, and possible to express policy disagreements with the majority via separate opinions and votes.

Judicial Review in State Supreme Courts: A Comparative Study. By Laura Langer. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002. 192p. $62.50 cloth, $20.95 paper.

2002 ◽  
Vol 96 (4) ◽  
pp. 826-827
Author(s):  
Donald R. Songer
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Judicial Review ◽  
Separation Of Powers ◽  
State University ◽  
State Supreme Courts ◽  
Judicial Decision ◽  
Supreme Courts ◽  
Judicial Decision Making ◽  
Almost All

Interest in strategic approaches to an understanding of judicial decision making, including the implications of the separation of powers (SOP), has grown dramatically in recent years. Unfortunately, almost all the research on these SOP interactions has been limited to those involving the U.S. Supreme Court. Laura Langer's book provides a refreshing alternative to the exclusive Supreme Court focus by examining the significance of separation of powers concerns for the exercise of judicial review by state supreme courts.

Challenges to the Impartiality of State Supreme Courts: Legitimacy Theory and “New-Style” Judicial Campaigns

2008 ◽  
Vol 102 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
JAMES L. GIBSON
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
State Legislature ◽  
Campaign Contributions ◽  
State Courts ◽  
State Supreme Courts ◽  
Supreme Courts ◽  
Institutional Legitimacy ◽  
State Supreme Court ◽  
Campaign Activity ◽  
Free Speech Rights

Institutional legitimacy is perhaps the most important political capital courts possess. Many believe, however, that the legitimacy of elected state courts is being threatened by the rise of politicized judicial election campaigns and the breakdown of judicial impartiality. Three features of such campaigns, the argument goes, are dangerous to the perceived impartiality of courts: campaign contributions, attack ads, and policy pronouncements by candidates for judicial office. By means of an experimental vignette embedded in a representative survey, I investigate whether these factors in fact compromise the legitimacy of courts. The survey data indicate that campaign contributions and attack ads do indeed lead to a diminution of legitimacy, in courts just as in legislatures. However, policy pronouncements, even those promising to make decisions in certain ways, have no impact whatsoever on the legitimacy of courts and judges. These results are strongly reinforced by the experiment's ability to compare the effects of these campaign factors across institutions (a state Supreme Court and a state legislature). Thus, this analysis demonstrates that legitimacy is not obdurate and that campaign activity can indeed deplete the reservoir of goodwill courts typically enjoy, even if the culprit is not the free-speech rights the U.S. Supreme Court announced in 2002.

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