scholarly journals How the Federal Cause of Action Relates to Rights, Remedies, and Jurisdiction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John F. Preis

Time and again, the U.S. Supreme Court has declared that the federal cause of action is "analytically distinct" from rights, remedies, and jurisdiction. Yet, just pages away in the U.S. Reports are other cases in which rights, remedies, and jurisdiction all hinge on the existence of a cause of action. What, then, is the proper relationship between these concepts?The goal of this Article is to articulate that relationship. This Article traces the history of the cause of action from eighteenth-century England to its modem usage in the federal courts. This history demonstrates that the federal cause of action is largely distinct from rights, closely related to (and sometimes synonymous with) remedies, and distinct from jurisdiction except where Congress instructs otherwise or the case implicates sovereign immunity. Sorting out these relationships provides several benefits, including refining the doctrine of prudential standing, clarifying the grounds for federal jurisdiction, and dispelling claims that Congress lacks power over certain causes of action.

2012 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 205-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison L. LaCroix

Historians and legal scholars generally agree that during John Marshall's tenure as chief justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1801 to 1835, the federal judiciary expanded its power to interpret the Constitution and asserted with increasing force its authority to speak on behalf of the Union. This single story of judicial nationalism, however, contains two distinct and largely non-overlapping strands. Historians have tended to focus on the Supreme Court alone, to the exclusion of the lower federal courts, and have largely treated early national controversies over the lower federal courts as outgrowths of the political turmoil that accompanied the emergence of the first party system. Legal scholars in the fields of federal courts and constitutional law, meanwhile, have devoted significant attention to the lower federal courts but have largely neglected the history of how those courts developed beyond the key early moments of the Constitutional Convention and the First Congress.


Author(s):  
Donald W. Rogers

This introduction reframes the history of the U.S. Supreme Court decision Hague v. CIO (1939) that guaranteed speech and assembly rights in public municipal forums under federal law for the first time. It lifts the story out of standard treatment as a product of police repression of labor organizers by city boss Frank Hague, exploring instead the case’s broader roots in multiple changes in city governance, policing, the labor movement, civil liberties law, and anticommunism and antifascism politics of the late New Deal era. It urges examination of all sides of the controversy, winners and losers, scrutinizing evidence beyond antiboss sources, including varied newspapers, municipal reports, trial transcripts, labor archives, and federal court records. It views the case as part of a constitutional watershed.


2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 395-421
Author(s):  
Brenda I. Rowe ◽  
Wesley S. McCann

The no impeachment rule bars the admission into evidence of juror testimony regarding jury deliberations in proceedings questioning the validity of a verdict. In Pena-Rodriguez v. Colorado, the U.S. Supreme Court created a constitutional exception to the no impeachment rule to allow impeachment of a verdict by a juror’s testimony regarding a fellow juror’s clear statement during jury deliberations indicating reliance on racial bias as a substantial motivating factor for that juror’s vote. This study traces the history of the no impeachment rule, analyzes the Court’s decision in Pena-Rodriguez v. Colorado, examines variation in exceptions provided by states’ statutory no impeachment rules, and discusses the likely impact of Pena-Rodriguez as well as policy implications of the current state of no impeachment statutes.


Hypatia ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Wagner Decew

I first discuss reasons for feminists to attend to the role of women in the military, despite past emphasis on antimilitarism. I then focus on the exclusion of women from combat duty, reviewing its sanction by the U.S. Supreme Court and the history of its adoption. I present arguments favoring the exclusion, defending strong replies to each, and demonstrate that reasoning from related cases and feminist analyses of equality explain why exclusion remains entrenched.


Author(s):  
Robert M. Lichtman

This book provides a comprehensive history of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions in “Communist” cases during the McCarthy era. The book shows the Court’s vulnerability to public criticism and attacks by the elected branches during periods of political repression. The book describes every Communist-related decision of the era (none is omitted), placing them in the context of political events and revealing the range and intrusiveness of McCarthy-era repression. Demonstrating keen insight into the Supreme Court’s inner workings and making extensive use of the justices’ papers, the book examines the dynamics of the Court’s changes in direction and the relationships and rivalries among its justices, including such towering figures as Hugo Black, Felix Frankfurter, Earl Warren, William O. Douglas, and William J. Brennan, Jr.


Author(s):  
Timothy R. Johnson

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.


2006 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 193-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
William J. Novak

James Henretta's “Charles Evans Hughes and the Strange Death of Liberal America” takes up one of the most interesting and important interpretive questions in the history of American political economy. What explains the dramatic transformation in liberal ideology and governance between 1877 and 1937 that carried the United States from laissez-faire constitutionalism to New Deal statism, from classical liberalism to democratic social-welfarism? That question has preoccupied legions of historians, political-economists, and legal scholars (as well as politicians and ideologues) at least since Hughes himself opened the October 1935 Term of the U.S. Supreme Court in a brand new building and amid a rising chorus of constitutional criticism. Henretta, wisely in my opinion, looks to law, particularly public law, for new insights into that great transformation. But, of course, the challenge in using legal history to answer such a question is the enormous increase in the actual policy output of courts, legislatures, and administrative agencies in this period. Trying to synthesize the complex changes in “law-in-action” in the fiercely contested forums of turn-of-the-century America sometimes seems the historical-sociological equivalent of attempting to empty the sea with a slotted spoon. Like any good social scientist, Henretta responds to the impossibility of surveying the whole by taking a sample. Through a case-study of the ideas, political reforms, and legal opinions of Charles Evans Hughes, particularly as governor of New York and associate and chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Henretta offers us in microcosm the story of the revolution (or rather several revolutions) in modern American governance.


Author(s):  
CLAUDIA ANGELOS ◽  
JAMES B. JACOBS

This article traces and analyzes the history of prison- and jail-crowding litigation in the federal courts since the 1960s. While prisoners and pretrial detainees have won many victories, the doctrinal basis for a constitutional right to uncrowded incarceration facilities remains unclear and is still evolving. Despite several recent Supreme Court decisions unfavorable to inmates, there has been no rejection of the principles (1) that the totality of conditions in prison—including crowding—must not amount to cruel and unusual punishment and (2) that jail crowding cannot be permitted to impose genuine privations over an extended period of time. In order to enforce the decrees outlawing overcrowding, judges have had to search for creative enforcement techniques. Many of these techniques are controversial and their effectiveness is disputed. The courts have forced the other branches of government to face up to crowded prisons and jails, and they have helped to ameliorate the suffering and deprivations that the overcrowding crisis has caused.


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