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.

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.

The Persistent Problem of Media Taxation: First Amendment Protection in the 1990S

1997 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
pp. 579-590 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cathy Packer ◽  
Karla K. Gower
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Court Decisions ◽  
Lower Court ◽  
Persistent Problem ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Lower Courts ◽  
Explicit Recognition ◽  
One Step ◽  
The Media ◽  
Substantial Change

This article examines U.S. Supreme Court decisions regarding the constitutionality of taxation of the mass media. It concludes that the Court's 1991 decision in Leathers v. Medlock does not represent a substantial change in the law governing taxation of the media but is one step in the evolution of two distinct lines of media taxation cases. The article also examines how the lower courts have applied Leathers in the six years since it was decided. The lower court decisions uniformly - although not explicitly - recognize the two lines. What is needed now is explicit recognition by both the Supreme Court and the lower courts.

Who Wins?

2020 ◽  
pp. 239-262
Author(s):  
Chris Hanretty
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Predictors Of Success ◽  
Lower Court ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Lower Courts

This chapter looks at whether appellants succeed before the Supreme Court. Around half of appellants succeed, and these rates of success vary by area of law and by the type of appellant. The strongest predictors of success, however, have to do with the route the case took to the court. Appellants are more likely to succeed if the Supreme Court itself granted permission to appeal (rather than having leave granted by the lower court), and if appellants were able to convince at least some judges in lower courts. Success is not wholly determined by what happens in lower courts, however: litigants who employ one additional senior lawyer are more likely to succeed.

scholarly journals Declarations of Invalidity in Superior Courts

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Mancini
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Criminal Code ◽  
Short Paper ◽  
Lower Court ◽  
Stare Decisis ◽  
Binding Effect ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Lower Courts ◽  
The Law

Section 52(1) of the Constitution Act, 1982 empowers courts to declare unconstitutional laws that are inconsistent with the Constitution “to the extent of their inconsistency.”1 Section 52 is a powerful tool in the hands of judges. For example, a claimant need not be directly affected by an unconstitutional law to raise a challenge to that same law,2 and once a court declares a law invalid under section 52, the law is effectively removed from the statute books.3 A key question is whether such a declaration, issued by one judge of a multi-member lower court, binds another judge of that same court. This phenomenon can be broadly described as “horizontal stare decisis.”4 But the Supreme Court has only explored horizontal stare decisis in the context of revisiting its own decisions.5 It has never opined on whether there is something special about horizontal stare decisis in lower courts, especially involving constitutional declarations under section 52; specifically, whether one judge is bound by another judge’s declaration of invalidity. This issue was directly confronted in the McCaw case at the Ontario Superior Court.6 Faced with a previous section 52 declaration of invalidity issued against section 33.1 of the Criminal Code, Spies J found that she was bound by that declaration. Accordingly, she found section 33.1 unconstitutional. In this short paper, after reviewing the salient facts of McCaw, I argue that Spies J’s ruling is broadly consistent with Supreme Court constitutional remedies doctrine, which is basically formalist in nature and permits no discretion on the part of judges to depart from the binding effect of a s.52 remedy. I then deal with two objections to this position. Ultimately, while one can question the coherence of the Supreme Court’s doctrine, McCaw represents a defensible application of it.

scholarly journals Traffic Stops, Reasonable Suspicion, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania: A State Constitutional Analysis

2007 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis J. Buffone
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Fourth Amendment ◽  
General Rule ◽  
Criminal Activity ◽  
Search And Seizure ◽  
Federal Constitution ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Lower Courts ◽  
Reasonable Suspicion ◽  
Constitutional Analysis

The Fourth Amendment to the Federal Constitution protects individuals against unreasonable searches and seizures. Traditionally, the Supreme Court has interpreted the Fourth Amendment to require warrants supported by probable cause in both the search and seizure contexts. In Terry v. Ohio, the Supreme Court recognized that not all interactions between police and citizens involve intrusions serious enough to trigger the full probable cause standard. As a result, the Court delineated a specific, narrowly applicable exception to the general rule. The Court held that in situations where the police have specific and articulable grounds that provide them with reasonable suspicion that criminal activity is afoot, they may briefly detain an individual for purposes of investigation. Both the facts of Terry and the language of Justice Warren’s opinion leave no doubt that the exception was to be construed and applied in only the narrowest of contexts. However, as lower courts interpreted and applied Terry in the following years, the standard enunciated in Terry blurred considerably. Hence came the development of the wellentrenched, but nebulous, investigative detention doctrine.

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.

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