scholarly journals THE NON-RECOGNITION OF ISLAMIC MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE

2012 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
John McDermott

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.

2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-84
Author(s):  
Martin D. Carrigan

In National Federation of Independent Business v. Katherine Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, Case No. 11393, the Supreme Court of the United States affirmed most of the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA). In holding the ACA as valid (constitutional), Chief Justice Roberts reasoned that the taxing power in the U.S. Constitution was the reason that the law was enforceable. Although a strong dissent on such reasoning was written by four other Justices, Roberts also wrote that laws are entrusted to our nations elected leaders, who can be thrown out of office if the people disagree with them. [1]Roberts also wrote that the Commerce Clause in the U.S. Constitution did not give Congress authority to pass the ACA. Moreover, Congress could not impose unfunded mandates on the States to expand Medicaid. In so writing, Roberts disposed of the chief arguments of those in favor of the law and provided a bone to those who opposed it. But, by then holding that Congress taxing power was sufficient to uphold the law, Roberts ignored the Federal Anti-Injunction statute and called into question the ability of the Supreme Court to hold a law passed by Congress entirely unconstitutional. By writing that, in effect, the Court should defer to Acts of Congress, Roberts attempted a finesse first exercised by Chief Justice John Marshall in Marbury v. Madison in 1803. While it may seem as if he intended to demonstrate the same legal adroitness of Marbury, instead he deferred to the wishes of Congress, going through legal gymnastics to uphold a law that many scholars saw as indefensible, and damaged the power of the Supreme Court given to it in Article III immeasurably.


2005 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 987-1009
Author(s):  
George M. Sullivan

In two consecutive national elections a conservative, Ronald Reagan, was elected President of the United States. When Justice Lewis Powell announced his retirement during the late months of the Reagan administration, it was apparent that the President's last appointment could shift the ideology of the Court to conservatism for the first time since the presidency of Dwight Eisenhower. President Reagan's prior appointments, Sandra Day O'Connor and Antonin Scalia, had joined William Rehnquist, an appointee of President Nixon and Bryon White, an appointee of President Kennedy to comprise a vociferous minority of four in many instances, especially cases involving civil rights. The unexpected opportunity for the appointment of a conservative jurist caused great anxiety in the media and in the U.S. Senate, the later having confirmation power over presidential appointments to the Supreme Court. This article examines the consequences of the Senate's confirmation of Justice Anthony Kennedy to the Supreme Court. The impact, which was immediate and dramatic, indicates that conservative ideology will predominate on major civil rights issues for the remainder of this century.


2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (21) ◽  
pp. 97-160
Author(s):  
李順典 李順典

鑑於美國最高法院重新激活了專利適格性標的要件,其認為涉及發明的自然法則、自然現象或抽象概念,除非它們也包含「發明的概念」,否則不具專利適格性,因而引發了巨大爭議。因為新專利適格性原則不當削弱了美國在創新中的領導地位,而且它們已經給美國專利制度注入了巨大的法律不確定性,所以美國應重新思考生物技術產業創新的激勵措施生物技術公司的專利適格性在不同的國家面臨不斷的改變,故必須發展保護生物技術創新的全球策略,可行的發展策略應是根據國家的法律標準申請專利。In view of the United States Supreme Court has reinvigorated the patent-eligible subject matter requirement, holding that inventions directed to laws of nature, natural phenomena, or abstract ideas are not eligible for patenting unless they also contain an ''inventive concept.'' As a result, the Supreme Court has sparked tremendous controversy. Since the new patent eligibility doctrine is undermining U.S. leadership in innovation, so the U.S. shall reconsider the incentives for innovation in the biotechnologyindustry. Biotech companies facing constant changes in patent eligibility in different countries have to develop global strategies for protecting biotechnology innovations, and a recommended strategy is to file patent applications tailored to the legal standards of the countries of interest.


2019 ◽  
Vol 113 (4) ◽  
pp. 849-855

On June 10, 2019, the Supreme Court denied certiorari in a case in which the D.C. Circuit held that the United States could continue to detain an individual at Guantánamo Bay until the cessation of the hostilities that justified his initial detention, notwithstanding the extraordinary length of the hostilities to date. The case, Al-Alwi v. Trump, arises from petitioner Moath Hamza Ahmed Al-Alwi's petition for a writ of habeas corpus challenging the legality of his continued detention at the United States Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay. The Supreme Court's denial of certiorari was accompanied by a statement by Justice Breyer observing that “it is past time to confront the difficult question” of how long a detention grounded in the U.S. response to the September 11 attacks can be justified.


2017 ◽  
Vol 42 (03) ◽  
pp. 900-923 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence Baum

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.


10.12737/903 ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-81
Author(s):  
Владимир Сафонов ◽  
Vladimir Safonov

The article reveals the problem of applying the principle of the social state in the practice of the U.S. Supreme Court.


1998 ◽  
Vol 92 (4) ◽  
pp. 697-704 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lori Fisler Damrosch

The U.S. Government’s position asserting nonjusticiability of the treaty claims raised by Paraguay in the domestic and international lawsuits is disturbing. The Government’s amicus filings at the court of appeals and the Supreme Court denied that Paraguay’s claims belonged in federal court (or indeed in any court at all); at die International Court of Justice, the United States admitted a treaty violation but denied the competence of that tribunal to enter a judicial remedy. At one or another phase of these proceedings, the U.S. Government pressed a variety of arguments that (if accepted) would rule out virtually any judicial consideration of a treaty-based claim. The haste with which the Supreme Court denied a stay in Breard’s case foreclosed adequate consideration of the justiciability of such claims in domestic courts and also effectively barred Paraguay from achieving the relief it sought on the international plane.


2013 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 293-311 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yasmin Dawood

This article re-examines the distinction between the libertarian approach and the egalitarian approach to the regulation of campaign finance. The conventional approach (as exemplified by the work of Owen Fiss and Ronald Dworkin) is to reconcile the competing values of liberty and equality. By contrast, this article advances the normative claim that democracies should seek to incorporate both the libertarian and the egalitarian approaches within constitutional law. I argue that instead of emphasizing one value over the other, the ideal position is one that simultaneously recognizes the values of liberty and equality despite the irreconcilable tension between them. Rather than choosing one value over the other, or reconciling these values by redefining them, I claim that it is vital to maintain the tension between liberty and equality by instantiating the conflict in law. Democracy is better served when the law contains an explicit tension between these foundational values.After setting forth this normative framework, I then apply it to the campaign finance decisions of the Supreme Courts of the United States and Canada, respectively. I make two main claims. First, I argue that although the libertarian/egalitarian distinction is usually presented as a binary choice, the laws of a given jurisdiction often simultaneously display both libertarian and egalitarian characteristics. For this reason, I claim that the libertarian/egalitarian distinction is better conceived of as a “libertarian-egalitarian spectrum.” Second, I argue that in recent years, the U.S. Supreme Court and the Supreme Court of Canada, respectively, have privileged one value—liberty or equality—at the expense of the other. The U.S. Supreme Court has over-emphasized the value of liberty (most notably in its Citizens United decision), with the result that political equality is markedly undermined. By the same token, the Supreme Court of Canada’s commitment to equality has become too one-sided in recent cases (Harper and Bryan), with the result that there are significant impairments to free speech liberties. I argue that both of these approaches are detrimental to democratic participation and governance. Finally, this article offers a preliminary proposal for how courts and legislatures can allow for the conflict between liberty and equality to be instantiated in law.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-198
Author(s):  
Tyler Yeargain

For half of the states and almost every territory in the United States, legislative vacancies are filled by some system of temporary appointments rather than by special elections. Most of these systems utilize “same-party” appointments to ensure continuity of representation. But few states have anticipated the problem of state legislators switching parties. Though party-switching is rare, it happens frequently enough that several state supreme courts have already interpreted same-party appointment statutes as applied to party-switchers. This Article argues for a uniform approach to the problem of party-switchers in same-party appointment systems. First, this Article reviews the current legislative appointment schemes as they operate today and analyzes each statute or constitutional provision to determine how each of them might treat a vacancy caused by a party-switching state legislator, as well as the four state supreme court decisions addressing this question of statutory interpretation. It then argues that the principles underlying same-party appointment systems support statutory amendments to clarify how party-switching state legislators are replaced.


2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 13
Author(s):  
Zbigniew Lewicki

FROM REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY TO JUDICIAL DEMOCRACY: THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES AND THE EVOLUTION OF THE POLITICAL SYSTEM Summary The article discusses the process in which the judiciary branch has claimed and maintains its supremacy over the other two branches by practicing the extra-constitutional process of judicial review. Prior precedences under the British or colonial rule can hardly be claimed as they were established in a markedly different system in which the tripartite division of power was not as pronounced as it is under the U.S. Constitution. The real culprit is the U.S. Congress which refrains from making clear rules in controversial matters, such as abortion. The Supreme Court swiftly moved into the void to the point where the beliefs of nine nominated Justices outweigh the views of over five hundred elected representatives of the people, to wit: the flag burning controversy. While the learned opinions of nine learned and respected specialists should not be dismissed lightly, it is a far cry from the Founding Fathers’ intention if one person’s preferences can sway the nation’s political system, as is the case when the Court is divided between four liberals and four conservatives. However, lawyers are unlikely to give up the power they have usurped over time.


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