scholarly journals Waiving Federal Sovereign Immunity in Original Actions Between States

Author(s):  
Sandra Zellmer

There are tremendous disparities between high stakes original actions between states before the U.S. Supreme Court, where there is no waiver of federal sovereign immunity, and other types of cases in the lower courts, where a plethora of immunity waivers allow states and other parties to seek relief from the federal government for Fifth Amendment takings, unlawful agency action, and tort claims. Federal actions or omissions are often at the heart of the dispute, and federal involvement may be crucial for purposes of providing an equitable remedy to the state parties, but there is no reliable mechanism for bringing the federal government to an original action before the Supreme Court. This Article shows how federal sovereign immunity stands in the way of comprehensive resolution of interstate water rights and highlights the need for reforms to facilitate meaningful participation by the United States. In particular, it investigates the merits of a waiver of federal sovereign immunity in original actions between the states. Although federal immunity is a staple of our nation’s jurisprudence, it has no constitutional basis and it serves little purpose in this context. The Article concludes that a congressional waiver of federal sovereign immunity would be appropriate and would have few downsides, at least in the case of original actions between states before the U.S. Supreme Court.

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.


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.


1997 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 803-853 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rotem M. Giladi

The case of the Canadian ambassador's residence has been the subject of several court decisions at various instances in Israel. These decisions (as well as others relating to the doctrine of sovereign immunity) have been reviewed in former issues of this section. On June 3, 1997, the Supreme Court, in its appellate jurisdiction, gave its judgment in this case and delineated the application of the international law doctrine of sovereign immunity in Israeli law. In a different case decided on the last day of 1996, the Tel-Aviv District Court was required to rule on the applicability of this doctrine to a civil suit brought against the government of the United States of America. This District Court decision now needs to be examined in light of the recent ruling of the Supreme Court in theEdelsoncase.


1972 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-67
Author(s):  
Marc Schnall

This article summarizes the activity of the United States Supreme Court in formulating and applying definitions of what constitutes obscenity. For almost ninety years, American courts applied a test of obscenity established by a British court in 1868. In 1957, after lower courts in the United States had expanded the British definition, the Supreme Court, in Roth v. United States, defined as obscene such material which, "to the average person, apply ing contemporary community standards," appealed to prurient interests and lacked redeeming social value. Between 1957 and 1966, the Court added several dimensions to its definition of obscenity. The current test of obscenity was framed in 1966 in Memoirs v. Massachusetts, which reworded the Roth definition and included a third standard—namely, that the material must also be "patently offensive." This article examines not only the Supreme Court's actual definitions of obscenity but also the trends in these definitions and the Court's continual efforts to define and redefine obscenity.


2008 ◽  
Vol 102 (3) ◽  
pp. 551-562 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Charnovitz

Although “[tjreaties are the law of the land, and a rule of decision in all courts,” the president and the courts may sometimes be powerless to achieve compliance with a U.S. treaty. That was the puzzling outcome of Medellin v. Texas. Even though the Supreme Court declared that the United States has an international obligation to comply with the Avena judgment of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the Court invalidated the president’s memorandum directing Texas and other errant states to comply.


2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 171
Author(s):  
Wojciech Kwiatkowski

First Bank of the United States as a Prototype for the Federal Reserve SystemSummaryThe article describes the history of the First Bank of the United Statesfirst banking- institution, that was charted in XVII-th century North America as an effect of a cooperation of two federal bodies – Congress and the President. Although, the federal government possessed only 20 %, of the shares with federal licences it could conduct its activity on territory of the whole country. Moreover – the Bank is now referred to as the first central bank in the United States because of its national scope and services rendered to the federal government. The Bank helped the government to obtain emergency loans, facilitated the payment of taxes, and served as the receiver and disburser of the public funds. In addition, it issued bank notes and made them fully redeemable in coin. During a 20-years period the Bank achieved a commercial success and maintained a financial stability. However, in 1811 Congress did not renew the charter because the Bank’s constitutionality was questioned.Alexander Hamilton (the first U.S. Secretary of the Treasury), who was [the followerof creation of the bank, already in 1790 assumed that the federal government had the power to charter banks because the Constitution granted the government the right to establish institutions necessary for its operations. Addifferent viewpoint was presented by Thomas Jefferson who favored a more decentralized government and believed that only the states could charter banks under the Constitution. Furthermore – because the Constitution did not expressly grant the power to Congress, he reasoned that federally chartered banks were unconstitutional. Finally in 1819, as a far-reaching decision, the Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall followed Hamilton’s reasoning and ruled in case McCulloch vs Maryland that the Second Bank of the United States was constitutional. For U.S. federal government this decision of the Supreme Court was very important about 200 years later – in 1913, when president Wilson, many politicians’ and main U.S. bankers decided to create the Federal Reserve System.


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