Court questions White House employer vaccine mandate

Headline UNITED STATES: Supreme Court and vaccine mandate

Biden's commission on the Supreme Court finishes work

Headline UNITED STATES: Supreme Court Commission finishes work

Recent Legal Developments: Criminal Justice Decisions of the United States Supreme Court, 2,020 Term

In this paper we review and analyze the criminal justice-related decisions of the 2,020 term of the United States Supreme Court. We also provide a summary of the Court’s voting patterns and opinion authorship. Thirteen of the Court’s 57 decisions touched on criminal justice. There were significant decisions involving the Fourth Amendment, the Eighth Amendment, and federal criminal statutes. Each of these is discussed in turn.

Habeas corpus w Polsce oraz w niektórych państwach kręgu common law. Analiza prawnoporównawcza

In their article, Przemysław Krawczyk and Bartosz Łukowiak discuss the issue of the habeas corpus procedure. On the basis of a comparative legal analysis, they present a model of the functioning of this institution in Poland and in selected countries whose legal code is based on common law. Krawczyk and Łukowiak discuss in detail, among other things, the scope and the subject matter of this mode and the catalogue of guarantees associated with it. Their research has made it possible to compare the most important similarities and differences in the functioning of the habeas corpus privilege in the Polish legal code and in common law. This, in turn, has allowed them to assess the accuracy of some of the solutions known to the Polish criminal procedural law. This article contains extensive references to the views expressed on this mode both in the Polish and the Anglo-Saxon doctrine of the procedural criminal law and to the case law of the European Court of Human Rights and the United States Supreme Court.

Rien que des mots: Counteracting homophobic speech in European and U.S. law

Adopting a comparative perspective, this article examines legal means and practices of challenging homophobic speech in European and U.S. law. This exercise revolves around the study of major cases concerning homophobic speech from the law of the European Court of Human Rights and broader legal framework within the Council of Europe (the CoE), the Court of Justice of the European Union (EU) as well as the United States Supreme Court (along with a broader scrutiny of U.S. law in comparative perspective with European (CoE and EU law) in recent years. The article concludes that the concepts of (1) hate speech (in constitutional, administrative and criminal settings) (2) direct discrimination and (3) harassment (in labour and anti-discrimination law) will be central in the strategic litigation of LGBT organizations seeking to redress the climate of homophobia via various legal avenues in both Europe and the U.S. While in the settings of European law, all three concepts – depending on the context – can benefit victims of homophobia in their judicial redress, U.S. law offers coherent protection in its employment law framework, even though this remains in need of further strengthening.

Nestlé United States, Inc. v. Doe. 141 S. Ct. 1931.

On June 17, 2021, the United States Supreme Court reversed and remanded a suit filed against Nestlé USA and Cargill under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) for lack of jurisdiction. This case has already garnered attention over the nature of the dispute (child slaves in Africa), the Supreme Court's treatment of jurisdiction under the ATS, and the finding shared by five of the nine Supreme Court justices that domestic corporations can potentially be sued under the ATS. This analysis focuses on the child slavery and global supply chain aspects of the decision.

The Sky Is Not Falling: Why Name, Image, and Likeness Legislation Does Not Violate Title IX and Could Narrow the Publicity Gap Between Men’s Sport and Women’s Sport Athletes

For decades, the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (“NCAA”) amateurism rules have largely prevented NCAA athletes from commercializing their names, images, and likenesses (“NIL”). The right to license and profit from one’s own image, often referred to as the “Right of Publicity,” is explicitly recognized by statute or common law in 35 states. No federal Right of Publicity statute exists, but in 1977, the United States Supreme Court recognized the right. However, until 2021, NCAA athletes were precluded from benefiting from this right, as under the NCAA’s amateurism principle, “An individual loses amateur status and thus shall not be eligible for intercollegiate competition in a particular sport ...” if he “[u]ses athletics skill (directly or indirectly) for pay in any form in that sport.” Until July 1, 2021, by becoming an NCAA athlete and complying with the NCAA’s Bylaws to maintain eligibility, NCAA athletes gave up their right to benefit from their NIL while competing in NCAA athletics. This relinquishment put full commercial marketing control of the athlete, their team, and the college sport in the NCAA’s hands. Research shows that despite the application of Title IX to sport in 1975, NCAA women’s sports have not been commercially marketed in parity with NCAA men’s sports, with NCAA men’s sports experiencing significant publicity and sponsorship windfalls. This article examines the recent decision by the NCAA to allow NCAA athletes to benefit from their NIL, the potential Title IX implications of the decision, and how the decision could narrow the publicity gap between NCAA men’s and women’s sport athletes in furtherance of the plain language and intent of Title IX.

United States Supreme Court Approach to First Amendment Freedom of Religion in Response to the COVID Pandemic

The 2020-21 Covid 19 Pandemic has raised many legal challenges as governments world-wide have struggled to deal with the public health and safety challenges of Covid. At the center of many of these decisions is the need to balance public health protections against other rights that have been infringed by legislation related to Covid Pandemic restrictions. One of the most important rights that have been implicated by Covid restrictions in the United States has been in the area of restrictions on religious worship which implicates the right to freedom of religion as enshrined in the United States Constitution. During the time of the Pandemic the United States Supreme Court, as the final arbiter of the United States Constitution has had to work to balance the interests of the government in protecting public health and safety with the right to freedom of religion. The Supreme Court’s approach to these cases reflects the difficulties inherent in balancing two such important interests in difficult circumstances and also represents the reality of the shifting majority in the Court as a result of new Justices appointed under the administration of Donald Trump. The Court has transitioned from a majority that opposed restrictions on governmental action during COVID to a majority that is more willing to stop governmental action that is deemed to be in violation of the Free Exercise of Religion Clause of the First Amendment.

Attitudes towards LGBT individuals after Bostock v. Clayton County: Evidence from a quasi-experiment

Do United States Supreme Court decisions on LGBT rights shape attitudes towards LGBT individuals among the mass public? In this paper, I conduct an empirical test of the effect of quasi-random exposure to the announcment of \textit{Bostock v. Clayton County} - a landmark case which held that that an employer who fires their employee because of their sexual orientation or gender identity violates Section VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act - on favorability towards LGBT individuals. Relying on data from Phase 2 of the Democracy Fund/UCLA Nationscape survey, I find that quasi-random exposure to the announcement of \textit{Bostock} engendered increases in favorability towards LGBT individuals among the wider American public. Subgroup analyses also indicate that the largest increases in favorability were among Democratic partisans and the religiously unaffiliated, while minimal changes in favorability were detected among those who are among the most likely to oppose LGBT rights, including Republicans and Evangelical Protestants. The findings speak to the validity of the legitimacy model and highlight the limitations of the backlash model in the post-\textit{Obergefell} era of public opinion towards LGBT rights.