US Supreme Court will generate greater controversy

Significance The decision to hold a hearing on this issue, rather than simply issue a decision, reflects a degree of concern about perceptions of the Court’s legitimacy following the transfer of the country’s currently polarised politics onto the Court through recent appointments. Impacts The conservative majority of the Supreme Court is so dominant that no liberal decisions are likely in the foreseeable future. Chief Justice Roberts will try on occasion to moderate the Court’s conservative decision-making but mostly without effect. The recent report from President Joe Biden’s commission on the Supreme Court will prove ineffectual. Upcoming cases will provoke a political backlash among voters and make Court reform a central preoccupation for some Democrats.

A APLICAÇÃO DO DISGORGEMENT OF PROFITS NO ÂMBITO DA US SECURITY AND EXCHANGES COMISSION (SEC)

O direito civil do século XXI não se satisfaz mais somente com a reparação dos danos, sendo que avanços da matéria possibilitaram a existência de novos institutos com escopo em teorias protetivas e sistemas de risk management. O ponto de partida do presente estudo é a análise do disgorgement of profits, por meio do exame de recentes decisões envolvendo o referido instituto no âmbito da Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). A pesquisa abordou duas relevantes decisões conexas da US Supreme Court, debatendo suas implicações para este específico setor. O estudo proposto pertence à vertente metodológica jurídico-dogmático. Em relação ao tipo de investigação, foi escolhido, na classificação Witker e Gustin, o tipo jurídico-projetivo. No tocante à técnica de análise do conteúdo, trata-se de pesquisa teórica, a qual se demonstrou possível mediante o estudo da jurisprudência e doutrina. Ao fim, por meio da análise sistemática e aprofundada dos dois julgados, comprovou-se a eficácia do referido instituto, assim como sua constante evolução, de modo que poderá ser aprimorado em futuras decisões pela US Supreme Court.

The Amistad Saga: A Transatlantic Dialogue

The story of the slave ship La Amistad is one of the most celebrated and narrated 19th-century stories of the transatlantic slave trade. To fully appreciate the significance and impact of the events and circumstances of this fateful episode, it is important to examine its legacy from multiple points of the Atlantic world—vestiges of the triangular trade bequeathed by the Columbian Exchange. For a long time, the Amistad saga has been viewed from a very US-centric perspective because the dispute over the lives of the Africans rose to the US Supreme Court in 1840–1841. New archival and oral research in West Africa, Europe, and the Caribbean is rebalancing the narrative and revising the historical drama. Today, the Amistad story is widely recognized as a quintessentially Atlantic story, a story of mobility that moves back and forth across the Atlantic in multiple directions over many decades. The deployment of the phrase “Amistad saga” provides a vehicle with which to critique the socio-legal battles about transatlantic slave trading in Caribbean, North American, and West African history. The Amistad story is often described as pre-incidental to the US Civil War. The victory of African defendants is often framed as a self-congratulatory vindication of the successful resistance of enslaved Africans. The celebrated figure of “Joseph Cinqué” or Sengbe Pieh, the self-appointed leader of the Africans, and a replica of the ship itself are part of an Amistad memory industry that attempts to narrate the slave trade and its abolition. A new framework for teaching and understanding the history of the Amistad saga and its memory and forgetting through an Atlantic lens must combine historical and contemporary perspectives from the United States, Europe, Cuba, and Sierra Leone.

Justice-level heterogeneity in certiorari voting: US Supreme Court October terms 1939, 1968, and 1982

Although the literature on US Supreme Court agenda-setting is sizable, justice-vote-level multivariate analyses of certiorari are almost exclusively limited to samples of discussed cases from 1986 to 1993. Moreover, these studies have done very little to explore justice-level heterogeneity on certiorari. Here, we address these lacunae by analyzing the predictors of individual justices’ cert votes on all paid cases from the 1939, 1968, and 1982 terms. We find substantial justice-level heterogeneity in the weight that justices place on the standard set of forces shaping the cert vote. We also show that some of this heterogeneity is associated with justices’ experience and ideological extremism, largely in theoretically predicted ways. In closing, we sound a note of caution on drawing conclusions about effects of justice attributes, when the number of justices is relatively small.

Fines, Fees/Costs, Forfeitures, and Restitution

Chapter 2 discusses the primary types of economic sanctions by focusing on the three purposes of economic sanctions: (1) punishing the offender (fines), (2) funding the government (fees and forfeitures), and (3) compensating the victim (restitution). Although these three purposes are ostensibly independent, in practice compensating the government or the victim can also mean punishing the offender. Because state and local governments have in recent years focused on using economic sanctions to fund the criminal justice system, there is some detailed discussion about fees and forfeitures. The chapter also examines the constitutional status of economic sanctions as outlined in court decisions, particularly the US Supreme Court. There is a brief overview of the laws in the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the federal government regarding the three major types of economic sanctions: fines, fees, and restitution. In general, poorer states (particularly in the South) have more fees for compensating the government.

US Supreme Court hears carefully chosen gun case

Significance The case, which concerns the power of a state to prohibit the carrying of concealed handguns, involves the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, which protects “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms”. The outcome may see the Court restrict state regulatory power in unprecedented ways. Impacts This case could continue a trend begun in 2008 that has broadened the scope and applicability of the Second Amendment protections. The Court could adopt an ends-and-means evaluation that would permit greater variability for state restrictions on guns. Other interest groups will pursue well-chosen cases before the newly conservative court.