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The Supreme Court's doctrinal statements governing nonmajority opinions demonstrate inconsistencies and confusion belied by the Justices' behaviors modeling the narrowest grounds doctrine. And yet, lower courts are bound by stated doctrine, beginning with Marks v. United States, not rules of construction inferred from judicial conduct. This Article simplifies the narrowest grounds rule, reconciling doctrinal formulations with observed behaviors, avoiding the implicit command: "Watch what we do, not what we say." The two most recent cases considering Marks, Ramos v. Louisiana and Hughes v. United States, obfuscate three central features: (1) when the doctrine does or does not apply; (2) how it applies in proper cases; and (3) the precedential status of narrowest grounds opinions in the Supreme Court. Individual Supreme Court Justices capture discrete doctrinal elements; none convey a general theoretical understanding of the rule's scope and meaning. In Ramos, the more recent of the two cases, six Justices invite lower courts to treat fractured Supreme Court cases as overruling past majority opinions. Three Justices convey that a single Justice cannot control on narrowest grounds. Two Justices treat narrowest grounds opinions as precedent in the Supreme Court. Each proposition is in tension with observed behaviors in other cases even in the Ramos term. In June Medical Services v. Russo, Chief Justice Roberts alone issued a controlling narrowest grounds opinion, with none of the Justices raising a fuss. By declining to join Roberts's opinion, the four liberal Justices ensured a fractured ruling, thereby preserving a broader 2016 abortion precedent. In Bostock v. Clayton County, the same cohort joined Justice Gorsuch's strained textualist construction of Title VII, forging a majority embracing sexual orientation and transgender status within the meaning of sex. These rulings convey that a single Justice can control under Marks and that majority opinions hold precedential status beyond narrowest grounds decisions in the Supreme Court. This Article models narrowest grounds, introducing the essential doctrinal element of dimensionality. A simple model, comporting with behavioral modeling by the Justices themselves, reveals that fractured cases with opinions aligned along one relevant dimension necessarily yield a narrowest grounds opinion, and fractured cases implicating more than one relevant dimension do not. The analysis unlocks each of the preceding questions and resolves several additional puzzles. Modeling narrowest grounds provides clarity for lawyers, scholars, and jurists, off and on the Supreme Court. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses several aspects of the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's views about America's rule of law and takings (eminent domain) law claims under the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Majority and plurality opinions are addressed, along with Scalia's decisions in takings cases such as Nollan v. California Coastal Commission and Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council. American jurisprudence and Scalia's U.S. Supreme Court voting history are assessed.

The article discusses extended families in relation to the plurality opinion that was issued in the 1977 U.S. Supreme Court family law case Moore v. City of East Cleveland, and it mentions then-American Supreme Court Justice Justice William Brennan’s concurring opinion in the case.

The article discusses the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in the 2014 case McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission which deals with the nation's campaign finance laws, and it addresses several of the jurisprudential and policy mistakes that were made by the controlling plurality in the case. Judicial precedent and the impact of money on American politics are examined, along with political power and the democratic system of government in the U.S. A strict scrutiny standard of review is examined.

The article discusses the U.S. Supreme Court's (USSC's) ruling in the case McCutcheon v. United States Federal Election Commission (FEC) which deals with the First Amendment to the nation's Constitution, freedom of speech rights in America, and the legal aspects of aggregate political contribution limits. The difference between expenditures and contributions is addressed in the 1976 USSC case Buckley v. Valeo. Plurality opinions and U.S. constitutional law are also examined.

In National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, a plurality of the Supreme Court held that portions of the Affordable Care Act exceeded federal authority under the Spending Clause. With that holding, Sebelius became the first Supreme Court decision since the New Deal to limit an act of Congress on spending-power grounds, rounding out the "New Federalism" limits on federal power first initiated by the Rehnquist Court in the 1990s. The new Sebelius doctrine constrains the federal spending power in contexts involving changes to ongoing intergovernmental partnerships with very large federal grants. However, the decision gives little direction for evaluating when the amount of change or funding reaches the threshold of spending-power coercion. Sebelius thus leaves open important unanswered questions about the contours of the new limit and how it will impact intergovernmental bargaining. This Article assesses the Sebelius doctrine by testing its application in a legal realm in which spending-power bargaining features prominently: federal environmental law. Methodically applying the new limit to the major environmental programs of cooperative federalism, the analysis concludes that all should withstand legal challenge—even a potentially vulnerable provision of the Clean Air Act. The review sheds light not only on environmental law after Sebelius, but also the many other realms of American governance that engage spending-power bargaining, such as public education, civil rights law, social service programs, and civic infrastructure. The Article concludes that the impacts of the doctrine will be most palpable in the dynamics of intergovernmental bargaining. States will have more leverage when negotiating design and enforcement terms within spending-power partnerships. However, the federal government may adapt by relying on spending-power bargaining less often and with less at stake, even in contexts where states may prefer spending partnerships to the alternative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the U.S. Supreme Court Case Salinas v. Texas wherein the Fifth-Amendment protection was narrowed by excluding the pre-arrest context with law enforcement from Fifth Amendment. Topics include the Supreme Court disagreeing with the reasoning of federal circuits, narrowing of the rules pertaining to a defendant's right to silence, protection of a criminal defendant's right to silence, and issue of a plurality opinion which needed invocation by the criminal defendant.

The article discusses plurality opinions and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit's (USCOA's) ruling in the 2013 case United States v. James which deals with the admission of an expert's records in a court proceeding and defendant Richard James' rights under the U.S. Constitution's Confrontation Clause (UCCC). According to the article, the U.S. Supreme Court's judgment in the case Williams v. Illinois, which addresses expert witness testimony and the UCCC, lacks precedential value.

An essay is presented on U.S. Supreme Court (USSC) Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her dissenting opinion in the 2012 case Coleman v. Court of Appeals of Maryland which deals with sex equality in America, the self-care provision of the nation's Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, and the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Other topics include plurality opinions, sick leave laws in America, and the U.S. Constitution's Equal Protection Clause.

The article discusses a recent plurality decision by the Minnesota Supreme Court in the case of Dickhoff ex rel. Dickhoff v. Green. Topics mentioned include the loss of chance of recovery caused by a medical professional's negligence, the formula for awarding damages due to malpractice, and the dissenting opinion written by the minority.

The article focuses on the impact of the constitutional law on the spending clause ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court in reference to the Supreme Court case National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius (NFIB v. Sebelius). Topics discussed include role of the Congress in developing the rules for the Medicaid, judicial opinion of the lower courts in the case and the plurality opinion on the court case. It further discusses the needs of expanding the Medicaid programs.

The Supreme Court's recent decision in J. Mclntyre Machinery v. Nicastro had the potential to resolve nearly two decades of confusion in personal jurisdiction doctrine. Confronted with the earlier Asahi plurality opinions, which had established competing "stream of commerce" theories, the Court produced a fractured 4-2-3 opinion that resolved little beyond holding that the New Jersey courts could not exercise personal jurisdiction over the defendant in the instant case. In this Article, I consider one dimension of the doctrinal deadlock that the Supreme Court produced in Nicastro: the concept of specific jurisdiction itself. In recent cases, most notably in Nicastro, the Court has become obsessed with the general and abstract contours of the relationship between a defendant and the forum state. However, one of the most important aspects of the distinction between general and specific jurisdiction is the relatedness between the lawsuit and the forum state. In conceptualizing relatedness at the highest level of generality, the Supreme Court has characterized the relatedness problem in a way that is nearly impossible to answer in any concrete case that comes before it. In other words, the Supreme Court has let the petfect become the enemy of the good. Instead of producing a flexible, workable, if not entirely global or perfect rule, the Court has given the lower courts hardly any rule at all. This Article suggests that in order to break the stream of commerce stalemate, the Supreme Court should refocus specific jurisdiction doctrine so that it produces concrete answers to the two dimensions of the relatedness problem. It further argues that Justice Brennan's stream of commerce position from Asahi remains the most viable path for specific jurisdiction analysis. The expansive scope of the Brennan position fits well with modern understandings of commerce and the domestic and international sale and distribution of goods. Moreover, in tandem with a robust fairness analysis, the stream of commerce position will allow courts to examine the two dimensions of relatedness in a useful, concrete, and doctrinally consistent manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the U.S. Supreme Court case Salazar v. Buono and several opinions that make up the plurality ruling of the nine Justices. It discusses various statutes implemented by the U.S. Congress to counter the holdings of the Court decisions. It reflects on the effect Justice John Paul Stevens had on the Supreme Courts' jurisprudence especially with regard to Buono decision. It highlights various positive and negative aspects of plurality opinions.

In 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on the issue of personal jurisdiction over alien corporations in products liability cases. J. McIntyre Machinery, Ltd. v. Nicastro was the Court's first statement on the issue in twenty-four years. The opinion, handed down almost ten years after the injury that gave rise to the litigation, could not command a majority of the Justices. Writing for a plurality, Justice Kennedy set forth a strict standard that required that a manufacturer's products be specifically targeted at a given forum state for jurisdiction to be proper. This Note argues that, while Kennedy's opinion did not necessarily violate the letter of jurisdictional doctrine--for in reality, there is no discernible letter--it violated the spirit. In analyzing the origins, development, and application of personal jurisdiction over the centuries, this Note concludes that the current palette of jurisdictional tests is not sufficient to meet the demands of fairness in cases like Nicastro. Using simple tort concepts as analogues, this Note advances a new test capable of doing justice without violating due process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plurality decisions from the U.S. Supreme Court demand interpretation, especially because they tend to occur when the Court faces important but divisive legal issues. Most courts, agencies, and scholars have assumed that federal agencies are in no better position to interpret plurality decisions than the lower federal courts when confronted with a potentially precedential Supreme Court plurality decision-the agency must construe the Justices' various opinions in search of a controlling rationale. In so doing, however, the agency eschews any claim to Chevron deference because it is no longer implementing a statute pursuant to congressionally delegated authority. Instead, it is merely an agency interpreting a court. This Article argues that pursuant to the Supreme Court's 2005 decision in National Cable & Telecommunications Ass'n v. Brand X internet Services, federal agencies have another option when dealing with a Supreme Court plurality decision regarding either a statute that the agency implements or the agency's prior interpretation of that statute. In the right circumstances, these post-plurality agencies can invoke their original congressionally delegated authority to implement the statute and issue new regulations that should be entitled to Chevron deference. Post-plurality agencies thus face a deference conundrum: they can defer to a fractured Supreme Court decision at the expense of their own claims to interpretive authority, or they can-admittedly with some risk in the next round of judicial review-reclaim interpretive deference for themselves. In assessing the deference conundrum, the exact character of the plurality decision is important. This Article includes a typology of Supreme Court plurality decisions involving agency-mediated statutes. When the Chevron/Brand X framework applies, however, agencies have the opportunity, and arguably the duty, to eliminate the confusion and inconsistency that plurality decisions promote by issuing clarifying and nationally uniform rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The plurality opinion in Stop the Beach Renourishment v. Florida Department of Environmental Protection articulated a new doctrine of "judicial takings" and purported to justify it with arguments drawing on text, history, precedent, and "common sense." This Article argues that the opinion makes a mockery of such forms of interpretation, represents raw pursuit of an ideological agenda, and indicates why the regulatory takings doctrine, more generally, should be abandoned or limited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the issues concerning the minimum contacts test discussed at the U.S. Supreme Court. It highlights the two cases of J. McIntyre Machinery Ltd. v. Nicastro and Goodyear Dunlop Tires Operations S.A v. Brown which marked almost a quarter of century to discuss the minimum contacts test at the U.S. court. Moreover, it states that the incoherence of the minimum contacts test has never evident than it is in the two cases and showed clearly in the J. McIntyre plurality opinion.

The article discusses plurality decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court as of January 2011, focusing on an apparent increase in the number of court decisions which feature five or more justices agreeing on a single result, but failing to agree on a single rationale. An examination of the impact of ideological, legal, and collegial factors on the voting preferences of U.S. Supreme Court Justices is also provided.