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In the War of 1812, the United States had a small navy and relied on privateers—private armed ships that sought to make money—to engage in commercial warfare against Britain. If privateers stopped a British merchant ship, or an American trading under a British license, they sailed it into a friendly port. If deemed a “good prize,” the vessel and goods were sold, the net proceeds divided between the privateer’s owners, officers, and crew. But sometimes, the stop and search went beyond the bounds of law: the seizure of the Ann Maria, a tiny Virginia schooner, off St. Thomas, by the Baltimore privateer Nonsuch, led all the way to the Supreme Court, and reveals the dark side of a system based on legalized robbery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The application of First Amendment commercial speech doctrine to integrated marketing communication (IMC) demonstrates that the integration of public relations messages with advertising and marketing messages may dilute the constitutional protection afforded corporate speech. This analysis of U.S. Supreme Court precedents shows that by intermingling political expression with commercial expression, a corporation may expand the range of communication that may be defined and regulated as commercial speech. The additional review of a California Supreme Court case that redefined commercial speech to include public relations messages illustrates the potential for heightened regulation of integrated marketing communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the actions of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase in the prosecution of Confederate president Jefferson Davis and in the case Texas v. White. Topics discussed include Chase's rejection of the doctrine of state secession from the Union in 1869 thus establishing the permanency of the Union, the prosecution of Davis for treason in Virginia and Chase's challenges in reconciling the law and the Civil War.

The article discusses the last five years of the U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Marshall who led the court from 1801 to 1835. Topics discussed include challenges faced the court following the election of president Andrew Jackson in 1828, the attempt of the Congress to limit the jurisdiction of the court which Marshall believed as a constitutional crisis, and cases decided by the Marshall Court during its last five years including Cherokee Nation v. Georgia and Worcester v. Georgia.

The article discusses the 1921 robbery and murder trial of Massachusetts shoe factory worker Nicola Sacco and fish seller Bartolomeo Vanzetti and the role of Harvard law professor and later U.S. Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter in the case, in addition to the significance of the case to the jurisprudence of U.S. Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and the role of various U.S. Supreme Court justices in hearing pleas for stays of execution in the case.

The cover of the July 2018 edition of the scholarly periodical "Journal of Supreme Court History" is presented, in addition to information about the journal and a table of contents.

The article discusses the legal principles of a free press and fair trial as related to the trial of Bay Village, Ohio, physician Samuel Holmes Sheppard, who was convicted and subsequently acquitted of murdering his wife, in addition to the role of the U.S. Supreme Court in the case Sheppard v. Maxwell. The article also discusses the case Estes v. Texas.

The Supreme Court has long held that certain types of sentences violate the Eighth Amendment's proscription against cruel and unusual punishment. Throughout the Court's Eighth Amendment jurisprudence, it has reiterated that excessive-punishment claims are informed by evolving standards of decency. When the Court assesses a form of punishment under the Eighth Amendment, it utilizes a two-part proportionality review. This test requires the Court to first assess whether a national consensus has formed against a particular type of punishment through an examination of state legislation. If a national consensus exists, then the Court subjectively contemplates whether it has reason to disagree with the legislative trend. Consequently, a particular punishment violates the Eighth Amendment if the Court agrees with the national consensus. In 2002, for the first time, the Supreme Court held that using capital punishment on intellectually disabled offenders constitutes cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment. In its decision, the Court provided little guidance and left to the states the autonomy to develop standards for assessing intellectual disability in such cases. However, this task proved problematic, demonstrated by the Court granting certiorari twice in the past fifteen years to determine whether state standards adhere to its 2002 holding. In Moore v. Texas, the Supreme Court struck down Texas's procedural standards for assessing intellectual disability in capital cases. Specifically, it held that Texas's use of seven evidentiary questions based upon lay perceptions was unconstitutional because a national consensus had formed against utilizing this type of subjective indicia to determine intellectual disability. This Case Comment analyzes the Court's reasoning behind its invalidation of Texas's standards, as well as the differences in state procedures for determining intellectual disability. These variations in state standards indicate that intellectually disabled offenders may be subject to the death penalty in some states but not in others depending on where they are tried and sentenced. Finally, through the lens of the incorporation and equal protection doctrines, this Comment argues that the Court should cease its search for national consensus when contemplating the constitutionality of different state procedures and instead provide a uniform test for determining intellectual disability in capital cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a presumption of regularity in America's judicial review of the executive branch, and it mentions U.S. Supreme Court (Supreme Court) cases and a travel ban involving majority-Muslim nations which was issued by American President Donald Trump's Administration. According to the article, the Supreme Court has used the phrase presumption of regularity in 59 legal cases between 1900 and 2018. Presumptions involving prosecutors and administrative agencies are assessed.

The article discusses the impact that the U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren E. Burger's decision to redesign the Supreme Court bench had on the mitigating oral argument interruptions, referencing Supreme Court history from 1962 through 1982. An overview of the bench's shape's influence on Justices' decision making is provided.

The article discusses the U.S. President and Supreme Court Chief Justice William Howard Taft's tenure as chief justice in the 1920s, including his progressivism and judicial reforms. An overview of Taft's efforts to unify the U.S. federal courts, including in regard to his role in reducing court costs for poor litigants, is provided.

The article discusses the history of judicial activism on the U.S. Supreme Court beginning with the standard set by the Court in the 1905 case Lochner v New York, while also examining the opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts in the case Obergefell v Hodges, in which he used an analogy to Lochner. The article discusses the concept of ideological polarization and differences between the Republican Party, the Democratic party, and the influence of Progressivism.

In the United States, state legislatures have drawn voting districts to achieve desired election results for hundreds of years. Dating back to the James Madison presidency, various legislatures and iterations of the U.S. Supreme Court have wrestled with the legal and constitutional issues that stem from the practice known as "gerrymandering." While courts and legislatures have, at times, been successful in eliminating some of the more sinister uses of the tactic, such as racially motivated district-line drawing, gerrymandering inspired by partisan motives remains. Continual improvements in technology coupled with an increasingly divided political culture mean that partisan gerrymandering is at risk of becoming more effective than ever. As a result, the voices of individuals with political ideologies opposing those of the sitting state legislatures risk being quieted to barely audible whispers. Until this year, however, the Supreme Court had contented itself to stand idly by, firmly refusing to wade into the legal and constitutional muck that is partisan gerrymandering. This Note explores the uses and effects of partisan gerrymandering by modern state legislatures. It then delves into the contentious history of the partisan gerrymandering question at the Supreme Court level, with special focus on a concurring opinion by Justice Kennedy in which he proposed a solution for how to handle future partisan gerrymandering issues. This Note analyzes the validity of Justice Kennedy's solution and ultimately concludes that his proposal has sound legal and practical support and would allow courts to hold unconstitutional efforts to gerrymander along political lines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in the 2017 case Maslenjak v. United States which deals with American immigration and naturalization laws, and it mentions the U.S. Supreme Court's determination that if an underlying act is a false statement to government officials, the government must show that the falsehood influenced the decision to grant citizenship. Ethnic Serb Divna Maslenjak's application for naturalization in America is examined.

The article discusses the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in the 2017 case BNSF Railway Co. (BNSF) v. Tyrrell which deals with American civil procedure rules and a personal jurisdiction doctrine, and it mentions how the U.S. Supreme Court denied Montana's courts general jurisdiction over BNSF which had continuous contacts with the state but was not considered to be at home in Montana. The U.S. Federal Employers’ Liability Act of 1908 and compensation for workplace injuries are assessed.

The article discusses the U.S. Supreme Court's determination in the 2017 case Beckles v. United States that the statutory language in the nation's Federal Sentencing Guidelines (Guidelines) is not void for vagueness because vagueness review under the American Constitution's Due Process Clause cannot apply to the Guidelines. According to the article, defendant Travis Beckles was convicted of possession of a firearm by a felon and was sentenced as a career offender.

The article discusses the U.S. Supreme Court's 2016 Term in relation to the conservatives' opposition to the expansion of America's national bureaucracy in the 1930s and the attitudes of U.S. President Donald Trump and his administration. America's Congressional Review Act and the nation's Administrative Procedure Act are addressed, along with Republicans' efforts to repeal various government regulations that were implemented during U.S. President Barack Obama's administration.

The author presents a history of the U.S. Supreme Court case of Pennekamp v. Florida and the question of freedom of the press. He discusses the role of the "Miami Herald" and its editor John D. Pennekamp in the publication of editorials and editorial cartoons criticizing the Florida court system, the charges of contempt of court, and the hearings before the Florida Supreme Court and then the U.S. Supreme Court.

The author discusses the U.S. Supreme Court case of Fletcher v. Peck regarding land sold by the state of Georgia. He mentions the speculation regarding the sale and resale of those lands, the decision by Georgia that the state did not have the right to sell the lands and the Supreme Court's decision, based on the contract clause of the U.S. Constitution, that the land could be sold.

The author presents a survey of several aspects of U.S. Supreme Court history. He discusses the nomination of Supreme Court justices since the time of George Washington, a number of decisions handed down by the court, and the issue of judicial opinions.

The article presents the editorial board of the legal history periodical "Journal of Supreme Court History" and the table of contents for the November 2017 issue.

Despite occasional suggestions to the contrary, the Supreme Court has long since stopped interpreting the Constitution to afford special protection to certain groups on the ground that they are powerless to defend their own interests in the political process. From a series of decisions reviewing laws that burden whites under the same strict scrutiny as laws that burden racial minorities, to the more recent same-sex marriage decision based principally on the fundamental nature of marriage (rather than the political status of gays and lesbians), it is now an uncontroversial observation that when it comes to applying the open-textured provisions of the Constitution, the Court sees no distinction between the powerless and powerful. This Article challenges that conventional wisdom from a perhaps unexpected direction. I argue that the Court has gone further than to merely reject the political process theory of constitutional interpretation, under which powerless discrete and insular minority groups alone would be entitled to heightened judicial solicitude. In several doctrinal areas, the Court has reversed the theory's core prescription by conferring extra constitutional safeguards upon entities that, by any fair accounting, possess an outsized ability to protect their interests through the ordinary democratic process--all while withholding similar protections from less powerful counterparts. After describing these doctrinal developments, this Article offers a critical account of the Court's long and tumultuous relationship with political process theory. I conclude that although opponents of the theory may have been fair to question its ability to restrain judges as a positive principle of constitutional adjudication, political process theory ought to retain force as a negative command. That is to say, even if one believes judges cannot avoid substantive value judgments when deciding which groups are so powerless as to warrant extraordinary protection from the democratic bazaar, attention to the political process should still require judges to stay their hand before granting special constitutional treatment to entities that are powerful enough to look out for themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three themes have characterized death penalty abolition throughout the Western world: a sustained period of de facto abolition; an understanding of those in government that the death penalty implicates human rights; and a willingness of those in government to defy popular support for the death penalty. The first two themes are present in the U.S.; what remains is for the U.S. Supreme Court to manifest a willingness to act against the weight of public opinion and to live up to history's demands. When the Supreme Court abolishes the death penalty, it will be traveling a well-worn road. This Essay gathers, for the first time and all in one place, the opinions of judges who have advocated abolition of the death penalty over the past half-century, and suggests, through this "law of abolition," what a Supreme Court decision invalidating the death penalty might look like. Although no one can know for sure how history will judge the death penalty, odds are good that the death penalty will come to be seen as one of the worst indignities our nation has ever known and that a Supreme Court decision abolishing it will, in time, be widely accepted as right. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For almost thirty-five years, the U.S. Supreme Court has attempted to carve out a total takings doctrine within its regulatory takings jurisprudence. Most regulatory takings claims are evaluated under the "ad hoc" threefactor test first articulated in Penn Central Transportation Co. v. City of New York. Exceedingly few of these claims are successful. But the Court has identified certain categories of government actions that are compensable takings per se, otherwise known as total takings. This began in 1982 with Loretto v. Teleprompter Manhattan CATV Corp., where the Court held that a land use ordinance requiring a landowner to endure a permanent physical occupation of a portion of her property is always a compensable taking. Ten years later, in Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, the Court held that a land use restriction depriving an owner of all economically viable use of her property is also compensable per se. Finally, in 2015, in Horne v. Department of Agriculture, the Court extended its total takings jurisprudence to personal property, announcing that the government appropriation of personal property is a per se compensable taking. Although the Court has had more than three decades to articulate theoretical justifications for its total takings jurisprudence and to provide guidance for lower courts in determining when a regulation constitutes a total taking, it has failed to do so. This failure reflects the underlying reality that the total takings doctrine is a myth. More particularly, the categories that the Court has identified as constituting total takings are analytically incoherent, and the terms the Court has used to demarcate total takings from regulations that are not per se compensable cannot be applied in the real world. As a result, lower courts struggle to apply the total takings doctrine and the case law remains in utter disarray. In fact, lower courts have resorted to creating "shadow" total takings doctrines that rely on obvious distortions of the plain meaning of outcome-determinative terms and deflect attention from the fundamental question of whether compensation is warranted. This Article argues that the Court's attempt to create a total takings doctrine has failed, and that the Court should repudiate it. It demonstrates that the Court's initial total takings opinions were conceptually incoherent and woefully undertheorized. And it shows that attempts by lower courts to rehabilitate the doctrine by crystallizing the bright-line rules through careful and consistent application were doomed to, and did, fail. This Article also explains why the entire enterprise was misguided from the start. Although bright-line rules have their place, it is not in the heart of regulatory takings doctrine, which is premised on concerns for fairness and justice in distributing the burdens of land use regulation. Last term, the Court had a perfect opportunity to begin the process of repudiating the total takings myth. Murr v. Wisconsin was a run-of-the-mill regulatory takings case masquerading as a Lucas-type total takings claim, and it presented the Court with a vehicle to either remedy the central doctrinal incoherence of Lucas's bright-line rule or to overrule Lucas and turn its attention to the much needed task of clarifying and refining the Penn Central test. Instead, by offering a new multifactored test in a sort of regulatory takings "step zero," the Court in Murr merely exacerbated the core flaws of the Lucas bright-line rule. Now, more than ever, it is imperative that the Court recognize and begin to dismantle the total takings myth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing theories of legislative-judicial relations emphasize the role of public support for the judiciary on the likelihood of legislative compliance. Although Congress can strengthen or weaken the Supreme Court’s decisions after initial compliance, the role of public support for the judiciary on subsequent legislative action is unclear. We develop a theory of legislative-judicial interactions, which suggests that Congress considers the court’s current level of public support when determining whether to override a Supreme Court decision. We test our theory using data on congressional overrides of US Supreme Court decisions, finding that high levels of public support for the court shield the court from hostile congressional action. The results underscore the vital role played by the public in interbranch relations, suggesting that public support plays a role in the legacy of a judicial decision beyond ensuring initial compliance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the appointment of then-Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Harlan Fiske Stone to the role of Chief Justice of America's Supreme Court in 1941, and it mentions how Stone succeeded then-Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Charles Evans Hughes who was still living when Stone took the position. According to the article, a majority of the Chief Justices of America's Supreme Court have died while in office.

The article discusses the U.S. Supreme Court's order in 1956 which discharged America's Advisory Committee on Rules of Procedure, and it mentions how the committee, under the leadership of then-Yale Law School Dean Charles E. Clark wrote the original U.S. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure in 1938. The views of the late American Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren are addressed, along with civil procedure amendments in 1955 and the civil rights case Brown v. Board of Education.

The article discusses the roles of U.S. Supreme Court (USSC) Justice Sonia Sotomayor in various criminal justice-related litigation matters such as Calhoun v. United States, Woodward v. Alabama, and Hurst v. Florida, and it mentions the composition of the USSC in the wake of the death of American Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in 2016. Sotomayor's experiences as a Hispanic American woman are addressed, along with her advocacy for equal protection rights in the U.S.

The article discusses how the U.S. Supreme Court's rulings in the attorneys' fees-related cases Arcambel v. Wiseman and Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. v. Wilderness Society have impacted the American Rule which governs the payment of fees for lawyers, and it mentions the fee shifting law-based case Buckhannon Bd. & Care Home, Inc. v. W. Va. Dep’t of Health & Human Res. American legal jurisdiction and exceptions are examined, along with statutory interpretation by U.S. courts.

Who controls the content of the majority opinion on the U.S. Supreme Court? Previous research offers conflicting views; however, these studies assume that a single justice exerts primary influence over the entire opinion. In contrast, we argue that different justices control holding (the legal determination that sets binding precedent) and dicta (unnecessary comments that lack precedential value). We argue that the bargaining process enables the median justice in the majority coalition to control holding, while the opinion author controls dicta. We test the empirical expectations of our theory on the concurrence behavior of Supreme Court justices: special concurrences reflect disagreement with holding, whereas general concurrences often reflect disagreement with dicta. The results support our theory that the bargaining process divides control over holding and dicta, which can produce ambiguity and confusion in the law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Arbitration is an issue of considerable national concern. Yet as the Supreme Court continues to broaden the Federal Arbitration Act's (FAA) "liberal federal policy favoring arbitration agreements," few viable challenges to the FAA's expansion remain. One would be hard-pressed to find a doctrinal framework so permissive of delegating judicial power to non-Article III tribunals. Meanwhile, the Justices responsible for the FAA 's modern metastasis continue to vociferously question other congressional delegations of judicial power to non-Article III bodies. Those same Justices have yet to address the potential Article UI shortcomings of the Court's FAA jurisprudence. This Note investigates that analytical incoherence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the author's views about the reasons why the U.S. Supreme Court (Supreme Court) should legally abolish the death penalty, and it mentions the constitutionality of lethal injections and executions, as well as the Supreme Court's efforts to reform and regulate the death penalty over the years. Equal protection, race, and cruel and unusual punishment are examined, along with ineffective assistance of counsel and U.S. death penalty cases such as Gregg v. Georgia. Race.

The article focuses on U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Loving v. Virginia court case in 1967. Topics discussed include striking down the state's laws which prohibited interracial marriages, role of decision in furthering marriage equality and protecting the rights of traditionally marginalized, and interracial relationships blurring the distinctions policymakers attempted to draw between black and white.

The article discusses various historical and legal developments involving American Samoa and the Citizenship Clause contained in the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution as of 2017, and it mentions the U.S. Supreme Court's Insular Cases which deal with the constitutional rights that are extended to territorial residents. It states that a U.S. appellate court court rejected a request to extend constitutional birthright citizenship to American Samoa in the case Tuaua v. United States.

The article discusses the concept of territorial federalism in association with the history of the structural relationship between the U.S. Congress and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico (Puerto Rico) as of 2017, and it mentions America's Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA) and legal developments involving Puerto Rico and the U.S. Supreme Court. American democracy and popular sovereignty are assessed, along with the legal status of American territories.

Brown v. Board of Education and Plessy v. Ferguson dominate discussion of the impact of the Supreme Court on matters of southern race relations, and understandably so given the significance of Brown in overturning Plessy. As a result, historians have focused heavily on the Plessy case as a way of understanding the emergence of Jim Crow segregation. Yet this is to study the late nineteenth century from the perspective of the mid-twentieth century, and overlook other Supreme Court decisions of the late nineteenth century, most notably the decision in the 1883 Civil Rights Cases. This article will explore the implications of the 1883 decision: how it reignited an existing national debate over the meaning of civil rights that was influenced by local concerns. Through a study of how African Americans in Alabama responded to the court's 1883 decision, this article will demonstrate that black political activism remained strong well into the 1880s. Race and citizenship were brought into sharp focus by this decision, which had longer-term implications over the very meaning of civil rights in America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various aspects of the author's 31-years of corporate law scholarship, and it mentions his colleague and collaborator Professor David Millon, as well as the author's experiences as a corporate law teacher beginning in the 1980s. Business corporations and corporate takeovers are examined, along with legal education in America and corporation law litigation at judicial bodies such as the U.S. Supreme Court and the Delaware Supreme Court.

The article discusses the history of swing voters in American elections and the U.S. Supreme Court (USSC), focusing on various former and current USSC Justices such as Anthony Kennedy, Sandra Day O’Connor, Byron White, and Stanley Forman Reed. According to the article, a swing voting USSC Justice is an individual who does not employ a standard voting pattern and has the power to change law, policy, and history. The attitudes of USSC Justices are examined, along with the term swingman.