A precedent is a principle or rule established in a previous legal case that is either binding on or persuasive without going to courts for a court or other tribunal when deciding subsequent cases with similar issues or facts. Common-law legal systems place great value on deciding cases according to consistent principled rules, so that similar facts will yield similar and predictable outcomes, and observance of precedent is the mechanism by which that goal is attained. The principle by which judges are bound to precedents is known as stare decisis. Common-law precedent is a third kind of law, on equal footing with statutory law and subordinate legislation.
In law, the terms moot and mootness have different meanings in British English and American English.
Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow, 542 U.S. 1 (2004), was a case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. The lawsuit, originally filed as Newdow v. United States Congress, Elk Grove Unified School District, et al. in 2000, led to a 2002 ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance are an endorsement of religion and therefore violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The words had been added by a 1954 act of Congress that changed the phrase "one nation indivisible" into "one nation under God, indivisible". After an initial decision striking the congressionally added "under God", the superseding opinion on denial of rehearing en banc was more limited, holding that compelled recitation of the language by school teachers to students was invalid.
Harper & Row v. Nation Enterprises, 471 U.S. 539 (1985), was a United States Supreme Court decision in which public interest in learning about a historical figure’s impressions of a historic event was held not to be sufficient to show fair use of material otherwise protected by copyright. Defendant, The Nation, had summarized and quoted substantially from A Time to Heal, President Gerald Ford's forthcoming memoir of his decision to pardon former president Richard Nixon. When Harper & Row, who held the rights to A Time to Heal, brought suit, The Nation asserted that its use of the book was protected under the doctrine of fair use, because of the great public interest in a historical figure’s account of a historic incident. The Court rejected this argument holding that the right of first publication was important enough to find in favor of Harper.
The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, Division C of Pub.L. 104–208 (text)(pdf), 110 Stat. 3009-546, enacted September 30, 1996, made major changes to the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) of the United States, which the bill's proponents argued was mainly because of the rapidly-growing undocumented immigrant population in the country. "These IIRIRA changes became effective on April 1, 1997."
Danny Julián Boggs is an American attorney and a Senior United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He was appointed to the court in 1986 and served as its Chief Judge from September 2003 to August 2009. Boggs was on the short list of President George W. Bush's candidates for the U.S. Supreme Court.
Muth v. Frank, 412 F.3d 808, was a case in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruled that the denial to an individual of a writ of habeas corpus for violation of Wisconsin's laws criminalizing incest was not unconstitutional. The petitioners relied heavily on the Supreme Court's ruling in Lawrence v. Texas invalidating anti-sodomy laws two years prior, which the Seventh Circuit rejected.
Non-publication of legal opinions is the practice of a court issuing unpublished opinions. An unpublished opinion is a decision of a court that is not available for citation as precedent because the court deems the case to have insufficient precedential value.
Stephen Roy Reinhardt was a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, with chambers in Los Angeles, California. He was the last federal appeals court judge in active service to have been appointed by President Jimmy Carter.
The Federal Reporter is a case law reporter in the United States that is published by West Publishing and a part of the National Reporter System. It begins with cases decided in 1880; pre-1880 cases were later retroactively compiled by West Publishing into a separate reporter, Federal Cases. The fourth and current Federal Reporter series publishes decisions of the United States courts of appeals and the United States Court of Federal Claims; prior series had varying scopes that covered decisions of other federal courts as well. Though the Federal Reporter is an unofficial reporter and West is a private company that does not have a legal monopoly over the court opinions it publishes, it has so dominated the industry in the United States that legal professionals, including judges, uniformly cite to the Federal Reporter for included decisions. Approximately 30 new volumes are published each year.
Fortunato Pedro Benavides is a Senior United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. His chambers are in Austin, Texas.
David Brookman Smith, known professionally as D. Brooks Smith, is the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. He was previously Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, and is the only judge in the history of the Third Circuit to have served as both a chief district judge and chief of the Court of Appeals. Beginning January 2022, Smith will begin to serve as Penn State Law's new jurist in residence.
The Federal Supplement (ISSN 1047-7306 is a case law reporter published by West Publishing in the United States that includes select opinions of the United States district courts since 1932, and is part of the National Reporter System. Although the Federal Supplement is an unofficial reporter and West is a private company that does not have a legal monopoly over the court opinions it publishes, it has so dominated the industry in the U.S. that legal professionals uniformly cite the Federal Supplement for included decisions. Approximately 40 new volumes are published per year.
Thomas Lee Ambro is a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. He began his judicial service in 2000.
Carey v. Musladin, 549 U.S. 70 (2006), is a United States Supreme Court case involving the standard for when a federal court can grant habeas corpus relief to overturn a criminal conviction based on the state court's misapplication of established federal law. At issue was whether a criminal defendant's constitutional right to a fair trial was violated when relatives of the alleged victim were permitted to sit in the courtroom as spectators during trial, wearing buttons that displayed the victim's image.
Jerry Edwin Smith is an American attorney and jurist serving as a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Wal-Mart v. Dukes, 564 U.S. 338 (2011), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled that a group of roughly 1.5 million women could not be certified as a valid class of plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit for employment discrimination against Walmart. Lead plaintiff Betty Dukes, a Walmart employee, and others alleged gender discrimination in pay and promotion policies and practices in Walmart stores.
United States v. Kilbride, 584 F.3d 1240 is a case from the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rejecting an appeal from two individuals convicted of violating the Can Spam Act and US obscenity law. The defendants were appealing convictions on 8 counts from the District Court of Arizona for distributing pornographic spam via email. The second count which the defendants were found guilty of involved the falsification of the "From" field of email headers, which is illegal to do multiple times in commercial settings under 18 USC § 1037(a)(3). The case is particularly notable because of the majority opinion on obscenity, in which Judge Fletcher writes an argument endorsing the use of a national community obscenity standard for the internet.
Moseley v. V Secret Catalogue, Inc., 537 U.S. 418 (2003), is a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States holding that, under the Lanham Act, a claim of trademark dilution requires proof of actual dilution. This decision was later superseded by the Trademark Dilution Revision Act of 2006 (TDRA).
Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee v. FEC, 518 U.S. 604 (1996), was a case heard by the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Colorado Republican Party challenged the Federal Election Commission (FEC) as to whether the "Party Expenditure Provision" of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 (FECA) violated the First Amendment right to free speech. This provision put a limit on the amount of money a national party could spend on a congressional candidate's campaign. The FEC argued that the Committee violated this provision when purchasing a radio advertisement that attacked the likely candidate of the Colorado Democratic Party. The court held that since the expenditures by the Committee were made independently from a specific candidate, they did not violate the campaign contribution limitations established by the FECA, and were protected under the First Amendment.
