In the United States, Social Security is the commonly used term for the federal Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) program and is administered by the Social Security Administration (SSA). The Social Security Act was passed in 1935, and the existing version of the Act, as amended, encompasses several social welfare and social insurance programs.
A prenuptial agreement, antenuptial agreement, or premarital agreement, is a written contract entered into by a couple before marriage or a civil union that enables them to select and control many of the legal rights they acquire upon marrying, and what happens when their marriage ends by death or divorce. Couples enter into a written prenuptial agreement to supersede many of the default marital laws that would otherwise apply in the event of divorce, such as the laws that govern the division of property, retirement benefits, savings, and the right to seek alimony with agreed-upon terms that provide certainty and clarify their marital rights. A premarital agreement may also contain waivers of a surviving spouse's right to claim an elective share of the estate of the deceased spouse.
According to the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO), there are 1,138 statutory provisions in which marital status is a factor in determining benefits, rights, and privileges. These rights were a key issue in the debate over federal recognition of same-sex marriage. Under the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the federal government was prohibited from recognizing same-sex couples who were lawfully married under the laws of their state. The conflict between this definition and the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution led the U.S. Supreme Court to rule DOMA unconstitutional on June 26, 2013, in the case of United States v. Windsor. DOMA was finally repealed and replaced by the Respect for Marriage Act on December 13, 2022, which retains the same statutory provisions as DOMA and extends them to interracial and same-sex married couples.
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 to his position by President Jimmy Carter.
United States v. Windsor, 570 U.S. 744 (2013), is a landmark United States Supreme Court civil rights case concerning same-sex marriage. The Court held that Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which denied federal recognition of same-sex marriages, was a violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.
United States v. Hatter, 532 U.S. 557 (2001), was a United States Supreme Court case decided in 2001. The case concerned an alleged violation of the Compensation Clause of the United States Constitution when Congress extended Medicare and Social Security taxes to federal judge salaries. Additionally, the case dealt with whether a later increase of federal judge salaries, greater than the new taxes, remedied the potential violation.
Military divorce is a specific type of divorce that arises when one or both partners are members of the military. Although typically an uncontested divorce, military divorces are different because they require additional requirements to be fulfilled. Divorces occur less frequently than within the civilian population. They present a special set of challenges that make military divorces more complicated than a typical divorce. For example, The Federal Service Members Civil Relief Act of 2003Archived 2013-04-15 at the Wayback Machine requires any person seeking a divorce to state that their spouse is or is not currently a member of the United States armed forces. This is meant to prevent spouses from seeking divorces from service members who would be unable to attend divorce proceedings.
Hilmann v. Maretta, 569 U.S. 483 (2013), was a United States Supreme Court decision in which the court unanimously ruled that a Virginia statute revoking beneficiary status for spouses whose marital status has changed was pre-empted by the Federal Employees’ Group Life Insurance Act (1954).
Lambert v. Yellowley, 272 U.S. 581 (1926), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that reaffirmed the National Prohibition Act's limitation on the dispensation of alcoholic medicines. The five-to-four decision, written by Justice Louis D. Brandeis, affirmed the dismissal of a suit in which New York City physician Samuel Lambert sought to prevent Edward Yellowley, the acting federal prohibition director, from enforcing the Prohibition Act so as to preclude him from prescribing alcoholic medicines. The decision affirmed the police powers of the individual states, as well as the power of the Necessary and Proper Clause of the United States Constitution, which was cited in upholding the Prohibition Act's limitations as a necessary and proper implementation of the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
United States v. Barker, 15 U.S. 395 (1817), was a case decided by the United States Supreme Court upholding the common law tradition that private citizens may not demand costs from the federal government. The case involved a motion for costs filed against the United States Government and resolved the previously unanswered question of whether courts could award costs against the United States federal government. The Court's opinion read, in its entirety, "The United States never pays costs." Jurists have remarked that Chief Justice John Marshall's six-word opinion is one of the shortest Supreme Court cases ever written.
The Uniformed Services Former Spouses' Protection Act is a U.S. federal law enacted on September 8, 1982 to address issues that arise when a member of the military divorces, and primarily concerns jointly-earned marital property consisting of benefits earned during marriage and while one of the spouses is a military service member. The divisibility of U.S. military retirement payments in divorce proceedings has had a turbulent legislative and legal history, and the USFSPA has not closely tracked its civilian cousin enacted in 1975, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), although they are similar in some respects with regard to public policy aims.
Expressions Hair Design v. Schneiderman, 581 U.S. ___ (2017), was a United States Supreme Court decision that held that price controls, when used to prohibit the communication of prices of goods with regards to a surcharge, was a regulation of speech and required an analysis of the First Amendment's protections for freedom of speech.
Torres v. Texas Department of Public Safety, 597 U.S. 580 (2022), was a United States Supreme Court case dealing with the Uniformed Services Employment and Re-employment Rights Act of 1994 (USERRA) and state sovereign immunity. In a 5–4 decision issued in June 2022, the Court ruled that state sovereign immunity does not prevent states from being sued under federal law related to the nation's defense.
George v. McDonough, 596 U.S. ___ (2022), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the invalidation of a Department of Veterans Affairs regulation after a veteran's benefits decision becomes final cannot support a claim for collateral relief permitting revision of that decision based on "clear and unmistakable error" under 38 U.S.C. §§ 5109A and 7111.
McLane Co. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 581 U.S. 72 (2017), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that a district court's decision whether to enforce or quash a subpoena issued by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission should be reviewed for abuse of discretion, not de novo.
Clark v. Rameker, 573 U.S. 122 (2014), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that funds held in inherited Individual Retirement Accounts are not "retirement funds" within the meaning of 11 U.S.C. § 522(b)(3)(c) and therefore not exempt from the bankruptcy estate.
Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. v. Haeger, 581 U.S. ___ (2017), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the court held that when a court sanctions bad-faith conduct by ordering a litigant to pay the other side’s legal fees, the award is limited to the fees the innocent party incurred solely because of the bad-faith misconduct.
Manrique v. United States, 581 U.S. ___ (2017), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the court held that a defendant wishing to appeal an order imposing restitution in a deferred restitution case must file a notice of appeal from that order.
Town of Chester v. Laroe Estates, Inc., 581 U.S. ___ (2017), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the court held that a litigant seeking to intervene as of right under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 24(a)(2) must meet the requirements of Article III standing if the intervenor wishes to pursue relief not requested by a plaintiff.
Calcutt v. FDIC, 598 U.S. ___ (2023), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the court held that an administrative agency's discretionary order may be upheld in court only on the same basis articulated in the order by the agency itself.
