In United States constitutional law, the political questiondoctrine holds that a constitutional dispute that requires knowledge of a non-legal character or the use of techniques not suitable for a court or explicitly assigned by the Constitution to the U.S. Congress, or the President of the United States, lies within the political, rather than the legal, realm to solve, and judges customarily refuse to address such matters. The idea of a political question is closely linked to the concept of justiciability, as it comes down to a question of whether or not the court system is an appropriate forum in which to hear the case. This is because the court system only has the authority to hear and decide a legal question, not a political one. Legal questions are deemed to be justiciable, while political questions are nonjusticiable. One scholar explained:
The political question doctrine holds that some questions, in their nature, are fundamentally political, and not legal, and if a question is fundamentally political ... then the court will refuse to hear that case. It will claim that it doesn't have jurisdiction. And it will leave that question to some other aspect of the political process to settle out.
Michael William McConnell is an American jurist who served as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit from 2002 to 2009. Since 2009, McConnell has been a professor and Director of the Stanford Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School. He is also a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, and Senior Of Counsel to the Litigation Practice Group at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. In May 2020, Facebook appointed him to its content oversight board. In 2020, McConnell published The President Who Would Not Be King: Executive Power under the Constitution under Princeton University Press.
Diane Schwerm Sykes is an American jurist and lawyer who serves as the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. She served as a justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court from 1999 to 2004.
Gonzales v. Oregon, 546 U.S. 243 (2006), was a landmark decision of the US Supreme Court which ruled that the United States Attorney General cannot enforce the federal Controlled Substances Act against physicians who prescribed drugs, in compliance with Oregon state law, to terminally ill patients seeking to end their lives, commonly referred to as assisted suicide. It was the first major case heard by the Roberts Court under the new Chief Justice of the United States.
In the United States, qualified immunity is a legal principle of federal constitutional law that grants government officials performing discretionary (optional) functions immunity from lawsuits for damages unless the plaintiff shows that the official violated "clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known". It is comparable to sovereign immunity, though it protects government employees rather than the government itself. It is less strict than absolute immunity, by protecting officials who "make reasonable but mistaken judgments about open legal questions", extending to "all [officials] but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law". Qualified immunity applies only to government officials in civil litigation, and does not protect the government itself from suits arising from officials' actions.
Citizens to Preserve Overton Park v. Volpe, 401 U.S. 402 (1971), is a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that established the basic legal framework for judicial review of the actions of administrative agencies. It substantially narrowed the Administrative Procedure Act's Section 701(a)(2) exception from judicial review. It also stands as a notable example of the power of litigation by grassroots citizen movements to block government action.
Hudson v. Michigan, 547 U.S. 586 (2006), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that a violation of the Fourth Amendment requirement that police officers knock, announce their presence, and wait a reasonable amount of time before entering a private residence does not require suppression of the evidence obtained in the ensuing search.
The Supreme Court of the United States handed down eight per curiam opinions during its 2006 term, which began October 2, 2006 and concluded September 30, 2007.
The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal is an administrative tribunal established in 1977 through the Canadian Human Rights Act. It is directly funded by the Parliament of Canada and is independent of the Canadian Human Rights Commission which refers cases to it for adjudication under the act.
Thomas Lee Ambro is a Senior United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Hope v. Pelzer, 536 U.S. 730 (2002), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled that the defense of qualified immunity, under which government actors may not be sued for actions they take in connection with their offices, did not apply to a lawsuit challenging the Alabama Department of Corrections's use of the "hitching post", a punishment whereby inmates were immobilized for long periods of time.
Ziglar v. Abbasi, 582 U.S. ___ (2017), is a Supreme Court of the United States case in which the Court determined, by a vote of 4–2, that non-U.S. citizens detained in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks cannot recover monetary damages from high level federal officials for the conditions of their confinement. The case was consolidated with Hastey v. Abbasi, and Ashcroft v. Abbasi. It was argued on January 18, 2017.
Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825 (1994), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that a prison official's "deliberate indifference" to a substantial risk of serious harm to an inmate violates the cruel and unusual punishment clause of the Eighth Amendment. Farmer built on two previous Supreme Court decisions addressing prison conditions, Estelle v. Gamble and Wilson v. Seiter. The decision marked the first time the Supreme Court directly addressed sexual assault in prisons.
Safford Unified School District v. Redding, 557 U.S. 364 (2009), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that a strip search of a middle school student by school officials violated the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.
The Supreme Court of the United States handed down eight per curiam opinions during its 2013 term, which began October 7, 2013 and concluded October 5, 2014.
Bond v. United States, 572 U.S. 844 (2014), follows up on the Supreme Court's 2011 case of the same name in which it had reversed the Third Circuit and concluded that both individuals and states can bring a Tenth Amendment challenge to federal law. The case was remanded to the Third Circuit, for a decision on the merits, which again ruled against Bond. On appeal, the Supreme Court reversed and remanded again, ruling that the Chemical Weapons Convention Implementation Act of 1998 did not reach Bond's actions and she could not be charged under that federal law.
North Carolina State Board of Dental Examiners v. Federal Trade Commission, 574 U.S. 494 (2015), was a United States Supreme Court case on the scope of immunity from US antitrust law. The Supreme Court held that a state occupational licensing board that was primarily composed of persons active in the market it regulates has immunity from antitrust law only when it is actively supervised by the state. The North Carolina Board of Dental Examiners had relied on the Parker immunity doctrine, established by the Supreme Court case Parker v. Brown, which held that actions by state governments acting in their sovereignty did not violate antitrust law.
Patchak v. Zinke, 583 U.S. ___ (2018), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court upheld the Gun Lake Trust Land Reaffirmation Act, which precludes federal courts from hearing lawsuits involving a particular parcel of land. Although six Justices agreed that the Gun Lake Act was constitutional, they could not agree on why. In an opinion issued by Justice Thomas, a plurality of the Court read the statute to strip federal courts of jurisdiction over cases involving the property and held that this did not violate Article Three of the United States Constitution. In contrast, Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor, both of whom concurred in the judgment, upheld the Act as a restoration of the government's sovereign immunity. Chief Justice Roberts, writing for himself and Justices Kennedy and Gorsuch, dissented on the ground that the statute intruded on the judicial power, in violation of Article III.
Franchise Tax Board of California v. Hyatt, 587 U.S. 230 (2019), was a United States Supreme Court case that determined that unless they consent, states have sovereign immunity from private suits filed against them in the courts of another state. The 5–4 decision overturned precedent set in a 1979 Supreme Court case, Nevada v. Hall. This was the third time that the litigants had presented their case to the Court, as the Court had already ruled on the issue in 2003 and 2016.
Plumhoff v. Rickard, 572 U.S. 765 (2014), is a United States Supreme Court case involving the use of force by police officers during high-speed car chases. After first holding that it had jurisdiction to hear the case, the Court held that the conduct of the police officers involved in the case did not violate the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.
