Bush v. Gore,531 U.S. 98 (2000),was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court on December 12,2000,that settled a recount dispute in Florida's 2000 presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore. On December 8,the Florida Supreme Court had ordered a statewide recount of all undervotes,over 61,000 ballots that the vote tabulation machines had missed. The Bush campaign immediately asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stay the decision and halt the recount. Justice Antonin Scalia,convinced that all the manual recounts being performed in Florida's counties were illegitimate,urged his colleagues to grant the stay immediately. On December 9,the five conservative justices on the Court granted the stay for Bush,with Scalia citing "irreparable harm" that could befall Bush,as the recounts would cast "a needless and unjustified cloud" over Bush's legitimacy. In dissent,Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that "counting every legally cast vote cannot constitute irreparable harm." Oral arguments were scheduled for December 11.
Antonin Gregory Scalia was an American jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1986 until his death in 2016. He was described as the intellectual anchor for the originalist and textualist position in the U.S. Supreme Court's conservative wing. For catalyzing an originalist and textualist movement in American law,he has been described as one of the most influential jurists of the twentieth century,and one of the most important justices in the history of the Supreme Court. Scalia was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2018 by President Donald Trump,and the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University was named in his honor.
Stephen Gerald Breyer is a retired American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1994 until his retirement in 2022. He was nominated by President Bill Clinton,and replaced retiring justice Harry Blackmun. Ketanji Brown Jackson,who was nominated by President Joe Biden,was his designated successor. Breyer was generally associated with the liberal wing of the Court. He is now the Byrne Professor of Administrative Law and Process at Harvard Law School.
Rex Edwin Lee was an American lawyer and academic who served as the 37th Solicitor General of the United States from 1981 until 1985. He was responsible for bringing the solicitor general's office to the center of U.S. legal policymaking. During his tenure,Lee argued 59 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Hamdi v. Rumsfeld,542 U.S. 507 (2004),is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court recognized the power of the U.S. government to detain enemy combatants,including U.S. citizens,but ruled that detainees who are U.S. citizens must have the rights of due process,and the ability to challenge their enemy combatant status before an impartial authority.
Pierce Butler was an American jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1923 until his death in 1939. He was a staunch conservative and was regarded as a part of the Four Horsemen,the conservative bloc that dominated the Supreme Court during the 1930s. A devout Catholic,he was the sole dissenter in the later case Buck v. Bell,though he did not write an opinion.
The J. Reuben Clark Law School is the graduate law school of Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo,Utah. Founded in 1973,the school is named after J. Reuben Clark,a former U.S. Ambassador,Undersecretary of State,and general authority of the institution's sponsoring organization,The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
John Glover Roberts Jr. is an American lawyer and jurist who has served as the 17th chief justice of the United States since 2005. Roberts has authored the majority opinion in several landmark cases,including National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius,Shelby County v. Holder,and Riley v. California. He has been described as having a conservative judicial philosophy but,above all,is an institutionalist. He has shown a willingness to work with the Supreme Court's liberal bloc,and after the retirement of Anthony Kennedy in 2018,he has been regarded as the primary swing vote on the Court. However,Roberts is no longer regarded as the Court's median vote following the replacement of Ruth Bader Ginsburg by Amy Coney Barrett in 2020.
Hamdan v. Rumsfeld,548 U.S. 557 (2006),is a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that military commissions set up by the Bush administration to try detainees at Guantanamo Bay violated both the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and the Geneva Conventions ratified by the U.S.
Textualism is a formalist theory in which the interpretation of the law is primarily based on the ordinary meaning of the legal text,where no consideration is given to non-textual sources,such as intention of the law when passed,the problem it was intended to remedy,or significant questions regarding the justice or rectitude of the law.
In law,a majority opinion is a judicial opinion agreed to by more than half of the members of a court. A majority opinion sets forth the decision of the court and an explanation of the rationale behind the court's decision.
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. The procedures of the Court are governed by the U.S. Constitution,various federal statutes,and its own internal rules. Since 1869,the Court has consisted of one chief justice and eight associate justices. Justices are nominated by the president,and with the advice and consent (confirmation) of the U.S. Senate,appointed to the Court by the president. Once appointed,justices have lifetime tenure unless they resign,retire,or are removed from office.
Paul George Cassell is a former United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Utah,who is currently the Ronald N. Boyce Presidential Professor of Criminal Law and University Distinguished Professor of Law at the S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah. He is best known as an expert in,and proponent of,victims' rights.
Clarence Thomas is an American jurist who serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was nominated by President George H. W. Bush to succeed Thurgood Marshall and has served since 1991. After Marshall,Thomas is the second African American to serve on the Court and its longest-serving member since Anthony Kennedy's retirement in 2018.
Southland Corp. v. Keating,465 U.S. 1 (1984),is a United States Supreme Court decision concerning arbitration. It was originally brought by 7-Eleven franchisees in California state courts,alleging breach of contract by the chain's then parent corporation. Southland pointed to the arbitration clauses in their franchise agreements and said it required disputes to be resolved that way;the franchisees cited state franchising law voiding any clause in an agreement that required franchisees to waive their rights under that law. A 7-2 majority held that the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) applied to contracts executed under state law.
Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn,563 U.S. 125 (2011),is a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States involving taxpayer standing under Article Three of the United States Constitution.
Connick v. Thompson,563 U.S. 51 (2011),is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court considered whether a prosecutor's office can be held liable for a single Brady violation by one of its members on the theory that the office provided inadequate training.
Kerry v. Din,576 U.S. 86 (2015),was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court analyzed whether there is a constitutional right to live in the United States with one's spouse and whether procedural due process requires consular officials to give notice of reasons for denying a visa application. In Justice Anthony Kennedy's concurring opinion,the controlling opinion in this case,he wrote that notice requirements “[do] not apply when,as in this case,a visa application is denied due to terrorism or national security concerns.”Because the consular officials satisfied notice requirements,there was no need for the Court to address the constitutional question about the right to live with one's spouse.
Law and corpus linguistics (LCL) is a new academic sub-discipline that uses large databases of examples of language usage equipped with tools designed by linguists called corpora to better get at the meaning of words and phrases in legal texts. Thus,LCL is the application of corpus linguistic tools,theories,and methodologies to issues of legal interpretation in much the same way law and economics is the application of economic tools,theories,and methodologies to various legal issues.
Lafler v. Cooper,566 U.S. 156 (2012),was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court clarified the Sixth Amendment standard for reversing convictions due to ineffective assistance of counsel during plea bargaining. The Court ruled that when a lawyer's ineffective assistance leads to the rejection of a plea agreement,a defendant is entitled to relief if the outcome of the plea process would have been different with competent advice. In such cases,the Court ruled that the Sixth Amendment requires the trial judge to exercise discretion to determine an appropriate remedy.
