An amicus curiae is an individual or organization that is not a party to a legal case, but that is permitted to assist a court by offering information, expertise, or insight that has a bearing on the issues in the case. Whether an amicus brief will be considered is typically under the court's discretion. The phrase is legal Latin and the origin of the term has been dated to 1605–1615. The scope of amici curiae is generally found in the cases where broad public interests are involved and concerns regarding civil rights are in question.
The Supreme Court of California is the highest and final court of appeals in the courts of the U.S. state of California. It is headquartered in San Francisco at the Earl Warren Building, but it regularly holds sessions in Los Angeles and Sacramento. Its decisions are binding on all other California state courts. Since 1850, the court has issued many influential decisions in a variety of areas including torts, property, civil and constitutional rights, and criminal law.
Ronald Marc George is an American jurist. He previously served as the 27th Chief Justice of California from 1996 to 2011. Governor Pete Wilson appointed George as an associate justice of the Supreme Court in 1991 and elevated George to Chief Justice in 1996.
Varian Medical Systems, Inc. v. Delfino, 35 Cal.4th 180 (2005) is a California Supreme Court opinion by then-Associate Justice Janice R. Brown interpreting the state's SLAPP statute. Specifically, the case holds that an appeal from a denial of an anti-SLAPP motion stays all trial court proceedings: "The perfecting of an appeal from the denial of a special motion to strike automatically stays all further trial court proceedings on the merits upon the causes of action affected by the motion...you have a right not to be dragged through the courts because you exercised your constitutional rights."
Barrett v. Rosenthal, 40 Cal.4th 33 (2006), was a California Supreme Court case concerning online defamation. The case resolved a defamation claim brought by Stephen Barrett, Terry Polevoy, and attorney Christopher Grell against Ilena Rosenthal and several others. Barrett and others alleged that the defendants had republished libelous information about them on the internet. In a unanimous decision, the court held that Rosenthal was a "user of interactive computer services" and therefore immune from liability under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
The Animal Legal Defense Fund is an American animal law advocacy organization. Its stated mission is to protect the lives and advance the interests of animals through the legal system. It accomplishes this by filing high-impact lawsuits to protect animals from harm, providing free legal assistance and training to prosecutors to assure that animal abusers are punished for their crimes, supporting tough animal protection legislation and fighting legislation harmful to animals, and providing resources and opportunities to law students and professionals to advance the emerging field of animal law. In addition to their national headquarters in Cotati, California, the Animal Legal Defense Fund maintains an office in Portland, Oregon.
The California Academy of Appellate Lawyers is a statewide organization of experienced appellate practitioners. It strives to improve appellate practice in the nation's largest court system.
Sham peer review or malicious peer review is a name given to the abuse of a medical peer review process to attack a doctor for personal or other non-medical reasons. The American Medical Association conducted an investigation of medical peer review in 2007 and concluded that while it is easy to allege misconduct and 15% of surveyed physicians indicated that they were aware of peer review misuse or abuse, cases of malicious peer review able to be proven through the legal system are rare.
Edward Tabash is an American lawyer and political and social activist. He is an atheist, a proponent of the Establishment Clause. He chairs the Board of Directors for the Center for Inquiry. Tabash has represented the atheist position in debates against several world-renowned religious philosophers and apologists, including William Lane Craig, Peter van Inwagen, J.P. Moreland, Greg Bahnsen, Mohammad Hijab, and Richard Swinburne.
Theodore H. Frank is an American lawyer, activist, and legal writer based in Washington, D.C. He is the counsel of record and petitioner in Frank v. Gaos, the first Supreme Court case to deal with the issue of cy pres in class action settlements; he is one of the few Supreme Court attorneys ever to argue his own case. He wrote the vetting report of vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin for the John McCain campaign in the 2008 presidential election. He founded the Center for Class Action Fairness (CCAF) in 2009; it temporarily merged with the Competitive Enterprise Institute in 2015, but as of 2019 CCAF is now part of the new Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute, a free-market nonprofit public-interest law firm founded by Frank and his CCAF colleague Melissa Holyoak.
Keller v. State Bar of California, 496 U.S. 1 (1990), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that attorneys who are required to be members of a state bar association have a First Amendment right to refrain from subsidizing the organization’s political or ideological activities.
The American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER) was a nonprofit organization active in the United States from 2009 through 2015. The organization was established to support the plaintiffs in Hollingsworth v. Perry, a federal lawsuit challenging California's Proposition 8 under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. AFER retained former United States Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson and David Boies to lead the legal team representing the plaintiffs challenging Proposition 8.
Monte Neil Stewart is the founding president of the Marriage Law Foundation, the former United States Attorney for Nevada, and a former Special Assistant Attorney General and Counsel to the Governor of Utah.
United States v. Banki, 685 F.3d 99 is a case related to the transfer of large amounts of money — totaling some $3.4 million — from Iran to the United States. Banki was charged with conspiracy to violate the Iranian Transactions Regulations and operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business and four other charges. Banki's defense argued these transfers were necessary to protect the family's assets.
Molko v. Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity was a legal case heard before the California Supreme Court, which issued its ruling in 1988.
In 2001, in the case Conservatorship of Wendland, also known as Wendland v. Wendland, and the Robert Wendland case, the Supreme Court of California unanimously ruled that Rose Wendland, the wife of Robert Wendland, in the absence of a durable power of attorney for health care (DPAHC), did not have the authority to withhold artificial nutrition and hydration in her husband's behalf. The Court recognized that patients unable to make a decision for themselves should receive special protection according to the right to life and right to privacy provided by the California constitution.
In Scottish law, a Lord Advocate's Reference is a procedure by which the Lord Advocate can refer a point of law that has arisen during the course of solemn proceedings to the High Court of Justiciary sitting as the Court of Criminal Appeal, for a determination. The Lord Advocate is the senior law officer of the Scottish Government, chief public prosecutor and head of the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service in Scotland.
Raymond Paul Boucher is an American trial attorney. Throughout his career, Boucher has represented clients in a wide range of matters including consumer litigation, construction defect litigation, product liability, toxic tort litigation and employment discrimination. He served as lead attorney in the landmark $660-million sexual-abuse settlement with the Catholic archdiocese where he represented over 250 abuse victims in the July 2007 settlement. He was able to help secure over one billion dollars in recovery for victims of abuse by Catholic Priests in Southern California.
Mahmoud Reza Banki is an Iranian-American scientist, management consultant and startup executive. Born in Tehran, Iran, Banki immigrated to the US to attend college and became a naturalized US citizen in the 1990s. In January 2010, Banki was arrested and charged with violating US sanctions against Iran by the United States Attorney's office in New York City. Ultimately Banki won his case on appeal, and it was permanently closed in July 2012. Banki spoke about his case at a TED Talk in 2014, presenting a case for change in criminal justice. As of 2015 a documentary film about the case was being made. In The Moth podcast released January 2017, Banki spoke to the personal toll of the ordeal. Banki has also spoken before various audiences for the cause of improving the criminal justice system. As of 2022, Banki was Chief Financial Officer and Chief Strategy Officer at leading streaming company Tubi. On January 20, 2021, Banki received a full and unconditional pardon from the President of the United States.
Sharp v. Murphy, 591 U.S. ___ (2020), was a Supreme Court of the United States case of whether Congress disestablished the Muscogee (Creek) Nation reservation. After holding the case from the 2018 term, the case was decided on July 9, 2020, in a per curiam decision following McGirt v. Oklahoma that, for the purposes of the Major Crimes Act, the reservations were never disestablished and remain Native American country.
