The Supreme Court recently denied certiorari to review the Federal Circuit’s ruling in Apotex v. Pfizer (S. Ct. 906-1006, October 16, 2006). The ruling was predictable. Pfizer had mooted the case by providing a covenant not to sue Apotex on its Quinapril patent. But the underlying legal issue – subject matter jurisdiction in declaratory judgment cases – is currently pending before the Supreme C...

The Supreme Court has traditionally applied the Eighth Amendment differently to capital and non-capital cases based on the longstanding notion that “death-is-different.” In the recent case of Graham v. Florida, however, the Supreme Court applied its “evolving standards of decency” standard, heretofore reserved for capital cases, to a non-capital case. The Court held that the Eighth Amendment pr...

Under the dimension of US constitutionalism, freedom of speech is imprescriptible, while limitation to obscene speech in judicial practice becomes exception of the stipulation of US Constitution “prohibiting laying down the law”. Furthermore, coordination of conflicts between the two turns to be the target sought by the Federal Supreme Judicial Court. Prejudication on games between the two by t...

This edition of “Ask the Author” features a discussion with Andrew Martin, who is a professor of law and chair of the political science department at Washington University in St. Louis. Andrew has done some very influential work on the Supreme Court, including co-authoring a paper on ideological drift of Supreme Court Justices, see [1] here, that will appear in issue four of the Northwestern Un...

Previous research has identified strategic behavior in the nomination, confirmation, and retirement processes of the Supreme Court, each independently. This paper analyzes the interaction between the justices, the president, and the Senate in these processes. I constructed a game theoretic model to consider the nomination and approval process of Supreme Court justices and the change in dynamics...

This article discusses the 1975 Supreme Court opinion O'Connor v. Donaldson. The article first examines the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the basis for the O'Connor ruling. It then looks carefully at the Court's conclusions, with particular attention to the Court's reasoning and analysis. The article goes on to look at how the Supreme Court has interpreted O'Connor on subseque...

In the case of Beal v. Doe, decided in 1977, the US Supreme Court ruled that states could constitutionally restrict money from Medicaid from funding elective abortions. After the 1973 case Roe v. Wade [2], in which the US Supreme Court had ruled that women have rights to terminate pregnancies within the first trimester [3], the state of Pennsylvania passed legislation that restricted the use of...

There are many views on how human decision makers behave. In this work, the Justices of the United States Supreme Court will be viewed in terms of constrained maximization and cognitivecybernetic theory. This paper will integrate research in such fields as law, political science, psychology, economics and decision making theory. It will be argued that due to its heavy workload, the Supreme Cour...

The U.S. Supreme Court will decide later this year whether to let stand decisions by two appeals courts permitting doctors to help terminally ill patients commit suicide. The Ninth and Second Circuit Courts of Appeals last spring held that state laws in Washington and New York that ban assistance in suicide were unconstitutional as applied to doctors and their dying patients. If the Supreme Cou...

Ever since the U.S. Supreme Court granted and subsequently dismissed the writ of certiorari in Laboratory Corp. of America Holdings v. Metabolite Laboratories, Inc., those who depend on the patentability of clinical diagnostic methods have been waiting for the other shoe to drop. The provocative dissent to the dismissal by Justice Breyer has sown uncertainty in the diagnostics industry. However...