Can the modern economy function without a market for interestbased credit? This question has acquired some urgency in the wake of the recent Shariat Court ruling banning interest in Pakistan. Some pundits have pronounced that great harm will result from the banning of interest. Actually, such pronouncements are based on a lack of understanding of both the modern economic system, as well as the ...

Scholars have devoted a great deal of research to investigating the role and influence of the U.S. Solicitor General (SG) as amicus curiae in the Supreme Court. Yet, we know little about the SG’s decision to file an amicus brief and how this relates to the SG’s success on the merits. We fill this void by examining legal, political, and administrative factors that affect the SG’s decision to par...

We assess the credit market impact of allowing mortgage “strip-down” as a foreclosureprevention measure, where strip-down reduces the principal of underwater residential mortgages to the current market value of the property for homeowners in Chapter 13 bankruptcy. Our identification is provided by a series of U.S. court decisions that introduced strip-down in parts of the U.S. and a Supreme Cou...

The reliability of confessions is subject to a variety of factors, some of which give rise to expert testimony. To the degree that prosecutors construe the determination of reliability as an objective standard, they may attempt to bar testimony. Moreover, when the testimony is theoretical rather than clinical, there are additional challenges. Depending on jurisdiction, the admissibility of expe...

The recent hearings on Judge Sonia Sotomayor's and Solicitor General Elena Kagan's nominations to the Supreme Court vividly exemplify the enthusiastic concurrence between the senators and the nominee that judges make neither law nor policy. Judges decide particular cases between particu­ lar litigants, the questioners and the responders agree, and in doing so they apply laws and policies made b...

The Supreme Court has consistently stated that federal appellate courts may issue the writ of mandamus as an interlocutory remedy only under "extraordinary" circumstances," to correct a lower court order that is "not mere error but usurpation of power."2 The Court has explained that mandamus cannot serve as a substitute for normal appeal and should be available "only where appeal is a clearly i...

Although a 1996 U.S. Supreme Court decision affirmed that therapists cannot be compelled to testify in federal proceedings about patients' disclosures, a footnote could be interpreted as creating a "dangerous patient exception" when there is a serious threat of harm. This column describes circuit courts' differing views about whether such an exception exists and the value of an exception. Altho...

In light of Elena Kagan's nomination to serve as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, this report analyzes then-Professor Kagan's views of executive power and the doctrine of separation of powers as laid most extensively out in her 2001 Harvard Law Review article Presidential Administration. This report will proceed as follows. First, it will briefly describe the constitutio...

This article explores the ways in which the court’s recognition of a broad zone of personal liberty in Lawrence v. Texas may serve to strengthen a woman’s constitutionally protected reproductive rights in future Supreme Court decisions. Part of the author’s analysis focuses on using particular Justices’ opinions (and dissents) to predict the direction of future challenges to abortion rights in ...