It is no exaggeration to say that no U.S. Supreme Court opinion has been more misunderstood and has had its arguments more misrepresented in the public square than Roe v. Wade (1973). 1 There seems to be a widespread perception that Roe was a moderate opinion that does not support abortion on demand, i.e., unrestricted abortion for all nine months for virtually any reason. Even a philosopher of...

he Supreme Court is the highest court of India. It is at the apex of the Indian judicial system. In the previous two lessons, you have learnt that the Union legislature, which is known as Parliament, makes laws for the whole country in respect of the Union and the Concurrent Lists and the executive comprising the President, Council of Ministers and bureaucracy enforces them. Judiciary, the thir...

Court scholars have a voracious appetite for Supreme Court preference measures. Several papers question whether widely-used Martin and Quinn scores provide valid intertemporal measures, calling into question virtually an entire generation of quantitative research on the Court. This paper discusses the challenges of inter-temporal preference estimation and revises, updates and extends Bailey and...

In December 1993, Garyand JenniferTroxel filed a petition in Washington Superior Court to obtain increased visitation with their two granddaughters under theprovision ofaWashington statuteallowing any person toseekvisitation ofachild ifthevisitation could beshown to be in the child's best interest.' The trial courtgranted increased visitations to thegrand parents. The Washington Court ofAppeals...

Segal and Spaeth’s The Supreme Court and the Attitudinal Model Revisisted argues that judges are policymakers who decide cases primarily (and sometimes exclusively) on the basis of their personal policy preferences. This is particularly true of Supreme Court justices, for the American political system leaves them unconstrained when issuing decisions on the merits. Segal and Spaeth label this th...

Genetic testing is becoming more common and more powerful by the day. The costs of the underlying DNA sequencing technology are plummeting, making it likely that tests based on it will become even more pervasive. The use of tests to determine DNA sequence to help make clinical decisions is here to stay. DNA sequencing is also finding new uses in forensics, determination of ancestry, understandi...

The Supreme Court decision O'Connor v. Donaldson (1975) has been widely interpreted to assert that dangerousness is a constitutional requirement for civil commitment. This interpretation is a misreading of the decision, which actually addressed the conditions disallowing indefinite, involuntary custodial confinement and not the requirements for an initial commitment. An excessive reliance on da...

The recent High Court ruling upholding a prior decision to allow a mother to sue for the cost of rearing a child after having had a failed sterilisation has understandably attracted great controversy (Cattanach v Melchior [2003]). The implications of this decision on what can now be claimed for through medical litigation are significant, and lawyers and doctors will extract from it lessons for ...

On June 26, 1997, the US Supreme Court ruled in 2 unanimous decisions that there is no constitutionally protected right to assisted suicide. Overturning 2 1996 Federal Appeals Court rulings that had struck down Washington and New York state laws prohibiting assisted suicide, the Supreme Court rejected 2 key arguments. First, the Supreme Court rejected the argument that the right to liberty guar...

Amicus curiae briefs are deeply woven into the fabric of modern federal appellate practice. Indeed, amici curiae submit briefs in approximately ninety percent of the cases that the United States Supreme Court entertains, and the Justices deny a minuscule number of amicus requests to participate. Amicus practice is less ubiquitous in the United States Courts of Appeals. Amici seek to file compar...