The use of a simple 50%-50% box score of decisions for parents and districts, respectively, is a false measure of the impartiality of hearing officers under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). This analysis canvasses relevant structural factors that the stakeholders, the mass media, and the professional literature have failed to recognize both generally and systematically. T...

Not too many years ago, scholars could reasonably speak of the U.S. Supreme Court as being among the most activist in American history. Both empirical and normative scholarship was driven by the sense of a Court that was aggressive in the assertion of its own supremacy and active in the exercise of the power of judicial review. The Court under Chief Justice John Roberts cannot be viewed in the ...

handed down its 6-3 decision against Angel Raich and Diane Monson.1 The Court ruled that the federal government can prohibit even intrastate and noncommercial marijuana possession and cultivation under the rubric of “interstate commerce.” In the prior Supreme Court ruling, United States vs. the Oakland Cannabis Buyers’ Cooperative,2 the Court ruled that “medical necessity” is not a legal defens...

This commentary on Salem et al. provides background for their study by reviewing Washington v. Harper and outlining some areas that were not addressed by that decision. It contrasts Harper holdings with those in other U. S. Supreme Court decisions in parallel cases and in United States v. Loughner. It provides cautions about extensions of some holdings in Loughner regarding the use of Harper-ty...

On the face of it, the 5 June ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, affirming the earlier dismissal of the youths’ case, is a setback. However, the Court’s ruling positions the case to proceed to the Supreme Court on the question of whether the federal government has a public trust obligation to its citizens. The Court of Appeals focused on a recent U.S. Supr...

This paper provides an analysis of the judgment by the German Supreme Court in socalled Poem title list III (Gedichttitelliste III) together with relevant background to the case. The dispute concerned the infringement of the Sui Generis database right and the domestic supreme court decided the matter after the European Court of Justice gave its preliminary ruling on the interpretation of the re...

Since the United States Supreme Court ruling in 2002 on the Atkins v. Virginia case, which determined that executing an individual with mental retardation violates the Eighth Amendment, the potential motivation to malinger mental retardation by individuals charged in potential death penalty cases has emerged. The following case illustrates some of the challenges that emerge in such an evaluatio...

The landmark case of Jackson v. Indiana is well known to forensic psychiatrists, but little is known of the personal and legal background of this case. Mr. Jackson's state hospital records were reviewed, as were available transcripts and decisions of the Indiana court proceedings, before and after the U.S. Supreme Court decision, and local newspaper coverage, to understand how this case developed.

This article identifies the key issues involved in the debate about affirmative action. The June 2003 Supreme Court decisions allowing consideration of race to ensure that there is a "critical mass" of African American, Latino/Latina, and Native American applicants to higher education are addressed. Social psychologists have identified key myths and provided clarifications about the need for an...