Online research in philosophy

Although the ethical and legal worlds are often at odds, a wealth of information is gained by evaluating legal decisions from an ethical perspective. Evaluating court decisions from an ethical viewpoint, increases our knowledge, and helps to beneficially influence future court precedent. Of particular importance to the relationship between the law, business, and ethics, is the ideal of beneficence and non-maleficence. It is the court’s role to protect the rights of individuals, especially with regards to their health care provision. These issues are especially present in conflicts that relate to the availability and access to health care and insurance coverage. Patient autonomy, physician malpractice and informed consent are all influenced by such current court precedent as addressed bythe Employee Retirement Income and Security Act of 1974 (ERISA). This leads us to the central theme of this discussion on the ethical implications of the Supreme Court precedent on ERISA.

This Comment demonstrates that policy judgements are not masked by philosophical references, nor do philosophers play any crucial role in contentious judicial decisions. Neomi Rao’s study is flawed for many reasons: incomplete content analysis, poor assessment of data, and an inadequate definition of philosophy. She should be criticised for hypocritically praising Court philosopher references in some instances and not others, especially with regard to the Court’s early development. This Comment searched unsuccessfully for an instance where philosophers were cited just once in controversial cases regarding racial integration, capital punishment’s abolition and re-legality, and the 2000 Presidential election. Philosophers are peculiarly absent from major controversial cases. Rao claims the Court’s majority decisions avoided the “Philosophers’ Brief” because the philosophers’ argument was grounded in theory, not substantive legal argument surrounding issues of judicial precedent. This Comment challenges Rao’s use of “philosophy” as something entirely abstract and steeped in metaphysics. Philosophy is presented as a large umbrella covering diverse sub-fields, two of which are philosophy of law and political philosophy. These sub-fields are of great use to law. Thus, the Court has not illegitimately used philosophers to support personal policy preferences. Nor is the use of philosophy incommensurable with judicial decision-making.

Unit I. Fundamental characteristics of the common law. The source of law -- The jury -- The adversary system of trial -- Retroactivity: a return to stare decisis -- Unit II. The courts and their jurisdiction. Court systems in the United States -- Court system in England -- Unit III. Constitutional law. Judicial review -- Equal protection -- Freedom of speech -- Appendix I. Constitution of the United States -- Appendix II. Table of Supreme Court cases -- Appendix III. Common case citations.

Since former President Soeharto was forced to resign in 1998, the Indonesian judiciary has been significantly reformed. A Judicial Commission was established to monitor its performance. A Constitutional Court was also created; one of its tasks is to decide disputes between state institutions and to review the constitutionality of statutes. This paper discusses the Constitutional Court case in which several Supreme Court judges alleged that the Constitution’s guarantee of judicial independence precluded the Judicial Commission from supervising the Supreme Court’s performance by critically analysing its decisions. The Constitutional Court accepted this argument, declaring that the Indonesian Constitution prohibited the Judicial Commission from performing this function. This paper discusses this case and its potential ramifications.

Highly experienced Supreme Court advocates are frequently believed to be influential in argument before the Court in a way that far outstrips the run-of-the-mill advocate. This paper tests that hypothesis with regard to a particular subset of "public law" or "public interest" cases. It finds that highly experienced advocates have become an enormous influence on the Court's public law cases, and offers a game-theoretic rationale for this influence - that the use of highly-experienced counsel serves as a "signal" to the Court that the preferable result is the one that the advocate is pushing. It also examines the effect on civil rights law (as a case study) that the Supreme Court Bar, as they're called, has, and proposes some possible solutions.

One of the chief arguments against a constitutional Bill of Rights is that it gives judges too much power. The courts interpret the constitution, and from the highest court there is no appeal (though the Constitution can be amended -- a difficult process). As Americans sometimes say, "The US Constitution is whatever the Supreme Court says it is". In many cases the Supreme Court has interpreted the Bill of Rights by means of wire drawn reasoning, reflecting the judges' political and social views. For a survey of Supreme Court Cases on the Bill of Rights see M. Konvitz, Fundamental Liberties of a Free People . The Supreme Court's power to interpret the constitution has made the appointment of judges a political issue, and in 1937 President Roosevelt sought to appoint additional judges (to "pack" the Court) so as to change the court's attitude (the US Constitution does not fix the number of judges). A President is expected to nominate judges ideologically acceptable to his supporters, and the Congress scrutinises these nominations in a partisan way. See article on George W. Bush's nominations. Since judges hold office for life, a President's nominations may make a long term difference to the interpretation of the constitution.

A pair of U.S. Supreme Court cases in the mid-1980s created the exhaustion doctrine of federal Indian law - that cases within federal jurisdiction that raise a colorable claim of tribal jurisdiction should be litigated first in tribal court. Only when tribal remedies are exhausted may the losing party seek review in federal court. This federal post-exhaustion review raises two central questions: First, what standard of review should the federal courts employ in reviewing tribal court determinations? And second, what exactly are the federal courts entitled to review once tribal remedies have been exhausted? Underlying these questions is the issue of differentiating between tribal law and federal law. The existing standard of review between the two varies dramatically. Tribal court determinations of tribal law are entitled to absolute deference while tribal court determinations of federal law are generally reviewed de novo. Although federal courts may redetermine at least some issues of federal law on post-exhaustion review, proper respect for tribal courts and legislatures mandates that federal courts not review issues of tribal law. Thus, this article argues that proper deference to the sovereign powers of Indian tribes and tribal courts requires the federal courts, on post-exhaustion review, to scrupulously distinguish tribal court rulings on tribal law from rulings on federal law. Given that federal courts have apparently taken de novo review powers over all questions of federal law decided by tribal courts (whether that is legitimate or not), tribal courts are in some danger of serving merely as preliminary fact finders for federal district courts. This article proposes that federal courts can preserve the rights and values of tribal courts as instruments of tribal self-government only by carefully limiting questions of federal law to appropriate issues.

The Supreme Court's 2008 decision extending the constitutional right of habeas corpus to non-citizen detainees held at Guantanamo Bay is a remarkable decision on many levels. Although the Supreme Court had previously held to a mostly sovereignty based, territorial methodology for determining whether U.S. constitutional rights would be extended extraterritorially, latent in the Court's jurisprudence had long been a strain of the "personal law" principle. That personal law principle was the analytical basis for reorientation of U.S. conflicts law away from territoriality to interest analysis. In Boumediene v. Bush, the Court was required to confront the competing territoriality and personal law strands of its jurisprudence. Its attempt to reconcile the two into a "functional" test mimics the same struggle that U.S. courts have had for the last four decades trying to accommodate those competing concerns on conflict of laws. Thus, this article argues that the Supreme Court's decision is best understood as a conflict-of-laws decision.

This article is intended to provide an overview of recent Supreme Court jurisprudence on private international law. It will discuss several cases that have been brought to the Supreme Court over the past few terms, and will utilize these cases as a lens through which to view the movement of the Court toward or away from an increased awareness of and international consensus on private international law issues. Interspersed throughout this discussion will be mention of other issues of private international law that may be brought before the Court in the future. The article concludes that while the Court has embraced its role in defining the extraterritorial reach of federal laws, bringing about much needed predictability for international sovereign and private interests, it has separately continued to defer questions of personal jurisdiction to the authority of lower federal and state courts with little regard for internal (and international) harmony.