We present a systematic quantitative approach how to analyze the reasons that judges in Nordic countries publicly adduce for their decisions in constitutional matters, as implemented in the Nordic CONREASON Project. Based on encodings of forty (per court) purposively selected landmark cases,...

The German Constitutional Court has powers that are no weaker than the powers of the US Supreme Court. Justices are openly selected by the political parties. Nonetheless, public and professional perception are strikingly different. Justices at the German court are not believed to be guided by...

This is a contribution to the book The Catholic Supreme Court Justices, which includes an intellectual biography of each and every Catholic Justice in the history of the Supreme Court of the United States. This chapter is on Amy Coney Barrett. It first highlights her unusual choices in...

This article analyses the judgment of the Supreme Court of Poland of 25 June 2020, in which the Court refused to recognise registered mail receipt forms issued by the authorities of the so-called Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) as foreign official documents, despite the Public...

This paper summarizes and comments on all Supreme Court opinions issued during the 2022-2023 term that deal with labor and employment law and the employment relationship. The paper also provides information on all cases accepted for argument during the 2023-2024 term as of July 29, 2023

This Article explores the concept of “judicial federalization doctrine.” The doctrine emanates from well-documented areas of federal constitutional law, including exactions, racially motivated peremptory challenges, the exclusionary rule, same-sex sodomy, marriage, and freedom of speech and...

How does the public assess the Supreme Court and its work? Using data from three surveys conducted over a span of ten years, we show that individuals’ policy preferences drive evaluations of the Court and its willingness to reform the Court. We find strong evidence that the Court’s hybrid...

Most constitutional systems count with the eventualities of unexpected circumstances threatening the constitutional order. These constitutions allow a constitutional regime’s partial or complete transformation into a constitutional emergency. Before 2020, Slovakia had almost no experience with...

In 2021, Texas enacted an abortion statute, SB8, stating “a physician may not knowingly perform or induce an abortion on a pregnant woman if the physician detected a fetal heartbeat for the unborn child.” SB8’s prohibition applies broadly against anyone who “knowingly engages in conduct...

In life, there are times and quotes which are unforgettable. Historians can affirm the famous saying, ‘the Bourbon monarchy learnt nothing and forgot nothing from the 1789 French revolution’. This narrative depicts the troubles that befell the French King, Louis XVIII in 1830. Although he...

We empirically examine the value relevance of court rulings on environmental litigation for polluting firms. In a landmark case, the US Supreme Court cited the “major questions” doctrine to reject the jurisdiction power of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the West Virginia V. EPA...

An unsympathetic Supreme Court threatens U.S. antitrust reform. This paper illustrates the problem by focusing on the holdings and dicta of two 21st century Supreme Court decisions, Verizon v. Trinko and Ohio v. American Express (Amex). In interpreting these decisions, some read Trinko to...

In this Article, I argue that the deportation of lawful permanent residents on account of a criminal conviction is punitive, and therefore enhanced constitutional protections must be afforded to lawful permanent residents during removal proceedings. To support this argument I rely, in part, on...

We examine the effect of a U.S. Supreme Court decision regarding abortion laws on Americans’ preferences for political candidates. The decision was leaked in advance of the official announcement, and we track the evolution of political preferences from before the leak to after the leak, and...

Martin and Quinn used item response theory based on the Markov-Chain-Monte-Carlo method to estimate justices’ locations on a one-dimensional scale. Their analysis has been received with interest and doubts by the legal community. This paper explores the Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithm in...

The Respect for Marriage Act’s enhanced statutory protections for the right to marry are a legislative response to concerns generated by the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling about the future of LGBTQ constitutional rights. Although Dobbs repeatedly promised that its elimination of constitutional...

The 1991 Policy of liberalisation, globalisation and privatisation was a complete game changer for the Indian economy and by an extension, for the justice system in the country. The Indian legal infrastructure needed reforms even before 1991; however, the cycle of reforms that started post 1991 gave...

In the first part of this work, I emphasized that the general trend of judicial self-restraint rests on two main pillars. The first is deference to congress, and the second is deference to the executive. From one hand, the U.S. Supreme Court deferred to the Congress mainly through its own...

Constitutional loyalty, the importance ascribed to complying with constitutional rules, is difficult to measure across countries due to differences in context, history, and culture. We overcome this challenge by exploiting the COVID-19 pandemic as an ideal setting in which societies around the...

Occasionally, information about the inner workings of the Supreme Court is leakedto the press by insiders--clerks, or even justices themselves. These leaks reliably stokecontroversy among commentators and academics alike who pontificate on the negativeeffect leaks have on the Court's...

Post-2000, the justices of the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) have encountered a largely consistent workload of law-making appeals and candidate appeal gatekeeping. In contrast, Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) and High Court of Australia (HCA) records indicate those national high...

The Anti-Injunction Act (“AIA”) is an important part of administrative procedure law and a crucial piece of the United States tax system. Enacted to help expedite the tax revenue process, the Act works to invalidate any lawsuit to restrict the assessment or collection of taxes. Nonetheless,...

This paper focuses on the academic contribution of Professor Upendra Baxi and the influence of his writings in the decision-making process of the Supreme Court of India which cites eminent scholars' writings in its judgments to arrive on the logical conclusions. Professor Baxi is a highly...

Public enforcement of law relies on the use of public agents, such as judges, to follow the law. Are judges motivated only by strategic interests and ideology, as many models posit, rather than a duty to follow the law? We use the random assignment of U.S. Federal judges setting...

Appellate courts sometimes issue inconsistent decisions. Individual judges are sometimes inconsistent too. We argue that making judges more consistent could exacerbate the problem of inconsistent courts. We do so through a variant of Arrow's model of preference aggregation in which preferences...

The story of how the Eurozone crisis was particularly harsh on Portugal is a well told one. The most visible side of this story is the austerity policies commanded by reactions to the crisis, particularly following the international loan agreed with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the...

This paper examines the partisan patterns in state supreme court elections for the period 1981 through 2020. It shows that those elections have become more partisan across all election formats: partisan, semi-partisan, nonpartisan, and retention. The greatest change has been in nonpartisan...

This paper uses economic reasoning to analyze the traditions and institutions of one of the most successful criminal organizations in modern history: La Cosa Nostra (LCN). Drawing on recently declassified FBI reports, the paper's analysis shows that LCN's core institutions are best understood as...

In the Parliament of the Republic of Moldova a project is examined, in which it is proposed that, in case of illicit enrichment, the burden of proof falls not on the state (as it is now), but on the perpetrator. If this project is adopted, there is a probability that in the Republic of Moldova...

In West Virginia vs. EPA, a conservative majority within the Supreme Court announced this past June a sweeping ruling, traceable to the opinions of former Justice Scalia, that seriously threatens environmental law’s ability to safeguard public health and welfare. In sustaining former President...

By way of two detailed decisions released on October 19, 2022, a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court of India has revisited the entire law governing income tax exemption for charitable activities in India.These decisions have examined the statutory provisions which have been in vogue for...

Anecdotal evidence often points to aging as a cause for reduced work performance. This paper provides empirical evidence on this issue in a context where performance is measurable and there is variation in mandatory retirement policies: U.S. state supreme courts. We find that introducing...

The rights and aspirations of the Constitution of South Africa are expressly recognised in competition legislation. This recognition, as well as the principle of constitutional supremacy, enjoin competition authorities and courts to interpret and adjudicate competition matters in a manner that...

Inspired by the recent activation of the ultra vires review of the Federal Constitutional Court (FCC) of Germany, the article analyzes one of its restrictive elements: the concept of obviousness and its concretization through objective arbitrariness. These concepts are used with good intentions...

The parties’ right to be heard in court is a central aspect of due process. It has been decades of routine practice that the defendant in preliminary injunction proceedings has been heard only in the oral hearing upon objection, i.e., after the preliminary injunction had already issued - and...

The Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court authors many of the most important opinions coming out of the Court. The prestige of authoring an important policy decision, and the value that such an opinion adds to the legacy of the Chief Justice’s Court, plays an important and strategic...

On February 25, 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court in Rodriguez v. FDIC unanimously ruled that there should be no federal common law, including in the area of taxation, except in extraordinary circumstances. Some commentators have raised the concern that this hostility to federal common law may...