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...

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...

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 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...

Who governs—and who should govern—online communication? Social media companies, international organizations, users, or the state? And by what means? A range of rhetorical devices have been used to simplify the complexities associated with the governance of online platforms. This includes...

Purpose The CoViD-19 pandemic has brought about a panoply of institutional challenges both domestically and in the international arena. Classical constitutional theory thereby underwent a reinvention by the executive for the sake of speedy policy action and to the detriment of institutional...

This article presents the first comparative evaluation of the social media presence of 17 Latin American high courts. We explore the intensity with which they use Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, as well as the level of influence that each court has developed on these platforms. The resulting...

In May 2020, for the first time in its history, the Federal Constitutional Court (FCC) of Germany declared Union acts as being ultra vires. According to the FCC, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) had acted beyond their mandates because they did...

The German Constitutional Court is radically different from the (mostly US) courts in which panel effects have been studied so widely. On the one hand, to a large extent, ideological and gender bias are neutralized by design. On the other hand, panels are not randomly composed. This makes it...

Using data on essentially every U.S. Supreme Court decision since 1946, we estimate a model of peer effects on the Court. We estimate the impact of justice ideology and justice votes on the votes of their peers. To identify the peer effects, we use two instruments that generate plausibly...

In recent years, the United States Supreme Court has decided fewer cases than at any other time in its recent history. Scholars and practitioners alike have criticized the drop in the Court’s plenary docket. Some even believe that the Court has reneged on its duty to clarify and unify the law....

Annexation of local governments is a contentious topic. Litigation of annexation often addresses important constitutional provisions, such as property rights, federalism, limitations to police powers, equality and, more specifically, the Voting Rights Act. The United States Constitution is...

This article explores the viability of the selection of distinguished jurists and scholars as judges in the Supreme Court of India. Deriving inspiration from foreign jurisdictions such as the United States, the founding father(s) of the republic envisioned distinguished jurists as adjudicators...

The COVID-19 pandemic has unleashed a catena of contractual disputes. The paper synthesizes the Indian Contract Act and relevant case laws to present a legal position on force majeure, the frustration of contract and contractual gaps, in the context of COVID-19. Using the economic analysis of...

In India, In the current hierarchy of tax litigation, the disputes are addressed at the first level by a tax officer, the appeal against which is determined by another tax officer, albeit a senior one. The second appeal lies before a quasi-judicial tribunal, against whose orders further appeals...

Justice Clarence Thomas is one of the most recognizable members of the United States Supreme Court. Many people recall his stormy Senate confirmation hearing and notice his fiery dissenting opinions that call on the Court to reflect the original public meaning of the Constitution. Yet observers...

Over the years, India has become a self- reliant economy. In the recent past, the country has seen several legal reform taking place, One such reform was the enactment of Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016. The Act consolidated and amended all existing laws on the lines of Resolution and...

In the traditional approach to ideological classification, “liberal” judicial decisions are those that support civil liberties claims; “conservative” decisions are those that reject them. That view – particularly associated with the Warren Court era – is reflected in numerous...

This article provides extended summaries and (separately) the author's take on every employment and labor law decision rendered by the Supreme Court during its most recent term. Also covered in this piece are abbreviated reviews of all grants of certiorari for the upcoming term and short...

The Supreme Court’s decision in Gitlitz v. Commissioner is an irresponsible decision disrupting the logic of tax for the benefit only of abuse. In Gitlitz the Supreme Court gave the equivalent of a double deduction, both an appropriate exclusion of cancellation of indebtedness income for an...

Case complexity is central to the study of judicial politics. The dominant measures of Supreme Court case complexity use information on legal issues and provisions observed post-decision. As a result, scholars using these measures to study merits stage outcomes such as bargaining, voting,...

A model of negligence in common law jurisdictions is a conceptual structure that basically seeks to align the three legal concepts used by courts to administer negligence law with the three substantive elements that constitute, justify and limit negligence liability. The three legal concepts are...

This Article first provides an overview of the Section 14(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 private right of action. Thereafter, the Article explores the implication of rights of action generally under federal law as well as the development of the implied right, its elements, and scope...

This paper investigates stock and option market reactions to judicial events in the United States Supreme Court (SC) relating to cases where at least one party involved is a public firm. Using a comprehensive dataset of more than 500 SC cases from 1948 to 2018, we find that the stock market...

In a decision that delighted "deep pockets," shocked the plaintiffs' bar, and befuddled neutral observers, the Supreme Court in Central Bank of Denver v. First Interstate Bank of Denver held that aiding and abetting liability in private actions may not be imposed under section 10 (b) of the...

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...

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...

In 1981, while in the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, two of the authors were instrumental in initiating the FTC's fraud program, relying on Section 13(b)'s authority to obtain a permanent injunction to seek equitable relief, including asset freezes and consumer redress. The fraud program...

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...

The Supreme Court of India delivered its judgment in the appeals pertaining to the Ram Janmabhoomi – Babri Masjid case on 9 November 2019, after a marathon hearing of 40 days and exhaustive discussions and deliberations on issues encompassing history, archaeology and of course law. The...

2020 was a big year. From a socio-legal and political perspective, many legislatures and judiciaries around the world have dealt with issues arising from national elections, a global pandemic, and collective action reform. In Australia, the parliamentary enquiry into litigation funding for...

The Supreme Court’s decision in Gitlitz v. Commissioner is an irresponsible decision disrupting the logic of tax for the benefit only of abuse. In Gitlitz the Supreme Court gave the equivalent of a double deduction, both an appropriate exclusion of cancellation of indebtedness income for an...

While longstanding theories of political behavior argue that voters do not possess sufficient political knowledge to hold their elected representatives accountable, recent revisionist studies challenge this view, arguing that voters can both follow how their representatives vote and use that...

The U.S. Supreme Court’s June 30, 2020 decision in U.S.P.T.O. v. Booking.com B.V. held that consumer perception alone should determine whether terms are registrable as trademarks or generic and free for all to use. The issue was whether a term that is generic for the class of goods or services...

Since the Founding, Supreme Court justices have enjoyed life tenure. This helps insulate the justices from political pressures, but it also results in unpredictable deaths and strategic retirements determining the timing of Court vacancies. In order to regularize the appointment process, a...

The German Constitutional Court’s recent challenge to European law supremacy, and European lawyers’ strident critique of it, misdirect the conversation we need to have. The German Constitutional Court wants us to focus on a surplus of European Union power, the European Court of Justice’s...

The abstract nature of Constitutional principles, such as the social state principle, requires further interpretation to determine their concrete substance. Their realization is primarily the duty of politics and the legislator. Yet the Constitutional Courts can substantially contribute to...

This paper deals with judicial departures in consolidating democracies. It investigates to what extent and under what conditions judges in those contexts are not able to decide on their departures themselves but are rather forced to leave due to pressure from the elected branches. We undertook a...

Article 181(5) of Ghana's 1992 Constitution requires parliamentary approval of international business transactions to which the government is party, a term defined to include state procurement contracts and various public-private investment projects. This paper traces the origin of that...

This article aims to analyze the decision rendered by the U.S. Supreme Court on March 5, 2014, in Re BG Group plc v. Republic of Argentina, whereby Argentina was ordered to pay the British company BG Group the amount of United States Dollar (USD) 185.3 million in damages as a result of...

Previous studies suggest a significant role of language in the court room, yet none has identified a definitive correlation between vocal characteristics and court outcomes. This paper demonstrates that voice-based snap judgments based solely on the introductory sentences of lawyers arguing in...

The emphasis on “fit” as a hiring criterion has raised the spectrum of a new form of subtle discrimination (Yoshino 1998; Bertrand and Duflo 2016). Under complete markets, correlations between employee characteristics and outcomes persist only if there exists animus for the marginal employer...

We estimate how U.S. state courts impact firm value by exploiting a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that exogenously changed firms' exposure to different courts. We find that increased exposure to more business-friendly courts is associated with positive announcement returns. We find no such...

The 2004 Constitution of Afghanistan vaguely describes the powers of the Supreme Court (the Court) to interpret the constitution and exercise judicial review. It also describes an independent commission for the supervision of the implementation of the constitution (the Commission), whose powers...

Banking law is the branch of civil law which tries to perpetuate credibility of banking business. Good governance, customer protection, transparency and financial safety are the major concern of banking jurisprudence. In contemporary time, banking business is much risky job across the globe...

Using data on essentially every US Supreme Court decision since 1946, we estimate a model of peer effects on the Court. We consider both the impact of justice ideology and justice votes on the votes of their peers. To identify these peer effects we use two instruments that generate plausibly...