The Nominations Presidents Make: Appointing Supreme Court Justices

This paper tests the hypothesis that presidents are more successful in Congress during their first hundred days in office. Analyzing an original dataset composed of the bills on which presidents took official positions, it finds that presidents indeed have higher success rates during the first hundred days of their first year than they do later during their first year or during the first hundred days of noninaugural years. This effect is strongest for presidents who face divided government.     

Biased Justice: James C. McReynolds of the Supreme Court of the United States

James Clark McReynolds was a man who people only spoke of in superlatives—most of them unflattering.     

President Jefferson's Three Appointments to the Supreme Court of the United States: 1804, 1807, and 1807

In endeavoring to set the stage for an examination and analysis of Mr. Jefferson's three appointments to the Supreme Court of the United States, a summary glance into those of his two predecessors, George Washington and John Adams, both Federalists, is apposite.     

To Sit or Not to Sit: The Supreme Court of the United States and the Civil Rights Movement in the Upper South

In the early 1960s, Ford T. Johnson Jr. was an undergraduate at Virginia Union University, a black college in Richmond, Virginia. So was his sister, Elizabeth. On Saturday, February 20, 1960, they and dozens of classmates headed downtown to participate in sit-ins directed at segregated seating arrangements at the eating venues in the department stores that lined Broad Street. What motivated the Johnsons and the other black students who participated in the sit-in that Saturday was a commitment to bring segregation to an end—beginning with the integration of downtown Richmond's lunch counters. Whether the racial discrimination imposed in those stores reflected the express mandates of state laws and city ordinances or the private decisions of various enterprises did not matter to the demonstrators. Even if integrated service had been within the law, management at lunch counters and other establishments, relying on trespass laws, would still have called upon public authorities to eject demonstrators seeking desegregation.     

The Supreme Court and Juvenile Justice

For so many things I thank the Historical Society profoundly, but place right at the top of my list the delightful opportunity your invitation has given me to read the prior Annual Lectures—interesting, exciting, thoroughly intimidating—touching on the Court's history, its cases, its people, even its wives (the subject of Justice Ginsburg's 1999 lecture). Wholly apart from the Society's many initiatives to preserve the Court's history and increase public awareness of its contributions to our nation, the now nearly three dozen Annual Lectures alone offer an amazing insight into this great institution.     

The Supreme Court in the Nineteenth Century

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, we find a Court which has not yet found its role, and whose principal impact is deciding which litigant wins in a particular lawsuit. Chief Justice John Marshall, appointed in 1801, changes that; he and his successor, Roger B. Taney, are the dominant figures in the Courts over which they preside. From 1801 until 1864-sixty-three years-the nation had only two Chief Justices; during the same time, it had fifteen presidents. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, the Chief Justices are less dominant and influential, sharing their authority with several notable Associate Justices. By the end of the century, the Court is beginning to wrestle with the many problems facing the nation after a little more than a century of existence.     

Punctuated Equilibrium and the Supreme Court

In the legislative and executive branches, policy scholars have used punctuated equilibrium (PE) theory to describe and explain patterns of change. However, there has been little examination of how PE might apply to courts and legal policy change. This article addresses that gap by providing evidence that legal policy change—here conceptualized as changes in what precedents the Supreme Court most often cites—is governed by PE theory. After making a prima facie case for the applicability of PE theory to the Court, I leverage network rankings of Supreme Court decisions to create a proxy for legal policy change that improves on existing measures. Using both a stochastic process model and an analysis of the punctuations the measure uncovers, I find strong evidence of PE processes.     

The Invisible Dance: The Supreme Court and the Press

Abstract

In America, Tocqueville writes, men were born equal; they did not have to become so.¹ But he is not unaware of the radical democratic character of the American revolution of which Gordon Wood has reminded us.² Prior to 1776, Tocqueville observes, the democratic principle was “far from dominating the government of society.” It was the Revolution that made it “the law of laws.” “The war was fought and victory obtained in its name” (1:1, ch. 4. 59).     

The Graver Tank Litigation in the Supreme Court

The very generality of the patent statutes in American law places a heavy burden on the courts and the patent bar for the development of patent law and policy. It is particularly important that we examine periodically how well the courts have performed that function and how well the bar has supported that effort. This article will focus on an earlier era in patent law—in particular the process surrounding the second Graver Tank decision, in the 1949 Term of the Supreme Court—to see what lessons that experience may hold for present day. ¹