Source: http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/civpro/2012/week9/index.html
Timestamp: 2016-02-13 03:11:07
Document Index: 46090131

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 1331', '§ 1331', '§ 1331', '§ 1331', '§ 1331', '§20701']

Lumen Mulligan (University of Kansas Law School) has posted You Can't Go Holmes Again to SSRN.
Under the standard interpretation of 28 U.S.C. § 1331, the so-called Holmes Test, pleading a federal cause of action constitutes a sufficient condition for finding federal question jurisdiction. In January 2012, the Supreme Court, in Mims v. Arrow Financial Services, LLC, re-characterized this standard test for § 1331 jurisdiction as one that considers whether “federal law creates [both] a private right of action and furnishes the substantive rules of decision.” In this first piece to address the Mims Court’s significant change to the § 1331 canon, I applaud its rights-inclusive holding. I contend that this right-inclusive view rests upon a firmer jurisprudential framework than does the Holmes test, as the latter is intertwined with an anachronistic pairing of causes of action and rights and Justice Holmes’ overall “bad man” jurisprudential position. I argue further that Mims’ rights-inclusive approach more accurately describes § 1331 doctrine as a whole, helping to illuminate that — contrary to the Holmes test — merely pleading a federal cause of action is neither necessary nor sufficient for taking statutory federal question jurisdiction. I also demonstrate that this rights-inclusive view is more solicitous of the intent of the 1875 Congress, which passed § 1331, and of the intentions of later-in-time Congresses, which pass legislation against the presumption that federal rights provide grounds for taking federal question jurisdiction, than is the Holmes test.
March 1, 2012 in Federal Courts, Recent Scholarship, Supreme Court Cases | Permalink
Today, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Kurns v. Railroad Friction Products, covered earlier here. Justice Thomas wrote the majority opinion, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia, Kennedy, Alito and Kagan. Justice Kagan filed a separate concurring opinion as well.
Justice Sotomayor wrote an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, which was joined by Justices Breyer and Ginsburg.
Justice Thomas’s majority opinion begins:
This case requires us to determine whether petitioners’ state-law tort claims for defective design and failure to warn are pre-empted by the Locomotive Inspection Act (LIA), 49 U. S. C. §20701 et seq. The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit determined that petitioners’ claims fall within the field pre-empted by that Act, as that field was defined by this Court’s decision in Napier v. Atlantic Coast Line R. Co., 272 U. S. 605 (1926). We agree.
February 29, 2012 in Recent Decisions, Supreme Court Cases | Permalink
Oral Argument Transcripts in Kiobel and Mohamad
Here are the transcripts from today's oral arguments in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum and Mohamad v. Palestinian Authority.
February 28, 2012 in Supreme Court Cases | Permalink
Lots of coverage on Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, which is being argued today:
Kenneth Anderson (Volokh Conspiracy)
Jonathan Hafetz (ABA Preview)
Julian Ku (Point of Law)
Juan Mendez (Opinio Juris)
Peter Weiss (New York Times)
David Weissbrodt (Point of Law)
Stephen Wermiel (SCOTUSblog)
One issue that isn’t squarely raised by the questions presented is whether the Alien Tort Statute applies to claims brought by one alien against another (as in Kiobel). Amanda Frost’s Academic Round-up for SCOTUSblog covers an essay by Anthony Bellia and Bradford Clark, which argues that the Alien Tort Statute applies only to claims brought by an alien against a U.S. citizen. Marco Simons has a response on Concurring Opinions.
February 28, 2012 in In the News, Recent Scholarship, Subject Matter Jurisdiction, Supreme Court Cases, Weblogs | Permalink
Hoffman on Hubbard on Preservation Under the Federal Rules
Now available on the Courts Law section of JOTWELL is an essay by Prof. Lonny Hoffman (Houston) entitled A Modest Proposal on Preservation. It reviews an article by Prof. William Hubbard (Chicago), Preservation Under the Federal Rules: Accounting for the Fog, the Pyramid, and the Sombrero.
February 27, 2012 in Discovery, Recent Scholarship, Weblogs | Permalink
Computer Assisted Discovery in SDNY
Magistrate Judge Peck has issued an opinion in Moore v. Publicis Groupe, 11 Civ. 1279, permitting the use of computer assisted discovery in an employment discrimination class action pending in the S.D.N.Y. The protocol will use trainable computer programs and a "seed set" of data coded by lawyers to engage in predicitve coding of a large number of documents. The opinion is notable not only for the ruling itself, but for the lucid descriptions of computer assisted discovery methods and how they may or may not apply to situations beyond the case at hand.
More coverage is available at Law Technology News.
February 27, 2012 in Discovery, Federal Courts | Permalink
Now available from the ABA is a preview by Prof. Jonathan Hafetz (Seton Hall) of Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum and Mohamad v. Palestinian Authority. At issue in these cases (as covered earlier here) is whether corporations, organizations, and other defendants that are not natural persons may be sued under either the Alien Tort Statute or the Torture Victim Protection Act. They will be argued in tandem tomorrow.
February 27, 2012 in In the News, Supreme Court Cases | Permalink